Creative reminiscence.

Robert Butler, former Director of the Institute on Aging, was one of the first researchers to recognize the important role of reminiscence in human development. In his work with healthy older adults in the 1950s and 60s, he became aware of their reports of an internal process of reviewing and coming to terms with the past. Butler wrote what has become a classic in reminiscence psychology, "The Life Review: An Interpretation of Reminiscence in the Aged" (1963). He describes life review as a spontaneous personal process of recalling and evaluating one's life and making sense of the life one has lived. Butler theorizes that retellings represent a deep psychic urging toward a final reckoning. He goes on to note that life review is similar to the psychotherapeutic process in that a person reviews the past in order to understand the present. Useful in the process of creating a life review are such memorabilia as scrapbooks, family photo albums, letters, possessions, genealogies, and music.