Poststructuralist historicism and the psychological construction of anxiety disorders

When applied to the construction of anxiety disorders, theories of poststructuralist historicism emphasize acts of interpretation that constitute and construct the disorders and problematize the processes by which meaning is constructed. An examination of the historical formulations of anxiety disorders, and in particular, agoraphobia, provides the opportunity for reanalyzing traditional approaches to the classifications of disorders. Psychological issues of paradox, attachment, and personal identity, which are crucial to current conceptualizations of agoraphobia, are acutely problematized within a poststructuralist historicist hermeneutic. A rethinking of disorder construction from within this hermeneutic suggests replacing individualistic conceptualizations of personal identity with a broader view that recognizes and celebrates multiplicity and that displays formulations of the self in a contextualized and historicized status, thus enabling a fuller engagement with the social world.