Constructing Panic

Capps, Lisa,Ochs, Elinor

ISBN 10: 0674165489 / ISBN 13: 9780674165489

Published by Harvard University Press, 1995

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing. Published by Harvard, 1995. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.

Seller Inventory # 191307

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Constructing Panic
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674165489
• ISBN 13: 9780674165489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Like New
• Dust Jacket Condition: Like New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Philosophy & Psychology

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.

Review

In a marriage of psychology and linguistics, this book makes clear that for all its frustrations as an instrument, language is potent, the primary medium for symbolizing constructions of reality. The authors are sensitive to human experience and suffering, and their linguistic insights are subtle yet vivid. -- Leon Tec, M.D. "Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health"