Dialogical Integration of Life Experiences and Successful Aging.

This article examines the hypothesis that the dialogical integration of life experiences is related to successful aging. Life story interviews with 93 older Czech adults were sorted into categories characterized by specific patterns of life experience integration: (i) without dialogical processes, (ii) with differentiated I-positions, (iii) with dialogical relationships, (iv) partially integrated, and (v) completely integrated. The results indicated that the categories were ordered, yielding low-level correlations with scales of successful aging in predicted directions.

Dialogical and Integrated Self in Late Adulthood: Examining Two Adaptive Ways of Growing Old.

We examined two contradictory views of Erikson's concept of ego integrity: as an outcome of the tension between integrity and despair, or as a dialogical process of balancing positive and negative life experiences. One hundred sixty-seven Czech older adults participated in the study. Dialogically integrated, outcome-integrated, and outcome-despairing participants were selected based on the Ego Integrity Scale and based on methods mapping life-reviewing dialogue.