The science underneath
Culture, meaning and looping effects
In shortHow distress is felt and spoken about depends on culture, and the labels we use change people.
The idea
Laurence Kirmayer, a cultural psychiatrist, shows that how we live and express distress depends on culture: in some places distress is felt and spoken of mainly through the body, in others through words about mood. Ian Hacking called it ‘looping effects’ when a category changes the people it describes: someone who receives a label begins to see themselves, and to be seen, through it, and that changes what they do. That is why the explanations we give a child are not neutral.
What to try
- Before adopting an explanation, ask what it will change in how the child sees themselves and is seen.
- Notice the words your family uses for distress: they say a lot about what is expected.
- Describe what happens, in what order; leave big explanations until after observing.
The common mistake
Thinking a label only describes. It also directs everyone’s attention, expectations and actions.
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Short, plain pieces by the researchers and good writers.
The science behind itHow strong the evidence is, the model, videos and references.
How strong the evidence is
A way of thinking A lens for interpreting what a child does, not a rule from trials.
Kirmayer proposes an ecosocial approach in which distress and symptoms emerge from loops between bodily, cognitive, interpersonal and social processes; ‘idioms of distress’ and ‘cultural affordances’ (Ramstead, Veissière and Kirmayer, 2016) shape what is perceived and done, through shared regimes of attention. Hacking describes ‘interactive kinds’, categories that change the people classified. Implications: assess the meanings family and school attach; consider the iatrogenic effect of categories; formulate in terms of processes circulating between people.
More technical books
Culture, body and brain together, against reductive accounts of distress.
See on Amazon ›A case study of how psychological categories change the people they describe.
See on Amazon ›Amazon links are affiliate links: if you buy, Bounded Uncertainty receives a small commission at no cost to you.
Videos
External videos, chosen because they agree with these ideas. Bounded Uncertainty has no link to the channels.
References
- Ramstead, M. J. D., Veissière, S. P. L., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Cultural affordances: scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1090.
- Kirmayer, L. J., Lemelson, R., & Cummings, C. A. (Eds.) (2015). Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health. Cambridge University Press.
- Hacking, I. (1995). The looping effects of human kinds. In D. Sperber, D. Premack & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal Cognition (pp. 351–383). Oxford University Press.
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