[The Doxa of the social-gerontological field: successful and productive aging-orthodoxy, heterodoxy or allodoxy?]

Abstract

Without any precise or consistent definition, the imagination of successful and productive aging has meanwhile become the basic illusio of the (psycho) gerontological field. The article examines to what extent a utilitarian term like success can be applied to the aging process. It examines further, if the imagination of successful aging is a faulty representation (allodoxy) of aging, which was brought in as a consciously antipodal system of explanation (heterodoxy) nourished by the attempt to set something positive against the negative societal stereotypes of aging, thus, deceiving itself being the prevailing modus of interpretation (orthodoxy) in the socio-gerontological field.