Constructing panic : the discourse of agoraphobia / Lisa Capps and Elinor Ochs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Capps, Lisa.

Contributor:

Ochs, Elinor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agoraphobia--Case studies.

Agoraphobia.

Personal construct theory.

Discourse analysis.

Discourse analysis, Narrative.

Panic attacks.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Construcing Panic offers an unprecedented analysis of one patient's experience of agoraphobia. Authored by a team comprising a clinical psychologist and a linguist, the book proposes a new view of agoraphobia as a communicative disorder.

Meg Logan has not been farther than two miles from home in six years. She has agoraphobia, a debilitating anxiety disorder that entraps its sufferers in the fear of leaving safe havens such as home. Paradoxically, while at this safe haven, agoraphobics spend much of their time ruminating over past panic experiences and imagining similar hypothetical situations. In doing so, they create a narrative that both describes their experience and locks them into it. Constructing Panic offers an unprecedented analysis of one patient's experience of agoraphobia. In this novel interdisciplinary collaboration between a clinical psychologist and a linguist, the authors probe Meg's stories for constructions of emotions, actions, and events. They illustrate how Meg uses grammar and narrative structure to create and recreate emotional experiences that maintain her agoraphobic identity. In this work Capps and Ochs propose a startling new view of agoraphobia as a communicative disorder. Constructing Panic opens up the largely overlooked potential for linguistic and narrative analysis by revealing the roots of panic and by offering a unique framework for therapeutic intervention. Readers will find in these pages hope for managing panic through careful attention to how we tell the story of our lives.

Contents:

Foreword by Jerome Bruner 1. The Agony of Agoraphobia 2. In Her Own Words 3. Telling Panic 4. A Grammar of Panic 5. Accommodation as a Source of Panic 6. Nonaccommodation as an Outcome of Panic 7. Paradoxes of Panic 8. Constructing the Irrational Woman 9. Socializing Emotion 10.Socializing Anxiety 11.Therapeutic Insights Epilogue: Flying Notes References Acknowledgments Index

Notes:

Originally published: 1995.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-237) and index.

ISBN:

9780674029187

0674029186

OCLC:

923109923