Geropsychology, overview

[Extract] Geropsychology is an increasing field of clinical practice within professional psychology. Due to the rapid increase in the proportion of older people across countries, a growing number of psychologists work with older adults, their families and caregivers, and aged-care systems concerned. Historically, the origin of the study of the psychological ageing is often credited to A. Quetelet who initiated the first collection of psychological data in examining human development and ageing and published the book On Man and the Development of His Faculties in 1935 (Cook, Herson, & Van Hasselt, 1998). Although afterwards more research had investigated psychological functioning of adults, including older adults, and scholars recognized the need for the scientific study of older people, at the beginning of the twentieth century, most clinicians were unwilling to extend psychological treatment to older individuals. For example, Freud (1905) suggested that psychological treatment of patients over 50 years of age would be ineffective. In the clinical domain, K. Abraham (1927) was regarded as the first psychoanalyst to recognize and express optimism for the psychoanalytic treatment of older individuals. Later in 1929, the first psychotherapeutic program for older adults, the San Francisco Old Age Counseling Center, was founded in the USA. Following this developmental trend, S. L. Pressey (1939), as the first psychologist to publish a book on psychology of ageing, focused on the development of adulthood and ageing. Despite the increasing scholarly interests in older adults, the field of geropsychology remained in its infancy. It was until after World War II the field of psychology and ageing attracted substantial systematic investigation. The books Psychological Aspects of Aging (Anderson, 1956) and Handbook of Aging and the Individual (Birren, 1959) remarked the rapid development of geropsychology. Despite exponential growth of geropsychology, it has been criticized being data rich and theory poor, which indicates the need of theoretical development in contemporary geropsychology (Cook et al., 1998)