Going Home Alone? On Disorientation, Homelesness, and We-Identity in Alzheimer’s Dementia

Abstract

In this paper, Alzheimer’s Dementia (AD) is understood as a philosophical enterprise sui generis, which is deepened by the socio-ontological question for the implicit and explicit conditions of enduring togetherness. The contribution ofers a constitutional analysis of four main conditions of enduring togetherness, i.e., familiarity, trust, communication, and identifcation. Therefore, it brings phenomenological approaches to embodiment and socio-constructivist approaches to language into a close dialogue by the notion of embodied expressivity. The starting point is a general refection on disorientation in AD, progressively and fundamentally modifying the experience of the one’s lifeworld, resp. home-world, in the sense of existential homelessness. These analyses help us to understand how AD changes the way of experiencing myself, the others, and the world and lead to important therapeutic indications discussed in four examples. The paper culminates in the question what exactly enduring togetherness can actually mean— especially in more advanced stages of AD.