Losing Selves

Dementia Care as Disruption and Transformation

Bibliographic Data

ID2481602
AuthorsTracy X Karner (University of Houston, corresponding author), Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, Donna Bobbitt‐zeher (The Ohio State University, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume28
Issue4
Pages549-570
Publication date2005-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/si.2005.28.4.549
OpenAlexW2078581962
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited38

Caregiving is a process of transformed identities and reconstructed relations. The disruption of Alzheimer's disease affects both the individual with dementia and the person providing care. One becomes enselfed in dementia, the other transformed into a caregiver. Using data from twenty qualitative interviews with family caregivers, this article traces the transformative process by which the previous relational selves of both participants become casualties of the disease. Findings suggest that the ill person in this dyad is silenced through dementia, leaving the caregiver narratives to become the morality tales of transformation from disorder to order, from havoc to meaningful interaction. By becoming caregivers, family members construct value in their struggles to negotiate the disorder of illness and recreate meaningful and affirming selves and relationships

Aesthetics · Dementia · Developmental psychology · Disease · Dyad · Epistemology · Morality · Narrative · Negotiation · Sociology · Transformative learning · Cultural, Psychoanalytic, and Sociopolitical Reflections · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology