From the late nineteenth century on, the dullness found in the senile, their isolation and withdrawal, their clinging to the past and lack of interest in worldly affairs were characteristically represented as the symptoms of senility ― the social shame of the inevitable deterioration of the brain. Following World War II, academic discourse on aging typically represented these as the causes of senility. The location of senile mental deterioration was no longer the aging brain but a society that, through involuntary retirement, social isolation, and the loosening of traditional family ties, stripped the elderly of the roles that had sustained meaning in their lives. When elderly people were deprived of these meaningful social roles, when they became increasingly isolated and were cut off from the interests and activities that had earlier occupied them, not surprisingly their mental functioning deteriorated. The elderly did not so much lose their minds as lose their place.

* senile: 노쇠한 ** deterioration: 노화