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Respecifying ‘moods’ as normatively accountable devices: Accounts and methods of account production in therapy talk
Conference presentation

Respecifying ‘moods’ as normatively accountable devices: Accounts and methods of account production in therapy talk

D. Bysouth
The Australian Psychological Association
35th Annual Meeting of the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (SASP) (Canberra, Australia, 20/04/2006–23/04/2006)
2006
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Abstract

Bipolar disorder is a relatively common and disabling psychiatric disorder that is characterised as being principally a disorder of ‘mood’. What is of some interest is that ‘mood’ is a conceptually fuzzv term that remains generally unexplicated in the clinical literature, and also appears highly ramified in vernacular usage. The current paper reports an empirical investigation of how ‘moods’ feature in therapy talk involving a clinical psychologist and bipolar clients, drawing upon ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and membership categorisation analysis. Analysis is presented that briefly describes some perspicuous instances of ‘moods’ operative as kinds of devices; as collections of various categories that are vernacularly rendered, reflexively organised, normatively accountable descriptions of conduct A more detailed analysis is provided of an instance in which a psychologist provides an ascription of a putative ‘mood’ to a client, that the client rejects, with some explication of how such ‘mood’ ascriptions may serve to invalidate both accounts and methods of account production.

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