563 - Striking Sails: A Pastoral-Psychological View of Growing Older in Our Society

Striking Sails: A Pastoral-Psychological
View of Growing Older in Our Society
By Heije Faber
Translated by Kenneth R. Mitchell
Nashville, Abingdon, 1984. 158 pp. $10.95.

Faber, one of the pioneers of the modern pastoral care movement on the continent of Europe, was my colleague for a year when he was Visiting Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Seminary during 1980-81. At the time he wrote this volume, he was retired from the faculty of the University of Tilburg, where he taught during his later years following a twenty-five year career as a pastor in the Reformed Church in The Netherlands. Striking Sails is thus written from both objective (mastery of research and prior pastoral experience) and subjective (a retired professional man) points of view, a factor which enriches the work.

Much of what Faber has to say will be familiar to pastoral and other workers in the vast field of aging, but some will not, and, I shall dwell briefly upon that. Following the line of thinking developed by J.M.A. Munnichs, a Dutch gerontologist whose valuable contributions Faber introduces to American readers, he develops a disengagement-reengagement theory of aging based upon Munnichs' idea that the principal task of aging is coming to grips with finitude-a term that emphasizes more the vicissitudes of life than confrontation with death. Faber also draws with profit on the psychoanalytic tradition, concocting a rich brew of theory from which he derives many useful insights. This book will be a rewarding supplement for those readers who have been feeding on the standard American fare.

James N. Lapsley
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.