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Growing Old: A Journey of Self-Discovery

Reviewed by Luke Penkett.

Danielle is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Geneva, a full member and training analyst of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Originally published in French in 2008, her book, written at the request of her colleagues (but not finished until she herself had ‘grown old’) addresses the strikingly different responses and reactions the elderly have to the process of ageing.

Written in a straightforward and unsentimental manner, yet movingly illuminated by experience, Growing Old emphasises the value of old age attained through a sense of self worth. It is a work celebrating the opportunity of learning more and more about ourselves. A worthy successor to Henri Nouwen’s Ageing, through its brief yet pertinent chapters on remembering, eternity, phases of life, anxiety about death, the resources of old ages, and generations, there is so much here for all wishing to gain insights into the natural progression into later life.

Drawing on her rich clinical experience of working with the elderly, and her own personal experience of growing older, Danielle offers us much that is of help in coming alongside the elderly and approaching our own ageing. Far from depressing reading, the book does not, at the same time, fudge its issues as removing much of the fear that can ruin the pinnacle of one’s life.