The self that remains: a symbolic analysis of the psychological death of the self in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Alzheimer's disease, we witness a psychologicaldeath of the selfbefore physical death. The unraveling of the self that occurs in Alzheimer's disease is a classic underworld journey, through which the deceased undergo a dismantling of memory and temporal identity to become shades of the Underworld. Through stories of family members living with dementia in a loved one, Alzheimer's disease reveals a descent into an irrational, symbolic, and timeless otherworld. This unique dying process provides insight into a degeneration and death of self and identity that is always occurring in the undergrowth of individuation. Individuation, as explicated through Greek eschatology, has two aspects: a general, phylogeneticHomericprocess, and an ontogeneticOrphicprocess characterized by intentional participation in one's own evolution of consciousness. Analyses of an archetypal death, a symbolic birth, and the self that remains as temporal identity is deconstructed through dementia conclude the article.