Read Online The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self by Anil Ananthaswamy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anil Ananthaswamy
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from growing any further, limiting it to whatever it was at the time of disease onset. Alzheimer’s continues to hack away at the narrative until all one is left with is a set of disconnected episodes. Eventually, even those are gone.
The term “petrified self” did not go down too well among some of their colleagues. “It suggests the person with Alzheimer’s is dead or ossified,” said Morris. “I have a lot of sympathy for that, since that is not what we meant. We should be careful how we conceptualize people. On the other hand, you can’t limit science by political correctness. You can’t hide inconvenient truths.”
And the truth is that as the narrative self petrifies first and then begins to deteriorate, the person with Alzheimer’s reverts back to the critical narrative self, to memories that were formed at a time when the self was being defined most strongly, when its essence was being etched deeply in the body and brain. Alzheimer’s, however, ultimately affects even the critical narrative self. Despite Allan’s ability to reminisce about his adolescence and early adulthood, Michaele would notice long periods when he would just “disappear, disappear.” She’d look into his eyes and find them empty, vacant. All caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients would relate to Michaele’s experience. “There was just hardly [anyone] there anymore,” she told me.
But is that something caregivers are inferring, or is the person with Alzheimer’s really unaware? Morris argues that the onus is on science to show that patients are not aware, that they have no self.
Pia Kontos is not comfortable with claims that Alzheimer’s patients ultimately have no self. She argues that even in the face of severe cognitive decline evident in Alzheimer’s patients, a form of selfhood persists, a precognitive, prereflective selfhood that’s embedded in the body. She takes her inspiration from French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. “Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty help [us] think about what the body brings to our engagement with the world that doesn’t rely on cognition,” she told me.
She has seen examples of such “embodied selfhood” in her research in long-term care settings with people with Alzheimer’s disease. One particular observation—of an elderly male resident who was severely cognitively impaired and spoke only in single words, often nonsensical—left a deep impression on her. One day, on SimchatTorah, a Jewish high holiday to celebrate the Torah, the residents went to the synagogue in the long-term care home. The old man stood in line, waiting to be called to the bimah (pulpit) to sing the prayer. “I saw this gentleman get up in the lineup, and I remember my whole body clutched,” said Kontos. “This is going to be a disaster, I thought, because he can’t put two words together.”
What followed stunned her. When his name was called out, the man confidently walked up to the bimah and recited the prayer with utter proficiency. One could argue that there was some cognition still intact in him that allowed him to do so. But Kontos thinks otherwise.
“The way that I have analyzed it is that there was an orchestration of an event there. There was the touch of the Torah, the presence of the rabbi, the presence of all the congregants, and that elicited in him what Bourdieu has termed ‘habitus,’ but I term ‘embodied selfhood,’ and it enabled him to perform in that moment,” Kontos said. “If you took that gentleman to his room and asked him to recite the prayer, he couldn’t do it.”
Embodied selfhood is “the idea that bodily habits, gestures, and actions support and convey humanness and individuality.” Merleau-Ponty argued that we are all born with a primordial body that is capable of engaging with the world. “Nothing human is altogether incorporeal,” he wrote. He took as an example the skill of touch-typing. If you are a capable touch typist,
The term “petrified self” did not go down too well among some of their colleagues. “It suggests the person with Alzheimer’s is dead or ossified,” said Morris. “I have a lot of sympathy for that, since that is not what we meant. We should be careful how we conceptualize people. On the other hand, you can’t limit science by political correctness. You can’t hide inconvenient truths.”
And the truth is that as the narrative self petrifies first and then begins to deteriorate, the person with Alzheimer’s reverts back to the critical narrative self, to memories that were formed at a time when the self was being defined most strongly, when its essence was being etched deeply in the body and brain. Alzheimer’s, however, ultimately affects even the critical narrative self. Despite Allan’s ability to reminisce about his adolescence and early adulthood, Michaele would notice long periods when he would just “disappear, disappear.” She’d look into his eyes and find them empty, vacant. All caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients would relate to Michaele’s experience. “There was just hardly [anyone] there anymore,” she told me.
But is that something caregivers are inferring, or is the person with Alzheimer’s really unaware? Morris argues that the onus is on science to show that patients are not aware, that they have no self.
Pia Kontos is not comfortable with claims that Alzheimer’s patients ultimately have no self. She argues that even in the face of severe cognitive decline evident in Alzheimer’s patients, a form of selfhood persists, a precognitive, prereflective selfhood that’s embedded in the body. She takes her inspiration from French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. “Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty help [us] think about what the body brings to our engagement with the world that doesn’t rely on cognition,” she told me.
She has seen examples of such “embodied selfhood” in her research in long-term care settings with people with Alzheimer’s disease. One particular observation—of an elderly male resident who was severely cognitively impaired and spoke only in single words, often nonsensical—left a deep impression on her. One day, on SimchatTorah, a Jewish high holiday to celebrate the Torah, the residents went to the synagogue in the long-term care home. The old man stood in line, waiting to be called to the bimah (pulpit) to sing the prayer. “I saw this gentleman get up in the lineup, and I remember my whole body clutched,” said Kontos. “This is going to be a disaster, I thought, because he can’t put two words together.”
What followed stunned her. When his name was called out, the man confidently walked up to the bimah and recited the prayer with utter proficiency. One could argue that there was some cognition still intact in him that allowed him to do so. But Kontos thinks otherwise.
“The way that I have analyzed it is that there was an orchestration of an event there. There was the touch of the Torah, the presence of the rabbi, the presence of all the congregants, and that elicited in him what Bourdieu has termed ‘habitus,’ but I term ‘embodied selfhood,’ and it enabled him to perform in that moment,” Kontos said. “If you took that gentleman to his room and asked him to recite the prayer, he couldn’t do it.”
Embodied selfhood is “the idea that bodily habits, gestures, and actions support and convey humanness and individuality.” Merleau-Ponty argued that we are all born with a primordial body that is capable of engaging with the world. “Nothing human is altogether incorporeal,” he wrote. He took as an example the skill of touch-typing. If you are a capable touch typist,
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