Download or read book Narrative Identity and Dementia written by Marie A Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1998, this book is a study on the influence of emotions on autobiographical memory in dementia. Based on eight in-depth case-studies of older people with dementia, collected over a two year period, the general findings of this innovative study reveal the strength and durability of the personal narrative even as cognitive processes decline. Using a psychotherapeutic approach, the author is able to demonstrate that the retention of a personal past give a sense of narrative identity and well-being to sufferers of dementia and has an important part to play in dementia care training. Researchers, teachers and students will find this book a useful resource, together with those who work in the field of ageing and dementia care.
Download or read book Reconsidering Dementia Narratives written by Rebecca Bitenc and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.
Download or read book Entangled Narratives written by Lars-Christer Hydén and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As people are living longer on average than ever before, the number of those with dementia will increase. Because many will live a considerable time at home with their diagnosis, we need to know more about the ways people can adapt to and learn to live with dementia in their everyday lives. Lars-Christer Hydén argues in this book that to do so will involve re-imagining what dementia really is and what it can mean to the afflicted and their loved ones. One of the most important everyday opportunities for sharing experiences is the simple act of storytelling. But when someone close to you gradually loses the ability to tell stories and cherish the shared history you have together, this is seen as a threat to the relationship, to the feeling of belonging together, and to the identity of the person diagnosed. Therefore, learning about how people with dementia can participate in storytelling along with their families and friends helps to sustain those relationships and identities. In Entangled Narratives, Hydén not only emphasizes the possibilities that are inherent in collaborative storytelling, but instructs professionals and otherwise healthy relatives to learn how to effectively listen and, ultimately, re-imagine their patients and loved ones as collaborative meaning-makers in their lives.
Download or read book The Last Ocean written by Nicci Gerrard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning journalist and author, a lyrical, raw and humane investigation of dementia that explores both the journeys of the people who live with the condition and those of their loved ones After a diagnosis of dementia, Nicci Gerrard’s father, John, continued to live life on his own terms, alongside the disease. But when an isolating hospital stay precipitated a dramatic turn for the worse, Gerrard, an award-winning journalist and author, recognized that it was not just the disease, but misguided protocol and harmful practices that cause such pain at the end of life. Gerrard was inspired to seek a better course for all who suffer because of the disease. The Last Ocean is Gerrard’s investigation into what dementia does to both the person who lives with the condition and to their caregivers. Dementia is now one of the leading causes of death in the West, and this necessary book will offer both comfort and a map to those walking through it. While she begins with her father’s long slip into forgetting, Gerrard expands to examine dementia writ large. Gerrard gives raw but literary shape both to the unimaginable loss of one’s own faculties, as well as to the pain of their loved ones. Her lens is unflinching, but Gerrard honors her subjects and finds the beauty and the humanity in their seemingly diminished states. In so doing, she examines the philosophy of what it means to have a self, as well as how we can offer dignity and peace to those who suffer with this terrible disease. Not only will it aid those walking with dementia patients, The Last Ocean will prompt all of us to think on the nature of a life well lived.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development written by Kate C. McLean and published by Oxford Library of Psychology. This book was released on 2015 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity is defined in many different ways in various disciplines in the social sciences and sub-disciplines within psychology. The developmental psychological approach to identity is characterized by a focus on developing a sense of the self that is temporally continuous and unified across the different life spaces that individuals inhabit. Erikson proposed that the task of adolescence and young adulthood was to define the self by answering the question: Who Am I? There have been many advances in theory and research on identity development since Erikson's writing over fifty years ago, and the time has come to consolidate our knowledge and set an agenda for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development represents a turning point in the field of identity development research. Various, and disparate, groups of researchers are brought together to debate, extend, and apply Erikson's theory to contemporary problems and empirical issues. The result is a comprehensive and state-of-the-art examination of identity development that pushes the field in provocative new directions. Scholars of identity development, adolescent and adult development, and related fields, as well as graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners will find this to be an innovative, unique, and exciting look at identity development.
