This article examines some of the issues involved in developing research strategies that are robust enough to attend to the complex relationship between gender and emotional distress. Social constructionism may be helpful because it highlights the discursive production of power, femininity and psychopathology. The strength of a phenomenological approach is that it emphasizes the richness and complexity of an individual’s lived experience and privileges agency. Working towards a rapprochement between these two approaches may help to deconstruct the stories that have been told about women and mental illness and help to generate more meaningful information about women’s experiences of emotional distress.
Bohan, J.
(1993) ‘Regarding Gender: Essentialism, Constructionism and Feminist Psychology’, Psychology of Women Quarterly17: 5-21.
2.
Bordo, S.
(1993) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3.
Boskind-Lodahl, M.
(1976) ‘Cinderella’s Stepsisters: A Feminist Perspective on Anorexia and Bulimia’, Signs2: 342-356.
4.
Burman, E.
and Parker, I., eds (1993) Discourse Analytic Research: Repertoires and Readings of Texts in Action. New York: Routledge.
5.
Burr, V.
(1995) An Introduction to Social Constructionism. New York: Routledge.
6.
Butler, J.
(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
7.
Butler, J.
(1995) ‘For a Careful Reading’, pp. 127-144 in S. Benhabib, J. Butler, D. Cornell and N. Fraser Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. New York: Routledge.
8.
Charmaz, K.
(1990) ‘Discovering Chronic Illness: Using Grounded Theory’, Social Science and Medicine30: 1161-1172.
9.
Davidson, L.
(1987) ‘What is the Appropriate Source for Psychological Explanation?’, The Humanistic Psychologist15: 150-166.
10.
Davidson, L.
(1988) ‘Husserl’s Refutation of Psychologism and the Possibility of a Phenomenological Psychology’, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology19: 1-17.
11.
Davidson, L. (1989) ‘Husserl on Psychology: The Return to Positivity’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.
12.
Davidson, L.
and Cosgrove, L. (1991) ‘Psychologism and Phenomenological Psychology Revisited. Part I: The Liberation from Naturalism’, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology22(2): 87-108.
13.
Derrida, J.
(1973) Speech and Phenomenon. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
14.
Derrida, J.
(1976) Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Flax, J.
(1990) Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley: University of California Press.
17.
Foucault, M.
(1965) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (trans. R. Howard). New York: Random Press.
18.
Foucault, M.
(1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison(trans. A. Sheridan). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
19.
Foucault, M.
(1980) The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (trans. R. Hurley). New York: Vintage.
20.
Gavey, N.
(1997) ‘Feminist Poststructuralism and Discourse Analysis’, pp. 49-64 in M. Gergen and S. Davis (eds) Toward a New Psychology of Gender: A Reader. New York: Routledge.
21.
Gill, R.
(1995) ‘Relativism, Reflexivity, and Politics: Interrogating Discourse Analysis from a Feminist Perspective’, pp. 165-186 in S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (eds) Feminism and Discourse: Psychological Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
22.
Giorgi, A.
(1970) Psychology as a Human Science: A Phenomenological Based Approach. New York: Harper & Row.
23.
Giorgi, A.
(1981) ‘Ambiguities Surrounding the Meaning of Phenomenological Psychology’, Supplement to Philosophical Topics12: 89-100.
24.
Giorgi, A.
(1985) Phenomenology and Psychological Research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
25.
Giorgi, A.
(1990) ‘Phenomenology, Psychological Science and Common Sense’, pp. 64-82 in G. Semin and K. Gergen (eds) Everyday Understanding. New York: Sage.
26.
Harding, S.
(1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
27.
Hare-Mustin, R.T.
and Marecek, J., eds (1990) Making a Difference: Psychology and the Construction of Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
28.
Hare-Mustin, R.T.
and Marecek, J. (1994) ‘Asking the Right Questions: Feminist Psychology and Sex Differences’, Feminism & Psychology4(4): 531-537.
29.
Henwood, K.
and Pidgeon, N. (1992) ‘Qualitative Research and Psychological Theorizing’, British Journal of Psychology83: 83-111.
30.
Henwood, K.
and Pidgeon, N. (1995) ‘Grounded Theory and Psychological Research’, The Psychologist8: 115-118.
31.
Hepworth, J.
(1994) ‘Qualitative Analysis and Eating Disorders: Discourse Analytic Research on Anorexia Nervosa’, International Journal of Eating Disorders15: 179-185.
