Geller Institute of Aging and Memory, University of West London, St Mary's Road Ealing, London, SW5 5RF, UK.
Med Health Care Philos. 2024 Mar;27(1):93-106. doi: 10.1007/s11019-023-10187-3. Epub 2023 Dec 21.
We examine the concept of personhood in relation to people living with dementia and implications for the humanity of care, drawing on a body of ethnographic work. Much debate has searched for an adequate account of the person for these purposes. Broad contrasts can be made between accounts focusing on cognition and mental faculties, and accounts focusing on embodied and relational aspects of the person. Some have suggested the concept of the person is critical for good care; others suggest the vexed debates mean that the concept should be abandoned. We argue instead that the competing accounts illuminate the very tensions in personhood which are manifest for all of us, but especially for people living with dementia, and argue that our account has explanatory power in shedding light on how precisely dehumanisation and constraints on agency may arise for people living with dementia, and for staff, within an institutional context.
我们探讨了与痴呆症患者有关的人格概念以及其对关怀人性化的影响，这一探讨基于大量的人种志工作。为了这些目的，有很多争论都在寻找一个对人的充分解释。可以在关注认知和心理能力的解释与关注人的身体和关系方面的解释之间进行广泛对比。有人认为，人格概念对于良好的护理至关重要；也有人认为，令人烦恼的争论意味着应该放弃这一概念。相反，我们认为，相互竞争的解释阐明了人格中存在的紧张关系，这些紧张关系对我们所有人，尤其是对患有痴呆症的人来说都是显而易见的，并且我们的解释在说明为什么在机构背景下，痴呆症患者以及工作人员的人性化和代理机构的限制会出现这一问题上具有解释力。
