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Generational Intelligence A Critical Approach to Age
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Author(s): Simon Biggs, Ariela Lowenstein
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Generational Intelligence

The question of communication and understanding between different generations

is emerging as a key issue for the twenty-first century. The advent of ageing popu-
lations may lead to increased conflict or solidarity in society, and provokes a pro-
found ambivalence both in the public and in the private sphere. In a new approach,
Biggs and Lowenstein offer a critical examination of Generational Intelligence
as one way of addressing these issues. How easy is it to put yourself in the shoes
of someone of a different age group? What are the personal, interpersonal and
social factors that affect our perceptions of the ‘age other’? What are the key
issues facing families, workplaces and communities in an ageing society? This
book sets out a way of thinking about interpersonal relations based on age, and
the question of communication between people of different ages and generations.
The book challenges existing orthodoxies for relations between adults of different
ages and draws out steps that can be taken to increase understanding between gen-
erational groups. The authors outline a series of steps that can be taken to enhance
Generational Intelligence, examine existing theories and social issues, and suggest
new directions for sustainable relations between generational groups.

Simon Biggs is Professor of Gerontology and Social Policy at the School of Social
and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia, and Visiting Professor
at the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College London, UK.
Ariela Lowenstein is Professor and Head of the Center for Research and Study of
Ageing at the Faculty of Welfare and Health Studies, University of Haifa, Israel.
This page intentionally left blank
Generational Intelligence
A Critical Approach to Age Relations

Simon Biggs and Ariela Lowenstein

First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2011 Simon Biggs and Ariela Lowenstein
The right of Simon Biggs and Ariela Lowenstein to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Biggs, Simon J.
Generational intelligence : age, identity, and the future of gerontology /
Simon Biggs and Ariela Lowenstein.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Gerontology. 2. Identity (Psychology) 3. Generations.
I. Lowenstein, Ariela. II. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Aged—psychology. 2. Intergenerational Relations.
3. Emotional Intelligence. 4. Geriatrics. 5. Negotiating. WT 145]
HQ1061.B527 2011
305.26—dc22
2010040386

ISBN: 978–0–415–54654–6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–0–415–54655–3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–82791–8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
Contents

Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction viii

1 What is Generational Intelligence? 1

2 Self and the generational imagination 19
3 Developing generational awareness 28
4 Self and other 41
5 Generational strategies and negotiation 56
6 Generations and family 67
7 Generational Intelligence and caregiving: The family and the state 84
8 Generational Intelligence and elder mistreatment 96
9 Workplace and intergenerational relations 110
10 Intergenerational relations in the community 127
11 Conclusion: Toward sustainable intergenerational relationships 142

Bibliography 151
Index 177
Preface

This book was born from a long-standing professional collaboration and exchange
of ideas between the two authors on various issues in social gerontology. Both of
us come from different social science disciplines and trained in different methods
– Biggs in social psychology and qualitative work and Lowenstein in sociology
and quantitative methods. Both have had an enduring interest in social issues and
problems as they affect adult life. Both have also worked in social work, one with
an emphasis on psychodynamic and the other on family approaches. Thus, we
arrive at this endeavour from different disciplinary orientations and intellectual
perspectives, debating a variety of concepts and viewpoints that have been com-
monly encountered. Each of us has his/her own writing style which has added
creativity to the task, and is also reflected in the book. We had many meetings
throughout the three years of writing, which were essential for the negotiation of
ideas and the engaging process of trying to develop a new approach to intergen-
erational relations. The face-to-face meetings were important in order for us to
share perspectives, provoke each other, generate ideas and iron out differences.
We discovered that collaboration is more challenging than is usually thought and
that it is a multidimensional and multi-method process which itself takes time to
take shape.
Our collaboration has culminated in the theoretical thinking evidenced in the
current book. We have built on, but also reconstructed existing debates and in
so doing hope to have created a space in which a new concept has taken shape,
namely that of Generational Intelligence. The book is, then, about the process
of research and thinking about intergenerational relations, focusing on studies
already undertaken in this area, the construction of existing work and limits of
knowledge. It is also about new conceptual thinking to advance that knowledge.
As part of this we explore the meaning of generation, the connection between
ageing and generation, relations between generational groups; distinctions and
interactions between cohort, family, and life position, agency and social structure.
We then discuss a number of key topics through the lens of that novel concept,
perhaps in a generationally intelligent manner.
The book should be useful to scholars, professionals and students working in
the area of adult ageing and intergenerational relations.
Acknowledgements

Both authors would like to thank the many people, colleagues and students, who
have listened to, commented on and contributed to the various ideas and presenta-
tions that have been incorporated in the book.
We also want to acknowledge the smooth and substantively helpful working
relationship we have experienced with Routledge.
We would like to extend special thanks to Mrs Sigal Naim, a graduate with
honors of the MA Department of Gerontology and Coordinator of the Center for
Research and Study of Aging at the University of Haifa, Israel, who helped with
the final editing, referencing and collation of the manuscript.
In particular, Simon Biggs would like to thank Irja Haapala, Guy Biggs and
Eve Allen for their continued inspiration and support. He would also like to thank
Taina Rantanen and staff at the University of Jyvaskyla, where he found time
and space to write, and colleagues at the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College
London, for their forbearance while he was on sabbatical.
Ariela Lowenstein wants to thank her husband Ami for his ongoing enthusiasm
about the book, support and encouragement all through the years of writing, and to
thank her children Noam, Ruth and Tal and their spouses for being there for her.
Introduction

Rarely have societies witnessed a ‘silent revolution’ of such significance as the

global phenomenon of population ageing (Kinsella, 2000; WHO, 2007), which
impacts generational relationships and changes the landscape of individuals, fami-
lies and societies. During the last decades, there has been unprecedented growth in
the number and proportion of older persons in most countries around the world, a
trend which is expected to continue. This reflects a globalization of issues associ-
ated with adult ageing, even though the pace is more gradual in some countries
and more rapid in others (Bengtson et al., 2003). Worldwide, the proportion of
people aged 60 years and over is increasing faster than any other age group. In
2025, there will be a total of about 1.2 billion people 60 years and older (WHO,
2007). Thus, population ageing is a major factor impacting intergenerational rela-
tions and changes within these relationships. This shift in the demographic map
needs to be located in broader social developments and in the way people think
about generations in their personal lives.
Intergenerational relations cover different levels of social units such that micro-
level interpersonal relations and macro-level structures and policies do not stand
alone but interact (Walker, 1996). Such interaction, which includes the relation-
ship between public and private spheres and between social and personal experi-
ence, offers a useful arena for analysing relations within and between generations.
As Connidis and McMullin (2002a) state: ‘Individuals as actors exercise agency
as they negotiate relationships within the constraints of social structure’ (p. 558).
In other words, people have a degree of choice and autonomy, but this always has
to be negotiated within existing prefiguring arrangements which are not always of
their own choosing.
In this book, our main goal has been to develop a new conceptual-theoreti-
cal framework for understanding intergenerational relations in their broadest
perspective.
We believe that ‘theorizing is a process of developing ideas that allow us to
understand and explain our data’(Bengtson et al., 2005: 4). Theory provides

Fundamental orienting perspectives for how questions are asked and solu-
tions formulated . . . It may also provide conceptual tools to interpret complex
events and critically evaluate the current state of affairs. . . . At the extreme
 Introduction ix
end of theory building, the ideas and explanations are infused with novelty
and open new directions.
(Biggs et al., 2003: 2, 7)

In our case, knowledge about the complex and multidimensional topic of intergen-
erational relations would expand horizons that are being shaped by and attempt-
ing to anticipate changing demographics and cultural demands on social systems,
families and individual life courses. We are living in times when a paradigm shift
is emerging in relations between generations which need new tools to explain
and understand it. One example of such change comes from the OASIS1 study,
in which both authors were involved, one as lead researcher and the other as an
outside adviser. The findings indicated that norms of support between generations
have a sufficiently open character to allow an accommodation to new social reali-
ties and new forms of relationship. As gender equality and increased female par-
ticipation in work-life impact family intergenerational relationships, families are
becoming less duty driven and more open to negotiation. Affection and attachment
emerged as more important for family cohesion and intergenerational ties, lending
family relationships a more personal and a less structural flavour (Lowenstein and
Daatland, 2006). Here, we attempt an outline of some of the key issues and con-
tradictions in this field and achieve a new path for thinking about an increasingly
important development and some of the social issues that emerge from it.
The first area that we would like to address, in this introductory chapter, con-
cerns the concept of ‘generation’ where ‘the conceptual language surrounding it
is itself confusing’ (Phillipson, 2010: 14). Generation has been referred to as a
‘packed social concept’ (McDaniel, 2008), including a variety of social, familial
and personal associations, that influence personal identity. Bengtson and Putney
(2006) argue that: ‘The problem of generations and ageing represents one of the
most enduring puzzles about social organization and behavior’ (p. 20).
Hagestad and Uhlenberg (2007) discuss three different phenomena assigned to
this term: first, age groups or individuals as given life stages; second, historical
generations defined as birth cohorts with specific attributes; and third, family gen-
erations – locations in a system of ranked descent. These authors outline that:

In focusing on these three, one is examining people who not only are anchored
differently in dimensions of time, primarily biographical time/chronological
age and historical time but also the rhythm of family time. . . . A host of
challenging yet neglected issues lies in the intersection of these three
phenomena.
(Hagestad and Uhlenberg, 2007: 239–40)

Later in the book we look at the phenomenology of generation, and how, rather
than starting out from thinking in terms of cohorts, families and individual life
positions, people experience generation ‘all in one go’. This implies both a
holistic experience and one that is often tacit rather than consciously thought
through.
x Introduction
Generation is, then, an amalgam of influences that may not be directly acces-
sible to experience. It nevertheless underpins much of everyday attitudes and
behaviour. We are generational beings in a variety of ways. We are by virtue of
being temporal creatures, ones that develop over time and thus subject to processes
of increasing maturity and the accumulation of experience. Our internal world
therefore, comes to include associations, images and identifiable figures that are
generationally inflected. These processes both distinguish individuals from each
other and form the basis for shared generational experiences.
In addition, most people grow up in families that consist of different generations.
Even for those who do not, the surrounding culture, its institutions and opportuni-
ties for self- expression are generationally organized. The influences of family on
intergenerational relationships are picked up again later in the book. Here, concern
lies with its effect on personal identity as one’s earliest memories and attempts to
define who one is, are formed in relation to familial others. Such influences embed
themselves within us before we have the verbal tools to articulate what is happen-
ing, separate them out and achieve a critical distance from them. Sometimes, these
relations are so pervasive that the ability to distinguish oneself from others can be
lost, perspectives cease to be specific and dominant ways of perceiving eclipse
those that are less powerful.
Finally, individuals may begin to realize that as they are striving to define them-
selves and their place in society, they are part of a stream of others who, having
been born at the same time, in the same historical, cultural or social circumstances,
are travelling the same paths. These pathways, may become culturally labeled, as
the ‘war generation’, ‘baby-boomers’ or the ‘millennium children’ and shaped so
that the flow becomes ever stronger. In such cases, we may become one of the
streaming Serengeti-like multitudes charging along together in history’s cohort,
erasing the tracks of preceding generations; at some time becoming conscious of
a new generation coming up behind us.
Without such organizing principals as generation, life would become an essen-
tially aimless, timeless drifting from sensation to sensation, from experience to
experience. Like the donkey between the carrot and the stick, we all too readily find
ourselves seduced by an endless round of consumption, the point of which as Mar-
cuse (1964) has pointed out, early in the study of consumer society, leaves us dis-
satisfied so that we continually need to consume more. Alternatively we are driven
by work-priorities, surrounded by a battery of demands, seemingly without limit or
obvious end. These activities fill our time to such an extent that our lives appear out-
side of time. We do not simply persist in time; however, we, as Small (2007) reminds
us, age. Our adult identities change over time and, in many contemporary societies,
this process is perceived negatively and is avoided. Taken together, these immediate
experiences provide a powerful motivator not to look at generational identity. Until
we stop and realize we are in a different place, and here the concern is a different
place in the life course. It is this process of ageing that offers the life course pattern
and purpose. And if there are patterns, the question arises of how they can be discov-
ered in ourselves, and in seeing them cease to be immersed in their particular logic
and reclaim some form of agency, of understanding, with respect to them.
 Introduction xi
The second area that requires an introductory explanation concerns two con-
cepts that are very closely related, these being adult ageing and generations. Age-
ing happens to each individual throughout their life course, and while this is often
thought of simply as a physical process, it is also a social one, determined by
attitudes and expectations about behaviour. A distinctive way that age is related to
generation, is through the passage of time, so that one is referred to as a member of
the younger and older generation or as part of the millennium, IT, X, Y, boomer or
war generation. These distinctions are often linked to particular historical experi-
ences or change of affairs which offer persons born at a certain time a set of com-
mon reference points and social labels that help locate them in wider social space.
The value of generation in the family sense is often evaluated through the lens of
these common and distinguishing cohorts-driven, cultural and historical experi-
ences. Family distinctions of generation are perhaps the most fluid, by degrees in
terms of age and ageing. Becoming a parent or grandparent can happen across a
range of chronological ages. One is, for the most part, born into a family at some
point, yet one is also born into a social cohort which is then fixed and its labeling
processes and iconic status travel with its members throughout their lives.
There are different levels in which age and generation impact on people’s iden-
tities and position in society. Both concepts influence the way that we think and
feel about intergenerational relations. That is to say our inner, imaginative worlds
are already structured in generational terms, through individual experience, social
development in families and through wider societal expectations and historical
circumstances. We are aware of these influences by degrees, some consciously
and some are unconscious. This inner world presents a liminal, fuzzy beginning to
a journey towards generational understanding, where the influences of life-course
experience, family lineage and historical cohort are often indistinct. Sometimes,
it may be difficult to say where the boundary between inner and outer reality lies.
We have memories and associations. Emotional echoes and ways of thinking that
reach out to shape the world. It is not always easy to define where one begins and
the other ends. At a different level, social expectations shape intergenerational
relations in particular ways and form the stage on which thoughts and feelings
are expressed or suppressed. Again these expectations are often unspoken and act
as a sort of common sense which guide everyday behaviour and allow much of it
to be taken for granted. However, this socially constructed reality is only one of
many possible interpretations, even if it appears at times to be rigid and inflexible.
In fact, attitudes to adult ageing and generational relations continue to change
across cultures and in different historical periods. When these social realities are
in transition; as they are when stable populations change their demographic shape,
traditional attitudes and demands around adult ageing are challenged, the balance
between state and privatized forms of care is threatened, or a new generational
group or cohort challenges an existing social order: life becomes both more uncer-
tain and more flexible. Thus changing age and generational relations present both
a threat and an opportunity to actual intergenerational relationships, which can
occur at the personal level, in social interaction, in institutions and organizations
and in structural characteristics and imbalances of power.
xii Introduction
The two concepts, age and generation come together in the notion of the ‘age-
other’ someone who is constructed as being of a different group to oneself, based
on age. Age-otherness may include aspects of life course and family position and
cohort identity. Whether an individual is seen as being ‘other’ will be affected by
the interaction of these elements of generational identity. So, in a certain social,
cultural or historical context, a person of a certain chronological age may be
labelled as being part of one category or another, such as being adolescent, mid-
dle-aged or very old. While in another, these would be categorized differently, or
not at all. Similarly, the importance of family ties and generational positions may
be more important than wider cohort group identities in one context, and less so
in another. The importance given to family or periods in the individual life course,
whether it is seen as a negative or positive source of identity may vary between
historical cohorts cultural groups.
The distinctions outlined earlier have drawn attention to a third area of concern:
the contexts within which age and generational relations are played out. Each has
its effect on intergenerational relations in various areas including in families, in
the workplace or in different community settings. It is argued that social, demo-
graphic, economic and cultural changes influence relations between generations
and raise controversy, surrounding generational equity, inequality between gener-
ations and intergenerational justice (Lowenstein and Doron, 2008). At the time of
writing, we know little, for example, about how increased life expectancy affects
family members’ interaction with older and younger kin; nor do we know how
the perception that life is long affects decisions about investments in children and
grandchildren and expectations in each generation about providing and receiving
help at different life stages (Hagestad, 2003). Certain issues may be raised in this
regard, however: further studying the features of family, work, social policy initia-
tives as institutions that coordinate the sometimes competing goals of individuals
or groups. Examining if families have particular ways of resolving conflicts may
be one way of judging the relative benefit of family membership as compared
to other social groups. Looking at sources of generational solidarity and the dif-
ferences across various social and cultural contexts; looking at the benefits and
costs of group membership, how it is distributed within and between generations,
and what explains inequality between generations. Trying to understand if norms
generated by social and economic context affect choices and the process by which
generations in a variety of contexts make choices and negotiate relationships.
Given the temporal nature of ageing and of generational progression, intergen-
erational relations need to be understood by including a life-course approach and
taking life transitions into account (Rossi and Rossi, 1990), empirical evidence
show that parents and children differ qualitatively in the ways in which they relate
to one another, the way they negotiate relationships over time and especially as
frailty sets in for older parents as each generation experiences such life transition
differently.
We would argue, in this regard, that sustainable intergenerational relationships
will need to rely on increased levels of generational insight, empathy and mutu-
ally negotiated action which might be especially needed during life transitions.
 Introduction xiii
Intelligence of this sort facilitates the interplay between different levels of under-
standing associated with intergenerational exchanges. Such deeper understanding
should allow us to move beyond varying conceptual positions, such as family
or cohort and macro or micro, obligation or choice, which can give credence to
inflexible responses to related social issues. An intelligent approach to intergener-
ational relations would need to address the issue of how individuals become self-
consciously aware of their generational status, and thereby encounter and under
optimal conditions be able to put themselves in the position of the age-other.
How far these processes influence the experience of and action towards others
in the social world would largely depend on the relative ability to act with aware-
ness of one’s own generational circumstances. This would be activated by the abil-
ity to reflect and act, which draws on an understanding of one’s own life course,
family and social history, placed within a contemporary social climate.

