"My Brain s On Strike"

Abstract

This article examines the social construction of identity by older dementia patients in the memory clinic through the use of accounts about memory loss. The data are verbatim transcriptions of neuropsychological examinations between seventeen older dementia patients and four clinicians conducted at the Memory and Alzheimer's Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco. Using an interactional sociolinguistic framework, this article analyzes five kinds of accounts that discursively construct the identities of these older dementia patients: (1) cognitive accounts, (2) experiential accounts, (3) accounts of ability and attention, (4) emotional accounts, and (5) comparative accounts. This research has implications for improving the quality of life of older dementia patients to the extent that caregivers and family members can help dementia sufferers to construct and maintain a sense of their own identity.