Narrative

This article reviews one current concept of experiential learning, using the work of David Kolb as an exemplar of this genre of learning theory. Working from a relational or social constructionist perspective, the article suggests that there are three problematic assumptions within current experiential learning cycles. First, there is a realist treatment of world and events. Second, a distinct and independent individual is assumed to be able to experience, know and act on this real world. Third, cognition, be it in the form of knowledge, interpretation or perception, is treated as the unproblematic precursor to action. In contrast to these assumptions relational premises invite multiple narratives to replace ‘concrete experience’, social rather than individual action and coordination with others in contrast with adaptation to a real world. These alternative premises form the basis of an alternative, narrative reflective cycle that is argued to offer practical reflective ‘tools’ that would be of benefit, even if the reflector did not share the author’s relational constructionist assumptions.

Against Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's writing offers to psychologists a series of critical perspectives on concepts regularly employed by the discipline, and it assists in the deconstruction of facile appeals to notions of `cognition', `drive' or `self' in which traditional psychology trades. However, academic and popular representations of the Wittgensteinian focus on language, and on the discursive setting for all varieties of mental and cultural phenomena, also threaten to obscure the material structuring of contemporary institutional power, power that both inhibits and incites speech. Selected aphorisms from Wittgenstein that have been used to warrant radical linguistic reflections on psychology are examined, and it is argued that these theoretical points need to be contextualized and reworked to accommodate a historical materialist account.

Deconstructing `Paranoia'

`Paranoia' is a construct which is currently associated with types of `schizophrenia', `personality disorder' and `delusional disorder' in DSM-IV™ (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In this paper, the concept of paranoia is deconstructed by examining six dominant and six opposed and subjugated presuppositions within both the psychiatric and abnormal psychology literature. In an argument which aims to provide a positive deconstruction, a discursive approach is suggested as a perspective which transforms these oppositions and enables more creative theorizing.

Sorcery of the Self

In this article, we first examine current cognitive and social constructionist (SC) notions of self and we suggest that although `self is central to both approaches, it is not satisfactorily defined by either because the discussion of self remains at an epistemological level. The lack of genuine definition leads to difficulties specifying the properties `self possesses and to dilemmas about how to draw boundaries between public and private experience and explain that discourse is both personalized yet socially constructed. In the second part of the article, we examine phenomenological claims for an ontological position which transcends views of the self as a unit `known about' and which grounds self-knowledge in Being. Being is revealed by projects in the world and does not distinguish a priori between subject and object. Such divisions are invoked by projects such as `knowing the world' which require a temporal and spatial version of the world in order to come about. Projects are always in the process of coming about; therefore, self s defining quality is what it is about to become rather than what it is. Hence the finite self is an illusion; but a necessary one. We draw an analogy between the way the illusion of self is created and revealed through the project of `knowing the self' and the way a conjuror, through his/her lead-up, convinces an audience to see what should be there. Only because sense of self is an illusion, we speculate, can it exert such a powerful sway over our lives.

The Place of the Psyche in a Constructed World

The vast majority of social constructionist writings have been critical of psychological science-on both ideological and conceptual grounds. The constructionist emphasis on microsocial processes also functions oppositionally to psychological accounting. The existing animus grows, however, from a realist metaphysics and a correspondence view of language, neither of which constructionism endorses. Viewing the relationship between constructionism and psychological science in more pragmatic terms, we find three significant ways in which constructionism contributes to a more fully enriched and broadly effective psychology. First, critical constructionism functions to denaturalize psychological accounts, opening them to reflexive deliberation, and democratizing the field more generally. Second, constructionist metatheory invites a resuscitation of marginal or suppressed discourse within the field, and invigorates societally engaged efforts to forge new and more useful discourses of the mind. Finally, social constructionism offers the possibility for a fundamental reconceptualization of the self. Illustrative is the family of theories conceptualizing the self as either constituted by or constituting relationships.

Emerging Challenges Redux

I return to consider my hopes and visions for Theory & Psychology as expressed in the initial issue. Of special concern are issues of (a) moving beyond empiricism, (b) determining the place of critique, (c) relating theory to cultural practice, and (d) illuminating the historical and cultural context of theoretical intelligibility. While significant strides have been made in each domain, we also confront significant challenges for the future. Primary among these challenges, much theoretical and critical work remains committed to incipient foundationalism and remains too distant from contexts of action.

What is Doing History?

This paper discusses contemporary approaches to the study of history, and their relation to the `history of ideas' which underpins traditional historiographies. After outlining the conventional histories of psychology, and their implicit assumptions, an alternative `history of the present' is discussed. The implications of utilizing a `history of the present', or archaeological approach to history, are discussed in relation to the `discourse debates' currently circumscribing critical psychological inquiry. An empirical example from my work in relation to an archaeology of hallucinations is used to illustrate these issues, in which I argue that the adoption of a `history of the present' avoids the dilemmas surrounding discursive approaches to the relation between language and social reality, and emphasizes the relevance of placing history on the agenda, when analysing the constitution of contemporary psychological phenomena. The paper raises these important issues and offers some conceptual tools for such an analysis.

Pain as Symptom, Pain as Sign

This article proposes a theoretical contribution to critical health psychology. Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics provide health psychology and related fields with an analytic that centers interest at the intersection where the co-constitution of reified categories occurs. I begin with the terms symptom and sign as used in medical contexts. Symptoms and signs can be reinterpreted, drawing on the Heideggerian notion of ‘attunement’, and upon Peirce’s semiotics. Next, I present Peirce’s concept of sign, with its triadic structure of object-representamen-interpretant. An understanding of pain as a sign in this sense is developed on this basis. The value of Peircian semiotics for a critical health psychology is illustrated with some examples drawn from a qualitative study. Pain is not only something of concern and the bearer of meanings, but a way of interpreting one’s situation. This semiotics of pain furthers the project, common to phenomenological and discursive approaches in health psychology and related fields, of studying the upsurge of meaning in speech and in other acts that co-constitute it.

Pain in the Vernacular: Psychological and Physical

A hermeneuticalphenomenological analysis of 42 narratives of pain in everyday life leads to the conclusion that psychological pain is pain. Psychological and physical pain have similar phenomenological structures. Both are felt bodily performances that entail at least temporarily a disabling of a potentiality for action. Pain is a performance of affliction of a person in a social situation. The category of psychological and physical pains arises from cultural conceptions of the nature of the person. This category reveals that pain can afflict the person in any aspect of existence. A categorization closer to the phenomena differentiates pains on the basis of what aspect of existence is afflicted. In conclusion, differences between pain and suffering are explored.

Health Psychology and Discourse

Traditional social psychology has largely located the origins of the social in the mental and emotional processes of individuals. Interview and questionnaire approaches have focused on the personal account as a route to cognitive processes and personality structures. In contrast, qualitative approaches like grounded theory have highlighted the importance of discourse in the constitution of the social world, and the function of talk and text in the construction of meaning. It is argued here that the use of such approaches, informed by insights from discourse analysis and current thinking on textuality, can enable analysts to read the personal account as a socially constructed, and constructing, text. This article uses examples from psychosocial oncology and from original research on the treatment experiences of a group of cancer patients to discuss new ways of reading personal accounts as social texts.

Accounting for Domestic Violence

It is argued in this article that theoretical explanations of domestic violence act as powerful discourses that shape our understanding of social reality; that is, they act as social practices that have real (material) effects. This study uses Q methodology to explore subjective variability in the use of the term domestic violence. From the 40 participants' completed Q sorts, five interpretable factors emerged that suggest that domestic violence should be seen as an arbitration of connected discourses predicating social practices rather than an act whose causes are psychologically clear.

The Textuality of Stress

Stress is a key term in health psychology, marking both conceptual possibilities and legislative failures. Rather than add a further global theory of stress, the term is examined as it operates in numerous kinds of practices. Drawing on qualitative material from varying sources I place emphasis on the role of concern and understanding in the definition of stress as the matter at hand. A discursive approach is used to worry the opposition of scientific and cultural practice in stress research and point instead to the notion of specific problematizations that appear in the rich fabric of the term's definition and description. I propose that attention to the details of a textuality of stress marks a step towards a 'modest' health psychology.

Telling Tales of Relations: Appreciating Relational Constructionism

The terms social constructionism and (social) constructivism are employed in the context of different problematics and different philosophical assumptions. This article presents ‘relational constructionism’ as a social science perspective. The perspective centres language-based relational processes as they (re)construct more or less local relational realities. The latter includes western individualism and its construction of the bounded, separately existing individual relating to a separately existing other where ‘other’ is everything which is not self; this has been called ‘hard’ self-other differentiation. The perspective of relational constructionism allows that ‘soft’ self-other differentiation also is possible — for example, in the practice of relationally engaged inquiry and change work. Relational constructionism, as outlined here, has a number of distinctive features: it clearly speaks about ontology and power (unlike many other constructionisms); it centres and gives ontology to construction processes (to how, rather than what) and sees persons and worlds as emerging in processes (rather than assuming individual minds and actions); it opens up the possibility of soft self-other differentiation (rather than assuming that ‘hard differentiation is ‘how it really is’); and it centres dialogical practices as ways of relating that can enable and support multiple local forms of life rather than imposing one dominant rationality on others.

(Dis)embodying gender and sexuality in testicular cancer

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 15-34. Although post-treatment prognosis is generally very good, the impact on sexuality, gender identity and fertility is amplified in this age group. A Canadian study of men with testicular cancer explores how men (re)consider questions of sexuality and gender post diagnosis and treatment. Semi-structured interviews with 40 men were analyzed using thematic decomposition, an analytic technique that combines discursive approaches with thematic analysis. The theoretical framework that guides this work relies on material discursive approaches. From an analytic stance, this perspective is concerned with a focus on the ways in which both subjectivity and the body are experienced and constituted in language. In particular, we are concerned with how these men interpret the (altered) male body as a locus of gender signification and gender disruption. Men in this study construct testicular cancer as alternately inhibiting and enhancing masculinity and sexuality. Disruption interpolates with potentiality. A discourse of precarious masculinity predominates these accounts, wherein the link between anatomy and masculinity is simultaneously asserted and disavowed. Constructions of anatomical essentialism (i.e., testicular integrity is equated with masculinity) are juxtaposed against construals of anatomical superfluousness (i.e., other sites of sexuality and male identity are emphasized as being more central).

Making sense of everyday pain

A social constructionist analysis is reported of how sense is made of everyday pain. Q factor analysis is used within a critical framework as Q methodology. Sixty-one participants completed the procedure. Eight factors or accounts of everyday pain were derived. These are reported as pain as malfunction, pain as self-growth, pain as spiritual growth, pain as alien invasion, pain as coping and control, pain as abuse, pain as homeostatic mechanism and pain and power. Common to all of the accounts is the theme of how pain relates to self, and in particular, of whether pain can change self. This theme is expanded and discussed in terms of how self is protected and legitimated in a context of pain as a fundamental threat. Implications of this study for how to understand the experience of 'abnormal' pain are discussed, as are possible new research routes.

Complaining about chronic pain

This paper examines how a group of working class people describes and experiences chronic pain. This hermeneutical-phenomenological study concentrates on the lived body of pain from three perspectives, drawing on interviews with 14 people who were attending a pain management program. First I consider the terms in which pain is circumscribed in the narratives, stories told in the context of learning to manage pain. These terms are polarities, ways of specifying and legitimating pain in relation to "mind" and "body." Pain, in the discursive polarities that define it, is the private property of an individual, who must in some fashion prove that pain exists in an objective manner. The speaker, in this discourse, stands as the one responsible for the production of pain. In the second part, the analysis turns to what this discourse reveals about pain as a lived body phenomenon. Here the analysis centers upon the torment of having to inhabit the intolerable, upon how pain unmakes the lifeworld of the sufferer, and how, simultaneously, people make pain. The place of pain is the body, as body-in-place. The place of pain is at the boundaries of human dwelling, a kind of non-place, expressed metaphorically as "prison" or "homelessness." Finally, after these considerations of how pain is described, in part three, I turn to the act of "saying" pain, that is, to the narratives as addressed to someone else. The participants were not simply dispensing information; they were saying something to me. The narratives had the form of complaints. The form of the narratives, in the context of the pain program, was a quasi-legal call to rectify wrongs.

Patients' and professionals' understandings of the causes of chronic pain: blame, responsibility and identity protection

A social constructionist analysis of how sense is made of the causes of chronic pain is reported. It is recognised that there is a multiplicity of stories available in any culture from which understanding can be reached. Q-factor analysis is used within a critical framework as Q-methodology. Sixty chronic pain patients and pain professionals completed the sorting procedure. Four factors were derived that account for the causes of chronic pain. These are reported as the patients' account, the professionals' account, the scientists account and the alternative practitioner's account. Common to all four accounts are the themes of responsibility, blame and the need to protect identity. It is argued that in all accounts responsibility is repositioned away from the sufferer or the healer. In all of the accounts blame is resisted or deflected away from individual ownership. Finally, it is argued that when pain is no longer useful as a symptom, identity is challenged, weakened and at risk for both chronic pain patients and pain professionals. Implications of this study for chronic pain research and treatment are discussed.