Structure of the book

This book offers a new conceptual approach to the study of intergenerational rela-
tions from various disciplinary perspectives, relating to the individual, family and
social levels of analysis. The introduction paints the rationale and background
and sets the context for the book. Thereafter, the first chapter gives an exposition
of Generational Intelligence and broad views on what it is, presenting the steps
one has to undergo to eventually achieve a higher level. The next two chapters
deal with self-awareness, focusing on the internal world of the imagination, and
discussing the various paths towards achieving Generational Intelligence. It is fol-
lowed by two chapters on the self and others – emphasizing the impact of social
ageism and other phenomena on generational strategies, negotiating ambivalence
and using masquerade to create critical spaces for intergenerational engagement.
The second part of the book, which includes five chapters, focuses on specific
areas where intergenerational relations are played out: Generational Intelligence
in families, in caregiving, in relation to elder abuse, in the workplace and in com-
munity programmes. Each of these chapters begins with an introduction to the
topic and a review of the relevant literature. Each chapter then continues with
a novel conceptualization of Generational Intelligence and its implications for
the relevant topic discussed in the chapter. The last concluding chapter discusses
sustainability – the possibility of negotiating relations over time and strengthening
ones that last.
This book begins to map out some of the key issues, paradoxes and contra-
dictions in the study of intergenerational relationships today and in the future.
We introduced an innovative conceptual framework for understanding and action
which we hope will engage the readers and act as an impetus for further critical
thinking in this area. It should add impetus to what we already know or want to
discover. As social scientists we face the challenge of explaining how intergen-
erational relations are acted and negotiated by the individual, within families and
in broader social contexts, how these processes unfold and what do they entail.
Our work grew out of our quest for explanations and understanding of issues of
xiv Introduction
intergenerational relations and critically looking at existing theoretical perspec-
tives. We hope the development and formulation of the new concept of Genera-
tional Intelligence will be a further step in this direction.

Note
1 OASIS (Old Age and Autonomy: The Role of Service Systems and Intergenerational
Family Solidarity) was funded by the EU under the fifth framework programme.
1 What is Generational
Intelligence?

Summary
The purpose of this chapter is to draw out a newly emerging model of intergenera-
tional relationships, called Generational Intelligence. It takes as its starting point
the degree to which it is possible to place oneself in the position of a person of
a different age or in what has been designated as a different generation. In it, we
explore an approach that is based on how generations are experienced as part
of everyday social life. A point we make is, that in a time of changing roles and
expectations it is important to re-focus attention to the processes that underpin
these kinds of relationships. To this end, a working distinction is made between
the informational ‘intelligence’ that is culturally available to social actors and the
degree to which it is possible to think and act ‘intelligently’ within that defining
context. This is followed by four steps that someone would need to take to become
critically aware of age and generational identity as a factor in social relationships.
The steps include a growing awareness of oneself as being influenced by age and
generation, so that in the end it is possible to recognize one’s personal generational
distinctiveness. Other steps follow from this, such as understanding other people
based on similarities and differences between generations, becoming critically
aware of the values underlying social assumptions about generations and adult
ageing and finally, acting in a manner that is generationally aware. In this man-
ner, we work towards an understanding of two key aspects of intergenerational
relations. First, the degree to which it is possible to place oneself in the position
of the age-other and second, the possibility of working towards negotiated and
sustainable solutions.

Key points

• In everyday life, generation is taken for granted, experienced holisti-

cally and is not necessarily actively thought about.
• To make sense of it a critical distance has to be created, by becoming
consciously aware of one’s own generational identity.
2 What is Generational Intelligence?

• As part of this process, it is necessary to separate and then return to the

‘age-other’ so that the distinctiveness of each position can be recog-
nized.
• This process involves becoming critically aware of the values and
attitudes underpinning beliefs about intergenerational relations.
• The process clears the way for action that is generationally
sustainable.

Introduction
This chapter is grounded on two questions which are followed up in subsequent
parts of the book. First, how can we put ourselves in the place of someone of
another generation? And, second, how is it possible to negotiate intergeneration-
ally sustainable solutions? The first of these is necessary because, in life-course
terms, contemporary society so often eclipses the existential projects of the second
half of adult life and replaces them with the priorities of the first. This seems at
first glance to make putting oneself into the shoes of the age-other an easy task.
In effect, to the person in the dominant stage, their goals, hopes, desires and sense
of past and future, appear to be universally acknowledged. On closer inspection,
however, the task becomes a considerable psychological and social challenge. The
second is necessary because it is not simply enough to become self-consciously
aware of one’s own and another’s life-course priorities. It is also important to
achieve a rapport between them, and find ways of negotiating a complementary
relationship that can be sustained over time. It has, in other words to work for both
parties and to be able to last.
As a starting point, it may be helpful to put forward a preliminary definition.
We would define Generational Intelligence as an ability to reflect and act, which
draws on an understanding of one’s own and others’ life-course, family and social
history, placed within its social and cultural context.
Intergenerational relations provide the context within which individuals grow
and mature. They provide the backdrop against which people mark their own
ageing and the value that is attached to that process. Their quality shapes the way
we feel, think and act towards others.
Generational Intelligence not only focuses on a single person’s or generations’
perspective but also creates the possibility of a space emerging, in which multiple
generational viewpoints can be taken into account. This gives the opportunity for
a process of pragmatic negotiation to take place. It arises as people become explic-
itly aware of similarities and differences based on age. If age groups do not aim to
occupy the same social position within this space, complementary processes based
on age-distinctiveness and solidarity may be able to emerge. It does not suggest an
‘age-neutral’ or ‘age-irrelevant’ society, however, but the negotiation of genera-
tion-specific needs and goals.
 What is Generational Intelligence? 3
Generational relations as a growing social issue
How, then, can we put ourselves in the position of someone of a different age
group? How far is it possible to understand the different influences on intergenera-
tional activity? How far can we act while taking them into account? These are key
questions for the twenty-first century as the numbers of older citizens are growing
to equal those of children and adults in midlife (Bengtson and Lowenstein, 2003).
People are living longer, with changes in age structure affecting both the devel-
oped and developing worlds (Aboderin, 2004). The proportional growth of the
number of older adults and the length of time that people are living is historically
unprecedented (WHO, 2000). As a result, we are increasingly living in a world
where challenges to existing assumptions and expectations about intergenerational
behaviour can be expected (Biggs et al., 2011). The higher life-expectancy of older
persons is already creating new spaces for multigenerational interaction, as there
are simply more generations to interact with each other (Antonucci et al., 2001) to
which can be added an increased complexity of extended family patterns arising
from divorce, remarriage and other forms of relationships (Bengtson et al., 2003).
Individuals may be living in the context of four or in some cases five generations,
in circumstances where kin relations are becoming more diverse.
In addition to these demographic shifts, a new range of social issues are emerg-
ing, that are intergenerational in form. These include age discrimination in the
workplace, elder abuse in care, questions of generational fairness around pensions
and whether healthcare should be rationed according to age. Such issues have been
recognized by the Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid, convened by the
UN in 2002, which noted: ‘the need to strengthen solidarity between generations
and intergenerational partnerships, keeping in mind the particular needs of both
older and younger ones, and encourage mutually responsive relationships between
generations’ (UN, 2002b: 4).
This is not only a problem of numbers, however. It is also a problem of devel-
oping the intellectual and cultural capacity for societies to adapt to this situation.
Generation itself, has been referred to as a ‘packed social concept’ (McDaniel,
2008), including a variety of social, familial and personal associations, that influ-
ence personal identity. Unfortunately the different disciplines which are engaged
with the concept of generation, such as sociology, psychology, medicine, geogra-
phy, rarely cross-communicate (Bengtson and Lowenstein, 2003). Each empha-
sizes a particular perspective and struggles to deliver an understanding of how a
multiplicity of different influences contributes to the ways people navigate their
social world. Partly as a result of the aforementioned, there is a growing recogni-
tion that to study adult ageing one has also to study intergenerational relationships
(Antonucci et al., 2007). Intergenerational relations provide the context within
which individuals grow and change, the way that they mark their own ageing and
the relative value that is attached to that process.
Taken together, these factors point to a need to re-examine the idea of genera-
tion, its constituent parts and how it is experienced. What follows is an attempt at
unwrapping what an increasing critical awareness of generation might entail, in
4 What is Generational Intelligence?
other words, what forms of ‘intelligence’ are required to understand and act in the
context of other generations. By critical, here, is meant an ability to see beyond
the surface assumptions that drive everyday behaviour, address power relations
between generational groups, plus a valuing of the experiential element of ageing
and encounters between age groups. It has been assumed that age categories, such
as midlife, old age and adolescence cannot easily be given specific chronologi-
cal ages (Jung, 1931; Shweder, 1998; Schaie and Willis, 2002; Settersten, 2006).
They depend, for example, upon particular functional capacities and how ageing
is perceived in any society. Similarly, generations are often more likely to be a
combination of social Labeling and self-perception. The degree to which an indi-
vidual sees themselves as a member of a group based on age and different from
other age groups, or age-others, does not depend on breaking the population down
into demographically convenient ten-year chunks, but on how that generation is
socially constructed and experienced.

Generations, power and cultural resources

The need to interrogate different degrees of Generational Intelligence is made
more pressing in the light of comments by contemporary social theorists. For
example, Kohli has argued that ‘in the twenty-first century, the class conflict
seems to be defunct and its place taken over by the generational conflict’ (2005:
518). This assertion gains some support from Turner (1998) who has outlined
generational tension between baby boomers and younger generations on the
distribution of power. Francophone writers such as Ricard (Olazabal, 2005) and
Chauvel (2007a) have criticized the boomer or generation lyric for social self-
ishness and disproportionate cultural and economic influence, to the disadvan-
tage of succeeding generational groups. Moody (2008) has charted what he calls
the ‘boomer wars’ as a recurrent polarization of discourse in North American
popular literature, while in UK politics, Willetts (2010) has blamed the boomer
generation for using up resources belonging to other generational groups. Conflict
and competition in the public sphere of policy, work and popular debate, may
be expected to increase the salience of generational similarity and difference.
This is in spite of evidence that indicates that, at least in the private sphere, gen-
erational transfers continue to travel downward, from older to younger generations
(Irwin, 1998) and that family solidarity exists across systems that rely on family
or state-based welfare support (Daatland and Lowenstein, 2005; Daatland et al.,
2010).
Social commentaries, especially those arising from the public sphere, then,
suggest a renewed aggression in intergenerational discourse, directed primarily
against late-midlife intergenerational relations. Indeed, a number of social prob-
lems are likely to multiply as populations live longer, and the proportion of older
adults increases. If it is accepted that increased scarcity of resources, leads to
a retrenchment into in-group identification, and that identities are increasingly
being cast in terms of generation, obscuring other forms of social inequality, then
the degree to which it is possible to put oneself in the position of someone of a
 What is Generational Intelligence? 5
different age group may become one of the defining factors driving social policy
in the twenty-first century.
Our collective ability to deal with the issues thrown up by an ageing population
will only be as good as the cultural tools available to us. This is not only a prob-
lem of numbers, however. It is also a problem of developing the intellectual and
cultural capacity for societies to adapt to this situation. The cultural processes that
have been available to date, reflect attempts either to ensure continuity of social
value in terms defined by a dominant age group or of the transfer of power from
one generation to the next. Older adults may, for example, continue to be encour-
aged to remain as productive workers, either paid or unpaid (Morrow-Howell et
al., 2001), or they may find a role as consumers (Gilleard and Higgs, 2005), thus
in one way or another feeding wider economic interests. These positions have now
largely replaced attempts to ease a path of disengagement or of unspecified, yet
morally signified activity (Katz, 2000; Estes et al., 2003). Disengagement refers to
a withdrawal from social participation and a restriction in social roles in order to
make room for succeeding generations. Activity, here, refers to the need for older
people to ‘stay active’, but without necessarily identifying its purpose.
One implication of a transformation in expectations of later life is that a new
architecture for social relations may begin to emerge. Should anyone doubt the
dramatic change that has occurred in attitudes to later life, for example, it is only
necessary to compare two statements, 20 years apart, made by the United Nations.
The First World Assembly on ageing (1982) concluded that:

The human race is characterized by a long childhood and a long old age.
Throughout history this has enabled older persons to educate the younger and
pass on values to them. . . . A longer life provides humans with an opportunity
to examine their lives in retrospect, to correct some of their mistakes, to get
closer to the truth and to achieve a different understanding of the sense and
value of their actions.
(United Nations, 1982: 1b)

This can be seen in retrospect to illustrate a rather gentle view of generational

relations and the tasks of ageing, with an emphasis on retrospection, wisdom and
a sense of summing up. A sort of benign disengagement.
While demographic projections remained essentially the same, in 2002, the Sec-
ond World Assembly on Ageing, showed a very different vision of later life.

