Discuss life reviews and their significance among the elderly.

Answers will vary. Daniel Levinson theorized that one aspect of the "midlife crisis" was that people realized they had more to look back on than forward to. In fact, one of the complaints younger people sometimes level at older relatives is that they too often engage in reminiscence-that is, relating stories from the distant past. At times, it may seem that some older people live in the past, possibly in denial of current decline and the approach of death. Reminiscence was once considered a symptom of dementia, but contemporary researchers consider it to be a normal aspect of aging. In working with healthy older volunteers as individuals and in groups, Robert Butler   found that life reviews can be complex and nuanced, incoherent and self-contradictory, or even replete with irony, tragedy, and comedy. Butler believes that older people engage in life reviews to attempt to make life meaningful, to move on with new relationships as contemporaries pass on, and to help them find ego integrity and accept the end of life. Butler   also argues that health-care professionals rely far too much on drugs to ease the discomforts of older adults. Pilot programs suggest that therapists may be able to relieve depression and other psychological problems in older adults by helping them reminisce about their lives.