Late Adulthood: A Sense of Satisfaction or Failure?

I. Introduction:

Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development explores the broad meaning

of life. From Infancy, which needs are dependently met up to Late Adulthood that may

feel a sense of satisfaction or non-fulfillment. But it is more likely to be that on this

stage, there is more possibility of failure due to their sufferings from different kinds of

complications like cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

These are risks that affect memory, personality and functioning. People are faced with a

crisis that acts as a turning point in development at this stage. Dementia is what

destroys even the brightest of minds.

II. Background of the Study

Late Adulthood consist of age 60 until death, Erikson categorized this stage as

integrity vs despair. According to him during “old age” adults are believed to have more

wisdom and existential identity. But Ageism seems to be define as discrimination

because of age basis. As adults grow older, they need to stop working and worrying

about their productivity. They have to preserve or maintain the same amount of

activities, behaviors, personalities and relationship to change less with aging. Some

succeeded but other don’t.

Guillerma de Castro also known as “nanay hema” is an 86 years old from

Salawag, Dasmarinas City, Cavite. She is not diagnosed by Alzheimer’s but suffering

from the same symptoms of disease like this. She lost part of her memory and

sometimes acts like a child. She also needs companion even when eating, taking a
bath, walking and other stuffs she needs to do because of Cataract. According to her

family, nanay Hema’s age affects not only her mind but also her physical abilities.

We, a set of researchers from Electronics Engineering Technology visited nanay

Hema to see how adulthood affects people’s mind. We have notice that she tells a lot of

stories from her childhood experiences, family members, and accomplishments but she

cannot recognized her family members. She forgot how to fix things on her own. Is it

natural for the people to be like this? Is adulthood a satisfaction or a failure?

For us to have strong research, we plan to visit Home for the aged in Imus City,

Cavite. We have to see if most adults there experience memory loss or Dementias. We

also wanted to know if they are satisfied on their life after age 60 and up.

III. Statement of the Topic

Late Adulthood is a big failure or this society. Everyone could be a victim of

losing memory. Knowing that they are on the Late Adulthood stage is when they feel

deep satisfaction in life, but being satisfied becomes too short when Dementia affects

their mind. Continuity theory can solve this problem. Adults must explore life and

contemplate their accomplishments for them to develop integrity instead of worrying

about their productiveness after they stop working.

They should prefer to accomplish this objectiveness they should prefer to

accomplish this objective by using strategies tied to their past experiences and social

world. The theory deals with internal and external structures of continuity to describe

how they adopt to their situation and set goals the internal structure consist of an
individual’s personality or ideas remain constant in life and the external structure consist

of relationships and social roles that help them to stay on a stable self-concept.

ESET-E3G

Onate, Marneth S.

Pujante, Reian Joyce D.

Lugar, Maureen G.

Bontog, Mylene A.

Camus, Jayleine Muriel R.