Autoethnographies in Psychology and Mental Health

New Voices

Alec Grant, Jerome Carson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032528908
• eBook ISBN: 9781040146385
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This autoethnographic volume gathers a multiplicity of different voices in autoethnographic research from across psychology and mental health disciplines to address topics ranging from selfhood, trauma, emotional understanding, clinical psychology, and the experience of grief.

Edited by two leading figures, this volume broadens the concept of psychology beyond its conventional, mainstream academic boundaries and challenges pre-conceived and received notions of what constitutes 'psychology' and 'mental health'. This book collects new autoethnographic writers in psychology and mental health from across as diverse a range of disciplines and, in doing so, makes a strong case for the legitimacy of subjectivity, emotionality and lived experience as epistemic and pedagogic resources. The collection also troubles the related concept of 'mental health.' In contemporary times, this is either biomedically over-colonised (welcomed by some but resisted by others), often regarded by lay and professional people alike in terms of an 'ordered or disordered' binary (comforting for some but associated with stigma and othering for others), or, at worst, is reduced to a set of hackneyed memes – the stuff of Breakfast television (well-intentioned and undoubtedly reassuring and helpful for some but patronising and naïve for others). Overall, the volume promotes the subjective and lived-experiential voices of its contributors – the hallmark of autoethnographic writing.

Autoethnographies in Psychology and Mental Health will be of interest to psychology and mental health students and professionals with an interest in qualitative inquiry as it intersects with autoethnography and mental health.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Preface: Populating Projects with People and Their Autoethnographic Stories
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The Importance of Autoethnography for Psychology and Mental Health
• 2 Us and Them
• 3 The Shackles of Lupus, and the Redefining Path of Faith and Positive Psychology
• 4 Tell Fear, No: The Hope Is You (An Autoethnographic Account of a Male Sexual Violence Survivor’s Journey Through an Academic Psychology Education, to Understand How to Bring Himself and Others Home Safely)
• 5 Autistic and Challenging the Neoliberal Academy in Hong Kong
• 6 My Changing Journey
• 7 My Life with Dyslexia: An Autoethnography
• 8 Laughter, Joy, and Mental Health: An Autoethnographic Case Study of Joe Hoare
• 9 A Grief Odyssey
• 10 Cultural Impact on Professional Identity: Struggling to Connect with Professional Titles
• 11 A Conversational Autoethnography on Experiencing Loss and Grief
• 12 Pandemic Detectives: ‘A Phone Corpse on the University Campus’
• 13 A Phoenix Rising: Journeys through Childhood Trauma
• 14 Catching ‘Sliding Door’ Moments: Finding Purpose in Life, and Maintaining Love, Compassion and Mental Wellbeing
• 15 Building Resilience from Bad Experiences: An Autoethnographic Account
• 16 Locating and Decentring Professional Expertise as a Feminist Critical Psychologist in India
• 17 Mental Health and the Body: An Autoethnography of Neuralgia, Migraine, and Insulin Resistance
• 18 Spurious Emotional Understanding: What Do ‘Ordinary’ People Know about Entrapment in the Bubbly, Fizzing, ‘Hung-Before’ Feeling?
• 19 Dropping the Autoethnographic Seeds in the Soil
• Index