Henrik Loodin
Senior lecturer
Biografier från gränslandet : En sociologisk studie om psykiatrins förändrade kontrollmekanismer
Biographies from the borderland : A sociological study about the changing control mechanisms of psychiatry
Author
Summary, in English
The findings of the research are presented in four articles based on life stories told by persons with a psychiatric diagnosis. The articles deal with how psychiatry is turned into an organization in which medical knowledge, political reforms and organizational structures are concretized biographically in the life of the individual. One central aspect of the analysis is the adaptation phase that refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder go through. The overall aim of the articles is to understand how a psychiatric diagnosis intervenes in a life story. The first article analyses the absurdities that arise when a person contract a mental disorder. The article shows that these absurdities emerge when institutions influence the course of events in a patient’s life. The second article focus upon the adaptation phase that refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder must pass before they are included in a new social context. It is showed that the adaptation phase can be more traumatizing than the actual trauma that has been diagnosed. The third article problematizes the tensions between the autobiography of persons in a marginal position, and their biography as patients positioned on a field structured by psychiatric knowledge. In the fourth article it is discussed how the autobiography created by, what is commonly referred to as marginal experiences, may be used to develop existing theories on the construction of the sick role. A key finding in the four articles is that the discrepancy between the new forms of psychiatry and the patients’ life situations, creates a critical element – a borderland – that involves a loss of agency in how the own life is unfolded.
Department/s
- Sociology
Publishing year
2009
Language
Swedish
Publication/Series
Lund Dissertations in Sociology
Volume
88
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Lund University
Topic
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Keywords
- Autobiographies
- Medical Sociology
- Psychiatry
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
- Biography
- Migration
- Narratives
Status
Published
Supervisor
- Gunnar Andersson
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 91-7267-303-6
Defence date
27 November 2009
Defence time
10:00
Defence place
Stora Ahlgatan 4
Opponent
- Mats Börjesson (Professor)