The aim of this chapter is to derive some meaning at a broader level from the analysis presented in the previous chapters. To facilitate this process, this chapter begins with a review and summary of the themes discussed in the previous three chapters. This is followed by discussion of how these connect to the wider theme of efforts to sustain a sense of self. A model of key processes involved in managing the ageing experience is proposed and compared with other models of response to ageing and illness. Finally, the chapter considers how the theme of ‘sustaining the self ‘ relates to wider theories concerned with self and identity.

Review of themes and categories

Analysis of the interview transcripts and self-completed diaries produced three themes, each with related categories and sub-categories. These are shown in Figure 6.1.

While all of the categories and sub-categories of the ‘keeping going’ theme refer in some way to what participants describe themselves as doing and can be seen to be doing, the second ‘staying me’ theme encapsulates more about who they ‘are’, in other words, existential or ‘being’ mechanisms. Following Bury (1991), I have referred to these cognitive processes as ways of coping, to distinguish them from the action strategies of keeping going. Clearly this is to some extent a permeable distinction since, as will be discussed later in this chapter, what participants ‘do’ constitutes personal and public representations of who they ‘are’. The third theme, ‘the slippery slope’, acknowledges that those consequences and meanings are mediated by external factors. This theme incorporates those factors that appear to support or undermine older people's strategies of keeping going and staying me.

The next section explores the interrelationships between the three themes, their related categories and sub-categories and their relationship with the broader theme, ‘sustaining the self ‘.