The Spirited Interworld: Caregiving and the Liminal Phenomenology of Dementia

Abstract

Literature on caring for those with advanced Parkinsonian dementia often urges caregivers to refrain from arguing with, or contesting, their hallucinatory landscape. The clinical advice tends to be to go with the flow and “play along.” It is the above prescription that I aim to trouble here, on phenomenological grounds. With reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the perceptual faith, I explore that idea that caregiving often requires the relaxation or expansion of the perceptual faith, not for the purposes of “playing along” so much as being-with. At the intersection of the ethics of care and phenomenology, and in reference to my experience caregiving for my mother, this paper explores the ethics of caregiving for those with dementia.