Customer Reviews

The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain

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This book is EXTRAORDINARY. Every page I read gives HOPE to all of us that the last years of our lives can be beautiful years of thought, of action, of reflection. I have never had the good fortune to hear Dr. Cohen speak, but his voice comes through the pages of this book loud and clear. Just listen to a selection of sentences on just one randomly selected page:

· A life without memory is a ghost life at best
· Our brains have no known limits for memory storage. In other words just because you're old, that doesn't mean you've "used up" your brain's memory capacity.
· You need to understand a bit about the brain's mind-boggling circuitry.
· The limits on memory are logistical, not fundamental. We are limited only by the time we have in life for learning - our brains could contain many lifetimes of information.

This is incredible information this man is giving up. All of the above appeared on page 106. I found the entire book to be chock full of optimistic statements and beliefs predicated on Gene Cohen's lifetime of scientific learning.

I don't know about you, but when I pick up a book, the cover catches my eye, and then the feel. I want see how the pages feel as I turn them. What font does the author used, and how big is that font? Is the author long-winded in his statements? Does the book have an extra hundred, or two hundred pages of filler material, or does the author get to the point? Am I going to take one or two fabulous thoughts out of this book, or is it full of gems on every page, just waiting for me to get at them?

I couldn't put this book down, that's how interesting I found it. Chapter 7 is about "Reinventing Retirement". This chapter will transform your thinking as to what retirement can be all about. It can be the best years of our lives. I use to think that when people get old, they get cranky, and nasty. It wasn't until about five years ago; I suddenly realized that hey, these people were like this when they were young. They didn't need to get old, to get nasty.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes about different people at different stages of their lives. This man should write a book interviewing a hundred different fascinating people who are in their 80's or 90's. I haven't found anything out there like this, and Cohen is the perfect gentleman to write such a book.

One of the gifts that old age can bring is the ability to selectively re-live different times in your life if you have remarkable recall of what took place. I talked to a man once who was in his 90's, and had been an editor of a major magazine in his earlier years. His mind was extraordinarily alive, and vibrant, with incredible recall. I asked him what was the best thing about being older. He said it was the ability to constantly entertain himself by thinking about events in the past that happened 40, 50, 60, even 70 years ago. As I get older, I am 55 now, I understand what he meant.

I met a man who was among the handful of the most powerful Cardinals in the Vatican. This individual was in his late 80's. He told me that he had participated in thousands upon thousands of situations involving the last rites of people who were about to die. I asked him if there was anything in common among the people involved? What did they think about in the last minutes to hours, of their respective lives?

He said that none of them expressed guilt over things they had done. Every one of them talked about the things they had not done, but wished they had done. A man might have wanted to go salmon fishing in a river in Montana, or spent more time with his daughter in New Orleans. Not one of them ever said, "You know, I should have worked harder."

This book by Gene Cohen gives new meaning to old age, and what it can become for each of us who are willing to grasp the possibilities and ACT on them. Order it today, read it from cover to cover. Give it to your parents if they are still alive, or a loved one. Get out of that rut, and take on new challenges. Every day each of us is an author, and we are busy writing our own scripts - OUR LIVES. Make it so that you can look back some day, and say - NO REGRETS AND MEAN IT.

Richard Stoyeck

Dr. Cohen's exceptional book sets the record straight on the positive potential of life's second half. He uses current research to demonstrate why older adults should view later life as a time of personal growth and enrichment. He further deomonstrates that what he labels developmental intelligence involves more than just countering the disengagemetn theory of aging but involves "deepening wisdom, judgement, perspective, and vision." This book openly counters aging stereotypes while encouraging people to embrace the potential of life's second half. A must read for everyone age 50 and over and anyone interested in better serving what is quickly becoming the new consumer majority.

Even though I was raised around people who talked about the pains and ill health that accompanied aging, I never quite believed that this was what we were fated to look forward to.

Still, it came as a wonderful revelation that I was not alone in my belief, and that there was strong evidence that aging as a time of decay was little more than a myth.

This book not only provided compelling evidence that aging can be a rewarding period of life, but also provided a new set of expectations about what rewards will accompany the aging process. It was just the motivation I required to deal with what few health challenges I now have, so that I can enter the next phases of my life physically stronger and better able to reap its rewards!

This book is a historical marker in the rapidly growing field of cognitive development. Standing on the shoulders of Piaget and Erickson, and even Freud, Dr. Cohen creates four distinct yet integrated stages for the mature mind. Together they prove that the difference between adolescence and retirement (like heaven and hell) is about half an inch.
Remarkably readable (and approachable) this book can best be summed up by one of the author's own stories, about Charles Darwin. Darwin's youthful mind took him to the Galapagos Islands, where he gathered insights and information. In his fifties, Mr. Darwin's mature mind coalesced those thoughts into The Origin of the Species.
That is the cognitive difference between intelligence and wisdom, between youth and maturity.

