Alzheimer's

[Peter Parkinson]

Alzheimer''s.

Doing psychodrama with such people is one thing that I have done very little
and with no results to report. I have. However I had the opportunity to
direct and share in the care of my mother's final 10 years of her life. Her
care was all based on psychodramatic principles and my wife and children and
her professional carers were trained to be her auxiliaries. We did a role
analysis of both her current functioning and the functioning that she
dreamed of throughout her life. 

 

We thus worked appropriately to reduce her overdeveloped roles, expand her
creative roles and give her opportunities that she had never had in her
life.

 

Her overdeveloped controller was based on an assumption of being unlovable.
So we were able to encompass her matrix of all reality to the point that one
of her final statements was "You know dear, when you know that you are loved
on this side (of life/death) then it makes it so much easier to move to the
other side."

 

The overdeveloped avoider of reality led her to alcohol, other drugs, tv day
and night, and a dominant bullying personality. We became dominant
auxiliaries and applied cold turkey to all these, and insisted on her going
to social and creative events every day.

 

She was met with people who could fight just as well as she could.

 

3 months of this and her dementia had lifted, she, with a minder took
holidays with her old friends, played bridge, resumed painting, went
gambling and eventually launched her own 33 ft sloop, upon which, with
assistance of a skipper/minder, she spent much of her last 10 years of her
life with her old crew from her yacht racing days.

 

Dementia did catch up with her, as did a fractured hip or two, but behaving
as auxiliaries towards her and keeping her role repertoire forward in
everyone's mind together with the able supervision and mentoring of Isabelle
Sherrard, gave my mother a most wonderful final 10 years of her life, and
for myself the great honour of being part of it.

 

The whole tale is massive and soon I will write it up as an article or other
publication.

 

Cheers from

 

Peter Parkinson 

Aoteoroa New Zealand

Practitioner/Educator

Physician

PhD etc

 

 

  _____  

From: list-bounces at grouptalkweb.org [mailto:list-bounces at grouptalkweb.org]
On Behalf Of HV Psychodrama
Sent: Saturday, 20 January 2007 12:06 p.m.
To: grouptalk
Subject: Alzheimer's

 

    This seems to be the week for discussions about very serious
disorders/diseases/states of being. I was asked today about the use of
psychodrama with people with early to moderate Alzheimer's. Years ago I
worked in a day treatment for elderly de institutionalized people who had
lived for years at Hudson River Psych Center. They got great joy out of
enacting childhood dreams of what they wanted to be when they grew up. But
they didn't specifically have Alzheimer's. So,...has anyone out there had
any experience using psychodrama with people with Alzheimer's disease? 

  

 

 

 

Hudson Valley Psychodrama Institute
68 DuBois Road  New Paltz, NY 12561
(845) 255 7502   hvpi at hvc.rr.com
visit us at our website:  www.hvpi.net

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