Making connections and thinking through emotions: between geography and psychotherapy

TLDR

Interest in emotions within geography is rising, offering critical perspectives that challenge conventional limits, and psychotherapy, as a theory of practice emphasizing affective relational qualities, is directly relevant to geographical engagements with emotion. The study explores connections between emotional geographies and psychotherapy to resist equating emotion with individual subjectivity and to develop situated, relational perspectives. The authors discuss three precursors of emotional geographies—humanistic, feminist, and non‑representational—and revisit the distinction between feelings and their representations via psychotherapeutic meaning‑making.

Abstract

The current upsurge of interest in emotions within geography has the potential to contribute to critical perspectives that question conventional limits to scholarship. Three precursors of emotional geographies are discussed in this context (humanistic, feminist and non‐representational geographies). Connections between emotional geographies and psychotherapy are explored with a view to resisting the equation of emotion with individualized subjective experience, and developing situated, relational perspectives. Psychotherapy is approached as a theory of practice that accords central importance to affective qualities of relationships, which is shown to be directly relevant to geographical engagements with emotion. The distinction between feelings and representations of feelings is revisited through a discussion of psychotherapeutic meaning‐making.