This article explores knowledge about the breast in lived experience, addressing a gap in empirical research on a highly gendered cultural trope and embodied organ. We present findings from a study that used a free-associative psychosocial method-the Visual Matrix-in order to stimulate expressions of tacit aspects of the breast, aiming to generate an understanding of relations between embodied and enculturated experiences. Our data revealed how an aesthetic of the grotesque in one matrix allowed the mainly female group to use humour as a "creative psychic defence" against culturally normative and idealized aspects of the breast. This was expressed through symbolizations, affectively delivered in an exuberant mode, emphasizing the breast's potency and its potential for nurturance and "weaponization". Through this feminine poetic, life and death became inseparable yet ambiguous dimensions of breasts. The breast's life-affirming qualities included the sensual, the visceral, and the joyful-a material-semiotic knowing. This was incontrast to a second matrix, which expressed a more ambivalent and troubled response, and in which associations were weighted towards the spectacular breast of an ocular-centric culture that privileges hetero-masculine looking. We discuss differences between the two matrices in terms of psychosocial tensions between embodied and enculturated experiences.
Studies in the Psychosocial seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic and social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in each other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of a single dialectical process. As such it can be understood as an interdisciplinary field in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Studies in the Psychosocial is also distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the irrational and unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, understood psychoanalytically. Studies in the Psychosocial aims to foster the development of this field by publishing high quality and innovative monographs and edited collections. The series welcomes submissions from a range of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary orientations, including sociology, social and critical psychology, political science, postcolonial studies, feminist studies, queer studies, management and organization studies, cultural and media studies and psychoanalysis. However, in keeping with the inter-or transdisciplinary character of psychosocial analysis, books in the series will generally pass beyond their points of origin to generate concepts, understandings and forms of investigation that are distinctively psychosocial in character.More information about this series at
The Visual Matrix method is designed to elicit imagistic and associative contributions established collectively amongst participants in a group setting. In this article, a hard-to-reach area of experience-death and dying-illustrates the production of shared cultural images beyond individual experience. Our dual purpose was to assess the suitability of the method for this challenging topic, and to understand the ways in which death figured in the imagination of the participants. Three theorists, Wilfred Bion, Alfred Lorenzer and Gilles Deleuze, enable us to theorise psychosocial processes of symbolisation beyond cognition.
Dominant discourses of ageing are often confined to what is less painful to think about and therefore idealise or denigrate ageing and later life. We present findings from an exploratory psychosocial study, in a Nordic context, into three later-life transitions: from working life to retirement, from mental health to dementia and from life to death. Because, for some, these topics are hard to bear and therefore defended against and routinely excluded from everyday awareness, we used a method led by imagery and affect-the Visual Matrix-to elicit participants' free associative personal and collective imagination. Through analysis of data extracts, on the three transitions, we illustrate oscillations between defending against the challenges of ageing and realism in facing the anxieties it can provoke. A recurring theme includes the finality of individual life and the inter-generational continuity, which together link life and death, hope and despair, separation and connectedness.
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