No truce with the furies

Abstract

This article will look at some of the unconscious factors involved in the silencing of debate regarding the provision of long-term care for people in later life suffering from dementia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Particular attention will be paid to factors internal and external which led to the decimation of local authority and NHS provision in this area and led to a shifting of care into the private and voluntary sector. The consequences of such malignant mirroring of the deteriorated mental state of the people services are meant to contain is discussed from a psychoanalytic perspective.