Скачать или смотреть Shame, Health and Lived Experience Workshop - Emily Hartz (University of Copenhagen)

‘Eldercare and the Lived Experience of Shame and Boredom.’
Emily Hartz works on issues related to the intersubjective constitution of the self. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and she has approached this issue from the vantage point of German idealism, phenomenology of plurality, philosophy of law, gerontology and neuropsychology. Emily holds an Ma in philosophy from Copenhagen University, a PhD in philosophy from the Danish School of Education and is currently finalising an Ma in psychology from Copenhagen University.

‘Eldercare and the Lived Experience of Shame and Boredom.’
This talk will focus on whether and how shame structures the lived experience of being old and being dependent on eldercare. To discuss this issue, I draw on examples from existential group-therapeutic work in a nursing home in Copenhagen. Rather than grief and loss, the most prevailing issue for the participants in the group turned out to be boredom. An existential feeling that seemed to prevail in spite of – sometimes even as a result of – the caregivers’ sincere efforts to engage the elders in different activities. To understand the phenomenology of boredom in general and of old age in particular I turn to Simone de Beauvoir’s work on the existential structuring of old age. On this basis I argue that boredom and shame are intrinsically linked in the experience of being old and of being dependent on eldercare. Finally, I discuss how one might work therapeutically with shame and boredom in a concrete setting.