The potential of older persons is a powerful basis for future development.

This enables society to rely increasingly on the skills, experience and wisdom
of older persons, not only to take the lead in their own betterment but also to
participate actively in that society as a whole.
(United Nations, 2002: 2)

The first statement suggests a personal task looking backwards and sifting through
accrued experience. The second privileges the application of skills in the here
6 What is Generational Intelligence?
and now, while looking forward. By 2002, there seem to be fewer qualities that
distinguish one generation from another and less emphasis on specifically inter-
generational relations. However intergenerational relations continue to provide the
context within which individuals age, the way that they mark their own ageing and
the relative value that is attached to that process. It is becoming clear that we do not
currently, as national or global societies, have the cultural resources, the redundant
cultural strength, to draw on to negotiate this novel intergenerational situation. We
are, collectively, rather like midlifers who, according to Dan McAdams (1985),
have to ‘figure it out on their own’. Traditional roles and responsibilities no longer
seem to fit and the new demands lack the specificity and cultural embeddedness to
supply a reliable guide to action.

Towards a phenomenology of generation

A key beginning for Generational Intelligence is to recognize that while the scien-
tific study of population ageing uses separate categories, such as historical period,
cohorts within a certain age-range, family position or stage of life, it is rarely
encountered in such an atomized way during daily interaction. Rather, we would
argue, generational identity is experienced as an undifferentiated whole, all in one
go, as part of who one is. While the salience of different influences would vary
with context and circumstance; generation, as an amalgam of life-stage, family
position and cultural labeling, is generally experienced as a felt degree of similar-
ity or distance with respect to others loosely based on something to do with age.
Arber and Attias-Donfut (2000) have observed that a feeling of generational
belonging is created not just in a horizontal dimension of the birth cohort but
also in a vertical dimension of familial lineage and that questions of generational
awareness exist at the intersection of these axes. To this can be added Biggs’
(1999) distinction between depth and surface elements of life-course experience,
dimensions of the mature self which creates a third context, that of the maturation
of personal consciousness. This third context is perhaps more difficult to explore
empirically, and exists tacitly as a growing awareness of one’s progress through
life and the existential tensions that emerge as a result. This meeting point of birth
cohort, familial lineage and personal maturation creates a three-dimensional space
in which the immediate experience of generational identity, its phenomenology,
exists and is given holistic expression. It is the quality and critical consciousness
of this space that informs behaviour in intergenerational settings. The thoughts,
feelings and values associated with that space, the degree to which people are
aware of it, how they react to it, the effect it has on the sense of who they are and
how they behave towards others form a basis for what might be called ‘Genera-
tional Intelligence’.
By choosing a critical phenomenological form of inquiry, we recognize, then,
that while each dimension may be conceptually discrete, they are experienced
holistically and it is their sum or balance which results in a particular experience
of generation. Becoming conscious of one’s own distinctive identity emerges as a
force that both links and distinguishes particular generational groups in so far as
 What is Generational Intelligence? 7
it is not until one becomes conscious of generational distinctiveness that one can
develop genuine relationships between generations (Faimberg, 2005). So, con-
sciousness of generation, may depend upon being able both to recognize one’s
own generational identity and how that identity itself generates certain forms of
relationship. The point here is not simply to rehearse the observation that adult
demography consists of cohort, period and lifespan effects, but also to suggest
that generation is experienced as a combination of influences, experienced as a
whole, which give it its individual phenomenological flavour. In order to critically
interrogate this experiential space, an individual needs to separate out competing
influences, and consciously return to them before genuine intergenerational under-
standing can emerge. Such influences should be thought of processes, which come
in and out of focus at different times.

Linking generation and experience

An understanding of generations, when we think about it at all, is, then, medi-
ated by other experiences such as that of the family, one’s current position in the
life-course and whether one’s age group has shared historical events that become
socially signified. There are a number of research reports indicating that different
notions of generation are closely linked and exist at the crossroads of public and
private experience.
Hagestad (2003) has observed that families often mediate between individu-
als and societies undergoing change, while much of Bengtson’s (2001) work has
concentrated on the family as a place where the influence of relationships and
social structures meet. Here, intergenerational relations within families represent
complex social bonds, and family members are linked by multiple types of rela-
tionship that may produce solidarity, conflictual or ambivalent feelings (Luescher
and Pillemer, 1998; Pillemer et al., 2007). Bengtson and Putney (2006) claim that
intergenerational relations within multigenerational families have a profound but
unrecognized influence on relations between age groups at the societal level.
Perhaps, the most widely known evidence of the relationship between gener-
ations and historical and economic circumstances can be found in the work of
Elder (1974; 1994), whose longitudinal study of life chances following the Great
Depression and economic downturn in the North American Midwest, links the
three metrics of individual lifetime, family time and historical time. The linkage
between particular ages and family events and historical circumstances shows that
the character taken by certain generations depends on broad social changes like
migration, wars or economic shifts, which shape mutual support within families
(Hareven, 1996; Elder, 1980). Position in the family, age at which economic hard-
ship is experienced and gender were each found to mediate life chances and certain
aspects of personality. In France, Attias-Donfut (2003; Attias-Donfut and Wolff,
2005) has addressed generational interdependence in families as mitigating the
effects of ‘discontinuity of social destinies’. Attias-Donfut’s work has focused on
cultural transmission and generational memories and as such, constitutes a power-
ful attempt to place the protective role of families within a social and historical
8 What is Generational Intelligence?
context. The cohort one is born into, she states, shapes one’s personal destiny,
through prevailing social conditions ‘At the time of entry into professional life,
notably concerning the educational system and the labour market’ (2003: 214). In
the French postwar context at least three socio-historical phases can be identified,
which she calls the generation of labour, of abundance and of under-protection.
Successive cohorts, therefore, do not have the same life chances. Family and kin-
ship ties, which are themselves subject to multigenerational changes in fortune,
can nevertheless protect family members through generational interdependence,
and can subvert official versions of events by preserving and transmitting their
own oral histories. The memory of historical events is itself shaped by the role of
family members in passing the experience of social events on to younger genera-
tions, as ‘each generation has one foot in the history which formed its predecessor
and one in its own history and time’ (Attias-Donfut and Wolff, 2005: 453).
The work of Elder, Attias-Donfut and their associates demonstrates that the pro-
tective role of the family can be uneven and equivocal and can only be understood
in close relationship to an individual’s life stage and to cohort histories. Experi-
ence rests on a combination of generational influences.
The combined influence of different factors associated with generation and
holistic experience, may help explain the increasing popularity of seeing genera-
tions in terms of their habitus (Turner, 1998; Gilleard and Higgs, 2005). Habitus
is a term arising from the work of Bourdieu (1979), the French social philoso-
pher, to describe a sort of social space containing particular lifestyles and cultural
attitudes. If generation can be thought of as a space one can enter, it can be freed
from associations with a fixed age group and allows generational identity to be
seen much more in terms of a lifestyle choice. Thus, Gilleard (2004) has argued
that generation can be thought of as a distinct yet temporally located cultural phe-
nomenon within which individuals from a potential variety of overlapping birth
cohorts can participate. Gilleard further points out that generational styles of con-
sciousness arising from a specific ‘habitus’, both generate and structure an indi-
vidual’s behaviour and self-perception. Gilleard and Higgs (2005), therefore, talk
about the blurring of generational differences, and the creation of cohort-based
‘cultures of ageing’. Further, a number of writers have argued that generational
difference reflects existential questions concerning passage through the human
life-course itself. Differences occur as a consequence of increased recognition
that life is finite, changing life-projects between early and late adulthood and that
forms of social engagement and insight vary with increasing age (Dittman-Kohli,
1990; 2005; Biggs, 1999; Westerhof and Barrett, 2005) the common point of ref-
erence of both habitus and life-projects is that both make an identified generation
contingent upon experience. It is no longer fixed by age or lineage, but adopts the
qualities of a strategy or chosen identity.
When the study of familial, life-course and social cohort-based generations is
compared, one can see a move away from formal relations towards an understand-
ing of generations based on personal or collective experience and self-conscious
identities. If, as has been argued elsewhere, ‘generation’ is a crossroads phenom-
enon, where a number of social influences intersect (Biggs, 2007), then it is not
 What is Generational Intelligence? 9
unreasonable to begin to explore the phenomenology of that experience and the
processes that might make one factor more salient than others, or individuals more
or less willing to use generation as a self-conscious form of engagement with the
world.

A phenomenology of generational awareness

Our argument begins from the observation that generation is experienced in imme-
diate action as a phenomenological whole. Even though it may arise from attitudes
to life-course, family or cohort, experientially speaking, these are secondary con-
structs. For example, when UK baby boomers were asked about their generational
experience, they responded holistically, drawing intuitively on different aspects
of generation as it is used in common understanding and moving freely between
and combining demographic categories (Biggs et al., 2007). Generation, in this
sense as a phenomenological unity corresponds to what Bollas (1991) refers to as
a simple, or immersive, state of mind. Unless certain disconfirming events throw
individuals out of this immersion in the everydayness of life, ‘generation’ is used
but rarely reflected upon. Bollas argues that, with age, adults become increasingly
aware that their generational identity is no longer at the cultural centre, and as such
it becomes subject to critical self-awareness. With an increasingly sophisticated
perspective, concepts common in the literature, describing conflict solidarity and
ambivalence, each referring to life-course, lineage or cohort contexts, are less use-
ful as typologies, or mutually exclusive categories. Rather, they should be thought
of as phenomenological positions arising from the differential emphasis placed
upon them. And, as they become the subject of critical awareness, become strate-
gies that are adopted towards intergenerational relationships, rather than embed-
ded characteristics. Accordingly, while generation is immersively experienced all
in one go, it may be actively strategized as arising from one position or another.
In terms of life-categories an individual may, in life-course terms be in midlife,
in family terms be part of a sandwiched generation and belong to the baby-boomer
cohort. As a phenomenological space, she or he may change from looking back
to reference points in childhood, to looking forward to the amount of time they
think they might have left, wondering how competing family demands will allow
them to use this time to best advantage, identifying with younger rather than older
generations, and striving for self-actualization. Their awareness of self and others
is generationally inflected and an amalgam of influences which have yet to be des-
ignated or understood, but nevertheless affects intergenerational behaviour, even
if it is not always being thought about.
Degrees of Generational Intelligence would influence self-conscious aware-
ness of such generational positioning and how far ‘generation’ is recognized in
the experience of the social world. Individuals have varying degrees of access to
this material, depending on their exposure to facilitative contexts. These contexts
would allow the more deeply immersed elements of past experience and contem-
porary meaning to emerge into consciousness (Biggs, 1999). The journey from
immersion, to a recognition of different influences, which may be strategized or
10 What is Generational Intelligence?
recombined into a complex whole, form the basis for generationally intelligent
action.

What is Generational Intelligence?

Becoming aware of generational perspectives

In outlining a model, that has been given the working name of ‘Generational Intel-
ligence’, an attempt has been made to plot the process by which individuals or
groups are made capable of seeing from alternative age-perspectives. The question
being posed is what sort of ‘intelligence’ might be needed to engage with the age-
other within a generationally inflected space.
As such, the processes identified would apply to any age group, constituted
as different from another in the eyes of at least one group. Identifying another
person as being of a different age, an age-other, is not a quantifiable difference
when speaking about Generational Intelligence, but is rather phenomenologically
real in the sense that a difference is perceived to exist by one or both of the actors
involved. This difference may be based on cohort differences, such as that between
the ‘baby-boomers’ and their parents (Phillipson et al., 2008) or the ‘IT’ generation
and age groups who are less ICT literate (Edmunds and Turner, 2005). It may be
based on lineage within families, where a different generational position is bio-
logically and socially visible (Bengtson and Lowenstein, 2003). It may also result
from the occupation of a different phase of life, such as for example, adolescence or
childhood, or the first decades of adulthood or midlife (Biggs, 1999). In each case,
a difference based on age is socially signified and acts to guide the way in which
each actor constructs a sense of self and of those who are age-others. Because such
a difference is thereby socially real, it becomes a barrier to mutual understanding
that then has to be overcome. The endpoint would be an ability to act knowingly
within an intergenerational space, so that thinking, feeling and behaviour take a
critical understanding of generation into account. Because the label ‘generation’,
as an amalgam of life-course, cohort and family is somewhat protean in everyday
experience, we have tended to use the phrase ‘age-other’ to refer to identities that
emerge based on generational location, rather than identify particular ages or time
periods that hold a specific generation in place. The visibility of a particular aspect
would depend on context, as does the type of age-otherness that is most salient.
In terms of age similarity, the notion of an age-other points towards at least two
types. On the one hand, there is what might be called ‘simple similarity’. This
is when no barrier exists in the socially constructed realities of either party with
respect to age identity. Complex similarity, however, has a deeper structure in so
far as age difference has at first been recognized and is then denied. In this sense, it
might exist as what Bollas (1987) has called an ‘unthought known’. An unthought
known has been suppressed from phenomenological experience, but is neverthe-
less present as a guiding principle for everyday activity. It rests on the idea that
in order to suppress something, to hide it so to speak from everyday expression,
it had to have at some point been recognized. While Bollas was largely speaking
 What is Generational Intelligence? 11
about unconscious processes, it is also possible to see interpersonal activities such
as masquerade (Biggs, 1999) as means of acting on the basis of something that is
hidden and may also be hidden from the actor themselves.
Once an age-other has been identified, the question of how one relates to them
becomes an issue. How does one evaluate the relationship, does it occasion rivalry
and conflict, solidarity and common cause, or mixed feelings? Mixed feelings sug-
gest a more complex position in which the actors recognize ambivalence. Rather
than wholeheartedly and probably unreflectively liking or disliking the age-other,
both emotions need to be dealt with within the same space.
The move beyond single positions while keeping alternative generational per-
spectives simultaneously in mind moves the intergenerational terrain on from
conflict, towards a consideration of how one can live with the ambivalence that
inevitably arises. If some theoretical positions argue that there is more conflict
than harmony, while others that there is more harmony than conflict, a generation-
ally intelligent position would recognize that there is both harmony and conflict.
Creating a critical distance between different potential positions, gives room to
manoeuvre and reflect. One no longer acts out a single position rather one acts with
them and is able to strategize around alternatives previously expressed as being in
opposition or mutually incompatible. One is no longer caught in their grip.

