Psychologiczne aspekty problematyki wieku emerytalnego starszych kapłanów

Abstract

This is the leading article of a large study, entitled The Process of Adjustment to Retirement in Elderly Priests in which individual reactions to the psychological fact of retirement were examined. Our aim was the discovery of the mechanism's of psychological adjustment to retired life. The examined groups consisted of elderly priests, both those who have already retired and those who are preparing for retirement. Retirement may be prepared for accepted and experienced differently by different priests, as a result of individual efforts to adjustment. We should, however, distinguish between adjustment as a process and adjustment as an effect, i.e. the state resulting from that process. Moreover there seems to exist a certain ability to adjust i.e. a certain efficiency in organizing the level of adjustment. In adjustment as a process there are at least two kinds of psychological reaction of adjustment to the existing conditions of retired life. The effect both of preparation for and adjustment to retirement may vary, i.e. it can be greater or less depending on conditions such as: the life history of the given man, the atmosphere of his family etc. The most important factor in the process in the individual’s self-image, which can have a favourable or a detrimental effect; however, it is always connected with the degree of open-mindness with which he goes through the adjustment process. In the present study we tried to examine the interdependence of the existing self-image and of the level of adjustment to the conditions of retired life, bearing in mind the following aspects: the diagnostic aspect, the practical aspect, the therapeutical aspect, i.e. attempts to explain the psychological phenomenon. From our study we were able to draw practical conclusions concerning special psychological therapy to be recommended where problems concerning adjustment to retired life in the priesthood occur. The three main subjects dealt with in the article were the psychophysiology of ageing, the retirement of elderly priests, and their adjustment to retired life.