1. How did the presence of Dan Kuhn, the clinical social worker, affect your response to the respondents’ sharing of their stories?
2. In the first segment, the wife is discussing the changing nature of their sexual relationship, and suddenly there is an abrupt cut to her husband playing with a child’s toy. What effect did that visual information have on your understanding of the woman’s story?
3. What was gained by having the couple’s filmed in home settings rather than clinical settings?
4. In what ways are role changes a significant part of the caregivers’ stories?
5. The film is subtitled Intimacy and Sexuality in Alzheimer’s. How is that different from the subtitle, Sexuality and Intimacy in Alzheimer’s?
6. The first and fourth segments feature the women sitting alone, apart from their spouses. But the second and third segments feature couples sitting next to each other. How does that visual presentation affect our response to the sharing of stories?
7. The second segment, featuring Everett and Betty, contains the majority of emotional responses in the video—both laughter and tears. How did their emotional responses affect your understanding of their dynamics as a couple and Everett’s adaptation to his wife’s disease?
8. Everett is the only male caregiver featured in the documentary. How are his responses to his wife’s Alzheimer’s different from the responses of the three women to their husbands’ Alzheimer’s?
9. In the third segment, although Bob is on camera, his wife does most of the talking. What do you think she is leaving unsaid in this segment?
10. In the fourth segment, the caregiver confronts the sexual hyperactivity of her spouse. How did her response to this conflict surprise you?
11. Compare the coping mechanisms and strategies employed by the four caregivers in this video. What responses are most effective? What responses are least effective?
12. Imagine the four caregivers participating in a support group together. What do you think they would say to one another?
13. The issue of institutionalization does not come up in the documentary. Why? What alternatives are available to these caregivers?

Sample Worksheet

Consider the following questions as they relate to each of the quotes from the film:

1. How does the statement reflect an insight into some of the losses experienced by those caring for people with Alzheimer’s Disease?
2. How does the statement reflect the stresses experienced by caregivers?
3. What insights into the basis of the caregiver’s relationship (especially with regard to intimacy and sexuality) are revealed by these statements?
4. Only one of the four respondents is male. How are issues related to gender involved in issues relating to intimacy and sexuality?

Couple nr. 1:

• "I've always felt that sexual intimacy is as much a union of minds as of bodies. If one half of it is gone, that destroys it all."
• "I seem to have moved from wife to mother."
• "When you're taking care of a person, and watching over them, and taking care of all the intimate things, it takes away from the romantic aspect of that relationship."
• "It depends on the moment. You seize the moment when you can reach in and touch and be affectionate and take it. If you feel that is not, you have to let it go--regardless of how you might feel."
• "You have to have an emotional shield around you."

Couple nr. 2:

• "What’s been hard for Betty is to see some of these things happening to her. She’s been a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother and a great cook. And now all of a sudden to be burning everything or to double the ingredients or forget to put something in or to melt a couple of teakettles."
• "Our love for each other is stronger now than it has ever been. I realize how much I need her. For us, every day is a special day."
• "We can give each other to ourselves, no reservation."
• "We'll make it as great as we can make it today. If we have a hundred tomorrows, or a thousand tomorrows, then we'll make those just as meaningful too."

Couple nr. 3:

• "The way I felt a year ago was that we were living on a powder keg. You never knew if one of us was going to explode."
• "I never thought of myself as a person who took care of my husband."
• "We are the ones who have to change. Bob won't be able to."
• "It has changed, due to the fact that my role has changed. It's hard to be the lover and also the caregiver. It's not the same way—in bed, or really, very little."
• "I'm not thinking sex. I'm thinking more of what we have to do to have the day run smoothly, to make him feel good, how that will work out."

Couple nr. 4:

• "In the last year he has become very aggressive sexually. He's asking for sex a lot more. My body is changing, and I can not accommodate this as much as he would like."
• "There are so few things that give him pleasure, and how can I deny him that?"
• "It's not like making love. It's having sex."
• "It's not that hard for me to help him. I still love him. He's just changing."

The Great Circle of Life--Home Page

Text of The Great Circle of Life: A Resource Guide to Films and Videos on Aging, copyright © 1987, 1999, 2005, Robert E. Yahnke. All photographs copyrighted by Robert E. Yahnke.  All rights reserved.  Contact author for permission to copy photographs or reprint portions of text.

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