Deploying Generational Intelligence

There’s intelligence and intelligence

It might be useful at this point to make a distinction between two ways of using
the term ‘intelligence’. One refers to forms of information or everyday data that
are culturally available and can be collected in order to make sense of the world.
In generational terms, this may include the expectations held about generation-
ally related behavior and the cultural shortcuts used, both tacitly and explicitly,
to make sense of age and generational distinctions. In other words, we gather
intelligence about age and generation as a guide to appropriate conduct. The sec-
ond use lies in working ‘intelligently’ with such data. This would involve a way
of seeing through generationally tinted glasses, a way of interpreting the world,
to draw out how social reality has been generationally constructed. This second
use of intelligence would pay attention to the degree to which actors and groups
behave as if they are immersed in their own group-specific form of generational
consciousness or are able to use more complex forms that include multiple genera-
tional perspectives. So, at an everyday level, Generational Intelligence can refer
to the forms of information that are available to the active subject, in the sense of
the ‘intelligence’ current in any one situation. Rather like the way that spies use
the phrase to discriminate available and potentially available clues, Generational
Intelligence refers to a seeking out information, a search for data. Here it is help-
ful to distinguish between information that is available within any one social or
cultural context, the degree to which the social actor is aware of these sources
and the extent to which they are used to make sense of the age-other. The second
12 What is Generational Intelligence?
use lies in working ‘intelligently’ with such raw material, evaluating the source
and discerning what has not been said. Generational Intelligence, in this sense,
denotes different degrees to which social actors behave reflexively with respect to
generational identities and intergenerational relations. Such a reflexive awareness
of generation creates room for manoeuvre. It creates a distance between immer-
sion inside a generational identity and being able to step outside in order to take a
position with respect to the generational identities that are available. It turns fixed
positions into options.

Outlining the dimensions of Generational Intelligence

Generational Intelligence consists of certain dimensions, which include degrees of
self-awareness, a capacity for intergenerational empathy and an ability to act in a
generationally aware manner.
As a starting point in the study of generational experience, it is important to
ask about the degree to which one becomes conscious of oneself as part of a gen-
eration. It is quite possible to continue through adult life without actively using
generational categories to guide social understanding. While we are aware of gen-
erational distinctions in the wider environment, they may be submerged in Berger
and Luckman’s (1976) common sense experience or have become what Bollas
(1987) calls part of an ‘unthought known’. However, in order not simply to act
out these un-thought-about determinants, to be self-consciously aware of them in
order to understand and control their influence, it is important to recognize them.
Recognizing generation as an issue is the pragmatic equivalent of the philosophi-
cal task involved in determining degrees of generational awareness. Once genera-
tional positions are recognized as influencing personal identity and behaviour, it
is possible to identify how one’s own position differs from others. Generation, in
other words, becomes intergenerational.
Once social actors become conscious of themselves as part of a generation; as a
parent, as a member of the ‘war generation’ as being in ‘adolescence’; the relative
ability to put themselves in the position of other generations also becomes an issue.
At least when it comes to personal ageing, there is a growing body of evidence, aris-
ing from Jung’s (1931) original distinction between ‘first and second halves of life’,
that there are significant discontinuities between different parts of adult life as it is
experienced (Tornstam, 2005; Dittmann-Kohli, 2005). These discontinuities arise
from a differential awareness of personal finitude and changed existential priorities
as adults grow older and contribute to a sense of generational distinctiveness.
If one lives, however, as if there are no generational distinctions, as if every-
one were the same in terms of this temporal classification, then there would
be no reason to see another person as belonging to a different or similar gen-
erational group. One might assume, as many of the UK boomers claimed to do,
that there was essentially no difference in identity between themselves and their
adult children (Biggs et al., 2007). They conformed to the view that age-distinc-
tions were becoming increasingly blurred (Hepworth, 2004; Gilleard and Higgs,
2005). It is important to distinguish this way of thinking from being unaware of
 What is Generational Intelligence? 13
generational distinction, as here distinctions are consciously recognized as the first
step in denying their influence. A perspective that denies difference may create
certain disadvantages if age-related changes are ignored, while they continue to
influence behaviour and social attitudes; for example, in situations where different
age groups were expected to compete, at work, in sports, as consumers of services,
on equal terms without taking their particular attributes into account (Biggs, 2005).
In such cases, generational attributes represent both cultural and life-course related
phenomena. They can be ascribed as well as achieved and generational identities
may arise from personal experience or from social expectation. They may vary
in salience depending upon context or historical period. Each will influence the
degree to which it is desirable or even possible to see the world as it is seen from
a different age or generational position. An ability to place oneself in the position
of the age-other would depend upon the readiness of mass media and cultural
trends to identify alternative age perspectives, on public policies that facilitate the
expression of age-specific skills and competencies and on interpersonal behaviour
that valued complimentarity rather than similarity as a basis for social exchange.
The pragmatic equivalent of this dimension would be the degree to which it is
possible to negotiate intergenerational consensus. The UK boomers would need
to ask their children whether they thought that the generational groupings had
become blurred, on what dimensions and with what effect, for example. Helping
professionals and even social researchers would need to negotiate between genera-
tional groups and their concerns and be aware that their own generational position
influences the way that outcomes are achieved. Policy-makers would need to dis-
tinguish between their projected desire to live a certain way in later life, based on
their current age identity, and the perspectives of individuals in deep old age.
Once one has become self-aware of a personal generational identity and become
sensitized to distinctions between self and other on the basis of generational attri-
butes, the question arises of a relative ability to act with awareness of one’s gen-
erational circumstances. Here, we would need to know much more about how this
dimension works and the ways that generationally informed decisions are made.
It is possible, and probably most common, for example, for social actors to be
aware of their own generational identity, recognize the differences between this
and other age-related positions and nevertheless discount the latter in preference of
the former when it comes to deciding on a course of action. In certain positions of
authority, such as in the helping professions there may be codes that regulate inter-
generational behaviour, such as in child-care or elder-care. The midlife boomer
described earlier may experience tension between the cultural-generational marker
of self-actualization and the social expectation to care for a parent who perhaps
has not, in life-course terms, been facilitative of that development. The pragmatic
question that this dimension highlights would be the degree to which people are
able to act on mutually productive solutions.
These three dimensions of Generational Intelligence raise some basic questions
that have not been at the forefront of the debate on generational consciousness in
families and societies. Such questions would include: what each individual brings
into the intergenerational familial and societal exchange. How conscious they are
14 What is Generational Intelligence?
of what they bring. How relations are performed and negotiated within the encoun-
ter. The degree of impact had on the process, outcome and potential for connec-
tion, conflict or ambivalence, between generations. Whether it builds capacity for
understanding different generations and their needs?

Steps towards Generational Intelligence

This combination of a complex generational self that is reflected on as an object, a
recognition of balance and imbalance and the construction of a social reality that
makes available certain templates for generational identities, contributes to the
salience and deployment of Generational Intelligence.
If Generational Intelligence is unevenly distributed, in terms of generations and
age groups, then it follows that there are certain steps that might exist, taking
social actors from one state of awareness to another. It also suggests certain pro-
cesses that would need to occur, in order to establish higher degrees of generational
sensitivity. It can, perhaps, be broken down into identifiable steps that are liable
to increase the likelihood of generationally intelligent understanding and action.
By taking such steps, immediate experience can follow pathways into more com-
plex and reflective processes. It involves a process of separation and return which
allows a critical reflective space to emerge. As this space is entered, it provokes
recognition of the relationship between self and other that leads to further action
taking place beyond immersion. These steps might look like this:
Step One: self-exploration and generational awareness. This would be neces-
sary in order to locate oneself within generational space and to identify different
contributory factors that are expressed through generational identity. It involves
an exploration of the inner world of generation, its imaginative contents and
processes. The degree to which one’s immediate phenomenology is affected by
cohort, family and life- course position would need to be critically interrogated.
Socio-historical attitudes to family influences thoughts and feelings, about oneself
as a child, parent and grandparent, how progress through a person’s own life-
course affects attitudes, towards adolescence, the child-rearing years, and folds
back into cohort identities would need to be disaggregated and understood. This
may be primarily an interior process where parts of a holistic, yet immersive
awareness of self are separated out prior to being returned to as a self-consciously
aware whole. It is, as a first footfall, necessary to become aware that generational
distinctiveness actually exists. This is a rather obvious point to make were it not
for the tendency for certain policy statements (Biggs et al., 2007) and identity
positions (Biggs et al., 2007) to deny or obscure it. Recognizing distinctiveness
would be necessary in order to locate oneself within generational space and to
identify different contributory factors that are expressed through generational
identity. The degree to which one’s immediate experience is affected by cohort,
family and life-course position would need to be critically interrogated as part
of this process. Socio-historical attitudes to family, for example, will influence
a person’s thoughts and feelings about themselves as a child, parent and grand-
parent, and progress through their own life-course as one phase leads on to another
 What is Generational Intelligence? 15
from adolescence, through to midlife and on into old age. How these distinctions
fold back into cohort identities would need to be disaggregated and understood. At
this point self-awareness, would be principally a personal reflective endeavour, an
interior process where immersive awareness is separated out and made the subject
of conscious reflection.
Step Two: understanding the relationship between generational positions. This
examines the relationship between self and other, based on age and generation.
The purpose of this second step would be to identify the key generational actors in
any one situation and develop a generationally sensitized perspective, thus making
intergenerational relations explicit. Generational relations include the positions
that each social actor may hold, but also the associations that each person brings
with them about other generations, their internal and external sets of representa-
tions that are organized generationally. This may include influences based on the
experience of family, the cultural assumptions of different historical cohorts and
the existential life-tasks that an individual currently faces. As part of this process,
it would be possible to see the age-other as a person with priorities, desires, fears
and reflections that may or may not overlap with one’s own, thus engaging with
the difficult tasks of placing oneself in the position of that age-other. Generational
Intelligence would thereby begin a process that moves beyond binary thinking,
such as identifying exclusively with either conflict or solidarity, while recognizing
that age-based relations are based on multiple perspectives.
Step Three: taking a value stance towards generational positions. Knowing
that generational distinctiveness and difference exist is no guarantee of the qual-
ity of the relations that emerge. It is quite possible that participants in genera-
tional exchange take an antagonistic position, one based on harmony, on mixed
feelings or on indifference. Each of these suggests a value position supported by
certain power relations, and as Generational Intelligence’s own value position is
one of increasing the likelihood of harmonious accommodation between genera-
tions, being explicit about the position taken is important at this stage. Rather than
assume that actions concerning generational relations are in themselves neutral
or objective, the task would be to critically assess the relations that tacitly and
explicitly underpin intergenerational behavior. This is part of finding the ground
on which we stand, which for critical gerontologists would require examination
of generational power and how it might be negotiated. Therefore it is necessary
to introduce a moral dimension at this stage, which may create different problems
for social scientists, advocates and helping professionals to critically assess the
values that tacitly and explicitly underpin intergenerational behaviour. Values that
is, in Taylor’s (1989) sense, that in the process of becoming self-aware, we need to
commit to a place on which we will make our stand. So, for example, rather than
simply assume that older adults should withdraw from society, or remain actively
engaged, it is important to consider the assumptions driving these expectations, to
what degree they are good or bad and why.
Step Four: concerns action, in a manner that is generationally aware. Once
a value stance has been identified with respect to differences in generational
power, the ground on which action can take place is made much clearer. The
16 What is Generational Intelligence?
contributory element to this process would be the discovery of spaces that allow
critical distance to emerge between competing positions. This would form the
basis for informed strategies to emerge between generations. The value stance
driving such activity would be to achieve sustainable partnerships that will be
lasting and adaptive to changing circumstances. Generationally intelligent action
would take place in the knowledge of one’s own contribution and those of others
and in the service of negotiated solutions. Action would work towards situations
that move from immersion towards active accommodations between participants
in the intergenerational encounter, as it is in this way that generational relation-
ships might emerge that can stand the test of time. As part of this process, critical
spaces are created that allow comparison and questioning of established activities.
Keeping alternative generational perspectives simultaneously in mind moves the
intergenerational terrain on from fixed positions, towards a consideration of how
one can flexibly encounter the perspective of the age-other and act on it. It raises
the possibility that intergenerational relations can be negotiated and sustained.
Taken together, these stages lead to a way of seeing through a generationally
sensitized lens, in order to draw out how social reality has been generationally
inflected and how sustainable negotiation around resources might take place. It
is important, however, to engage in such a process without falling into the trap
of saying what old age or other phases of adult ageing should be like. Rather, the
objective would be to make a preliminary sketch of the processes that might have
to take place to allow sustainable solutions to emerge, where sustainability refers
to negotiations that take differing generational perspectives and requirements into
account.

Mapping generational encounters

The four steps outlined above might also be used to facilitate the mapping of par-
ticular generational encounters, as they arise in organizations, social institutions
and in policy arenas. It would then be necessary to determine who the generational
actors are, ascertain what their dominant generational identity might be given the
parameters of the situation and examine how this combination influences the value
attributed to other generational groups. Mapping would also identify when and
where decisions and behaviours take place.
Mapping the generational constituencies would first require identifying which
generational groups and positions are tacitly or explicitly involved. This would
include those who hold an interest in the outcome and who may or may not be in
direct contact with the generational actors in any one context. Second would be
to discover or create facilitative spaces for intergenerational communication and
decision-making, where the different constituencies can come together in order
to negotiate a mutually compatible solution. There is no guarantee that a solution
will be found that satisfies all the needs of all parties. However, the possibility
of such a space allows voices to be heard in the round and makes it less easy
simply to ignore generational issues. The third stage would be to clarify genera-
tional priorities. Each party would have the opportunity to critically reflect upon
 What is Generational Intelligence? 17
their own generational position, its key features and priorities, establish the degree
of overlap with other perspectives and establish similar or complementary roles.
Finally, it would be possible to analyse functions and problems with intergenera-
tional insight. By bringing the diverse generational perspectives together, a more
complex understanding of the issues emerges, which is likely to lead to sustainable
forms of generational collaboration.

Bringing different things to the table

Issues that were once principally uni-generational, in so far as the majority group
status was relatively unproblematic and the dominant view obtained by force of
numbers, now increasingly appear to be intergenerational. As such, they are in
need of negotiation and notions of sustainability themselves would require fresh
contact. In an increasingly complex and evenly matched demography, a new settle-
ment is perhaps required. Solutions would need to be seen, not exclusively through
the lens of the stewardship of resources from one generation to the next, but also,
as numbers of older citizens increase, on ones that build upon multigenerational
perspectives in the here and now.
Robert Butler has been reported as saying that gerontology is an amalgam of
‘advocacy and science’ (Moody, 2001). It has a championing element, as well as
a scientific element. It has, historically, championed those who are seen as disad-
vantaged, downtrodden and rejected by society once their usefulness is done, or as
dependent and in need of looking after. The road towards empowerment traced out
an ambiguous path between speaking for older adults, and suggesting that ‘only
older people can talk about old age’. There are good reasons, however, for not
allowing any one generation to talk exclusively and unilaterally about itself, just
as this is the case in speaking for another generation. Any group is not necessarily
the best to articulate a critical perspective on their own condition, or that of their
peers. From a generationally intelligent viewpoint, it is important that gerontol-
ogy moves away from exclusively championing the old and that society moves
away from championing youth. A different settlement is needed. The point here
is not to advocate negative responses to older people, there are surely enough of
these already. But to argue that to fully understand the problems we are facing, we
need to critically examine the evasions and eclipses in our own generational posi-
tions and their influences on our chosen topic rather than being unself-consciously
swept up by them. Until we can work out what it is that each generation brings
to the table, what it is about their position in the life-course, family and historical
experience that throws a novel perspective on what it is to be human and travelling
through time, we will not obtain a genuinely intergenerational solution that can
take the measure of the challenges that now face us.

