The Emotional Self; A Sociocultural Exploration

The emotions are central to the conduct of social life and relationships with others, and individuals' understandings of selfhood are strongly shaped via emotional experiences. In The Emotional Self Deborah Lupton brings together social and cultural theory with original empirical research into the nature of the emotional self in contemporary western societies. Lupton's interdisciplinary approach draws on a number of sociocultural approaches articulated in sociology, anthropology, gender studies and social psychology, that primarily adopt a poststructuralist perspective. She places strong emphasis on language and discourse as they construct and express concepts of the self and the emotions, while also acknowledging the sensual, embodied and the unconscious dimensions of emotional experience. The emphasis of the analysis is on the emotional self as a dynamic project that is continually shaped and reshaped via discourse, embodied sensations, memory, personal biography and interactions with others and objects. Among the subjects covered are: a review of theoretical perspectives on emotion in the humani