In July this year I attended the British Psychological Society PSIGE annual conference for psychologists specialising in working with older people.  At one of the workshops there I heard about an amazing new approach with people in advanced stages of dementia.  The talk was illustrated with video clips showing people in inert states, unresponsive and withdrawn. Later these same people were shown responding and engaging with the psychologist who was working with them.  It was very moving to see these people coming back to life.  The essence of this new approach is to resist the habit of trying to use speech for people who have little memory of speech.  Instead the aim is to observe closely any gesture, whether vocal or behavioural, and to reflect this back, much in the way parents of babies and toddlers will playfully echo back their child's vocalisations and gestures. I think we often become too frightened of the dementing process and its dreadful consequences to be able to play in a way that is easy and spontaneous in the nursery.  The psychologists pioneering this approach have shown that even in very advanced states of dementia people still long for an interaction with someone who can meet them on their own terms, and that such interactions can bring joy and pleasure.  The psychoanalyst and paediatrician, Donald Winnicott, wrote of the importance of the mother mirroring the infant, and of how the infant looks at the mother's face for a reflection of his or her own feelings, which is an early form of mother's 'containment' of the infant's feelings as developed by WR Bion.

The psychologists who are pioneering this work are Arlene Astell aja3@st-and.ac.uk  or Maggie Ellis mpe2@st-and.ac.uk both atthe University of St Andrews in the School of Psychology.

I recently prepared a new edition of my book about therapy with older people which was published in July.  This blog is intended to provide a forum for discussion about the book and other thoughts about the theory and practice of therapy with older people.