"Out of home". Hermeneutical approach to material-visual production and dementia

Abstract

Several theses of the current dialogue between philosophy and contemporary psychiatry, constitute the orientation of this paper, whose purpose is to draw a reflection on the potential of objects and images created in mental health contexts. From a hermeneutic approach to dementia, the relationship between existence and the world, affectivity and the others, will be considered as a way of accessing to the question of the produced images and objects, their meaning, and their place in a working group. The work done by an inpatient woman in a Mental Health Unit during her participation in an art work group is the guiding thread that will allow, from this particular case, to draw some final considerations. It is, above all, a defence of the participation of things, objects and images in the construction of meaning, as an inherent task to live.