As a retired Social Worker (81), and having about 25 years in the field of Gerontology, I was first intrigued by a review of the central thesis of this book, "The Myth of the Mid-Life Crisis," in the January 16,2006 issue of NEWSWEEK. The book met my expectations, so have given it as a gift to each of our 3 middle-age children. This book is well written, well organized, and has fulfilled its promise to expand our knowlege of adulthood (Eric Erickson.) I highly recommend it, especially for that cohort of people who are facing early lay-offs, and feeling very insecure about "what do I do now?" It may give many a new feeling of confidence about thier future. I've actually lived the experiences described in the book.

The Mature Mind is bound to be be a best seller in the short term and perhaps a classic at least for the mid term. This easily accessible book which almost studiously avoids brain jargon draws on the latest developments in brain science to demonstrate the truth of a proposition I went out on a neurologicial limb in making 17 years ago in my book, Serving the Ageless Market. I proposed that in the second half of life a migration of left brain mental functions toward the right brain takes place at higher levels of maturation. The result is that in some important regards the older brain can have functional advantages over the younger brain. According to the science that Gene Cohen reports out in The Mature Mind, that is precisely what happens to many people as they age.

I recommend this book to anyone who serves older people in any capacity, especially those who work in counseling or who are in the business of developing marketing communications for older markets. Why? Because the mature brain processes takes in and processes information differently than younger brains do. Thus, Dr. Cohen's book will help anyone achieve a better understanding older people. It will also lead to better communications with those who have advanced far on the path of what Dr. Cohen calls "developmental intelligence" which signal new levels of cognitive competence among older people that until Dr. Cohen's book has gone largely unrecognized.

After reading this book I'm more excited than ever about aging productively --- I believe this book can help reduce one's fear of aging. The research is solid, grounded, realistic and inspiring. Pamela D. Blair, Author The Next Fifty Years: A Guide for Women at Mid-Life And Beyond

We are using this book for discussion purposes in our Harvesting Wisdom Circle. We have found it to be a provocative and enlightening perspective on the issue of aging. It asks the reader to challenge many of the assumtions and myths that we have been taught by our society.

I am 47 years old and saw Dr Cohen on the "The Today Show". I was so comforted to know that all the maladies that accompanying the aging brain don't have to be. We've been brainwashed by government controlled media. As long as we take the necessary nutrients FOR THE BRAIN and keep active we have not much to fear. My genuis- level mother died at age 77. First the dementia and then the Alzheimer's. She wasn't taking proper nutrients, drank well-water, was on antidepressants, loved toxic beef liver that stank when she cooked it and cooked with aluminum. She didn't know all this good information. I have severe short-term memory loss and looking forward to correcting it.

This is a short sweet wonderful book. Dr. Cohen is well known in the world of creativity and aging, so this is a great addition to his work. The focus is on brain research and what it tells us about aging and the strengths of the mature brain. Somehow the idea that aging is always accompanied by forgetfulness has worked its way into the social psyche. This is the book that disputes that depressing idea.

This book is a strong mixture of anecdote and scientific research in a format that is accessible and enjoyable. We are introduced to feisty 70 to 90 year olds, new information about brain activity, news thoughts about adult development, as well as suggestions for a healthy future.

Dr Cohen introduces us to four stages of adult development: Midlife reevaluation, Liberation, Summing up, and Encore. In each stage we meet individuals who are still developing and growing. The author also explores the strength of the brain in each phase. We are introduced to the notion that an older brain processes differently, but equally as well as a younger brain. We think differently as we age in that we have more information to link into a decision, and can use the parts of our brain in tandem more easily. We might lose some speed in our processing, but our wisdom, or the result of the processing, increases. We in fact often have better social intelligence.

The book ends with a plan for building a social portfolio and reinventing retirement. Cohn points out that most people do not truly retire, they just move into an encore stage doing things they want to do. The suggestions for keeping our brain active and strong are fairly easy: plan, build community infrastructure, build a balance social portfolio, stay engaged, continue long duration activities, give back to community, and keep learning. Through out the book is another concept, keep physically active. Cohen ends with comments on the importance of creativity.

This is a great book for anyone over 50, or anyone who is afraid of aging. It is also a good book for a developmental psychology course, especially at the graduate level. The research is solid and the presentation welcoming. I highly recommend this book!