Doctoral Dissertation Research: Anger, Self, and Society Following Brain Injury

该项目将调查脑损伤对社会关系，角色表现和身份的影响。神经科学的最新发展改善了脑损伤的检测，并引起了公众和学术界对美国脑损伤程度的关注。受影响的数百万人包括退伍军人，他们因爆炸受伤而失去了无形的残疾，遭受家庭暴力的妇女，以及在运动场上受伤的运动员和儿童。为了改善对受伤人员及其家属的护理，需要更好地了解脑损伤的经历。在其对脑损伤的深刻破坏性心理社会后果的关注中，该项目提供了一个了解这种体验的窗口。该项目还为关于在神经学主导人类科学的时代人类意味着什么的辩论提供了一个新的角度：我们是否已经看到我们的人格完全依赖于我们的大脑，如果不是，我们是如何找到我们的身份和我们对一个人的权利的主张的？神经科学的主导地位是否限制或扩大了我们对自己作为人类的看法？为了进入这些辩论，该项目专注于愤怒，这是一种常见的破坏性脑损伤症状，挑战了对正常，责任和身份的信念，并一再促使受伤的人及其家人重新评估他们对做人的理解。通过定性方法，包括对受伤者及其家人在出版的著作、艺术作品和采访中将这些愤怒爆发概念化的方式进行话语分析，该项目区分了受伤后愤怒的不同表现和后果，确定了个人和家庭用于管理愤怒的策略，并调查了人们如何看待大脑、心灵、自我、神经科学时代的社会。了解人们如何谈论和思考受伤后的愤怒可以更好地干预破坏的家庭系统，并更好地确保遵守愤怒管理协议，这可以改善家庭关系，减轻护理人员的负担，并为那些遭受脑损伤影响的人提供更好的调整。更一般地说，对我们思考大脑和人格的方式的阐述可以为关于神经残疾人权利的辩论提供信息。从理论上讲，该项目将有助于文化和身份的社会学，健康和残疾的社会学，通过其对愤怒的关注情绪的社会学？也许是研究得最少的情感以及通过关注人们如何解释自己大脑图像的相关性来关注科学和技术社会学。

The project will investigate the effects of brain injury on social relationships, role performances, and identity. Recent developments in neuroscience have improved detection of brain injuries and drawn public and scholarly attention to the extent of brain injury in the United States. The millions of people affected include veterans coping with the invisible disability of blast injury, women victimized by domestic violence, and athletes and children injured on playing fields. To improve care for injured people and their families, a better understanding of the experience of brain injury is needed. In its focus on the profoundly disruptive psychosocial aftermath of brain injury, the project offers a window into this experience. The project also offers a new angle on the debates over what it means to be human in a time when neurology dominates the human sciences: Have we come to see our personhood as fully dependent on our brains, and if not, on what do we found our identity and our claim to the rights of a person? Has the dominance of neuroscience limited or expanded our view of ourselves as humans, and in what ways?To enter these debates, the project focuses on anger, a common and disruptive symptom of brain injury that challenges beliefs about normalcy, responsibility, and identity, and repeatedly drives injured people and their families to reassess their understanding of what it means to be a person. Through qualitative methods-including discursive analysis of the ways in which injured people and their families conceptualize these anger outbursts in published writings, in artwork, and in interviews-the project distinguishes the diverse manifestations and consequences of post-injury anger, identifies the strategies individuals and families use to manage it, and investigates how people think about the relationships between brain, mind, self, and society in the neuroscientific era. Understanding how people talk and think about post-injury anger can lead to better interventions into disrupted family systems and better ways of securing adherence to anger-management protocols, which can lead to better family relationships, a lighter burden on caregivers, and better adjustment for those who suffer from the effects of brain injury. More generally, an exposition of the ways in which we think about our brains and our personhood can inform debates about the rights of the neurologically disabled. Theoretically, the project will contribute to the sociology of culture and identity, to the sociology of health and disability, to the sociology of emotions through its focus on anger?perhaps the least studied emotion?and to the sociology of science and technology through attention to how people interpret the relevance of images of their own brains.