Mark Freeman: Selfhood, Narrative, & Reimagining The Story Of Dementia

This is a segment of episode 307 of Last Born In The Wilderness “Do I Look At You With Love?: Dementia’s Tragic Promise & An Act of Care w/ Mark Freeman.” Listen to the full episode: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/mark-freeman

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Mark Freeman, narrative psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at the College of the Holy Cross, discusses his book 'Do I Look at You with Love?: Reimagining the Story of Dementia' — documenting the final twelve years of his mother’s life of cognitive decline with dementia. This interview explores the complex reality of the narratives of the self, memory, the “tragic promise” of dementia, relationship, and the final acts of care one can provide for a dying loved one.

“'Do I Look at You with Love?' were the words uttered by Mark Freeman’s mother when she learned, once again, that he was her son. This book explores the experience of dementia as it transpired during the course of the final twelve years of her life, from the time of her diagnosis until her death in 2016 at age 93. As a longtime student of memory, identity, and narrative, as well as the son of a woman with dementia, he had a remarkable opportunity to try to understand and tell her story. Much of the story is tragic. But there were other periods and other dimensions of relationship that were beautiful and that could not have emerged without her very affliction. In the midst of affliction there were gifts, arriving unbidden, that served to alert Freeman and his family to what is most precious and real. These are part of the story too. Part narrative psychology, part memoir, part meditation on the beauty and light that might be found amidst the ravages of time and memory, Freeman’s moving story is emblematic of nothing less than the bittersweet reality of life itself.” (https://bit.ly/3BcRlQi)

Mark Freeman, Ph.D. (1986), University of Chicago, is Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at the College of the Holy Cross. His many writings include 'Rewriting the Self' (1993), 'Hindsight' (2010), and 'The Priority of the Other'(2014).

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