Conclusion
Generational Intelligence constitutes an attempt to move beyond bipolarities of
conflict or solidarity and to interrogate intergenerational space. It provides a way
18 What is Generational Intelligence?
of examining the degree to which individuals or groups are capable of seeing from
alternative age-perspectives. It also places an emphasis on negotiated solutions
and in order to be meaningfully negotiated, this requires an ability to understand
the priorities, desires and aspirations of the age-other.
Nevertheless, sustainable intergenerational relationships will need to rely on
increased levels of generational insight, empathy and ‘intelligence’. Workplaces,
care environments, urban and rural spaces and policy decisions are intergenera-
tional, although we tend to see them as age-neutral or with unspoken rules of
dominance and priority. We must move beyond the common practice of simultane-
ously ignoring and acting on the assumption of generational difference.
In this context, Generational Intelligence suggests a framework for understand-
ing contemporary issues and potentially pointing to novel solutions. It prioritizes
recognizing difference and commonality, negotiating ambivalence, the discovery
of complementary skills and relationships that are mutually recognized, creating
facilitative environments in organizations and through social structures. The way
in which these tasks might be navigated, is the subject of the rest of this book.
2 Self and the generational
imagination

Summary
The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the development of Generational
Intelligence as directed at the self. As such it begins to unpack the first step along
the journey towards increased Generational Intelligence, in so far as it addresses
the degree to which it is possible to perceive oneself generationally and as dis-
tinct from other generational groups. Our everyday encounters with generation
are often so subtle and deeply embedded that, paradoxically, we are hardly aware
that they are there. Three areas are therefore examined in this chapter that address
the way that notions of generation have become a part of the inner world of self.
The first includes a look at self-perceptions that are based on age, the second at
the emotional figures that inhabit that world and the third, different existential
priorities that emerge as the adult life-course progresses. The factors that shape a
personal sense of ageing and of generation include images, contents and processes
that are generationally constructed. A problem with ignoring these contents and
processes is that individuals get stuck in a particular form of generational imagina-
tion, which with time increasingly fails to fit their lived experience. A key element
for Generational Intelligence then becomes increasing awareness of the way in
which people think about their own journey through adult life and how their pat-
terns of thought might change as they move through time and, as a consequence,
grow older.

Key points

• Assumptions about age and generation are deeply embedded, but not
automatically part of conscious awareness.
• The ‘inner world’ of the imagination is not age neutral, but includes
characteristic ways of thinking about generational content.
• Attitudes to chronological and other forms of age structure
self-perception.
20 Self and the generational imagination

• The ‘inner life’ of the imagination is populated by generational figures

that influence emotional responses to others.
• Different phases of the adult life-course hold different existential priori-
ties that can either generate misunderstanding or enrich relationships.

Introduction
The influence of generation and age difference on the way we think and act is
often subtle and so deeply embedded that, paradoxically, we are hardly aware that
it is there at all. Relationships that are based on assumptions about one’s own and
different generational characteristics are perhaps most visible in social situations,
when one actually encounters people who differ from oneself on the basis of age.
Even here, the point at which variation in age becomes a difference in generation
is often tacit rather than explicit.
These encounters do not exist in a vacuum, however, and it is important to
examine the degree to which habits of thought and even the inner world of the self
are structured, as these form foundations for the way responses to age and gen-
eration are organized. According to a psychodynamic perspective, for example,
everyday encounters constitute the surface manifestations of underlying processes
that influence the way that people behave, think and feel about each other. Even
at the level of surfaces and impressions, they can constitute a complex dance of
half-acknowledged intuitions and associations which, by degrees, make the self
and the other known to one another. Unless individuals become conscious of the
ways in which their inner world is structured, it is argued, they will act unknow-
ingly and remain the creatures of these deep-seated associations. Contemporary
writing on these personal dynamics has primarily focused on gender (Craib, 2001;
Elliot, 2002), which is perhaps unsurprising when two key founders of contempo-
rary psychotherapy, Freud (1909/1962) and Jung (1931/1967), both emphasized
gender relations as core elements in the formation of adult identity. When viewed
through a gerontological lens, it becomes clear that these internal relations also
reflect relationships based on age. A mother or father is not simply a powerful and
formative influence on the identities of their son’s or daughter’s sexuality, that
power also rests on generational position and these differences can be expected to
provoke an important influence on how those children experience age throughout
their lives.
It follows that in order to more fully understand attitudes towards personal
ageing and generational identities, it is necessary to explore how age shapes our
internal imagination. The forms age takes can be expected to influence both per-
sonal and social attitudes to related concepts such as generation. Two themes are
examined in this chapter. First, we will look at how notions of age and generation
are manifested as part of this inner world of self. Second, we will examine how
individuals become critically aware of specific age-based identities as the adult
life course progresses. The first looks at content and organization, the second at
 Self and the generational imagination 21
processes that affect the development of a mature identity in midlife and beyond.
The key element of Generational Intelligence would concern the way people think
about their own journey through adult life and how their patterns of thought might
change as they move through time and, as a consequence, grow older. Genera-
tion is used in this chapter to describe markers of personal development that arise
via changing life-course perspectives, so that at different points in the process of
growing older one moves from one generational identity to another. As such, the
principal focus of attention is on temporally distinctive phases of adult develop-
ment, such as early adulthood, midlife and old age, rather than family relationships
or socio-historical cohorts. As these are more closely related to age and personal
ageing than other generational forms, the terms age and ageing are used in com-
bination with generation, perhaps more so than in other chapters. At root, this
chapter concerns processes of maturity, less in the sense of biological change than
in the sense of a capacity for critical awareness of the self and an ability to com-
municate across generational distinctions. Taken together, these elements supply
the grounding processes that might affect the construction of the adult self, how
this influences the possibility of putting oneself in place of the age-other and the
degree to which it is possible to achieve self-understanding in life-course terms.

Contents and awareness of age and generation

There appear to be at least three ways that age and self interact. The first consists
of ways in which self-perception is organized. Second, internal images exist in
generationally graded configurations, and appear to influence the way the world is
thought about. Third, the questions that lend existential meaning to life are often
based on age and life-course position.

Internal images of adult ageing

Self-perception and age

A number of studies have shown that when individuals think about their own ageing,
they do not do so as if age were a single and homogeneous experience. Rather, per-
sonal age is divided into a number of subjective states (Kaufman and Elder, 2002;
Bernard et al., 2004; Biggs et al., 2007; Daatland, 2008). In the US, Kaufman and
Elder (2002) found that when asked, individuals could easily distinguish between
their subjective, social and ideal ages. Discrepancies between these ways of think-
ing influenced their sense of personal satisfaction. Bernard et al., (2004) used simi-
lar distinctions with British respondents, aged in their late sixties and early nineties,
in order to assess the effects living in a retirement community, while Biggs et al.,
(2007) examined perceptions among UK baby-boomers in midlife. In each case,
subjective age (or how individuals ‘felt inside’) and ideal age (how old I would like
to be) were generally perceived to be younger than actual (chronological) age and
social age (how old others see me); although the majority of respondents said that
they were satisfied with their current age. It would appear, then, that respondents
22 Self and the generational imagination
understood these ways of dividing self-experience and were familiar with differ-
ent age-based ways of thinking about the self. They were used relatively easily to
interpret personal identity. While awareness of personal ageing was often associ-
ated with peripheral physical signs, such as wrinkles and changes to hair colour
and thickness among midlifers, these other sources of age-perception were used to
negotiate the tension between youthful and maturing selves. Most people had some
idea of how old they would like to be and felt themselves to be, even if this did not
fit with their actual age or how they thought others might see them. Norlag, the Nor-
wegian database on life-course, Ageing and Generation (Daatland, 2008) has also
included questions on how old respondents felt in years and how old they would
like to be if they had the choice. Daatland found that discrepancies between the age
adults thought they looked, felt and would ideally like to be showed a fairly consis-
tent pattern once they had reached the age of 20, with ideal age becoming progres-
sively younger than the age individuals thought they appeared or felt themselves to
be inside. In other words, while people’s ideal age may grow marginally older over
time, the gap between this, appearance and feeling increased with age.
Researchers have found that these perceptions of age varied in relation to health,
wealth and gender. Demakakos et al., (2005) used data from the English Longi-
tudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), to compare perceptions of actual and ‘self per-
ceived’ age and found that while perceptions of growing older were not directly
affected by wealth, wealthier respondents were more likely to say that midlife
ends and old age starts later, regardless of their age or gender. Health status was
the most likely factor to influence perceptions of ageing, with poor health acting
as an indicator of old age. Daatland (2008) reports that actual age emerged as the
main factor against which subjective self-perceptions were compared, with health
again being an important influence on subjective age. Degree of self-acceptance,
however, was not related to health status, while psychological resources such as
a sense of personal agency and high self-esteem tended to add to positive experi-
ences of adult ageing. In another study, Daatland (2008) found that women were
less dissatisfied with current age and report negative age changes to start later than
men did, which he attributes to women having better coping strategies with respect
to age and generational distinction.

Internal generational figures

While psychodynamic approaches to the life course have most commonly been
identified with the gendering of identity, they also serve as a useful source of mate-
rial on age that is rarely captured by other methods. Freud’s (1909/1962) observa-
tions on an Oedipal crisis, arising at approximately age four, primarily concerns
the process of rebellion against and then identification with the same-sex parent.
In Freud’s work, the resolution of early conflict ‘conceptualizes the psyche’s entry
into received social meanings’ (Elliot, 2002: 22) and forms the foundations of
social as well as personal capacities for stability and change throughout life. The
paths taken in resolving this core crisis continue to influence adult life-course, as
each new relationship is encountered. When this approach is critically observed
 Self and the generational imagination 23
from a gerontological perspective, it is also apparent that identity is maintained
through conflict and resolution between actors of different generations (Biggs,
2007) and the resulting formation of adult identity, characterized by Freud (1936)
as a civilizing process, also gives a strong indication of who the generational ‘bad
guys’ are. As Larkin’s (1971) poem ‘This Be The Verse’ puts it, parents ‘fill you
with the faults they had and add some extra just for you’.
The work of the analytic psychologist C. G. Jung (CW: 1939/1967), who first
followed then quarrelled with Freud, divided the adult psyche into animus and
anima, male and female archetypes that structure identity. While both exist in
women and men, one is dominant and the other secondary depending on gender
identification. He also identified age-based characters, such as an ‘ageless’ youth,
a heroic adult and a wise elder. These latter figures lend meaning to the priorities
and emotional resonances associated with different parts of the life course. Jung is
less concerned with conflict than Freud and more concerned with individual pro-
cesses of identity formation, he also extended psychological development beyond
childhood to include change arising from the adult imagination.
It appears that this imagination is populated with associations and figures that
are generationally structured in a number of ways. Counselling psychologists and
psychotherapists, for example, have commented on the way that working with
older adults reverses the traditional generational dynamic between an older thera-
pist and younger client (Knight, 1996; Woolfe and Biggs, 1998; Evans and Garner,
2004). When the client is older, it is possible for emotional associations to arise
that reflect a wide spectrum of generational relations beyond that of the conflictual
parental therapist and child-patient. In other words, our inner worlds may be orga-
nized along lines arising from experience of grandparents and grandchildren, adult
relationships between lovers, siblings and contemporaries in addition to those of
early development and each of these may appear in intergenerational interaction.
The autonomy attributed to such fantasy activity, that it is literally seen to have a
life of its own, also has a bearing on the experience of age-based identities within
the psyche. Again, it is Jung who elaborates how these might influence the per-
ception of the generational other, and in particular the effects of images of older
adulthood. Older adults, he argued appear as important archetypal images within
the inner world, where archetypes refer to psychological templates that take the
form of individual personalities within the imagination. Two key figures, the wise
old woman (Weaver, 1973) and man (Middelcoop, 1985) are seen as appearing in
dreams, at points of vulnerability and changing life-priorities. Whilst wise elders
inevitably reflect cultural stereotypes (Biggs, 1999) and social and historical cir-
cumstances (in some of their attributes); their main function in the adult psyche is
to act as gatekeepers and guides to an alternative state of being. This arises partly
by their reminding presence as persons of a later generation, and partly as a guide
to a state of affairs that the active subject has yet to experience. According to this
view, negative feelings and resistance towards wise elders reflects their role as
harbingers of personal change as much as the properties of old age itself. Indeed,
the elder may be perceived differently depending upon the age and life tasks faced
by the dreamer (Brooke, 1991).
24 Self and the generational imagination
The point here is that, psychological associations and archetypal figures that
become explicit within the detailed scrutiny of the counselling session, also influ-
ence everyday thinking, though not necessarily in a conscious manner. Wise elders
are potentially transformative images. They may be resisted if they reflect an
unwelcome need to move on from the comforting and familiar or be embraced as
guides to deeper self-understanding. They are the shadows of future selves.

