The Meaning of Memory Loss
The Meaning of Memory Loss
Illness, Identity, and Biography
This introductory chapter presents the topic of the book, Alzheimer’s illness narratives, and outlines the remaining chapters. While AD is currently constructed as a problem of epidemic proportion, such perceptions were not always the case. Scientific debate about the qualitative difference between age-related memory loss and Alzheimer’s persists, as does skepticism regarding the efficacy of treatment alternatives. Yet the overwhelming majority of research efforts and monies remain narrowly focused on cause and cure. This focus on prevention erases the everyday lived experiences of AD for those currently diagnosed and their family members alike. Contemporary epidemiological projections engender a crisis rhetoric that may contribute to mis-/overdiagnoses of Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment, and/or the conflation of memory loss and AD. In the 110-year quest to understand Alzheimer’s, and the rhetoric of global devastation and annihilation of selfhood which have accompanied it, we too often ignore the very experiences of the condition.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s illness narratives, misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, lived experiences of AD, crisis rhetoric, mild cognitive impairment
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
