ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the individual and group therapeutic effects of the investigation, together with the importance of the counselling skills used extensively throughout all interviews with the informants. It deals with an examination of the ethical considerations in the use of the approach with vulnerable demented people. The chapter suggests that the interventions might have highly significant implications for other people with dementia. The issue of whether older people with dementia are able to cope with this type of exploration is linked to the expertise of the worker, but also to their own ability to handle grief and loss. Most older people with dementia will have experienced the many losses that accompany the ageing process before the onset of their illness. T. Kitwood tentatively suggests that many sufferers of dementia might have highly vulnerable experiential selves, which compound the effects of the illness or even predispose the elderly person towards that state of cognitive loss.