Mary Weldy

Publication Date

Summer 1980

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Burt Feintuch, Camilla Collins, Lynwood Montell

Comments

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Original department Folklore & Intercultural Studies

Degree Program

Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether or not folkloric topics are useful in a program of Remotivation Technique. If analysis of the data generated by the research project shows that the program of Remotivation Technique sessions has been successful in improving the behavior of the participants, both as members of the group and as individuals functioning outside the group, the folkloric topics will have been shown to be useful. Remotivation Technique is a therapeutic technique developed by the late Dorothy Hoskins Smith in the 1950s. Its aim is to encourage institutionalized, withdrawn, moderately confused persons into a consideration of the real world and a renewed interest in their surroundings, thereby improving their behavior.

This study is based upon data generated by a research project conducted at the Medco Center of Franklin, Franklin, Kentucky. A series of eight highly structured Remotivation Technique sessions were held with a group of four elderly women. The topics used to develop the Remotivation Technique scripts implemented in each of the sessions were folkloric because they encompassed traditional expressions and implementations of knowledge operating within the intersecting groups to which the participants now, or at one time, had belonged. Members of the facility's Patient Care Plan Committee and I made an initial evaluation of each of the participants' behavior at the beginning of the eight sessions and a progress evaluation at the conclusion of the sessions. An analysis of the informational data thus obtained presents conclusive evidence that the behavior of all four participants improved (to varying degrees), both as members of the group and as individuals outside the group. The results of the research project demonstrate that folkloric topics are useful in a program of Remotivation Technique.

This thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter I includes an operational definition of folklore, an explanation of the history, purpose, and purported value of Remotivation Technique as a therapeutic program, and a consideration of the possible appropriateness of the use of folkloric topics in such a program. Chapter II contains a biography of each of the participants and a description of the research methodology. This chanter also includes a consideration of the process of topic selection and a description of each of the eight sessions. Chapter III concludes the study with an analysis of the initial and progress evaluations of each of the participants to determine behavior changes. In this chapter a determination is made as to whether or not folkloric topics were shown to be useful in a program of Remotivation Technique and why these results may have occurred. The chapter contains a critique of the study and implications for further research, as well as a consideration of the future possible use of folkloric topics in other therapeutic programs and techniques designed for use with the elderly living in nursing homes.

Disciplines

Anthropology | Folklore | Geriatrics | Medical Specialties | Medicine and Health Sciences | Mental and Social Health | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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