Memory Without Recollection. A Positive Study of Dementia and Practices of Bodily Persistence

The contribution approaches dementia from a phenomenological perspective, namely the analysis of one’s lived experience. In the first part, the essential coordinates of the phenomenological methodology to psychopathologies are outlined. Using two paradigmatic figures (Auguste and Marta), the second part gives a phenomenological interpretation of the loss of the self in neurocognitive disorders and also the persistence of a type of implicit, pre-reflective memory. The third part of the paper is devoted to the definition of what a philosophical practice is and how it can be applied to subjects with neurodegenerative or psychiatric illnesses. Finally, in the last part, a practice for subjects with dementia is described and proposed, based on empirical evidences and experiments by the two authors.