
Constructing Panic
Discourse of Agoraphobia
Harvard University Press
1st Edition
Published on 1. January 1995
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-674-16548-9 (ISBN)
Description
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.
Readers will find in these pages hope for managing panic through careful attention to how we tell the story of our lives.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
index
Dimensions
Height: 242 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
520 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-16548-9 (9780674165489)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
The agony of agoraphobia; in her own words; telling panic; a grammar of panic; accommodation as a source of panic; nonaccommodation as an outcome of panic; paradoxes of panic; constructing the irrational woman; socializing emotion; socializing anxiety; therapeutic insights; epilogue - flying.