What accounts for successful aging? – A dialogical self view

From the psychological perspective, older adults who are unsuccessful in aging (experiencing, for instance, depression, low well-being, or low life satisfaction) have been often considered unable to accept their own past including life losses. However, such an explanation may be too trivial. For example, an inability to accept the past may be a natural component of depressive thinking and not a separate variable that accounts for depression. Unsuccessful aging can alternatively be explained by focusing on processes of meaning construction of various aspects of one’s own life. The theory of the dialogical self describes these processes in terms of the development of an internal dialogue. An aging-successful older adult should develop a lifereviewing internal dialogue with adaptive features, such as differentiation or integration of various and often contradictory „I-positions.” Methods: Narrative analyses based on the theory of the dialogical self were applied to Life Story Interviews with 32 older adults (aged from 70 to 93 years). According to the presence of the adaptive features in narratives, various types of life-reviewing internal dialogues were identi-fied. The validity of these types was examined by their scores on the Reminiscence Function Scale (RFS). Respondents who used the respective types were compared in terms of well-being (Mood Adjective Checklist - MAC) and meaningfulness of life (Meaning in Life Questionnaire - MLQ). Results/Discussion: The narrative analysis yielded three types of life-reviewing dialogues according to how they are elaborated and adaptive: differentiated dialogue (low adaptive), progressive dialogue, and integrated dialogue (highly adaptive). The validity of these types was sup-\nported by differences on the RFS: participants with the progressive dialogue reported more frequent reminiscence activities to resolve past conflicts and to reconstruct their identity. As hy-\npothesized, scores indicating successful aging on the scales MAC and MLQ were higher in respondents with the integrated life-reviewing dialogue