Liminality and Experience

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction: Throwing Psychosocial Studies in at the Deep End

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 1-35

3. This Is Not … The Truth: On Fabulation

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 37-69

4. This Is Not … Food: On Food for Thought

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 71-109

5. This Is Not … a Pipe: On the Complexity of Experience

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 111-150

6. This Is Not … a Shock: On the Passage Between Multiple Worlds

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 151-196

7. This Is Not … a Turn to Affect: Feeling Between Ontology and Anthropology

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 197-251

8. Conclusion

   • Paul Stenner

   Pages 253-286

9. Back Matter

   Pages 287-297

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This book breathes new life into the study of liminal experiences of transition and transformation, or ‘becoming’. It brings fresh insight into affect and emotion, dream and imagination, and fabulation and symbolism  by tracing their relation to experiences of liminality. The author proposes a distinctive theory of the relationship between psychology and the social sciences with much to share with the arts. Its premise is that psychosocial existence is not made of ‘stuff’ like building blocks, but of happenings and events in which the many elements that compose our lives are temporarily drawn together. The social is not a thing but a flow of processes, and our personal subjectivity is part of that flow, ‘selves’ being tightly interwoven with ‘others’. But there are breaks and ruptures in the flow, and during these liminal occasions our experience unravels and is rewoven. This book puts such moments at the core of the psychosocial research agenda. Of transdisciplinary scope, itwill appeal beyond psychosocial studies and social psychology to all scholars interested in the interface between experience and social (dis)order. 

• psychosocial existence
• experimental psychology
• personal subjectivity
• self and other
• transdisciplinary approach
• psychosocial studies
• social psychology
• social research
• Autopoeisis
• Bio-psycho-social
• Fabulation
• Representational thinking
• Relational process ontology

“This is an ambitious and challenging text that provokes thought and forces the reader to confront their preconceptions of how we can make sense of the social world.” (Mark Erickson, Sociology, January 08, 2019)

“Liminality and Experience develops an approach to thinking that can illuminate the future of psychosocial approaches on producing effects of in/stability. A central concern of Liminality and Experience is the recognition the self is formed and sustained in a wider context of social forces and structures, though is not reducible to that context.” (Robbie Duschinsky and Samantha Reisz, Theory, Culture & Society, theoryculturesociety.org, May 31, 2018) “A compelling justification of the merits of a ‘process’ version of psychosocial transdisciplinarity.” (Wendy Hollway, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Open University, UK)

• School of Psychology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

  Paul Stenner

Paul Stenner is Professor of Social Psychology at the Open University, UK. He is author of over 100 articles and several books including, with S.D. Brown, Psychology Without Foundations, and, with Monica Greco, The Emotions: A Social Science Reader. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and President of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (until 2019).

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