Gfeller Fabienne, Zittoun Tania
Institute of Psychology and Education, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, University of Neuchatel, Espace Tilo-Frey 1, 2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Eur J Psychol Educ. 2025;40(1):43. doi: 10.1007/s10212-025-00941-x. Epub 2025 Jan 29.
Moving in older age is a critical experience in the person's life trajectory as it may require an important reorganization of their relation to the social and material environment. In order to better understand this experience, we propose to address it drawing on the concepts of rupture and transition as developed in the frame of sociocultural lifecourse psychology. We complete this theoretical framework with the distinction between frame and space and with literature on bodies and embodiment. We present a case study conducted in a building of so-called flats with referee, a type of flats developed in the frame of a political reform addressing demographic ageing, in a Swiss canton. We focus in particular on interviews with inhabitants before and after they moved to these flats. In the analysis, we discuss two aspects of this rupture/transition which, we argue, play an important role in the persons' experiences: firstly, the embodied dimension of the experience of rupture, which is notably related to the experience of a new physical environment; secondly, the social relations in these buildings designed especially to favor relationships among neighbors. Through this analysis, we aim at contributing to the understanding of development in older age from a sociocultural psychological perspective and to the literature on ruptures and transitions as we highlight theoretical and methodological implications.
在老年时搬家是人生轨迹中的一段关键经历，因为这可能需要对个人与社会和物质环境的关系进行重大重新调整。为了更好地理解这一经历，我们建议借鉴社会文化生命历程心理学框架中所发展的断裂和转变概念来探讨它。我们通过区分框架和空间以及关于身体和具身化的文献来完善这一理论框架。我们呈现了在瑞士一个州一栋所谓的有裁判的公寓楼里进行的案例研究，这种公寓楼是在应对人口老龄化的政治改革框架下开发的一种公寓类型。我们特别关注对居民在搬进这些公寓前后的访谈。在分析中，我们讨论了这种断裂/转变的两个方面，我们认为这两个方面在个人经历中起着重要作用：第一，断裂经历的具身维度，这尤其与新物理环境的体验相关；第二，这些特别设计以促进邻里关系的建筑中的社会关系。通过这种分析，我们旨在从社会文化心理学角度为理解老年发展做出贡献，并为关于断裂和转变的文献做出贡献，因为我们强调了理论和方法上的启示。
