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Embodied Domestics, Embodied Politics: Women, Home, and Agoraphobia

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Abstract

Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home.

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Notes

  1. See Chambless and Goldstein (1982) and Vidler (2000: 25–31).

  2. Three of the most common treatment modalities—exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and medication—work specifically on moderating the physiological and psychological reactions the agoraphobic has when she ventures beyond her home territory (Hallam 1978; Öst et al. 2004; Harman et al. 2002).

  3. See Jacobson (2004, 2010).

  4. One study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia (Clum and Knowles 1991). See also Daiuto et al. (1998); Fredrikson et al. (1996); Sheikh et al. (2002); Joyce et al. (1989).

  5. The prevalence alone of agoraphobia makes it an important psychological disorder to study. For instance, one study reports an incidence rate of 4.9% in Americans between the ages of 18 and 54, and a 1994 study found the prevalence of agoraphobia across the human lifespan to be 5.3% (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1999; Kessler et al. 1994). A 2005 study reports a lower population incidence rate of 1.4% (Kessler et al. 2005, but this rate is arguably affected by shifts in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) codes that have led to many patients who exhibit agoraphobia receiving primary diagnoses other than agoraphobia (see, for example, Hedley and Hoffart 2001).

  6. One report illustrates this point quite strikingly: A mere 18% of agoraphobic patients whose symptoms had diminished following treatment reported themselves to be “symptom-free” 4 years following treatment (McPherson et al. 1980: 152).

  7. While in Western society, “private” may immediately suggest the notion of “private ownership” or at least of an enclosed space over which we have exclusive rights, I recognize that not all people have access to homes of this sort. I use “private” here to indicate a relationship of privileged belonging.

  8. See Bachelard (1964, Chap. 1), Russon (2003, Chap. 4), Marcus (1995, Chap. 1) and Jacobson (2009).

  9. Cases in which people do feel imprisoned as alien residents within their “own” homes or feel themselves to have no place of “my own” are situations of crisis. A person living in such a situation may ultimately be more lacking in home than some people who are considered “homeless,” but who are in fact quite “at home” in being without a physical house-structure. See Young (2005: 152).

  10. See Porteous and Smith (2001: 61–63) and Young (2005: 131–132).

  11. See Derrida (2000) and Heidegger (1996). This is also the theme of Homer's (1967) Odyssey and Hölderlin's (2004) poems “Home,” “Return to the Homeland,” and “Homecoming”.

  12. Gilman's is an interesting reaction insofar as many agoraphobics are further incapacitated when removed from their familiar places and companions. Regardless of the specific reaction, however, home and the home-body for the agoraphobic have become so static that a change in their status has debilitating consequences for the agoraphobic sufferer (Davidson 2003: 100–105).

  13. Young (2005) makes a similar point, describing the lived body as a “body-in-situation” (18).

  14. See Jacobson (2010).

  15. Haley (1980: 30), a family systems therapist, confirms the operative claim here—namely, that the structure of the family home is what makes it possible or prohibits the child's successful emergence from the family into the larger world.

  16. See Kleiner and Marshall (1987), Gassner (2004), Parker (1979), Chambless and Goldstein (1982), and Frances and Dunn (1975).

  17. Arrindell et al. (2003) write: “A society that does not teach women to be instrumental, competent and assertive, rather than just house-oriented or nurturing and expressive, is one that breeds (agora) phobic women” (797, citing Fodor (1974) and Chambless and Mason (1986). See also Chambless and Goldstein (1982: 52) for a discussion of agoraphobics as conceiving of themselves as incapable of functioning independently. For discussions of agoraphobics' preoccupation with being abandoned, rejected or being alone, see Evans and Liggett (1971: 150), and also Byrne et al. (2004: 107).

  18. See Hudson (1974), Troutman (1997), and Hallam (1978).

  19. See Russon (2003: 65–68).

  20. For a helpful discussion of the normative structures and influences of both the state and the family with respect to gender differences, see Christman's (2002) chapter “Race, Gender, and the Politics of Identity,” especially the sections “Public and Private” and “Justice and Care”.

  21. See Fodor (1974: 143–145), Schneider (2002), and Powell and Abels (2002).

  22. See Porteous and Smith (2001: 47), Gilligan (1993), Tannen (1996: 21–25, 42, 90–91, 98–101, 230, 257), and Young (2005: 39).

  23. Fodor (1974) maintains that this discrepancy owes to the fact that, on the one hand, in their formative years, “young people are forging out in new areas,” but, on the other hand, girls have not been reinforced in this activity in the same way boys have (147). She specifically argues that girls are raised in ways that reinforce docile, submissive, and conservative roles, while boys are encouraged to be self-assertive, achievement oriented, and independent (138, 141–142).

