The mystical title and generous praise points on the book cover led me to anticipate that Travellers to Unimaginable Lands would be a fascinating read and I was not disappointed. Dasha Kiper presents us with an erudite, thought-provoking series of 11 chapters, each built around a ‘trap’ into which carers often fall. The various traps are captured by the chapter subtitles, for example, ‘Why we can't remember that Alzheimer's patients forget?’ Each chapter is multi-layered, including a case study, Kiper's reflections on what she learnt as a therapist from working with the people concerned and the presentation of possible scientific explanations for our reactions and beliefs. As an additional treat, several chapters also start with reference to a work of literature or a myth that provides a metaphor to help us understand the trap in question.
Kiper has a background in psychology, and uses neuroscience and psychology to look at underlying explanations for the interactions between those living with dementia and those who support them. She shows us that carers fall into traps that make them unhappy, not due to lack of effort, patience or virtue, but due to basic characteristics of the way the human brain makes sense of our experiences. She considers, for example, the tensions between thought processes and emotional responses, our propensity to attribute meaning to random events and the way our attachment behaviours may drive our automatic reactions.
Of course, this book is focused particularly on the well-being of carers. If I have a point of criticism, it is that this occasionally leads to lack of empathy for those living with dementia, who may appear to be behaving at random but who are likely to be struggling to make sense of their world, despite deterioration in cognition.
The case studies are drawn from Kiper's experience of providing counselling for carers of people living with dementia. The narrative style is intimate and compassionate, with lovely reproductions of conversational exchanges between care-recipient and carer. She gives us a feel for the carers’ rollercoaster emotions – the rarer moments of peace and intimacy and the frequent moments of frustration and despair. Those who are carers, and those who work with them, will recognise the situations that are portrayed and hopefully gain useful insights from the explanations that are put forward.
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