Self, Personhood and Self-Awareness: A Phenomenological Analysis of Dementia

This paper takes a phenomenological approach to understanding self and personhood in dementia. The paper challenges the view that subjects with dementia can simply be understood in terms of diminished cognitive capacities or that they have lost all vestiges of self and personhood or the capacity for meaningful interaction. Instead, drawing on phenomenology, an alternative view is offered that can more adequately account for self and personhood, as well as self-awareness and self-experience in dementia. The view offered here is of a body-orientated and relational view of personhood and selfhood. It not only assumes that cognition is always already embodied but significantly that embodiment and embodied memory are central to personhood. It also highlights the ways in which persons are constituted and affirmed through relation with others and considers the way in which surrounding worlds or care environments might be more or less enabling in contexts of dementia and aging by attending to personhood in care.