Personhood as projection: The value of multiple conceptions of personhood for understanding the dehumanisation of people living with dementia

Boddington, Paula, Northcott, Andy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3030-9861 and Featherstone, Katie (2023) Personhood as projection: The value of multiple conceptions of personhood for understanding the dehumanisation of people living with dementia. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 27. pp. 93-106. ISSN 1386-7423

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Abstract

We examine the concept of personhood in relation to people living with dementia and implications for the humanity of care, drawing on a body of ethnographic work. Much debate has searched for an adequate account of the person for these purposes. Broad contrasts can be made between accounts focusing on cognition and mental faculties, and accounts focusing on embodied and relational aspects of the person. Some have suggested the concept of the person is critical for good care; others suggest the vexed debates mean that the concept should be abandoned. We argue instead that the competing accounts illuminate the very tensions in personhood which are manifest for all of us, but especially for people living with dementia, and argue that our account has explanatory power in shedding light on how precisely dehumanisation and constraints on agency may arise for people living with dementia, and for staff, within an institutional context.

Item Type: Article
Identifier: 10.31234/osf.io/89abj
Keywords: Dementia Personhood Dehumanisation Hospitals Person-centred care
Subjects: Psychology
Depositing User: Andy Northcott
Date Deposited: 08 Jan 2024 15:01
Last Modified: 12 Dec 2024 14:00
URI: https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10589

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