My new article is just published:
Dementia and the Dissolution of the Self - An Transpersonal Perspective. Journal of Transpersonal Research 2025, 17 (1), 31-40.
Just a short impression:
(2) In Western culture, the dissolution of the self is usually understood as a pathology, what is a hindrance to self-report a possible natural expe-rience of old age
The I, the self is mostly understood as a nor-mally unquestioned achievement a human being possesses—at least in Western culture, where its loss results in questioning the personhood itself,
as ethical discussions about the personhood of people with severe dementia has shown (Werren, 2019). (Self-)reports of this experience are therefore also usually categorized as negative and
pathological, something I experienced myself several times in my process when connecting with doctors or psychotherapists as also in private contacts—and I was for-tunate to understand what had
happened to me, had the intellectual and academic resources for doing the research about it, and had enough strength and courage for the lonesome path one has to go during the dissolution process
due to being not able to ex-press oneself properly often for a very long time.
Not everybody is that fortunate and not eve-rybody has the understanding and strength to deal with misunderstanding, questioning and false and unrequested diagnosis, and a lot of people will
silence themselves instead of asking for validation and support in this process (what I also did for a very long time). So, this culture of questioning and pathologizing is a hindrance to
self-report a—in spiritual tradition “desirable“—and possibly natural experience of old age with the consequence that people are not able to get knowledge and guidance about the process and it’s
benefits for their personal life and humanity in its totality.
All these aspects are not unknown, the literature about spiritual crisis is full of it and the internet is full of forums and groups of people who had these or similar experiences and are going through spiritual crisis. But that does not mean the person having such an experience is getting the support they need.
From some conversations with relatives of people with dementia, I have received indications that there were events in the lives of these people – in their 50s and 60s – after which they and/or their relatives noticed changes in themselves, e.g. in their self-awareness, mood or a waning interest in their former acquaintances or the world itself. Over time, these changes increasingly became a challenging normality and may have contributed to the ever-in-creasing disorientation, especially if these changes and habits were not met by an understanding partner or a doctor without pathologization.
Download the article here: https://transpersonaljournal.com
