Psychosocial meaning making in carceral spaces: a case study of prison and mental health care practice. (1st July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shepherd, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Journal of psycho-social studies. Volume 14:Number 2(2021)
• Page Start: 139
• Page End: 151
• Publication Date: 2021-07-01
• Subjects: psychodynamics -- psychosocial -- incarceration -- prison; Social sciences and psychoanalysis -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; Psychohistory -- Periodicals; Social interaction -- Periodicals; Politics, Practical -- Periodicals; 302.5
• DOI: 10.1332/147867321X16215933279607
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-6737

Abstract

Abstract : Prisons represent sites of psychological distress and suffering. In this article, the implications of this, and the need for the maintenance of a psychosocial perspective, are explored. A psychogeographic overview of the prison environment is provided to consider the way it is constituted at different levels: the macro-social, meso-social and micro-social levels. Two vignettes are presented, which illustrate the process of loss and emergent self-destruction accompanying an enforced identity change followed by the radical means of stabilisation that may be adopted in opposition to this process. The essential nature of personal narrative construction ‐ this process of sense making ‐ is considered alongside the forcing impact of the social environment, as well as wider social pressures, and their impact on the dynamic process. In closing, a limitation of the employed methodology ‐ focusing on individual experience ‐ is remarked on: if these psychological processes take place through an act of modulation in response to a social field, how does the social field in turn respond to these modulations? In closing, I argue that through maintaining a psychosocial focus, researchers and clinicians discharge an ethical duty to maintain the attention of society on the suffering of some of its most vulnerable members.