Goetheanum | The Spiritual and Mental Development and Its Significance in Old Age

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The spiritual and mental development and its significance in old age

The care working group ‹Culture of Aging and Geriatrics› has been active since autumn 2024 and publishes its work results on the specialist portal Anthromedics. Questions and challenges include, for example, exploring connections between childhood and old age.

What does old age mean in our society? In traditional societies, it was highly respected: the wise counsel of the elderly was sought and revered. Today, we are often far from that. Occasionally, it can be experienced as a ray of hope when an elderly person has an aura that evokes modesty or even reverence. In the spirit of our time, such people are not the norm, and this phenomenon can be well illuminated based on the anthroposophical understanding.

We live, implicitly influenced by contemporary opinions, under the possibly mistaken assumption that humans are fully developed and their evolution is biologically complete. At best, certain bodily functions can be optimized or replaced by artificial prosthetics, but evolution or development in old age? What should that consist of? However, to develop ideals in geriatric medicine, the idea of a continuing evolution is necessary.

Exhausting the ego potential

According to Rudolf Steiner's indications, it is not complete: while in human evolution over long periods the physical and spiritual-mental development were connected and occurred in parallel into old age, this spiritual-mental developmental capacity has increasingly diminished in more recent times. This means that the spiritual-mental developmental processes become independent of the physical and ‹naturally› end increasingly earlier.1

Thus, the evolution of today's human being mainly takes place in the inner soul over the course of biography. Around the age of 28, a person has the opportunity to develop into spiritual-mental life through individual initiative – or they more or less leave it at what inner maturation could be achieved by age 28.

From an anthroposophical perspective, certain formative and supportive forces that helped until then withdraw. Therefore, further ego development into old age can proceed cautiously: the ego potential is not fully utilized or the chance for self-education is missed, causing people at, for example, 60 years old to appear inwardly like they are in their late 20s. Today, a person from the age of 28 should independently spiritually absorb and express their inner, soul impulses. Developing a perspective on such societal phenomena can become a valuable tool for practical work.

In anthroposophical view, evolution now tends to shift this inner-soul developmental capacity before the age of 28 over the next centuries. This means that today we can sometimes already observe this ›developmental endpoint› at age 27.1

Consequences of missed development

What does this mean for our understanding of culture and medicine of aging? We will encounter people who, after age 28 or even 27, could not do what might have been latent within them to develop. These can be ‹forgotten› ideals, values, or life motives. Such life courses can produce people who in later age lack the aura of maturity and wisdom. This makes them, at a first, fleeting encounter, seem uninteresting to younger people and can subsequently lead the environment to adopt a loveless attitude. Unfortunately, the general attitude toward old age in Central European society is affected by these circumstances.

Geriatric medicine means learning to understand these ‹darkened› areas of a biography and compassionately sensing the person behind the need for help, who perhaps had difficult life conditions and could not find their self-initiated initiative – possibly due to catastrophic historical conditions and transgenerational trauma. Those who adopt this perspective form an approach for their own willingness to help.

Above all, the attitude and intention can arise to stimulate or promote a certain inner development in every needy elderly person, as individually possible. This should also be a reason for the rehabilitative approach in old age, which generally focuses more on functional independence that delays the need for care somewhat.

A happy childhood tends to enable a healthy old age

These thoughts address the human biography. Life circumstances of childhood and youth are reflected in old age and manifest in soul or bodily conditions. A well-known example from research is the long-term ‹Nun Study›2: its results showed that a happy childhood is a strong prognostic factor for a healthy old age.

Such a connection raises significant questions in reverse, shedding light on health in general and health in traumatized societies. Rudolf Steiner's indications of such connections have been known for over 100 years,3 but hardly enter conventional medicine. Evidence for such connections also requires perseverance and appropriate research designs in research.4 There are still too few of these, but the indications are accumulating.

Introducing such aspects into the culture and medicine of aging is a demand of the times because only on such a knowledge basis can societal processes change. Early childhood education and schooling are health factors for the entire lifespan. Elderly care thus depends on what happened in education about 70 to 80 years earlier. Figuratively speaking, elderly care can mean pulling the child out of the well into which it fell many decades ago.

Conceptually separating old age and illness

The image of deficient old age is superficial and often the cause of lovelessness in human interaction. Lovelessness in elder care today is a topic, for example, when violence prevention programs must be introduced to maintain care quality in inpatient facilities. If we can understand that human life is a path of continuous development, then we have perspectives for effective support in the individual life phases.

Of course, there are also healthy elderly people whose resources are so strong that they remain independent into old age. These people represent a special societal resource. The societal problem is those who need help too early, who lose their independence earlier due to chronic illnesses, and who become dependent on medical care and nursing due to addiction, illness, or forgetfulness.

Therefore, it is sensible to distinguish and conceptually separate old age and illness even in practical terms. While it is true that illness is more likely to occur in old age, old age and illness are fundamentally different.

Footnotes

[1] Rudolf Steiner: GA 177, September 30, 1917, 1999

[2] Deborah D. Danner, David A. Snowdon, Wallace V. Friesen: Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001; 80(5): 804–813

[3] Rudolf Steiner: GA 306, April 15, 1923, 1989, page 28

[4] Elaine Holt: Acknowledging Creative Thinking Skills: Educating for a Creative Future, in: SSRN Electronic Journal, 2024