A linguist's insight into insight

In this article I am interested in exploring the notion of insight. Specifically, after offering a critique of the dominant debates, I shall take the debate forward by proposing a new perspective on insight, based on linguistic analyses of patients’ narratives. My article, anchored in a construction...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social theory & health 2010-02, Vol.8 (1), p.66-82
Main Author: Galasinski, Dariusz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Debate
Hospitals
Linguistics
Medical Sociology
Mental disorders
Mental health care
Narratives
Original Article
Patients
Poland
Schizophrenia
Social psychology
Social Sciences
Social Theory
Sociology
Suffering
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Summary:In this article I am interested in exploring the notion of insight. Specifically, after offering a critique of the dominant debates, I shall take the debate forward by proposing a new perspective on insight, based on linguistic analyses of patients’ narratives. My article, anchored in a constructionist view of discourse, is based on six unstructured interviews with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (F.20). All my informants were in their twenties and were undergoing voluntary treatment in a day-care clinic of a university hospital in Poland. They were described as ‘having insight’. My primary argument will be that insight is not an attribute of the person, but rather of what they say. I shall also argue that (a) insight is dynamic and provisional, not only within the context of a particular communicative event, but also, potentially, within a particular story line; and (b) it is the discursive form of what is being said that is crucial in understanding and exploring insight. In conclusion, I shall point out that while the approach I am proposing undermines the possibility of ‘measuring insight’, it places the suffering person at the centre of psychiatric focus.
ISSN:1477-8211
1477-822X
DOI:10.1057/sth.2009.20