What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?

The subjects were in good health, but aging had left its mark. “This was before 75 was the new 55,” says Langer, who is 67 and the longest-serving professor of psychology at Harvard. Before arriving, the men were assessed on such measures as dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognition — probably the closest things the gerontologists of the time could come to the testable biomarkers of age. Langer predicted the numbers would be quite different after five days, when the subjects emerged from what was to be a fairly intense psychological intervention.

At the end of their stay, the men were tested again. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn’t imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller — just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told me, had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.

After a lecture in 2010, in which she’d discussed how when we talk about “fighting” cancer we actually give the disease power, a man buttonholed Langer and laid into her. His wife had died of breast cancer. “He said she had fought it, and I made it seem that it was her fault,” Langer told me.
Langer apologized to the man. “Those are good points, and I’m sorry I didn't address them,” she said. “But let me explain to you that it’s the culture that teaches us that we have no control. I’m not blaming your wife; I’m blaming the culture.” Langer imagines a day when blame isn’t the first thing people reach for when things go awry. Instead, we will simply bring to bear the power of our own minds — which she believes will turn out to be far greater than we imagined.

New York Times Magazine

Dr. David Marcon
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