Events and Seminars

Event	:	The Hardest Passage: A Psychoanalyst Accompanies her Patient into Dementia
Venue	:	Online
Date	:	20/11/2024
Duration	:	3 - 4:45pm GMT / 10 - 11:45pm EST
Extra Info	:	The Hardest Passage: A Psychoanalyst Accompanies Her Patient’s Journey into Dementia is both the title of this presentation and Maxine Anderson’s forthcoming book that grew out of an encounter with one of her first analytic patients; a woman who recontacted her some 40 years following termination of the patient’s analysis, hoping for help to face the deepening impact of dementia. Feeling “too little is known about the disease,” Anderson’s patient and her husband generously permitted the author to write about their end-of-life work together. Her presentation offers glimpses of rarely documented clinical experiences over a three-and-a-half years period as the patient’s illness deepened. Included are observations from the patient’s point of view, her care-givers, and the analyst’s own responses, including dreams, which aided the analyst's evolving understanding. Anderson concludes that we all fear dementia because we are reminded of the losses that we may encounter as we age. Moreover, that this fear may trigger a turning away rather than a turning toward the declining patient, who may then turn away from him- or herself, deepening the progression of the disease. Attentive dementia care, Anderson suggests, involves facing these feared losses squarely, as part of the patient’s current reality. In a word, this quality of care involves mourning; that is, recognizing loss and change as part of reality rather than remaining haunted by fear and avoidance. During her decline, Anderson’s patient retained the capacity of self-reflection. Part of the patient's agony involved a conviction that parts of her mind were “flying away”; a vivid description of the feeling of being abandoned by her own receding capacities. In their work together, Anderson discovered that the patient felt calmed by the analyst’s presence and her ability to speak clearly and quietly to the difficult realities of the progressing disease. It became clear that this deep level of emotional accompaniment—that is, being with the patient’s dreads—quieted them, allowing both to feel in touch with the richness of experience still available. Anderson concludes that if we, as psychoanalysts (and caretakers of loved ones), can turn toward, rather than turn away from truly being with and even daring to be in this elder time of life, we may help ourselves and others to look and to feel beyond the inevitable fears of this hardest passage toward new depths of lived experience. If so, this turning toward may offer wisdom, hope, and the discovery of new aspects of our common humanity.
Organised By	:	Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
Web Link	:	https://conta.cc/4h1466F