Existential changes
Growing older requires that individuals live with both an increasing certainty that
life is finite and uncertainty as the assumed realities of younger adulthood are
questioned. While younger adults might be aware of death, for example, this is
usually a distant and unimaginable event such that it is possible to live every-
day life as if one were effectively immortal. Personal finitude, however becomes
increasingly real as parents die and with the passage of time, the body becomes
less responsive and social roles less facilitative. Later in adulthood, contempo-
raries also die and the body betrays us. Death becomes a certainty that tempers
life- planning and attitudes to the personal life course (Biggs, 1999). At the same
time, life becomes increasingly uncertain in so far as the youthful goals of per-
sonal achievement, physical agency and the assertion of one’s will give way to
maintain existing levels of personal competence and eventually coping with vul-
nerability and decline (Baltes et al., 2005). Dittman-Kohli (2005), summarizing
findings from the German Ageing Study, found distinctive differences between
the responses of younger, midlife and older adults. Responses to the SELE (Self
and Life) sentence completion instrument, reflected a shift with age as concerns
with social achievement became less central, and existential ones (time, health,
death, impermanence, contingency, finitude, etc) more so. Attitudes to the body
also shifted, from a preoccupation with sexual and interpersonal attractiveness
to physically integrity, competence and fitness. With age, adults become more
concerned with what Dittman-Kohli refers to as ‘the multiple conservation of per-
sonhood’ (2005: 283). Dittman-Kohli and Joop (2007) and Samuels et al. (1986)
argue that as adulthood progresses ‘self understanding is required to absorb and
redefine changes in the existential and psychological self’ (2007: 294).
This self-understanding, and the existential projects associated with it, appears
to vary across the adult life course, and have been described with particular expe-
riential clarity by Jung (1932/1967) in his distinction between the first and second
halves of adult life. During the ‘first half of life’, which spans early adulthood
up until middle age, personal identity is thought to be consolidated around the
personal will which emerges as the constraints of childhood are cast aside. It is
enough for the younger adult ‘To clear away all the obstacles that hinder expansion
and ascent’ claims Jung, (CW, 1932/1967. 9: 114) the object of which is to ‘win
for oneself a place in society and to transform one’s nature so that it is more or less
fitted in to this kind of existence’ (CW, 1967. 9: 771).
The autonomy found in this first half of life is referred to as a considerable
achievement, but one which comes at a cost. Jung goes on to say that, while the
 Self and the generational imagination 25
first half of life feels as if it is a period of increasing freedom from the family of
birth, it simultaneously embraces a new element of social conformity, through
work and through building new sets of familial relations. As these roles them-
selves begin to restrict self-development, they give birth to a second existential
task. This differs markedly from the persona, or social mask that is created dur-
ing the first, which is now seen to consist of ‘false wrappings’ (CW, 1931/1967.
7: 269) and becoming increasingly routine and lacking in vitality. The transition
from social conformity to an understanding of deeper levels of personal psychol-
ogy, Jung calls individuation, and describes it in the gendered language of the
time, in the following way:

A person in the second half of life . . . no longer needs to educate his con-
scious will, but who, to understand the meaning of his individual life, needs to
experience his own inner being. Social usefulness is no longer an aim for him,
although he does not deny its desirability . . . Increasingly, too, this activity
frees him from morbid dependence, and he thus acquires an inner stability and
new trust in himself.
(Jung, 1939/1967, 16: 110)

To cling on to the priorities of the first half of life beyond their existential sell-
by date becomes, a form of existential resistance which arises from a failure to
adapt to a changing set of life-priorities. Given that most of the subjects of Jung’s
therapeutic activity were women, it is safe to assume that he is not referring to an
exclusively gendered experience and individuation has been described by Samuels
et al., (1986) as the process by which persons become themselves, ‘whole, indi-
visible and distinct from others’. A need for social achievement and acceptance
during the first half of life, is replaced by a desire for personal coherence and
completeness in the second.
Jung’s argument suggests that there is some form of pressure, welling up from
deeper levels of the self that pushes people towards an expanded individuality as
they grow older. Existential transitions in midlife have been observed by Jaques
(1965) who associates it with an increased awareness of death, McAdams (1997;
2001) who is concerned with an increased unity of narratives of the self and an
ability to create one’s own life story and Biggs et al.’s (2007) study of accommo-
dation to both youthful and mature identities.
Tornstam (1996), who collected the experiences of Swedish and Danish older
adults, indicates that whilst external losses increase in later life, there is an absence
of reported loneliness. This ties in with the frequently cited absence of relationship
between well-being and disability in later life (Westerhof and Barrett, 2005), where
negative changes in physical functioning coexist with increasing self-reported
positive well-being. From a younger life-course perspective, this trend appears
paradoxical. However, if mediated by a changed perception in existential priori-
ties, a sense of being increasingly at ease with oneself and an ability to absorb the
tension between certainty and uncertainty, becomes intelligible. Tornstam (2005)
attributes enhanced coping in later life with a process called gerotranscendence:
26 Self and the generational imagination
The gerotranscendent individual . . . typically experiences a re-definition of
the self and of relationships to others and a new understanding of fundamen-
tal, existential questions. The individual, becomes, for example, less self-
preoccupied and at the same time more selective in the choice of social and
other activities.
(Tornstam, 2005: 3)

He suggests that adults approach identity ‘more like a Buddhist’ as they age which
he interprets as an intrinsic drive towards transcendence of the self marked by
‘positive solitude’ and an increased broad-mindedness. This is complemented by
an enhanced awareness of the difference between self and role, in the sense of
distinguishing between the development of what is unique about the self rather
than conforming to an appropriate social niche and preoccupation with one’s job,
appearance and ego.
Such processes are connected to more active and complex coping patterns in
social situations. Gerotranscendence, and its accompanying attention to existential
issues, reflects the development of active coping strategies rather than the defen-
siveness and social breakdown implied by disengagement from social activity in
old age. In other words, increased accommodation to existential threats in later life
also generates a qualitative change in attitudes towards life, which are distinctive
and adaptive to the point the individual has reached in their own life course.
So, from this brief review of the internal world of ageing, it would appear that
the ways that that world is structured is influenced at a number of levels, includ-
ing different ways of perceiving personal ageing, the imaginative figures that
influence emotional responses to others and temporal changes in life-priorities.
Self-perception, internal imagery and existential questioning each contribute to
the structuring of age relations in the minds of people as they encounter ageing in
themselves and age-attributed difference in others.

Generational Intelligence and the organization of the psyche

It has been argued earlier that rather than being neutral territory, the individual
imagination is permeated by issues of age and generational identity. With a few
notable exceptions, however, these phenomena have been overlooked by practi-
tioners, social scientists and psychologists working on adult development. This
would suggest that there is a theoretical and research task at hand to develop intel-
ligence, in the sense of collecting more sophisticated information on the contents
and processes associated with both adult ageing and interpersonal perception.
This task would include recognition that the often invisible imaginative reali-
ties driving intergenerational behaviour and the perception of self require deeper
investigation.
The task of becoming generationally aware of the way we experience ourselves
and our everyday generational encounters, we would argue, is a necessary first
step for increasing Generational Intelligence in daily life, the work of helping pro-
fessionals and in the creation of policy in this area. In this chapter, three elements
 Self and the generational imagination 27
that require conscious recognition have been identified, as part of that process.
There are most likely more, that as the field develops can be added to the list. The
first element reflects the observation that perceptions of self are organized accord-
ing to the experience of one’s own age, not simply as a chronological measure,
but as a source of social and emotional location. The perception of one’s own age
is thereby intimately linked to both the perception of others and also perceptions
by others of the ageing self. The second element reflects images that inhabit con-
sciousness or are capable of becoming part of conscious awareness. These images
appear to have generational characteristics and be embedded in a wider emotional
series of associations with different parts of the life course. They might, therefore,
be expected to influence our thought, feelings and behaviour towards age-oth-
ers. Finally, there appear to be existential elements that give particular phases of
the adult life course, distinctive qualities and priorities. These priorities can be
expected to shape the relations between self and other and the ways in which
personal energy is directed. Differences as well as continuities between genera-
tions emerge that arise from changed activities at different points in the life course
which may lead to misperception and a failure of understanding between genera-
tional groups unless they are exposed and understood. The initial steps towards
increasing Generational Intelligence would be to become aware of these influ-
ences so that rather than simply acting them out, we can act with them in mind.
3 Developing generational
awareness

Summary
In this chapter an examination takes place of the ways in which individuals become
critically aware of their personal generational identities. Three elements are exam-
ined in greater detail. The first concerns the balance between assimilating external
information into existing generational perspectives and accommodating for alter-
native positions to one’s own. The second recognizes the need to separate out from
existing relations, which may confuse personal identity with those of significant
others, in order to return to them. The act of return allows the distinctiveness of
each party to be acknowledged. The third addresses an increasing realization, with
age, that it is not enough to be immersed in the priorities of one’s own generation
and that a more complex reality needs to be engaged with. Each of these elements
contributes to the creation of a critical space in which more complex relationships
can be tolerated and understood. These elements supply the grounding processes
that affect the construction of an adult self, and ultimately the possibility of put-
ting oneself in the place of the age-other. In becoming aware of the ways that that
world is structured in the imagination, the ground is cleared for a more nuanced,
but less cluttered form of Generational Intelligence.

Key points

• The process of becoming generationally self-aware involves a move

away from egocentric thinking and a balancing of assimilation and
accommodation towards others based on age.
• The process of increased self-awareness is a core element of increased
maturity and Generational Intelligence, which allows people to take
their own assumptions into account.
• This can occur through a process of separation, and then return to the age-
other, allowing the boundaries between the two to be more clearly seen.
• A shift from a simple state of mind in which one is immersed in a par-
ticular generational perspective, to a more complex position, allowing
 Developing generational awareness 29

multiple perspectives to be considered is a marker for increased Gen-

erational Intelligence.
• Increased awareness of self and insight into generational others is not
only based on differences in age, but also on differences arising from
the ageing process itself and relies on recognizing the way our own
thoughts and feelings are organized.

Introduction
In the previous chapter, the influence of age and generation was sought in the
contents and categories that exist in the individual imagination. If, it was argued,
the inner world of self is organized with age in mind, so to speak, then this may
be a contributing factor in the apprehension of personal ageing and the recogni-
tion of generational difference. Both of these processes would contribute to the
development of Generational Intelligence as directed at the self. However, it is,
in many everyday situations, possible to ‘know something’ and behave as if it
does not exist, even though the act of denial affects how one behaves. If age and
generation are phenomena of this type, if for example, we work as if we are liv-
ing in a continual present or assume that out attitudes to age are universally valid
and unproblematic, it may be that we misread our social environment and even
our own futures as well as the circumstances of others. We may assimilate new
generational information into existing preconceptions rather than accommodate it
in anticipation of deeper understanding.
When on the trail of generational understanding an issue of particular interest
would be to see whether there are processes that occur developmentally, that influ-
ence the possibility of seeing other people as separate from oneself and, whether
these vary by age. In this section, rather than searching for the contents of any one
age-relationship and how these determine a person’s outlook, emphasis will be
placed on the degree to which changes in outlook also lead to changed contents
and priorities. As such it picks up on a way of seeing the life course as a more fluid
and reflexive process, with a particular emphasis on potential shifts from compla-
cent immersion in the worldview of any one age group, into positions of greater
complexity. Under the right circumstances, a critical distance between past and
present states of awareness might emerge, that leads to a deeper understanding of
the human condition and in particular generational relations.
Different processes have been suggested as ways in which these unthought pro-
cesses can become known. First, engagement with the imaginative contents identi-
fied in the previous section, through an act of ‘active imagination’, the object of
which is to establish a dialogue with internal images associated with the age-other.
Second, a process of psychological separation and return, the object of which is
to clarify the boundaries between one’s own identity in relation to others, based
on age and generational position, primarily within families. Third, an existential
30 Developing generational awareness
process which can occur in midlife, is particularly sensitive to the emergence of
complex forms of generational consciousness. The process of becoming aware of
generational complexity, in other words, appears to be something that takes place
in circumstances which are culturally variable and affected by life-course change.
Key to each of these is the emergence of a capacity to step beyond a personal
assumptive reality and to engage with the other as separate from yet connected to
oneself. The process of increased awareness of self and of others becomes a dance
in which attention to the movement of one enhances the capacity to respond to the
other.

Assimilation, accommodation and adult egocentrism

At every age it appears that people act on the basis of a series of assumptions that
explain their perspective on the world, but which at the same time can make it
difficult to put themselves in the place of others. For a small child, it may even
be difficult to perceive physical events from a different perspective from the one
they are in themselves. They assume that everyone sees the same thing from the
same position and that that position is the same as their own. This process, called
egocentrism, has been defined, in social terms, as an inability to see things from
another’s point of view (Papalia and Wendkos, 2006). Jean Piaget’s (1952) origi-
nal formulation of egocentrism concerned the cognitive development of children
to a point at which they reached adult levels of logical thinking. Once identified,
it became clear that these patterns of thought also had a much wider influence
on social behaviour and moral judgement (Sugarman, 2000). Judgements about
responsibility, the importance of a problem or the perception of feelings were
limited by a relative inability to see beyond the boundaries of a particular way
of thinking or schema. According to Piaget, these ways of thinking depended on
the developmental stage that an individual had reached. An egocentric child was
not selfish in the way the phrase is used in everyday speech, rather they failed to
see beyond their own particular worldview, which itself reflected their degree of
maturity.
Piaget claimed that at any age an egocentric perspective was maintained and
changed by two processes. Assimilation allowed new information and events to
be included by finding a place for them within the existing schema, while accom-
modation modified the schema itself in the light of these new experiences. The
balance achieved between accommodation and assimilation helped to determine
the power of egocentric thinking during any one developmental period. Further
research has indicated that forms of egocentrism are by no means restricted to
childhood. Adolescence can be marked, for example by a sense that one is liv-
ing out a unique story that no one else can understand, and, simultaneously that
one’s every move is subject to collective scrutiny, rather like being continually on
stage. Frankenberger (2002) found that notions of a personal fable and an imagi-
nary audience that are used to guide behaviour, forms of egocentrism tradition-
ally associated with adolescence, could be detected as late as in people aged 30
years. In terms of intergenerational perception, Tornstam (2005) has argued that
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 CHAPTER II
THE SKELETON

A. The Exoskeleton

T
he exoskeleton is well developed in the Crocodilia, and forms a
very considerable protection to its bearer. It is both dermal and
epidermal in origin.
The epidermal skeleton of the alligator consists of oblong horny
scales, arranged in transverse rows; the long axes of the scales are
parallel to that of the body. On the tail, except along the mid-dorsal
line, and on the ventral side of the trunk and head these scales are
very regular in outline and arrangement; on the sides of the head
and trunk and on the legs they are much smaller and less regularly
arranged, while along the mid-dorsal line of the tail, especially in its
posterior half, they are elevated into tall keels that give the tail a
large surface for swimming. The first three digits of both manus and
pes are armed with horny claws, which also belong to the epidermal
part of the exoskeleton.
 Fig. 15. Alligator Skins; Under-surface and Horn-back.

The dermal exoskeleton consists of bony scutes that underlie the

epidermal scales of the dorsal surface of the trunk and anterior part
of the tail. The overlying scales, except in very young animals, are
always rubbed off, so that the bony scales are exposed. The ventral
or inner surface of the scutes is flat, while the outer surface is
strongly keeled and in old animals is often rough and pitted. The
plates are nearly square in outline and are closely joined together in
most places.
The scutes are grouped in two fairly distinct areas known as the
nuchal and the dorsal shields. The former lies just back of the head,
in the region of the fore legs, and consists of four larger and a
number of smaller plates (Fig. 15). The latter, or dorsal shield,
extends over the back in fairly regular longitudinal rows and quite
regular transverse rows. At the widest part of the trunk there are six
or eight of these scutes in one transverse row. They become smaller
towards the tail.
The teeth are exoskeletal structures, partly of ectodermal, partly
of dermal origin. They are conical in shape, without roots, and are
replaced when lost. They will be described in connection with the
skull.
Musk glands, said by Gadow to be present in all Crocodilia, are
found in both sexes and are derivations of the skin. One pair, each of
which may be as large as a walnut, is found on the lower side of the
head, one on the inside of each half of the mandible. The other pair
is inside of the lips of the cloaca.
The Histology of the Integument. To understand the structure of
the integument of the Crocodilia it is well to begin with the embryo.
A cross section of the epidermis of such an embryo will show the
rete Malpighii as a single layer of short, cylindrical cells; over these
are found more or less flattened, disk-shaped cells formed by
transverse division of the underlying cells of the rete. On the outside
lies the epitrichial layer which consists of a mosaic of polygonal cells,
near the middle of each of which lies an oval nucleus. Between the
epitrichial cells are small oval holes, not unlike the stomata in the
epidermis of plant tissues. Bronn thinks these are not artifacts, but
he does not suggest any explanation of their occurrence.
In the epidermis of young and half-grown animals the rete
Malpighii is seen still as above noted. On these cylindrical cells are
found flattened cells that gradually become very flat and lose their
nuclei as they pass over into the horny layer.
The stratum corneum consists of strongly flattened cells in which
the nuclei can no longer be clearly seen, though their location can
usually be determined by the groups of pigment granules. On the
cells of the more superficial layers of the stratum corneum are seen
straight, dark lines, perhaps ridges caused by pressure of the over-
or underlying polygonal cells. The individual cells of the horny layer
are usually easily isolated in the belly and neck regions where they
never become very thick; but in the back the cells in this layer are
very numerous and fuse with each other to form the bony plates;
here the rete is the only clearly differentiated layer. Whether prickle
cells are present in the epidermis of the crocodile Bronn is not
certain, though he thinks they probably are.
Rathke pointed out that on the surface of certain folds of the
integument, especially in the region of the jaws, are found in all
Crocodilia certain small, scattered, wart-like elevations, around each
of which is customarily a narrow, shallow, circular groove; they
usually have a dark brown but sometimes a gray or even white color.
Microscopic examination shows these warts to be of epidermal
origin, consisting of bright, round cells that are closely united,
without visible intercellular substance. Treatment with potassium
hydroxid and then with water will show sometimes, though not
always, fine granular nuclei in the cells.
In probably all members of the genus Crocodilus at least is found,
on the thick swelling on the right and on the left side of the neck
and trunk, a small, flat pit which has the appearance of the opening
of an integumental gland. The pits are present also in the scales of
the throat, under the side of the neck, sides of the body, lateral and
ventral surfaces of the anterior half of the tail, and the legs. They
are near the hinder border of the scales. Only occasionally are two
pits found in one scale. These pits are found in the gavials but are
absent in some, probably all, alligators. A small knob projects from
the center of some of the pits. These pits are not openings of glands
but have about the same structure as the pits seen in the head.
The integumental bones in the Crocodilia originate in the
connective tissue of the cutis. Investigations in young animals show
that these bones usually take their origin in the under and middle
layers of the cutis and generally work towards the periphery.

