“The eating disorder is not you”: Applying bakhtin's theories in analyzing narrative co-construction in an internet support group

Walstrom, Mary K.

doi:10.1016/s0163-2396(00)80040-x

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Only a few studies have emerged to discuss loner deviants who found community in cyberspace (see Durkin and Bryant 1999; Jenkins 2001 on pedophiles; Quinn and Forsyth 2005 on men who seek castration; Walstrom 2000 on eating disorders; Muncer et al 2000 on depressives; and Gauthier and Chaudoir 2004 on female‐to‐male transsexuals). This research suggests that we may have to change our conception of the social organization of deviance, since loner deviants in the era of the cyber world may be becoming obsolete.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cyber Worlds of Self‐Injurers: Deviant Communities, Relationships, and Selves

Adler

2008

Symbolic Interaction

105

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We explore how self-injurers, a group of deviants who primarily were loners, now use the Internet to form subcultural and collegial relations. Drawing on virtual participant-observation in cyber self-injury groups, over eighty face-to-face and telephone in-depth interviews, and over ten thousand e-mail postings to groups and bulletin boards, we describe and analyze the online subcultures of self-injurers. Via the Web, they have become cyber "colleagues, " simultaneously enacting two deviant organizational forms and challenging the idea that deviant loners can exist in a cyber society. We further analyze these individuals and their interactions to compare and contrast the venues that they use, the communities and relationships that they form, and their relation to real life. We contribute to symbolic interactionism through our social constructionist stance toward the creation of virtual communities and relationships, our focus on identity and stigma, our view of social organization as grounded in the panoply of human interpersonal relationships, our contrast of the competing reality claims posed by virtual as opposed to the solid world, and our discussion of the modern versus postmodern self.The cyber world represents a new frontier, one that extends what has often been colloquially referred to as the fourth and fifth dimensions: time and space. Just as Melbin (1978) analyzed the night as a temporal frontier, the cyber world is a domain that occurs in a new form of space both "out there" and "in here"; it is simultaneously public and social, while remaining private and solitary. It is a postmodern form of space, created by technology and populated by disembodied people in a virtual universe detached from the physical locations known as place. These spaces are

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cyber Worlds of Self‐Injurers: Deviant Communities, Relationships, and Selves

Adler

2008

Symbolic Interaction

105

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“…15,48 Discourse analytical perspectives on narrative provided the foundation for my analysis of problem solving. [49][50][51][52][53] With these perspectives, and my own prior study of ASED interaction, I take narrative as the presentation of self as a protagonist, including protagonistdoer and protagonist-experiencer positionings. 54 Protagonist-doer positionings involve action, both behavioral ("I restricted last night") and discursive ("I keep telling myself .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

"You Know, Who's the Thinnest?": Combating Surveillance and Creating Safety in Coping with Eating Disorders Online

Walstrom

2000

CyberPsychology & Behavior

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Online support groups have become highly attractive to seekers of health advice. These sites offer rich online support and information, which may be enjoyed in a nonthreatening environment. The "bodiless" nature of online support groups helps ensure participants' sense of safety, because judgments relating to physical appearances are largely decreased. This article examines interaction in an online eating disorder support group, where such safety cannot be assumed. Because women with anorexia and bulimia routinely discuss problems relating to appearances (size and weight), the risk of monitoring and negatively evaluating oneself and others jeopardizes the safety of interaction in this online context. In a microlevel discourse analysis of three exchanges, the linguistic structure and joint nature of creating a safe communicative context is traced, as it unfolds amid solving a problem concerning physical appearances. The aim is to illuminate the therapeutic potential of online forums for women with eating disorders, namely, as safe spaces for coping with eating disorder-related problems. This study calls for increased inquiry of online forums as viable alternatives to face-toface eating disorder support groups, as anorexia and bulimia continue to proliferate in the United States. 761

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“…Emphasis on talk in the therapy room owes a great deal to a handful of philosophers of language. Foucault's thoughts about discourse's relation to power, knowledge and order figure prominently in the narrative approaches of White andEpston (1986, 1990;Epston, 1993); Wittgenstein's view of language as constituting rather than reflecting problems is central to both Anderson and Goolishian's linguistic system perspective (1988) as well as Deshazer's (1985) and Berg's solution-oriented approach (1994), and Bakhtin's ideas about language and dialogue have been applied during the past decade in a diversity of accounts from Belgium (Rober, 2002a(Rober, , 2002b, Finland (Seikkula, 1993;Seikkula et al, 1995), Hungary (Seltzer et al, 2001a), Norway (Seltzer, 2003), and the USA (Walstrom, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, his ideas have spread explosively into many fields (Emersen, 1997) and, in relation to therapeutic work with families and individuals, they have inspired a number of highly original conceptualizations (e.g. Katz and Shotter, 1996;Maranhao, 1986;Riikonen and Smith, 1997;Rober, 2002a;Seikkula, 1993;Seikkula et al, 1995;Shotter, 1993;Walstrom, 2000). A major concern for the research team was in discovering those elements of Bakhtinian theory having practical applications for clearing space and creating zones of opportunities in therapy for the telling of what have been described as silent stories (Seltzer, 1985a(Seltzer, , 1985b(Seltzer, , 2003, the not-yet-said (Anderson and Goolishian, 1988), the not-yet-told (Rober, 2002a), and the unsaid, unsayable and unspeakable (Rogers et al, 1999).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Co‐texting, chronotope and ritual: a Bakhtinian framing of talk in therapy

Seltzer¹,

Seltzer²

2004

Journal of Family Therapy

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This article employs a set of concepts developed by Mikhail Bakhtin in analysing the significance of language in therapeutic work. Employing his theoretical constructs, sequences of a videotaped transcript of a therapy session are analysed by a multidisciplinary team. This is combined with the notion of co-texted ritual in working with a woman who attempted suicide prior to this session. The findings suggest that co-texting gives direction to the meaning of ritual as well as the outcome of the therapeutic process. Bakhtinian concepts are found to be helpful in guiding, analysing and widening therapeutic processes. The findings also indicate that there is a need for a closer examination of ritual both as a constitutive and expanding force in narrative therapy. Finally, it is suggested that current assumptions about egalitarian relationships between therapists and clients require rethinking.

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“The eating disorder is not you”: Applying bakhtin's theories in analyzing narrative co-construction in an internet support group

Cited by 12 publications

References 10 publications

The Cyber Worlds of Self‐Injurers: Deviant Communities, Relationships, and Selves

The Cyber Worlds of Self‐Injurers: Deviant Communities, Relationships, and Selves

"You Know, Who's the Thinnest?": Combating Surveillance and Creating Safety in Coping with Eating Disorders Online

Co‐texting, chronotope and ritual: a Bakhtinian framing of talk in therapy

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