Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind

Martina Zimmermann teaches at the University of Warwick, UK, and is Privatdozentin at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She trained as a pharmaceutical scientist and specialized in neuropharmacology before moving into research in the health humanities. She is the author of The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer's Disease Life-Writing (2017). She has recently been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship with which she returns to the Department of English at King’s College London, where this monograph had been researched.

• Acknowledgements1: IntroductionAlzheimer’s disease: the twenty-first-century first-world scareDementia in historyMethodology: literature and scienceOverviewPart I: The Organic Paradigm2: From brain inspection to cell deathThe Forsyte Saga: the cultural image of dementia in the fin-de-siècle family novelDementia and memory loss in science, medicine and literature before 1880Auguste D. and Johann F.: Alzheimer’s clinical cases and histological researchDegeneration: the old and new narrative of loss and decline in medico-scientific literature on dementia and Alzheimer’s diseaseThere Were No Windows: the patient’s illness experience in the modernist novelPart II: The Ageing Perspective3: Culture shapes politics shapes scienceResearching old age: from medical science to old-age psychiatryAt The Jerusalem: dementia defines the elderly in 1960s’ new realist fiction4: The loss of self in healthcare and cultural discourseCaregiver guides: helpers in the face of loss and declineOut of Mind: the postmodern novel delves into the mind of the patientPart III: The Cognitive Picture5: The narrative of loss in a growing biomedical and literary marketplace of Alzheimer’s diseaseNeurodegeneration: the biochemical narrative of lost molecules, pathways and communicationOn genes and genealogy: the patient as specimen, carrier and type in research and popular scienceDeath in Slow Motion: past identities, lost plots and old age in caregiver life-writing6: Neuro-technologies and narrative examine the failing mindThe visual exploration of the brain and fascination with the mindThe Dying of the Light: detective fiction claims back patient authorityWho Will I Be When I Die?: patient life-writing around the year 2000Part IV: The Whole-Person Prospects7: The dichotomy of Alzheimer’s diseaseImmunization hope and hype: the patient as non-responderLa guardiana di Ulisse: the patient beyond forgetting in children’s literature and adult fiction of the new centuryAlzheimer mon amour: healthcare changes and patient personality in contemporary caregiver memoirsWe Are Not Ourselves: the cultural image of Alzheimer’s disease in the twenty-first-century Bildungsroman8: ConclusionNotesGlossaryBibliography

Zimmermann’s analysis of literature, medicine, and science addressing dementia and caregivingin diverse cultures is a reminder of the importance of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural knowledgefor social workers.