Harre's Selfhood in People with Alzheimer's Disease: Memories of Places and Relationships

Increasing share of elderly people in aging population affects all categories of age and social sectors. Society responds to the situation through a necessary change in social area and growing importance of social care for the elderly people. Number of factors determine quality of life in older age, including how they succeed in construction of the new self. Decreased frequency, intensity and diversity of personal interactions often lead to social exclusion. Loneliness is among the most serious concerns in older generation. Deeper levels of a multi-layered selfhood are less affected by the disrupted social construction, which one observes among the older people. It seems that the anchoring of personal identity in place and relationships grows in significance as people age. We investigate construction of selfhood from fragmented memories of people with Alzheimer's disease. Even in conditions of severely affected independence in everyday life we are finding a rich memory, which reflects their personal relationships linked to the places of past. Source observations use a qualitative probe of five clients in a specialized facility for the people living with Alzheimer's disease. We discuss our findings in the context of research focusing on social aspects of aging and the changing meaning of gradually lost memory.