Download or read book The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer s Disease Life Writing written by Martina Zimmermann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This is the first book-length exploration of the thoughts and experiences expressed by dementia patients in published narratives over the last thirty years. It contrasts third-person caregiver and first-person patient accounts from different languages and a range of media, focusing on the poetical and political questions these narratives raise: what images do narrators appropriate; what narrative plot do they adapt; and how do they draw on established strategies of life-writing. It also analyses how these accounts engage with the culturally dominant Alzheimer’s narrative that centres on dependence and vulnerability, and addresses how they relate to discourses of gender and aging. Linking literary scholarship to the medico-scientific understanding of dementia as a neurodegenerative condition, this book argues that, first, patients’ articulations must be made central to dementia discourse; and second, committed alleviation of caregiver burden through social support systems and altered healthcare policies requires significantly altered views about aging, dementia, and Alzheimer’s patients.
Download or read book Identity Construction and Illness Narratives in Persons with Disabilities written by Chalotte Glintborg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how being diagnosed with various disabilities impacts on identity. Once diagnosed with a disability, there is a risk that this label can become the primary status both for the person diagnosed as well as for their family. This reification of the diagnosis can be oppressive because it subjugates humanity in such a way that everything a person does can be interpreted as linked to their disability. Drawing on narrative approaches to identity in psychology and social sciences, the bio-psycho-social model and a holistic approach to disabilities, the chapters in this book understand disability as constructed in discourse, as negotiated among speaking subjects in social contexts, and as emergent. By doing so, they amplify voices that may have otherwise remained silent and use storytelling as a way of communicating the participants' realities to provide a more in-depth understanding of their point of view. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, medical humanities, disability research methods, narrative theory, and rehabilitation studies.
Download or read book Dancing with Dementia written by Christine Bryden and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christine Bryden was a top civil servant and single mother of three children when she was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 46. Dancing with Dementia is a vivid account of her experiences of living with dementia, exploring the effects of memory problems, loss of independence, difficulties in communication and the exhaustion of coping with simple tasks. She describes how, with the support of her husband Paul, she continues to lead an active life nevertheless, and explains how professionals and carers can help. This book is a thoughtful exploration of how dementia challenges our ideas of personal identity and of the process of self-discovery it can bring about.
Download or read book Living with Dementia written by Veljko Dubljević and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses current issues in the neuroscience and ethics of dementia care, including philosophical as well as ethical legal, and social issues (ELSIs), issues in clinical, institutional, and private care-giving, and international perspectives on dementia and care innovations. As such, it is a must-read for anyone interested in a well-researched, thought-provoking overview of current issues in dementia diagnosis, care, and social and legal policy. All contributions reflect the latest neuroscientific research on dementia, either broadly construed or in terms of the etiologies and symptoms of particular forms of dementia. Given its interdisciplinary and international scope, its depth of research, and its qualitative emphasis, the book represents a valuable addition to the available literature on neuroethics, gerontology, and neuroscientific memory research.
Download or read book On Vanishing written by Lynn Casteel Harper and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders that “reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves” (The New York Times). An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.” Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject. A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.
Download or read book Dementia Narrative and Performance written by Janet Gibson and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing mainly on case studies from Australia and the United States of America, this book considers how people with dementia represent themselves and are represented in ‘theatre of the real’ productions and care home interventions, assessing the extent to which the ‘right kind’ of dementia story is being affirmed or challenged. It argues that this type of story — one of tragedy, loss of personhood, biomedical deficit, and socio-economic ‘crisis — produces dementia and the people living with it, as much as biology does. It proposes two novel ideas. One is that the ‘gaze’ of theatre and performance offers a reframing of some of the behaviours and actions of people with dementia, through which deficit views can be changed to ones of possibility. The other is that, conversely, dementia offers productive perspectives on ’theatre of the real’. Scanning contemporary critical studies about and practices of ‘theatre of the real’ performances and applied theatre interventions, the book probes what it means when certain ‘theatre of the real’ practices (specifically verbatim and autobiographical) interact with storytellers considered, culturally, to be ‘unreliable narrators’. It also explores whether autobiographical theatre is useful in reinforcing a sense of ‘self’ for those deemed no longer to have one. With a focus on the relationship between stories and selves, the book investigates how selves might be rethought so that they are not contingent on the production of lucid self-narratives, consistent language, and truthful memories.
Download or read book Metagnosis written by Danielle Spencer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridging memoir with key concepts in narratology, philosophy and history of medicine, and disability studies, this book identifies and names the phenomenon of metagnosis: the experience of learning in adulthood of a longstanding condition. It can occur when the condition has remained undetected (e.g. colorblindness) and/or when the diagnostic categories themselves have shifted (e.g. ADHD). More broadly, it can occur with unexpected revelations bearing upon selfhood, such as surprising genetic test results. Though this phenomenon has received relatively scant attention, learning of an unknown condition is often a significant and bewildering revelation, one that subverts narrative expectations and customary categories. How do we understand these revelations? In addressing this topic Danielle Spencer approaches narrative medicine as a robust research methodology comprising interdisciplinarity, narrative attentiveness, and the creation of writerly texts. Beginning with Spencer's own experience, the book explores the issues raised by metagnosis, from communicability to narrative intelligibility to different ways of seeing. Next, it traces the distinctive metagnostic narrative arc through the stages of recognition, subversion, and renegotiation, discussing this trajectory in light of a range of metagnostic experiences-from Blade Runner to real-world mid-life diagnoses. Finally, it situates metagnosis in relation to genetic revelations and the broader discourses concerning identity. Spencer proposes that better understanding metagnosis will not simply aid those directly affected, but will serve as a bellwether for how we will all navigate advancing biomedical and genomic knowledge, and how we may fruitfully interrogate the very notion of identity.
Download or read book Beyond Loss written by Lars-Christer Hydén and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this collection of interdisciplinary essays by internationally established scholars is to see beyond the loss in dementia to the transformation and change, often in collaboration with others, of both personhood and identity. The collection identifies a number of new empirical, theoretical, and methodological areas that will be central to both research on and clinical practice concerned with age-related dementia in the coming years. Three general themes are identified as being of particular importance and interest: persons and personhood, identity and agency, and the social and the communal.
Download or read book Telling Stories written by Deborah Schiffrin and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narratives are fundamental to our lives: we dream, plan, complain, endorse, entertain, teach, learn, and reminisce through telling stories. They provide hopes, enhance or mitigate disappointments, challenge or support moral order and test out theories of the world at both personal and communal levels. It is because of this deep embedding of narrative in everyday life that its study has become a wide research field including disciplines as diverse as linguistics, literary theory, folklore, clinical psychology, cognitive and developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. In Telling Stories leading scholars illustrate how narratives build bridges among language, identity, interaction, society, and culture; and they investigate various settings such as therapeutic and medical encounters, educational environments, politics, media, marketing, and public relations. They analyze a variety of topics from the narrative construction of self and identity to the telling of stories in different media and the roles that small and big life stories play in everyday social interactions and institutions. These new reflections on the theory and analysis of narrative offer the latest tools to researchers in the fields of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.
Download or read book Traces of Aging written by Marta Cerezo Moreno and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection consists of eight essays that examine the way narratives determine our understanding of old age and condition how the experience is lived. Contributors to this volume have based their analysis on the concept of »narrative identity« developed by Paul Ricoeur, built upon the idea that fiction makes life, and on his definition of »trace« as the mark of time. By investigating the traces of aging imprinted in a series of literary and filmic works they dismantle the narrative of old age as decline and foreclosure to assemble one of transformation and growth.
Download or read book The Politics of Dementia written by Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memory loss is not always viewed purely as a contingent neurobiological process present in an ageing population; rather, it is frequently related to larger societal issues and political debates. This edited volume examines how different media and genres – novels, auto/biographical writings, documentary as well as fictional films and graphic memoirs – represent dementia for the sake of critical explorations of memory, trauma and contested truths. In ten analytical chapters and one piece of graphic art, the contributors examine the ways in which what might seem to be the individual, ahistorical diseases of dementia are used in contemporary cultural texts to represent and respond to violent historical and political events – ranging from the Holocaust to postcolonial conditions – all of which can prove difficult to remember. Combining approaches from literary studies with insights from memory studies, trauma studies, anthropology, the critical medical humanities and media, film and comics studies, this volume explores the politics of dementia and incites new debates on cultures of remembrance, while remaining attentive to the lived reality of dementia.
Download or read book Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of A Narrative Self written by Robyn Fivush and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003-05-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided into three parts, this volume discusses: the development of autobiographical memory and self-understanding; cross-cultural variation in narrative environments and self-construal; and the construction of gender and identity concepts in developmental and situational contexts.
