Reading Formations of Subjectivity: From Discourse to Psyche

This article represents a critical overview of strategies to examine subjectivity in discourse, highlighting a series of methodological approaches, which seek to manage the tension between discourse studies' focus on social and cultural structures, and psychoanalysis' interest in unconscious motivations. One aim is to trouble the supposed opposition between discourse analysis and the psychosocial approach and to regard the latter as a possible extension of insights established by the former. It is argued here that psychosocial readings in general, and Lacanian approaches more specifically, offer a cautious, nuanced way of introducing psychoanalytic ideas into the analysis of texts. The first part of this article offers examples of discourse analytic approaches, which have explicitly sought to incorporate psychoanalytic notions, followed by a discussion of Lacanian discourse analysis – a method shaped directly by this psychoanalytic school's concern with language. The article concludes with a series of methodological injunctions for conducting a psychosocial form of textual analysis.     

A Task Analysis of Client Re-engagement: Therapeutic De-escalation of High-Conflict Coparents

Parents who are engaged in protracted conflict following a divorce are often referred to coparenting therapy. Episodes of intense conflict are common during these therapy sessions and often result in coparents disengaging from the therapist while they engage in escalating conflict with each other, potentially disrupting their progress in therapy. The purpose of this study was to identify how therapists successfully re-engage clients in the session. To understand this process, 24 disengagement events (12 successful and 12 unsuccessful) from 13 cases were analyzed using a task analytic approach. The sample included coparent dyads referred by the judicial system to a high-conflict coparenting therapy program. Task analysis was used to create a model of how re-engagement unfolds in treatment. The empirical model that resulted has five phases: (1) disengagement from the therapeutic process, (2) disruption of the conflict, (3) de-escalating the most escalated coparent, (4) de-escalating the other coparent, and (5) therapist buffered re-engagement. Successful episodes of re-engagement tended to have therapists who remained active throughout the conflict episode, used structuring interventions aimed at disrupting and then regulating the most escalated partner, blocked attempts to re-engage in conflict, and then repeated this process with the less escalated partner. Additional interventions that promote therapeutic re-engagement are described for each phase, and implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed.     

When group membership gets personal: a theory of identity fusion

Identity fusion is a relatively unexplored form of alignment with groups that entails a visceral feeling of oneness with the group. This feeling is associated with unusually porous, highly permeable borders between the personal and social self. These porous borders encourage people to channel their personal agency into group behavior, raising the possibility that the personal and social self will combine synergistically to motivate pro-group behavior. Furthermore, the strong personal as well as social identities possessed by highly fused persons cause them to recognize other group members not merely as members of the group but also as unique individuals, prompting the development of strong relational as well as collective ties within the group. In local fusion, people develop relational ties to members of relatively small groups (e.g., families or work teams) with whom they have personal relationships. In extended fusion, people project relational ties onto relatively large collectives composed of many individuals with whom they may have no personal relationships. The research literature indicates that measures of fusion are exceptionally strong predictors of extreme pro-group behavior. Moreover, fusion effects are amplified by augmenting individual agency, either directly (by increasing physiological arousal) or indirectly (by activating personal or social identities). The effects of fusion on pro-group actions are mediated by perceptions of arousal and invulnerability. Possible causes of identity fusion--ranging from relatively distal, evolutionary, and cultural influences to more proximal, contextual influences--are discussed. Finally, implications and future directions are considered.     

Our flaws are more human than yours: ingroup bias in humanizing negative characteristics

Four studies investigated whether people tend to see ingroup flaws as part of human nature (HN) to a greater degree than outgroup flaws. In Study 1, people preferentially ascribed high HN flaws to their ingroup relative to two outgroups. Study 2 demonstrated that flaws were rated higher on HN when attributed to the ingroup than when attributed to an outgroup, and no such difference occurred for positive traits. Study 3 replicated this humanizing ingroup flaws (HIF) effect and showed that it was (a) independent of desirability and (b) specific to the HN sense of humanness. Study 4 replicated the results of Study 3 and demonstrated that the HIF effect is amplified under ingroup identity threat. Together, these findings show that people humanize ingroup flaws and preferentially ascribe high HN flaws to the ingroup. These ingroup humanizing biases may serve a group-protective function by mitigating ingroup flaws as "only human."     

The Effects of a Prior Story-Bank on the Processing of a Related Narrative

Two studies tested whether the possession of a mental story-bank (a set of thematically related narratives) affected the processing of a related narrative. Three competing predictions were proposed: a story-bank may lead to reduced attention, increased attention, or selective attention to a new, related story. The results of Study 1 (N = 125 undergraduates) suggested that a prior story-bank led to more efficient processing of a target narrative (as indicated by recall data), favoring a selective attention interpretation. Study 2 (N = 114 undergraduates) showed that individuals who possessed a relevant story-bank were more persuaded by a related target narrative, also consistent with the selective attention interpretation. Story-banks thus appeared to facilitate, rather than hinder, processing of new narratives.     

Towards an ontogenesis of queerness and divinity: Queer political theology and Terrorist Assemblages

The presumed categorical stability of sexual and national identities fuels a biopolitical phenomenon that Jasbir Puar has termed homonationalism. Critical responses to homonationalism must necessarily challenge the priority of ontological stasis that often characterises scholarly approaches to theorising both god and identity. This essay argues that a monotheistic political theology provides a basis for assuming notions of identity that are ontologically static. Post-secularity is put forth as an analytic for examining the intertwining of theological and cultural logics in the emergence of homonationalisms. Within that post-secular framework, affect theory is applied to analyse religion, nationalism and sexuality not as discrete social positions but as an assemblage of dynamic and interrelated multiplicities. This post-secular, affective approach allows for an expanded field of political and cultural analysis in queer theory and queer theology alike.     

Loneliness and the Effects of Life Changes

In this study, factor analysis was used to examine whether men and women experience loneliness differently and how marital status affects the experience of loneliness (especially if the marriage is terminated). The experiences of chronic and situational or event-related loneliness are also compared. Finally, the study is also an investigation of the social stigma that causes people to refuse to admit their loneliness. As a result of this stigma, when questioned for research purposes, individuals usually report a recall of past loneliness rather than a current or ongoing experience. In the present study, the difference between loneliness recalled and loneliness experienced at the time of questioning is investigated.     

Embracing Humanity in the Face of Death: Why Do Existential Concerns Moderate Ingroup Humanization?

People humanize their ingroup to address existential concerns about their mortality, but the reasons why they do so remain ambiguous. One explanation is that people humanize their ingroup to bolster their social identity in the face of their mortality. Alternatively, people might be motivated to see their ingroup as more uniquely human (UH) to distance themselves from their corporeal “animal” nature. These explanations were tested in Australia, where social identity is tied less to UH and more to human nature (HN) which does not distinguish humans from animals. Australians attributed more HN traits to the ingroup when mortality was salient, while the attribution of UH traits remained unchanged. This indicates that the mortality-buffering function of ingroup humanization lies in reinforcing the humanness of our social identity, rather than just distancing ourselves from our animal nature. Implications for (de)humanization in intergroup relations are discussed.