The Lost Daughter: Gerontological Reflections on the Life Course Perspective's Missing Plot

Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter with its deeply troubling, turbulent and yet unwavering chaos allows us to rethink how the past is never really lost. It is in the uneasy dialectic between individual lives, social structures, and emotional states that The Lost Daughter finds an unexpected gerontological articulation. Specifically, this article utilizes one of the assured tools of gerontology- the life course perspective- to argue that the persisting effects of social-psychological states (e.g. guilt, reprieve, and resentment) experienced earlier in life have been overlooked in this paradigm due to its empirical emphasis on macro processes of cohorts, trajectories and family transitions. The article concludes with reflections on how this intersubjective reading of the life course contributes to the practice of gerontological social work.