32.
Hollway, W.
(1989) Subjectivity and Method in Psychology: Gender, Meaning, and Science. London: Sage.
33.
Husserl, E.
(1962) Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson). New York: Collier Books.
34.
Husserl, E.
(1970) The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (trans. D. Carr). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
35.
Husserl, E.
(1977) Phenomenological Psychology (trans. J. Scanlon). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
36.
Jennings, J.
(1986) ‘Husserl Revisited: The Forgotten Distinction between Psychology and Phenomenology’, American Psychologist41: 1231-1240.
37.
Kitzinger, C.
(1994) ‘Should Psychologists Study Sex Differences?’, Feminism & Psychology4(4): 501-546.
38.
Kocklemans, J.
(1967) Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenological Psychology: A Historicocritical Study. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
39.
Kohak, E.
(1978) Idea & Experience: Edmund Husserl’s Project of Phenomenology in Ideas I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
40.
Kvale, S.
, ed. (1992) Postmodernism and Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
41.
Lather, P.
(1991) Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy within the Postmodern. New York: Routledge.
42.
Lather, P.
(1992) ‘Postmodernism and the Human Sciences’, pp. 88-109 in S. Kvale (ed.) Postmodernism and Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
43.
Malson, H.
(1997) ‘Anorexic Bodies and the Discursive Production of Feminine Excess’, pp. 223-245 in J. Ussher (ed.) Body Talk: The Material and Discursive Regulation of Sexuality, Madness and Reproduction. New York: Routledge.
44.
Malson, H.
and Ussher, J. (1996a) ‘Bloody Women: A Discourse Analysis of Amenorrhea as a Symptom of Anorexia Nervosa’, Feminism & Psychology6(4): 502-521.
45.
Malson, H.
and Ussher, J. (1996b) ‘Body Poly-texts: Discourses on the Anorexic Body’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology6: 267-280.
46.
Morawski, J.
(1994) Practicing Feminisms, Reconstructing Psychology: Notes on a Liminal Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
47.
Nicholson, P.
, ed. (1990) Feminism/postmodernism. New York: Routledge.
48.
Orbach, S.
(1986) Hunger Strike: The Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for our Age. London: Faber & Faber.
49.
Parker, I.
, Georgaca, E., Harper, D., McLaughlin, T. and Stowell-Smith, M. (1995) Deconstructing Psychopathology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
50.
Potter, J.
and Wetherell, M. (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
51.
Radden, J.
(1987) ‘Melancholy and Melancholia’, pp. 231-250 in D.M. Levin (ed.) Pathologies of the Modern Self: Postmodern Studies on Narcissism, Schizophrenia, and Depression. New York: New York University Press.
52.
Smith, J.A.
(1996) ‘Beyond the Divide between Cognition and Discourse: Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis in Health Psychology’, Psychology & Health11: 261-267.
53.
Stanley, L.
(1990) Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology. New York: Routledge.
54.
Tavris, C.
(1993) The Mismeasure of Woman. New York: Simon & Schuster.
55.
Unger, R.
and Crawford, M. (1996) Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
56.
Ussher, J.
(1989) The Psychology of the Female Body. New York: Routledge.
57.
Ussher, J.
(1991) Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?New York: Routledge.
58.
Ussher, J.
(1997) Body Talk: The Material and Discursive Regulation of Sexuality, Madness and Reproduction. New York: Routledge.
59.
Weedon, C.
(1987) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
60.
Weir, A.
(1996) Sacrificial Logics: Feminist Theory and the Critique of Identity. New York: Routledge.
61.
West, C.
and Zimmerman, D.H. (1987) ‘Doing Gender’, Gender & Society1: 125-151.
62.
Wetherell, M.
(1995) ‘Romantic Discourse and Feminist Analysis: Interrogating Investment, Power and Desire’, pp. 128-144 in S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (eds) Feminism and Discourse: Psychological Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
63.
Wilkinson, S.
and Kitzinger, C., eds (1995) Feminism and Discourse: Psychological Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
64.
Yardley, L.
(1996) ‘Reconciling Discursive and Materialist Perspectives on Health and Illness: A Reconstruction of the Biopsychosocial Approach’, Theory & Psychology6(3): 485-508.
65.
Yardley, L.
(1997) Material Discourses of Health and Illness. New York: Routledge.