  24. One study conducted in the 1980s documented that within households in which both husband and wife worked full-time outside the home, women were still held responsible for a full 80 percent of the domestic work (Marcus 1995: 154). See also Rybczynski (1986: 75; the entire chapter “Domesticity,” and 159–162); Porteous and Smith (2001: 48–50); Mallett (2004: 74–77); Marcus (1995: 104); and, Waldman (2003: 662–671), and, most pertinent to the topic of agoraphobia, Davidson (2003: 119 and chap. 6).

  25. See also Young (2005: 144–151).

  26. While de Beauvoir (1972) is writing of women in the first half of the twentieth Century, the persisting differentiation in household roles between men and women suggests that there continues to be a significant distinction between men and women in this arena. In an interview more than two decades after publishing The Second Sex, de Beauvoir held firm to a similar point, arguing that “…being banished to the ghetto of domesticity and the division of labour along male/female, private/public lines is precisely what women should be rejecting if they want to realize their full value as human beings” (Schwarzer 1984: 75).

  27. This relative insecurity of women's home situation is arguably further unsettled by traditions of male-based ownership privileges (Seidenberg and DeCrow 1983: 181–189; Woolf 1929).

  28. Prior to WWI, 80% of cases of agoraphobia were diagnosed in men (Reuter 2007: 8, 35–36, 38–39). While agoraphobia certainly existed in women prior to World War I, Reuter argues that it would not have been as visible, since prior to the war, it would have been considered “normal” for women in financially middle and upper class families to remain close to home, and, thus, the symptoms of agoraphobia would not become visible to others or possibly even to oneself (74–76).

  29. See Reuter (2007: 74–77), and Rousseau (1911: 327–332, 371).

  30. Margolis (1984) notes that while the net number of women entering the workplace around WWI increased only by 5%, the workforce at this time was undergoing a significant change in terms of the types and wage-level of jobs open to women (203).

  31. Even the Women's Bureau—an institution specifically focused on the rights of women workers—officially took the position that “wives that work… were a threat to the health and happiness of their families” (Margolis 1984: 206). Margolis concludes that at this point in time, “combining career, marriage, and motherhood was simply unthinkable” (207). See also Smith-Rosenberg (1985: 199–200).

  32. During WWII, the number of women in the workforce increased significantly—rising from 14 to 19 million—and married women composed a notable 75% of this increase (Mintz and Kellogg 1998: 161).

  33. See Arrindell et al. (2003: 799–800, 802, 804). See also Turgeon et al. (1998: 548–549).

  34. See also Hofstede (1980, 1986).

  35. See also Thorpe et al. (1985) and Emmelkamp et al. (1983).

  36. See also “The Conundrum of the Glass Ceiling” (2005), July 23; and, Fullerton (1999) for a view of statistical view of changes with respect to women in the workplace over the past 75 years.

  37. A recent news article discusses the upcoming change to French law that will mandate that 40% of company boards be made up of women (“La Vie en Rose” 2008, May 8; see also “Skirting the Issue” 2010, March 13). The article reports that some companies are “getting around” the quota by planting token women on their boards—women chosen for their attractiveness or public appeal rather than for their expertise. Critics complain that attention is being aimed at the top of the job market without addressing imbalances lower down.

  38. See Wilson (1993: 399), Frances and Egger (1999); Poovey (1987: 138), and Hallam (1978: 314).

  39. Recently, significant attention has been paid to gender biases in research studies as well as in treatment-protocols; see, for instance, the editorial and a trio of articles in a recent issue of Nature (2010, June 10): “Putting Gender on the Agenda”; “Sex bias in trials and treatment must end”; “Pregnant women deserve better”; and “Males still dominate animal studies”.

  40. In the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV 1994), the language describing agoraphobia was itself changed in such a way that reflects a gender differentiation (396). A common symptom of agoraphobic behavior was at that time identified as the inability to carry out “homemaking responsibilities” such as grocery shopping, taking children to appropriate places and events, etc.

  41. See also Evans and Liggett (1971: 152–153). They argue that an effective means of treatment must involve allowing the agoraphobic to actively experience—rather than superficially eliminate—her fears, and to develop a recognition in the agoraphobic that their source is rooted in interpersonal issues rather than in fixed features of her environment (153).

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Jacobson, K. Embodied Domestics, Embodied Politics: Women, Home, and Agoraphobia. Hum Stud 34, 1–21 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-011-9172-2

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