'I think therefore I am'? Dementia and Human Identity – Revd Dr Joanna Collicutt

Thu 2 July 2020

Dementia is a gradual, irreversible decline in mental abilities that is caused by an underlying health condition affecting the brain. It has devastating personal, interpersonal, and social consequences. Prominent among these is the deconstruction of personality that renders the individual less recognisable to self and others, a loss of the rational ability that the modern age has equated with existence as a human person, and the pre-modern age equated with the Imago Dei. The memory loss that accompanies conditions such as Alzheimer's disease means that the affected individual can no longer tell his or her story, but even more important is the story that society tells. The recent pandemic has sadly shown the truth of the old adage; 'The tragedy in dementia is not that the individual forgets but that she is forgotten.' How might a better story of dementia be told and how might it inform questions of human embodiment, identity, and worth more generally?

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Cost: Free