Goetheanum | The Soul-Spiritual Development and Its Significance in Old Age

About the job

The soul-spiritual development and its significance in old age

The care working group ‹Age Culture 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 had a high regard: the wise counsel of the elderly was sought after and respected. 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, against the background of contemporary opinions, implicitly in 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 soul-spiritual development were connected and took place in parallel into old age, this soul-spiritual developmental capacity has increasingly diminished in more recent times. This means that the soul-spiritual 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, one has the opportunity to develop oneself into the soul-spiritual life through individual initiative – or one more or less leaves it at what inner maturation could be achieved by the age of 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 exhausted, or the chance for self-education is missed, causing people, for example at 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 in age culture and medicine? We will encounter people who, on their life path after 28 or even after 27 years of age, could not do what might have been latent in them to develop. These can be ‹forgotten› ideals, values, or life motives. From such life courses, people may grow 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 fall into loveless behavior. Unfortunately, the general attitude in Central European society towards old age is affected by these circumstances.

Geriatrics 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 contemporary historical conditions and transgenerational traumas. 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

With these thoughts, the human biography is addressed. Life circumstances of childhood and youth are reflected in old age and found in soul or bodily conditions. A well-known example from research is the long-term conducted ‹Nun Study›2: its results showed that a happy childhood is a strong prognostic value 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 age culture and medicine is a demand of the times because only on such a knowledge basis can societal processes be changed. Early childhood education and schooling are health factors for the entire lifetime. 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 it fell into 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 elderly 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 aspects for correspondingly 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, and forgetfulness.

It is therefore sensible to distinguish and conceptually separate old age and illness even in practical terms. Although it is true that illness can occur more frequently 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