Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia

Capps, Lisa; Ochs, Elinor

ISBN 10: 0674165489 / ISBN 13: 9780674165489

Published by Harvard University Press, 1995

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674165489
• ISBN 13: 9780674165489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

Lisa Capps was Assistant Professor of Psychology at Berkeley.

Elinor Ochs is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jerome Bruner is University Professor at New York University and the author of many books, including Acts of Meaning; On Knowing; The Process of Education; and Toward a Theory of Instruction (all published by Harvard).