B. The Endoskeleton
I. The Vertebral Column.

Fig. 16.—Skeleton of Crocodile. D, dorsal region; L, lumbar region; Sa, sacral

region; Ri, ribs; Sc, scapula; H, humerus: R, radius; U, ulna; Sta, sternum
abdominale: Fe, femur; T, tibia; J, ischium; C, caudal vertebræ. (From Claus &
Sedgwick.)

The vertebral column consists of about sixty-five vertebræ, which

may be separated into the usual regions; there are nine cervical, ten
dorsal, five lumbar, two sacral, and about thirty-nine caudal. It is
likely that the number of caudals may be subject to frequent
variation; one complete skeleton had sixty-five vertebræ in all,
another had sixty-eight. A complete skeleton of the crocodile
(species not known) had sixty vertebræ. A thirteen-foot skeleton at
Western Reserve University had only sixty-one vertebræ, but some
of the caudals were evidently missing. Two skeletons of C. porosus
in the museum at Singapore had sixty and sixty-three vertebræ
respectively. A skeleton of Tomistoma schlegeli in the same museum
had sixty vertebræ.
 The Cervical Vertebræ. Since all of the cervical vertebræ bear ribs,
we shall assume the distinction between them and the dorsal
vertebræ to be that the ribs of the latter meet the sternum, while
those of the former do not reach to the sternum. Assuming this
distinction, there are, as was said above, nine cervical vertebræ.

Fig. 17. First Four Cervical Vertebræ of a Crocodile (C. vulgaris). (From Reynolds,
partly after Von Zittel.)
1. pro-atlas.
2. lateral portion of atlas.
3. odontoid process.
4. ventral portion of atlas.
5. neural spine of axis.
6. postzygapophysis of fourth vertebra.
7. tubercular portion of fourth cervical rib.
8. first cervical rib.
9. second cervical rib.
10. convex posterior surface of centrum of fourth vertebra.
 With the exception of the first two, to be discussed later, these are
all essentially alike and the fourth will be described as a type (Fig.
17). Its centrum is cylindrical or somewhat hourglass shaped,
concave anteriorly and convex posteriorly; it is not completely fused
with the neural arch but is united with it by sutures. From the
anterior end of the ventral surface of the centrum projects
downward and forward a small plow-shaped process, the
hypapophysis. On each side of the centrum, near its anterior end, is
a facet with which the lower branch (capitulum) of the rib
articulates. The neural arch is strongly developed and is extended
dorsally into a prominent neural spine and on each side as a short,
blunt, transverse process with which the tubercle or upper branch of
the rib articulates. Posteriorly the arch is notched on each side to
form the openings for the exit of the spinal nerves. Projecting
dorsally and anteriorly from the arch are two short processes which
bear the medially and dorsally facing prezygapophyses (Fig. 17).
Just caudad to these processes are somewhat shorter processes that
bear the laterally and ventrally facing postzygapophyses (Fig. 17, 6).
The atlas, as in other vertebrates, is highly specialized. It consists
(Fig. 17), even in the adult animal, six feet or more in length, of four
distinct portions, a ventral (4), a dorsal (1), and two lateral (2) parts.
The ventral portion is relatively more massive than in most animals;
its anterior surface is concave and forms the main part of the
articular surface for the occipital condyle of the skull. Its postero-
dorsal surface articulates with the odontoid process of the axis. On
its postero-lateral surfaces are the facets for articulation with the
first ribs, which, unlike the other cervical ribs, have but one articular
surface. Articulating dorsally with this ventral element of the atlas
are the two rather heavy lateral elements which form the neural
arch. Anteriorly they form the lateral parts of the articular surface for
the condyle and dorsally they unite for a short distance with each
other. Projecting ventrally from the posterior part of their dorsal
portion are the small postzygapophyses. Ventrally and laterally they
articulate with the odontoid process (Fig. 17, 3). Projecting dorsad
and cephalad from the dorsal surface of these lateral elements is the
dorsal element of the atlas (Fig. 17, 1), the pro-atlas, which may not
be properly a part of the vertebral column at all, since it is said to be
merely a membrane bone. Gadow says it is the detached neural
spine of the atlas. It is thin and triangular in shape, resembling in
contour a large, mammalian epiglottis. It forms an arch over the
space between the skull and the front of the atlas proper. Reynolds
calls it the pro-atlas.
The Axis. The centrum differs from those following it (described
above) mainly in its close articulation (not fusion) with the large
odontoid process; this process not only projects into the atlas, as is
usually the case, but articulates with its postero-lateral border on
each side, and is distinctly visible in a lateral view of the neck (Fig.
17, 3). Like the rest of the cervical vertebræ the posterior surface of
the centrum is convex. The neural arch of the atlas differs from
those following mainly in having a much wider (in an antero-
posterior direction) neural spine. The lateral processes and those
bearing the prezygapophyses are also less strongly developed than
on the following vertebræ.
 Fig. 18. Anterior View of A, a Late Thoracic and B, the First Sacral Vertebra of a
Young Crocodile (C. palustris). × ¹⁄₃. (After Reynolds.)
1. neural spine.
2. process bearing prezygapophysis.
3. facet for articulation with the capitulum of the rib.
4. sacral rib.
5. surface which is united with the ilium.
6. concave anterior face of centrum.

The Thoracic Vertebræ. The first thoracic vertebra differs scarcely

at all from the ninth cervical; and the tenth thoracic differs from the
first lumbar only in bearing a short rib. Only the first three thoracic
centra bear the hypapophyses noted in connection with the cervical
vertebræ. The ribs of the first two thoracic vertebræ articulate with
them by two processes, as in the typical cervical vertebræ; the other
ribs articulate only with the transverse process. The fourth thoracic
may be described as a type of this region (Fig. 18, A). Its centrum is
rather longer than in the first two thoracic and in the cervical
vertebræ and has no process for articulation with the head of the
rib, otherwise it is essentially the same. Like all of the vertebræ
behind it and unlike those in front it is apparently completely fused
with its neural arch. The neural arch is very broad (in an antero-
posterior direction) and is extended dorsally as a wide neural spine
(1). The neural spines of the following thoracic and the first two or
three lumbar vertebræ are increasingly broad and truncated. The
transverse processes are very broad, long and thin, and in the third
to eighth vertebræ they have two articular surfaces, an anterior and
more medial one for articulation with the head of the rib (3) and a
posterior and more distal one for articulation with the tubercle of the
rib. These two surfaces approach each other as the vertebræ are
followed caudad until, in the last two thoracic vertebræ, they form
practically one surface. The processes of the pre- and
postzygapophyses spring from the arch at the base of the transverse
process; the former surface is directed dorsally and medially, the
latter ventrally and laterally. The intervertebral foramina are smaller
and more nearly circular than in the cervical region, and are more
closely surrounded by bone.
The Lumbar Vertebræ. The five lumbar vertebræ are essentially
like the thoracic except that the transverse processes, which, of
course, bear no ribs, are both shorter and narrower. The postero-
lateral border of the centrum of the last of these five vertebræ has a
small surface for articulation with the antero-medial border of the
transverse process of the first sacral vertebra.
The Sacral Vertebræ (Fig. 18, B). These are two in number. The
centrum of the first is concave in front and flat behind, instead of
being convex behind, and the second is flat (instead of concave) in
front, and convex behind. The neural spine and zygapophyses are as
in the lumbar region. Projecting laterally from each sacral vertebra,
forming a close, sutural joint with both centrum and neural arch, is a
heavy bone shaped like a truncated pyramid (4); the base of the
pyramid is ankylosed with the ilium. These bones seem to be much
thickened transverse processes, but since they are not completely
fused with their respective vertebræ and are said to ossify separately
they should probably be called sacral ribs. The two sacral vertebræ
do not seem to be any more closely united than are any other two
vertebræ.
The Caudal Vertebræ (Fig. 16, C). These are characterized by the
entire absence of ribs, and by the presence on all but the first and
the last four or five of V-shaped chevron bones. The first ten or
twelve of these chevron bones articulate chiefly with the postero-
ventral ends of the centra, but they also articulate with the antero-
ventral ends of the vertebra behind themselves; and as they are
followed caudad they seem to lie directly below the intervertebral
regions and to articulate equally with the vertebræ before and
behind. The chevron bones gradually diminish in size from before
back. The neural processes of the first four or five caudals are
broad, like those of the more anterior regions, but caudad to this
point they become narrower and more pointed, though they retain
the same height until about the last ten or twelve vertebræ. Towards
the tip of the tail the dorsal spines diminish in height and finally
disappear. The transverse processes of the first five or six of the
caudals are long and narrow. They gradually diminish in length until
the eighteenth caudal, back of which they are no longer to be seen.
The zygapophyses are mostly about the same as in the more
anterior vertebræ, but towards the posterior end of the tail the
postzygapophyses come to lie between rather than above the
prezygapophyses. The neural canal diminishes, of course, in size
towards the tip of the tail until it is no longer present, the last five or
six vertebræ consisting only of the centra.
II. The Skull.
The skull of the alligator is very massive and has several
peculiarities. 1. The bones of the dorsal surface are rough and
pitted, especially in old animals. 2. The jaws are enormously large in
proportion to the brain cavity, and are armed with many large teeth.
3. The mandibular articulation is some distance caudad to the
occipital condyle. 4. The interorbital septum is mainly cartilaginous.
5. There is a complicated system of Eustachian passages connecting
with the back of the mouth by a single opening. 6. The posterior
nares are placed very far back and the palate is correspondingly
long.
The skull as a whole may be divided into three regions: the
cranium, the lower jaw, and the hyoid; these will be described in the
order given.
The Cranium.
 As a matter of convenience the bones will be described as seen
from the different aspects—dorsal, ventral, lateral, posterior, and in
sagittal section—without particular regard to their grouping into
segments or regions.
The Dorsal Aspect (Fig. 19). At the extreme posterior end of the
median line lies the parietal (23), double in the embryo but a single
bone in the adult. It forms a part of the roof of the cranial cavity and
articulates anteriorly with the frontal, laterally with the postfrontals,
squamosals, and, according to Reynolds, with alisphenoids, pro-otics
and epiotics, and ventrally with the supraoccipital. It forms the
median boundary of each of the two supratemporal fossæ (sf).
On each side of the parietal and forming the posterior comers of
the rectangular postero-dorsal region of the skull are the squamosals
(7). Each squamosal articulates medially with the parietal, anteriorly
with the postfrontal, and ventrally with the quadrate and exoccipital.
It forms part of the posterior and lateral boundaries of the
supratemporal fossa and a part of the roof of the external auditory
meatus.
Articulating with the anterior border of the squamosals and
forming the anterior corners of the rectangular region mentioned
above are the postfrontals (6). The postfrontal articulates medially
with the parietal and frontal, and ventrally with the alisphenoid and
a small part of the quadrate. It sends, in a ventro-lateral direction, a
thick process that unites with a similar process from the jugal to
form the postorbital bar (pb) which lies between the orbit (o) and
the temporal fossa (tf). The postfrontal forms the antero-lateral
boundary of the supratemporal fossa.
Articulating posteriorly and laterally with the parietal and the
postfrontals, and forming the highest point of the skull, is the single
frontal bone (24), which, like the parietal, is paired in the embryo. It
is a heavy bone whose dorsal surface is flattened posteriorly, deeply
concave in the middle region, and drawn out into a long projection
anteriorly. It forms part of the roof of the cranial cavity and
articulates ventro-laterally with the alisphenoid and anteriorly with
the prefrontals and nasals. It forms a part of the median boundary
of the orbit.
 The prefrontal (4) is an elongated bone in the latero-median
border of the orbit. Medially and anteriorly it articulates with the
frontal and nasal, laterally with the maxillary and lachrymal, and
ventrally, by a heavy process, with the pterygoid.
 Fig. 19. Dorsal View of the Skull of the Alligator (A. Mississippiensis).
1. premaxilla.
2. maxilla.
3. lachrymal.
4. prefrontal.
5. jugal.
6. postfrontal.
7. squamosal.
8. quadrate.
12. quadratojugal.
23. parietal.
24. frontal.
25. nasal. an, anterior nares; o, orbit; pb, postorbital bar; sf, supratemporal
fossa; tf, lateral temporal fossa.

