Enacting Hope and Desire in Mental Healthcare: Discursive Practices and Therapeutic Implications
Panel 14 / Quinto Convegno Nazionale SIAC “SPERARE / DISPERARE / DESIDERARE”
Matera, 25-27 settembre 2025
Proponenti: Giulia Sciolli (CNR), Roberta Martina Zagarella (CNR)
Abstract
The role of hope and desire for life as “practiced” in therapeutic settings, as factors shaping treatment even in situations that seem to only allow for despair, has been widely explored for conditions like cancer and chronic disabilities (e.g. Mattingly 1998, 2010). This anthropological literature has shown that hope and desire are continuously constructed and fostered through the discourses and practices of professional and family carers. Less attention has been given to mental health settings, where despair is often perceived more as part of the condition being treated and, gradually, of the very person who suffers, than as a consequence of an ‘external’ disease. What Mattingly (2010: 5) calls “a paradoxical border practice” (hope for a life beyond or notwithstanding illness) is therefore even more paradoxical in mental healthcare, especially for conditions deemed chronic. And yet hope has been found to characterise recovery narratives, therapeutic relationships and treatment engagement (Longhofer and Floersch 2010; Murphy et al. 2024; Van Dongen 1998). This panel welcomes submissions that, based on ethnographic research conducted among patients, healthcare professionals and/or family carers in specific strands of mental healthcare, show how the discursive constructions and enactments of hope and desire for life function as therapeutic tools or as points of tension in care, illuminating their transformative potential but also their limitations and ethical complexities.
Keywords: hope, desire, mental healthcare, discourse, practice
Lingue accettate: Italiano / English
Per sottomettere un paper scaricare il seguente format e inviarlo a: giulia.sciolli@cnr.it; robertamartina.zagarella@cnr.it
To submit a paper download the following format and please send it to: giulia.sciolli@cnr.it; robertamartina.zagarella@cnr.it
