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对脑损伤的检测，并引起了公众和学术界对美国脑损伤程度的关注。数百万受影响的人包括因爆炸受伤而造成的无形残疾的退伍军人、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。该项目将重点放在脑损伤造成的严重的社会心理后果上，为了解这一经历提供了一个窗口。在一个神经学主导人文科学的时代，这个项目也为关于人的意义的争论提供了一个新的角度：我们是否已经认识到我们的人格完全依赖于我们的大脑，如果不是，我们在哪里找到了我们的身份和我们对人的权利的要求？神经科学的主导地位是否限制或扩展了我们对自己作为人类的看法，以何种方式？为了进入这些争论，该项目将重点放在愤怒上，这是一种常见的破坏性脑损伤症状，它挑战了人们对正常、责任和身份的看法，并不断促使受伤的人及其家人重新评估他们对作为一个人意味着什么的理解。通过定性的方法——包括对受伤的人和他们的家人在出版的著作、艺术作品和采访中概念化这些愤怒爆发的方式的话语分析——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来管理它的策略，并调查了在神经科学时代人们如何看待大脑、思想、自我和社会之间的关系。了解人们如何谈论和思考受伤后的愤怒，可以更好地干预被破坏的家庭系统，更好地确保遵守愤怒管理协议，从而改善家庭关系，减轻照顾者的负担，并更好地适应那些遭受脑损伤影响的人。更广泛地说，对我们思考大脑和人格的方式的阐述，可以为有关神经残疾人士权利的辩论提供信息。从理论上讲，该项目将通过对愤怒的关注，为文化和身份社会学、健康和残疾社会学、情感社会学做出贡献。也许是研究最少的情绪？以及通过关注人们如何解释自己大脑图像的相关性而进入科学技术社会学。

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.