Agoraphobic Geographies : an exploration of subjectivity and socio-spatial anxiety
Abstract
This thesis examines the phenomenology and significance of agoraphobia for its
mostly women sufferers, principally by means of in-depth individual and group
interviews. It argues that agoraphobia, typically characterised by fear and avoidance
of social spaces, can be usefully conceptualised in terms of a 'crisis' in the boundaries
of the embodied self. That is to say, the disorder radically problematizes the
distinction individuals 'normally' experience between 'inner' self and 'outer' space,
initiating a profound sense of exposure and insecurity in the face of many social
situations. In response, sufferers retreat from the social sphere to the seclusion of their
homes, whose walls serve to reinforce their weakened and fragile boundaries.The initial impetus behind this project stems from the fact that, while there has been
no shortage of clinical research conducted on agoraphobia, it has received very little
attention outside bio-medical and psychological contexts. Chapter l reviews relevant
bodies of literature and highlights some of the gaps the project seeks to address.
Chapter 2 offers a detailed account of the research design, and the ways in which data
were generated and analysed, while chapter 3 offers reflections on what was found to
be the 'processual' nature of qualitative research. In each of the five substantive
chapters that remain, the thesis interweaves experiential accounts with existential
problematics, and presents a general movement from concerns with theory to therapy.
It also follows the unfolding development of the existential and phenomenological
tradition.Chapter 4 links the more esoteric and subjectivist existentialism of Kierkegaard with
experiential accounts of consumption, and chapter 5 explores the socially grounded
work of Sartre in relation to sufferers' accounts of extreme discomfort in the public
eye. Chapters 6 and 7 utilise the explicitly spatial, embodied, and inter-subjective
account of existentialism presented by Merleau-Ponty to present first, a case study,
and second, an analysis of sufferers' accounts of pregnancy. In this way the thesis
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also moves from abstract philosophical arguments about the human condition per se
to a more nuanced feminist geography capable of accounting for the diversity of
experiences of agoraphobia and its gendered relations to pa11icular times and places.
In its final chapter, the thesis turns to an explicit discussion of treatment, and critiques
the unacknowledged predominance of and reliance on masculinist Cartesian
conceptions of selfhood within self-help resources, questioning what treatment based
on models of embodied subjectivity more inclusive of unusual spatial relations might
look like.In its conclusion, the thesis suggests that by taking account of personal narratives of
agoraphobia, and of its wider social contexts and relations, a sensitive, sympathetic
and fully spatialised account of the disorder more faithful to the way sufferers
actually describe their experiences can be offered.