The Desocialization Effect – exploring identity and emotional exchange in the regressive stages of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

In applying a conceptual framework derived from social psychology, the article at hand explores the degenerative stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as a process of desocial-ization, in order to shed a new light on an already established neuroscientific body of re-search. Based on the empirical material of interviews and personal stories with caregiv-ers/relatives to patients diagnosed with AD, the research finds that the process of desocialization unfolds on two interrelating levels. On the first level, the patient’s loss of short-term working memory and long-term declarative memory implies a loss of self - both in a situational context and as an understanding of themselves as beings related to a social context of historical continuity. It further finds that the patients in the later stages collapse identities and live through prior roles attached to objects and symbols related to intense emotions. On the second level, it finds that when the patient’s diminishing proce-dural memory deprive them of the behavioral patterns that has shaped their identities. The social surroundings inability to verify their status in a specific role implies a threat to the patient’s selves, which eventually results in attempts to avoid the common social ritu-als that have shaped the relationship between patient’s and caregiver/relatives. As this rejection, and degeneration, also entails a threat to the caregiver/relatives concept of self, an attempt to restore this social bond results in the renegotiation of the currencies of emotional exchange in the relationship, in which the caregiver/relatives trade sympathy in exchange for the patient’s verification of their own identity.