ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Alzheimer disease has been studied according to several approaches: neurological, cognitive, or psychodynamic. Investment in the latter is sparse although it provides an essential clinical overview for global understanding of the disease. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: This study followed the Alzheimer Observation Bank of Research and Data (ABORD) programme, which began in the 1980s. Fifty-nine subjects suffering from Alzheimer disease were compared to 31 control subjects, in order to search for an association between vulnerability factors linked to the life story and future clinical outbreak of Alzheimer disease. The study was carried out with an 11-item questionnaire on difficult life events. They concerned childhood, stress inductive situations, separation or bereavement experiences, family background or psychiatric history. RESULTS: Control subjects experienced less difficult events (Chi(2)=5.87; P<0.05). An accumulation of deleterious life events can impact on psychic economy. Pathogenic factors appear, sick people have more often been placed before the age of 10 (Chi(2)=5.06; P<0.01), and recognize more psychiatric family history and/or psychic vulnerability (Chi(2)=5.06; P<0.05). Difficult life events can impact on the subject's ability to grieve, and so the elaboration of losses linked with ageing can become difficult and exceed the psychic ability of the subject, which can be further disrupted by cerebral lesions or pathogenic factors. Hence, the subject could make an unconscious choice of a rescue mental running, which appears in the development of Alzheimer. A protective factor has been found: spiritual practice referring to a form of faith or philosophical adherence (Chi(2)=5.64; P<0.05).