Exploring the transdisciplinary trajectory of suggestibility

Abstract

Traditionally considered a deficiency in will power and rationality, suggestibility has proven a troublesome concept for psychology. It was forgotten, rediscovered, denounced, undermined experimentation and recently became the ambiguous issue at the centre of concern about child witness' credibility in sexual abuse cases. This paper traces the history of suggestibility to show how it raises the 'paradox of the psychosocial'. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Stengers, and on interviews with legal practitioners, this paper demonstrates how suggestibility carries this paradox into theory, research and legal practice. It thereby opens up a transdisciplinary perspective, allowing for questions of power and knowledge to be asked as performative questions. In the spirit of a process centred ontology for psychology, Iargue that suggestibility constitutes a 'rhythm of problematisation', a folding, offering a subversive insight into dynamics of subjectification and application, and offering new perspectives towards issues of children's credibility and protection.

The Biosocial Event: Responding to Innovation in the Life Sciences

“…some extraordinary occurrence a newspaper would report), but focussing on event involves seeing any state, however banal or dramatic, consequential or otherwise, as always already constituted by continuous events insisting within the state. Accordingly, to focus on 'event' is not to mark something out as extraordinary, but to adopt a perspective that focuses on the dynamic forces that continuously constitute states of affairs as ongoing transformations and to open these up to analysis (Motzkau 2009(Motzkau , 2011. Biosocial events are of particular interest as, in our view, productive analysis of the changes in relation between specific processes that they involve is often hampered by biosocial dualisms that pose obstacles to the conceptual articulation of life processes and social processes.…”

Editorial: Research as Practice: On Critical Methodologies1

“…Jefferson 2004, 2006, Motzkau, 2009). Through their specific research practice contributors to this volume aim to abandon the deep trodden ruts of the discipline to go cross country in order to create and inhabit such spaces.…”

Awake, Asleep, Adult, Child: An A-humanist Account of Persons

“…A second strategy is equally concerned with the greater recognition of children (Komulainen, 2005(Komulainen, , 2007Lee, 2001Lee, , 2005Motzkau, 2005Motzkau, , 2006Prout, 2004). However, it refuses the being/becoming distinction on different grounds.…”