rientation. When policy makers continually make their decisions based on cost-effectiveness rather than value-orientation, confusion and alienation can only increase. Restructuring health care in a manner befitting the needs of an aging population requires a fuller incorporation of ethics. Two major areas of research need attention: first, redefining what old age should be and abandoning prior assumptions and misconceptions about aging; second, administering programs proficiently and ethically to an aging population. Reconsideration of how counselors should behave with aging clients lies at the heart of this social phenomenon. This report examines some recent research to show what areas of change have already been highlighted. In a world growing increasingly old and rapidly more technological, this adaptation to change will need to be constant and daily.
Until the 20th century, America existed as a frontier country, with its corresponding emphasis on novelty. America identified itself with youth and what was new (Palmore, 1993, p. 356). As this century draws close to the next, American attitudes about the aging process have begun to shift radically. By the year 2005, there will be 35 million Americans older than 65 (Binstock, 1991, p. vii). Erik Erikson, one of America's preeminent psychologists, realized as he himself grew older that the psychology of aging, an analysis of the phenomenon of maturity, was a field which had remained largely untappped. One of the most central tasks for psychologists turning their attention to the elderly is anchored in tasks of definition. Even more significantly, a radical need for redefining how people view age is warranted. Erikson directed attention to the aging process by dividing it into these recognizable categories: Integrity & Despair, Generativity & Stagnation, Intimacy & Isolation, Identity & Identity Confusion, Industry & Inferiority, Initiative & Guilt, and Autonomy & Blam...