Linda M. McMullen

Effects of communication apprehension, familiarity of partner, and topic on selected “women's language” features

In keeping with Lakoffs (1975) notion that the use of “womens language” (WL) conveys uncertainty on the part of the speaker, the influence of communication apprehension, familiarity of partner, and topic on the use of selected WL forms was investigated. In dyadic conversation with a female friend or stranger, 71 female university students, who had completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension—Long, discussed a familiar or an unfamiliar topic. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that (1) communication apprehension was positively related to the use of question intonation, (2) familiarity of topic and partner were negatively related to the use of hedges, and (3) familiarity of topic was positively related to the use of intensifiers. There were no intercorrelations of the linguistic forms. These results challenge the notion that WL forms actually cohere to form a kind of “language” and suggest that the influence of social and psychological variables on the use of WL is much more complex and multifaceted than Lakoff believed.

Dominance and Nurturance in the Narratives Told by Clients in Psychotherapy

The personal narrative or relationship episode has recently been described by Luborsky, Barber, and Diguer (1992) as a “basic data unit in psychotherapy sessions” (p. 287). To determine if the inte...

Depression Is to Diabetes as Antidepressants Are to Insulin: The Unraveling of an Analogy?

The common comparison of depression to diabetes enables the construction of depression as a nonstigmatizing chronic illness that requires medication. We explore, through the use of discourse analysis, how both long-term users of antidepressants and family physicians invoked this analogy in research interviews. Specifically, we show how these participants explicitly or implicitly challenged the aptness of the depression–diabetes analogy as framed either within a generic (and presumably type 1) conception of diabetes or within the model of type 2 diabetes. These challenges include demonstrating how the elements or inferences of the analogy do not correspond, and how the analogy does not have its intended effects. We consider the implications of the unraveling of this analogy for the construction of depression as a chronic medical condition, for the supposed ease of prescribing and taking antidepressants, and for the reduction of stigma.

Women and Depression: A Case Study of the Influence of Feminism in Canadian Psychology

Evidence of the burden of depression for women worldwide and of the link between depression and the economic and social conditions of women’s lives provides a firm grounding for feminist-informed understandings of depression. We focus on the conjunction of women and depression as a site for assessing the influence of feminism in Canadian psychology. On the basis of our analysis of two ‘fact sheets’ - one on depression and one on postpartum depression - that appear on the website of the Canadian Psychological Association, we conclude that feminist-informed understandings of depression are almost completely absent in the accounts of depression presented to the public. We explore reasons for the resistance to such understandings through reference to psychology’s reliance on individualist conceptions and to the contemporary climate in which Canadian clinical psychology is located.

Interpersonal Scripts in the Anger Narratives Told by Clients in Psychotherapy

In recent years, anger has been conceptualized as an interpersonal script. To investigate the different varieties of this script, 109 stories of angry experiences told by clients to their therapists were drawn from audiotapes of psychotherapy sessions. Phrases representing 5 features of a script (i.e., antecedents, beliefs and evaluations, selfs expression of anger, behavioral reactions of others, and the consequences) were extracted from each story, coded, and subjected to cluster analysis. Five clusters were identified: (1) Direct expression and receptive response, (2) Tit for tat, (3) Other tries to come through for self, (4) No direct expression, and (5) Hostile confrontation over unmet expectations. Our results confirm what can be extrapolated from the literature as common scripts and draw attention to other less commonly described ones. The importance of understanding anger scripts as a dynamic interplay between self and other is emphasized.

Division of labor in conversations: Are Fishman's results replicable and generalizable?

Fishmans (1978a) conclusion that women do the bulk of the support work in their conversations with male partners has had widespread appeal. In this article, we present the results of two studies designed to assess the generalizability and replicability of her findings. In Study 1. the get-acquainted conversations of 20 mixed-sex, 10 male same-sex, and 10 female same-sex dyads were analyzed for the support strategies identified by Fishman. No support for a sexual division of labor was found. In Study 2, we analyzed the casual, at-home conversations of 17 intimate male-female couples. Again, we found no evidence that the women used more of the support strategies than their male partners. Rather, our findings suggest that the women may have helped to sustain the conversations with their male partners simply by talking more. The appeal of Fishmans conclusions in the absence of empirical evidence suggests that she has touched on a mythic truth.

