Silver School of Social Work, New York University.
Gerontologist. 2017 Oct 1;57(5):963-968. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnw086.
Mary Gordon's short story, Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year, is about a family trying to cope, not only with Mrs. Cassidy, who has dementia and is physically and verbally abusive, but also with her elderly husband's difficulties caring for her at home. Mr. Cassidy's dilemma, expressed through the dissonance between his private "inner talk" of emotions and desires that he feels are forbidden and shameful, and his insistence to his son and daughter-in-law that his wife is still the woman he married and her care is not too much for him. This article attempts to open up conceptual space on such questions of caregiver perceptions of the personhood (who they are now), and "personness"-the motivations and intentions-of the person with dementia; caregiver and family motivations and feeling states; and the ways that cultural narratives of obligation in family caregiving affect a caregiver's sense of self and moral certitude. In addition, the story helps us to consider the implications of a bifurcation between a caregiver's inner feelings, and what he or she understands to be the way he or she should feel and act publically. The article attempts to illustrate the interplay and tensions between narratives-master narratives from the culture, those from more immediate ideological environments, auto- and biographical stories, memories, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are-and how these come into stark relief in the context of a radically altered intimate relationship.
玛丽·戈登的短篇小说《卡西迪太太的最后一年》讲述了一个家庭在努力应对的故事，不仅要应对患有痴呆症且身体和言语上都具有攻击性的卡西迪太太，还要应对她年迈的丈夫在家中照顾她的困难。卡西迪先生的困境，通过他内心的情感和欲望的不和谐表达出来，这些情感和欲望他觉得是被禁止和羞耻的，而他坚持认为他的妻子仍然是他结婚时的那个女人，她的照顾对他来说并不多。本文试图在这些问题上开辟概念空间，即照顾者对患者人格（他们现在是谁）和痴呆症患者的“人格性”——动机和意图的看法；照顾者和家庭的动机和感受状态；以及家庭护理中义务的文化叙事如何影响照顾者的自我意识和道德确信。此外，这个故事帮助我们思考了照顾者内心感受与他或她理解的应该公开感受和行为的方式之间的二分法的含义。本文试图说明叙述——来自文化的主导叙述、更直接的意识形态环境中的叙述、自传和传记故事、记忆以及我们对自己身份的叙述——之间的相互作用和紧张关系，以及这些在亲密关系发生根本性变化的情况下是如何鲜明地凸显出来的。
