Gerotranscendence: A Developmental Theory of Positive Aging
"Every baby boomer looking for an alternative paradigm to activity theory’s ’energetic aging’ in later life and its projected treadmill of trips to the personal trainer and plastic surgeon, sky diving lessons, and updates from the stockbroker, should read this book.  Gerotranscendence represents a shift in meta-perspective, from a materialistic and pragmatic view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one.Easily read, Tornstam’s book is choc full of fresh insight and substantial evidence, supporting his convincing argument that gerontologists have, for too long, circled their wagons around one theory of aging (activity theory) with too little attention to the ‘subjects’ of their enquiries—older people themselves—in all their diversity and abundance of unique personal experiences of growing older.We live in a post-modern time where identities are seen as fragile, shifting, multiple and transitory and where all truth is localised.  Tornstam produces an inclusive, developmental approach to growing older that invites gerontologists (as well as the rest of us) to reconsider aging from an array of perspectives in this increasingly multicultural, multifaceted, interactive world. His theory flies in the face of more commonly invoked theories of aging, particularly activity theory, allowing manifold images of later life to materialize from reality and an emergence of the importance of individual meaning to describe phenomena.There is a spirituality in Tornstam’s approach—that part of the person concerned with meaning, truth, purpose or reality and the ultimate significance of things—and one that I find refreshingly engaging.  Perhaps the last 40 years or so of getting granny out of the chair and into a hang glider has been at cross purposes to not only what granny wants, but also what nature/the gods/her muse encourage her to do.  Tornstam provides an alternative way to see the world—"a theoretical tool that makes certain parts of reality comprehensible"."- Kip Jones, PhD, MSc Honorary Research Fellow, Mary Seacole Research Centre, De Montfort University