Out of place: Narrative insights into agoraphobia

Abstract

Abstract This study explores how agoraphobia is realized through the activity of storytelling. Analysis of one agoraphobic woman's narratives articulates (a) the narrative structuring of a panic episode, (b) the grammatical resources systematically recruited to portray panic as unaccountable and the protagonist as irrational and helpless, and (c) a recurrent communicative dilemma narrated in the setting, which anticipates the onset of panic. The narrator presents two conflicting accounts of panic: One foregrounded in her stories and in clinical literature links panic to an immediate activity and location; another backgrounded in her stories and heretofore unrecognized in the literature links panic to a failure to communicate unwillingness to participate in proposed activities that compromise the protagonist's perceived well‐being. We conclude that agoraphobia is a communicative disorder that constructs a range of relationships. This study offers a methodology for researchers, clinicians, and sufferers of agoraphobia for illuminating the complex logic and paradoxes in narrative accounts of panic experience.