ABSTRACT

If you allow yourself to notice, it is apparent that emotions are commonplace in dementia care. In this chapter we offer an exploration of emotion in dementia care, employing the method of psychodynamic observation. Thirty hours of reflective observations that were orientated towards emotional experience in connection with the environment were carried out and captured as a qualitative dataset using a reflective diary. The observation took place in two hospital units for people predominantly with dementia diagnoses and typically described as ‘challenging’ to services. We set the research question as ‘where is the emotion in dementia care?’