The nasal (25) is a long narrow bone forming the greater part of
the roof of the nasal passage. Along the median line of the skull it
articulates with its fellow; posteriorly with the frontal; laterally with
the prefrontal and maxillary; and anteriorly with the premaxilla. In
the crocodile, caiman, and gavial it also articulates with the
lachrymal. In the alligator the anterior ends of the two nasals form a
narrow rod of bone that extends across the anterior nares, and,
meeting a projection from the premaxillaries, divides the opening
into right and left halves. In the crocodile the nasals project only a
very little way into the nares; in the caiman (according to Reynolds)
they do not extend into the nares at all, and in the gavial, whose
much elongated snout is mainly due to the great length of the
maxillaries, the nasals do not extend more than a third of the
distance from the prefrontals to the anterior nares.
The maxilla (2) is a large bone that forms a large part of the
upper jaw and that holds most of the teeth of that jaw. On the
ventral side, as will be described later, it articulates with its fellow in
the middle line, with the premaxilla, with the palatine, and with the
transpalatine. Dorsally it articulates with the premaxilla in front; with
the nasal and prefrontal on the medial side; and with the lachrymal
and jugal behind.
The premaxilla (1) forms, with its fellow, the extreme tip of the
upper jaw. Each bone forms the anterior and lateral borders of its
half of the anterior nares. It articulates medially with its fellow and
posteriorly with the nasal and maxilla. Ventrally, as will be noted
later, it bears five teeth and articulates with its fellow medially and
with the maxilla posteriorly. Between the premaxillæ on the ventral
side is the large anterior palatine foramen.
The lachrymal (3) is a fairly large bone that forms the anterior
border of the orbit. It is bounded laterally by the jugal, anteriorly by
the maxilla, and medially by the prefrontals. Its postero-medial
border is pierced by a large lachrymal foramen that extends
lengthwise through the bone and opens, at its anterior end, into the
nasal chamber.
The supraorbital, missing in the skull figured, is a small bone lying
in the eyelid close to the junction of the frontal and prefrontal. Being
unattached it is usually absent from prepared skulls.
The jugal or malar (5) is an elongated bone that forms a part of
the lateral border of the head, on the one hand, and most of the
lateral border of the orbit on the other. Anteriorly it articulates with
the maxilla; medially with the lachrymal and prefrontal; posteriorly
with the quadratojugal, and ventrally with the transpalatine. With
the transpalatine it sends, in a dorso-medial direction, a process that
meets the process, described above in connection with the
postfrontal, to form the postorbital bar.
The quadratojugal (12) is a small bone, wedged in between the
jugal in front and the quadrate behind.
 Fig. 20. Ventral View of the Skull of the Alligator (A. Mississippiensis).
2. maxilla.
5. jugal.
8. quadrate.
9. palatine.
10. pterygoid.
11. transpalatine.
12. quadratojugal.
14. basioccipital. a, anterior palatine vacuity; eu, opening of the median
Eustachian canal; pn, posterior nares; pv, posterior palatine vacuity.

The quadrate (8) is more irregular and has more complicated

articulations than almost any bone in the skull. Its posterior end,
which forms the articular surface for the lower jaw, is elongated
laterally and slightly concave. Anteriorly the quadrate articulates with
the quadratojugal; medially with the basisphenoid and exoccipital;
dorsally with the exoccipital, squamosal, postfrontal, and, possibly,
with the pro-otic; ventrally with the pterygoid, alisphenoid, and
probably with some of the otic bones. Its dorsal side forms most of
the floor of the external auditory meatus which will be described
later. While the basioccipital may be seen from the dorsal side, it is
not really one of the dorsal bones of the skull and will be described
later; the same is true of the pterygoids and palatines which may be
seen through the empty orbits.
The Ventral Aspect (Fig. 20). The larger part of this side of the
skull is made up of four pairs of bones: the premaxillæ, the maxillæ,
the palatines, and the pterygoids, lying, from anterior to posterior, in
the order named.
The premaxilla (1), as described in the dorsal view of the skull, is
a triangular bone which, with its fellow, forms the anterior end of the
snout. Each premaxilla bears five teeth, not only in the alligator but
in the crocodile, the caiman, and in the gavial. Of these teeth the
fourth from the front is the largest; the first two are small, and the
third and fifth are of intermediate size. This arrangement as to size
is also true, apparently, in the other groups of Crocodilia. The ventral
surface of the premaxilla, which is more or less flat and horizontal, is
pierced by a number of small foramina, in a row parallel to the
curved outer margin of the bone. Between these foramina and the
base of the teeth are four rounded depressions to receive the points
of the first four teeth in the lower jaw; of these depressions the first
and fourth are the deepest. The first pit often becomes so deep as
to perforate the bone; this is true also with the crocodile and,
according to Reynolds, with the caiman, but is not true of the gavial,
whose interlocking teeth project outside of the jaws. It will be
remembered that one of the chief distinctions, given early in this
work, between the crocodile and the alligator is that in the former
the fourth tooth in the lower jaw fits into a notch and not into a pit
in the upper jaw.
The maxilla (2), which with its fellow forms most of the hard
palate, has also been mentioned in connection with the dorsal
aspect. Each maxilla is notched, posteriorly, to form the anterior
border of the posterior palatine vacuity, and together they are
notched to receive the rectangular anterior ends of the palatines.
The postero-lateral extremity of the maxilla articulates with the
transpalatine. Along the outer border of the bone are the teeth, of
which there are fifteen or sixteen in the alligator, about the same
number (perhaps one or two less) in the caiman and crocodile, and
about twenty-four in the gavial. The first or anterior eight or ten
teeth have individual sockets, the rest are placed in a groove. In the
crocodile none of the teeth have individual sockets, and in the gavial
they all have sockets. The premaxillary and more anterior of the
maxillary teeth are slightly recurved and are sharper than the
posterior maxillaries which besides being blunt have a constriction
above the surface of the socket.
The crocodilian tooth consists of three layers (Fig. 20 A).
The enamel (e) forms a fairly thick layer over the crown of the
tooth; it exhibits a very clear striated structure, the striations being
apparently due to stratification.
Some of the tubules of the dentine (d) continue into the enamel,
where they may be distinguished by their remarkable fineness and
their straight course.
The cement (c) covers the root of the tooth that projects into the
alveolus of the jawbone; it is much more strongly developed than in
the lizards and contains a very large number of bone corpuscles
which are distinguished from the bone corpuscles proper by their
greater circumference.
The fairly large pulp cavity (p) has, like the tooth itself, a conical
form.
Parallel to the teeth is a row of small foramina, a continuation of
those noted in the premaxilla; some or all of these foramina open
into a longitudinal sinus along the alveolar border of the maxilla; this
sinus opens posteriorly by one or more large apertures into the
posterior palatine vacuity.
The palatines (9) form a broad bar of bone from the pterygoids
behind to the maxillæ in front. They are united with each other by a
straight median suture and form a considerable part of the floor as
well as a part of the side walls and roof of the nasal passage. They
form most of the median boundaries of the posterior palatine
vacuities (pv). Dorsally they articulate with the pterygoids,
prefrontals, and vomers.
The pterygoids (10) are the very irregular bones that project
ventrad and caudad from beneath the orbits. Their suture is
continuous, caudad, with that between the palatines and at the
posterior end of this suture is the posterior opening of the nasal
chamber, the posterior nares (pn). This opening is divided by a
vertical, longitudinal, bony septum, and the part of the chamber into
which it immediately opens, which lies in the pterygoids, is divided
by a number of transverse, vertical septa. Posterior and dorsal to the
posterior nares the pterygoids are fused. Anteriorly the pterygoids
articulate with the palatines; dorsally with the quadrates,
basisphenoid, alisphenoids, and prefrontals, and dorso-laterally with
the transpalatines. The lateral vertical border of the pterygoid is
roughened and is, according to Reynolds, covered, during life, with a
pad of cartilage against which the medial side of the mandible plays.
The transpalatine (11) is a T-shaped bone articulating ventrally
with the pterygoid and dorsally with the maxilla, the jugal, and the
postfrontal.
 Fig. 20a. Longitudinal Section of the Jaw and Tooth of a Crocodile.
(After Bronn.)
c, cement; d, dentine; e, enamel; p, pulp, of functional tooth; c′, cement; d′,
dentine; e′, enamel, of rudimentary tooth; e″, epidermis; k, bone of jaw.

The basioccipital (14) is seen projecting caudad as the single

occipital condyle; it will be described in connection with the posterior
aspect of the skull.
The jugal (5), quadratojugal (12), and quadrate (8) may all be
seen from this view. The first two have been sufficiently described in
connection with the dorsal aspect; the last will be further described
in connection with the lateral aspect.
Just caudad to the posterior nares is a small opening, the unpaired
Eustachian canal (eu).
The Lateral Aspect (Fig. 21). As will be seen by the figure,
practically all of the bones visible in this view have already been
described, except those of the mandible, which will be described
separately. At the base of the skull are, however, two bones, the
basi- and alisphenoid, that have not been described and that show
as well in this as in any other view. The basisphenoid (just below v
and hidden by the pterygoid) was mentioned in connection with the
quadrate, with whose posterior margin it articulates. It is an
unpaired bone of very irregular shape. Anteriorly it is flattened out to
form the rostrum, a rectangular process that forms the posterior part
of the interorbital septum; in fact it is the only part of the septum
present in a prepared skull, since the rest is cartilaginous. Dorso-
laterally the basisphenoid articulates with the alisphenoid; posteriorly
with the basioccipital; ventrally with the pterygoid; and posteriorly
with the exoccipital and basioccipital. On the dorsal surface of the
basisphenoid is the pituitary fossa, not seen, of course, in this view
of the skull.
The alisphenoids (crossed by the dotted line from V) are a pair of
very irregular bones that form most of the antero-lateral walls of the
brain case. They articulate dorsally with the parietal, frontal, and
postfrontal; ventrally with the basisphenoid and pterygoid; and
posteriorly with the quadrate and some of the otic bones not visible
in this view. Between it and the quadrate, plainly visible in this view,
is a large opening, the foramen ovale (V), through which, according
to Reynolds, the trigeminal nerve passes. In the middle line, directly
under the frontal bone, is an opening between the anterior wings of
the two alisphenoids, for the exit of the optic nerves. Ventrad and
caudad to this opening, and sometimes continuous with it, is another
large foramen, just dorsad to the rostrum, for the exit, according to
Reynolds, of the oculomotor and abducens nerves. Projecting
caudad is seen the rounded condylar part of the basi-occipital (14)
to be described later, and dorso-cephalad to this is a part of the
exoccipital (13) in which four foramina may be seen; of the dorsal
three the one nearest the condyle and foramen magnum is for the
exit (Reynolds) of the hypoglossal nerve (XII); slightly dorso-
cephalad to this is one for the vagus nerve (X); between these two
is a very small one for a vein; the largest and ventrally located
foramen is for the entrance of the internal carotid (15). Another
large foramen in the exoccipital bone will be seen and described in
connection with the posterior view of the skull. Dorsal to the
quadrate and largely bounded by it is the wide external auditory
meatus (16), which leads into the tympanic cavity. This cavity is
complicated by a number of canals that lead from it in various
directions. Overhanging the cavity and meatus is the squamosal
bone, described in connection with the dorsal aspect of the skull.
Fig. 21. Lateral View of the Skull Alligator (Caiman latirostris). ×¹⁄₃. (Brit.
of an
Mus.)
(After Reynolds.)
1. premaxilla.
2. maxilla.
3. lachrymal.
4. prefrontal.
5. jugal.
6. postfrontal.
7. squamosal.
8. quadrate.
9. palatine.
10. pterygoid.
11. transpalatine.
12. quadratojugal.
13. exoccipital.
14. basi-occipital.
15. foramen by which carotid artery enters skull.
16. external auditory meatus.
17. frontal.
18. supra-angular.
19. articular.
20. dentary.
21. coronoid.
22. angular.
 III, VI, opening for exit of oculomotor and abducens nerves.
V, foramen ovale.
X, pneumogastric foramen.
XII, hypoglossal foramen.

The Posterior Aspect (Fig. 22). Most of the bones seen in this view
have already been described. The pterygoids (10) form the two
prominent, ventro-lateral projections, while dorsal to these is the
large process formed by the quadrate (8) and quadratojugal (12).
The dorsal margin is formed by the edges of the parietal (23) and
the squamosals (7). Immediately below the parietal is the
supraoccipital (26); it is a small, triangular bone, articulating above
with the parietal and squamosals, below with the exoccipitals, and
anteriorly with the epiotic. It takes no part in the formation of the
foramen magnum.
The exoccipitals (13) form the entire boundary of the foramen
magnum except the narrow ventral portion formed by the
basioccipital. Each exoccipital is a wing-shaped bone, articulating
dorsally with the squamosal and supraoccipital, ventrally with the
quadrate, basioccipital, and basisphenoid, and anteriorly with the
opisthotic. It is pierced by five foramina, four of which were
described in connection with the lateral view. Some distance laterad
and somewhat dorsad to the pair already described is the fifth and
largest foramen (VII); it really lies between the exoccipital and
quadrate, but the former bone forms almost its entire boundary;
through it, according to Reynolds, pass the seventh nerve and
certain blood-vessels.
 Fig. 22. Posterior View of the Skull of A. Mississippiensis.
7. squamosal.
8. quadrate.
10. pterygoid.
11. transpalatine.
12. quadratojugal.
13. exoccipital.
14. basioccipital.
15. foramen for carotid artery.
23. parietal.
26. supraoccipital.
VII. foramen for 7th nerve and certain blood-vessels. bs, position of
basisphenoid.
Fig. 23. Longitudinal Section through the Skull of an Alligator (Caiman latirostris).
×¹⁄₃. (Brit. Mus.) (After Reynolds.)
1. premaxilla.
2. nasal.
3. frontal.
4. parietal.
5. supra-occipital.
6. epiotic.
7. prootic.
Immediately in front of the figure 7 is the prominent foramen for the
trigeminal nerve.
8. opisthotic.
9. basioccipital.
10. quadrate.
11. pterygoid.
12. basisphenoid.
13. alisphenoid.
14. prefrontal.
15. vomer.
16. maxilla.
17. palatine.
18. dentary.
19. splenial.
20. angular.
21. supra-angular.
22. articular.
23. coronoid.
24. exoccipital.
25. squamosal.
26. jugal.
27. external mandibular foramen.
28. internal mandibular foramen.
VIII. internal auditory meatus.
XII. hypoglossal foramen.
Fig. 24. Dorsal View of Lower Jaw of Alligator (A. Mississippiensis).
18. dentary.
19. splenial.
21. supra-angular.
 22. articular.
23. coronoid.

The basioccipital (14) which, as has been said, forms a small part
of the ventral wall of the foramen magnum, consists of a heavy
dorsal portion, the ventrally curved condyle, and of a broader,
irregular ventral portion, between which and the basisphenoid is the
single opening of the Eustachian canals (eu). Dorsally and laterally
the basioccipital articulates with the exoccipitals; ventrally, laterally,
and anteriorly with the basisphenoid which was described in the
lateral view.
The Sagittal Section (Fig. 23). The only bones shown in this figure
(besides those of the mandible, to be described later) that have not
already been described are the vomers and those of the auditory
capsules.
The vomers (15) are delicate bones articulating with the maxillæ,
the palatines, the pterygoids, and with each other. They form a part
of the septum and roof of the nasal passage.
The mesethmoid is not ossified.
Reynolds describes the bones of the auditory capsules as follows:
“Three bones, the epiotic, opisthotic, and pro-otic, together form
the auditory or periotic capsule of each side. They are wedged in
between the lateral portions of the occipital and parietal segments
and complete the cranial wall in this region. Their relations to the
surrounding structures are very complicated, and many points can
be made out only in sections of the skull passing right through the
periotic capsule. The relative position of the three bones is, however,
well seen in a median longitudinal section. The opisthotic early
becomes united with the exoccipital, while the epiotic similarly
becomes united with the supraoccipital, the pro-otic (Fig. 23, 7)—
seen in longitudinal section to be pierced by the prominent
trigeminal foramen—alone remaining distinct throughout life. The
three bones together surround the essential organ of hearing which
communicates laterally with the deep tympanic cavity by the
fenestra ovalis.