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Embodied selfhood in Alzheimer's disease

Rethinking person-centred care

Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Canada

Dementia care practices are premised on a model of Alzheimer's disease that denies the body an agential role in the constitution and manifestation of selfhood. As a consequence, despite advances in person-centred care, the body, which is a substantive means by which persons with advancing dementia engage with the world, is treated as passive rather than active and intentional. My central argument is that dementia care practices must embrace the idea that the body is a fundamental source of selfhood that does not derive its agency from a cognitive form of knowledge. With an interest in bringing the body into a theoretical re-visioning of selfhood in Alzheimer's disease, I advance this idea with the notion of embodied selfhood. I suggest ways that the notion of embodied selfhood could enhance person-centred dementia care; however, further research is required in order to fully conceptualize this notion in the context of dementia care.

Key Words: being-in-the-world • embodiment • ethnography • habitus

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