Dementia Positive

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind its faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Albert Einstein



I have seen deeply demented patients weep or shiver as they listen to music they have never heard before, and I think they can experience the entire range of feelings the rest of us can, and that dementia, at least at these times, is no bar to emotional depth. Once one has seen such responses, one knows that there is still a self to be called upon, even if music, and only music, can do the calling.

Oliver Sacks (2007) Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
New York: Knopf (p.346)




His function was to arouse confidence and to be receptive, to listen patiently and lovingly, helping the imperfectly formed confession to take shape, inviting all that was dammed up or encrusted within each soul to flow and pour out. When it did, he received it and wrapped it in silence.

Herman Hesse (1973) The Glass Bead Game Penguin p. 457



Forgetting has become part of who Daddy is, so I decide to try to honor his forgetfulness. I try to love it. It defines his being these days, and sometimes I feel that to see him I have to look through it, a shuttered window. Underneath the forgetting lie a few remembered things, shoelaces, the way to hold a razor to shave, song-lyrics he recalls, like cockles and mussels - but you have to catch them at the right moment of the day, when they shine through the slats. Daddy is Daddy now because he forgets.

Cohen E (2003) The House on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting London: Vermillion (p.196-7)



A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being --- matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak. And it is here, beyond the realm of an impersonal psychology, that you may find ways to touch him, and change him.

Luria AR From a personal letter to Oliver Sacks quoted in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat London: Picador (p.32)



Humour … has considerable merit in providing a means of access to otherwise inaccessible territory. As well, its power to transform the moment is too vital to be ignored.

Dean R (2003) Death, Humor and Spirituality: Strange Bedfellows? In GR Cox et al Making Sense of Death: Spiritual, Pastoral and Personal Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement New York: Baywood Publishing Co Inc (p.80)



A new form of hospice for patients with advanced [dementia] would revolve around the concept of 'being with' rather than 'doing to' patients ..., even if they have some years to live. ... Efforts to enhance emotional, relational, and esthetic well-being would, under such a plan, be enhanced in ways that involve family members, providing them with a sense of meaning and purpose. Through music, movement therapy, relaxation, and touch, such efforts support patients' remaining capacities. Connections with nature through a beautiful and open environment fit under this rubric, as can spiritual support.

Stephen G Post (2000)
The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying (2^ndedition)
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

Quoted by J Hughes (2006) Beyond hypercognitivism: a philosophical basis for good quality palliative care in dementia
Les Cahiers de la Fondation Mederic Alzheimer 2 (June) 17-23 (p.18)