LIFE'S SECOND HALF: The Dynamics of Aging
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The shunning of the aged in America is inhuman, says this post-retirement author, who maintains that there are three ways to combat the problems that are built into old age here: you can be a ""sorehead,"" you can be resigned to your fate, or you can be philosophical. Ellison advocates the last, and claims (with Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl) that ""suffering ceases to be unendurable when the sufferer can see a worthy reason for it."" Ellison is the founder of the Phenix (sic) Clubs, whose purpose is to help the aged find enough of those worthy reasons to temper the suffering inherent in growing old. He claims that ""Classic signs of senility have been produced experimentally in persons between the ages of twenty and thirty after they were consistently ignored, belittled, and treated as if they were a burden to society."" We're glad somebody said that.