The aesthetic rationality of the popular expressive arts: Lifeworld communication among breast cancer survivors living with lymphedema

The use of popular expressive arts as antidotes to the pathologies of the parallel processes of lifeworld colonization and cultural impoverishment has been under-theorized. This article enters the void with a project in which breast cancer survivors used collages and installations of everyday objects to solicit their authentic expression of the psycho-social impacts of lymphedema. The article enlists Jurgen Habermas’ communicative action theory to explore the potential of these expressive arts to expand participants’ meaningful engagement with their lifeworlds. The findings point to the unique non-linguistic discursivity of these non-institutional artistic forms as their liberating power to disclose silenced human needs: the images ‘spoke’ for themselves for group members to recognize shared subjectivities. The authenticity claims inherent in the art forms fostered collective reflexivity and spontaneous, affective responses and compelled the group to create new collective understandings of the experience of living with lymphedema. The article contributes theoretical insights regarding the emancipatory potential of aesthetic-expressive rationality, an under-developed area of Habermasian theory of communicative action, and to the burgeoning literature on arts-based methods in social scientific research.

Development of a program theory for shared decision-making: a realist review protocol

BackgroundThe practicality of applying evidence to healthcare systems with the aim of implementing change is an ongoing challenge for practitioners, policy makers, and academics. Shared decision- making (SDM), a method of medical decision-making that allows a balanced relationship between patients, physicians, and other key players in the medical decision process, is purported to improve patient and system outcomes. Despite the oft-mentioned benefits, there are gaps in the current literature between theory and implementation that would benefit from a realist approach given the value of this methodology to analyze complex interventions. In this protocol, we outline a study that will explore: “In which situations, how, why, and for whom does SDM between patients and health care providers contribute to improved decision making?”MethodsA seven step iterative process will be described including preliminary theory development, establishment of a search strategy, selection and appraisal of literature, data extraction, analysis and synthesis of extracted results from literature, and formation of a revised program theory with the input of patients, physicians, nurse navigators, and policy makers from a stakeholder session.DiscussionThe goal of the realist review will be to identify and refine a program theory for SDM through the identification of mechanisms which shape the characteristics of when, how, and why SDM will, and will not, work.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42017062609

Talking Controversy: Long-Term Users of Antidepressants and the Diagnosis of Depression

Depression is a condition that is routinely diagnosed; however, controversies about the diagnosis remain. Some argue that depression goes undiagnosed, while others argue that the diagnosis is applied too readily and broadly. The focus of this article is how those with a diagnosis of depression respond to such controversy. We interviewed 11 long-term users of antidepressants, queried them about their diagnosis and medication history, and presented them with arguments about the diagnosis of depression. Informed by the methodology of discursive psychology, we attended to the rhetorical strategies participants used to argue for and/or against the over- and under-diagnosis of depression. We show how they employed strategies such as invoking biomedical knowledge and implicating patients as responsible for health care to defend their own diagnostic status and to legitimize depression as a routinely diagnosed condition. This article adds the voice of long-term antidepressant users to the debate over the diagnosis of depression.

WAIS characteristics of non-pathological obsessive and hysteric styles.

Tested traditional clinical hypotheses about the cognitive functioning of individuals (N = 16) with an obsessive or an hysteric style in a non-pathological population using selected subtests of the WAIS. Individuals identified as having an obsessive style displayed the predicted patterns (Information and Vocabulary greater than Comprehension), while their hysteric counterparts displayed only a trend toward certain predicted patterns (Comprehension greater than Information and Vocabulary). Predicted between-group differences were significant. Higher base rates of obsessive features in a college population may account for the weaker trends within the hysteric group. Generally, the results appear to support the likelihood that nonpathological forms of the two styles display patterns of cognitive functioning similar to those of their more pathological counterparts.