Amanda Lecouteur
Biographic Data
| ID | 162178 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amanda Lecouteur |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amanda |
| FAMILY NAME | Lecouteur |
| SIGNATURE | LECOUTEUR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Adelaide |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6801-1230 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 161 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Emotion regulation as affective neoliberal governmentality
Emotion regulation is central in many therapy models, including couple and family therapy models. This article draws on poststructuralist governmentality studies and processual affect theory to offer insight into how the therapeutic concept of emotion regulation may reflect and support neoliberal affective forms of self‐governance. We suggest that couple and family therapy—through using professional discourses and affect‐oriented techniques or in…
‘It really freed me up ... to work’
I am different
Although there has been an increasing interest in the notion of involved fatherhood, few studies have examined how fathers who work part-time and engage in child-rearing make sense of this experience. The present study explores how part-time working fathers positioned themselves in terms of their ‘at home’ and ‘at work’ identities. Thematic analysis was used to examine 30 interviewees’ accounts of their experiences. Three central themes were iden…
The third shift
Research on the gendered division of household work in western political economies often neglects its emotional dimensions. This conceptual paper draws on concepts of emotion work and feminist care ethics to explore gendered and intersecting divisions of emotions and emotional work in couple relationships and their implications for couple therapy. Although emotion work has been studied in workplace settings, less attention has been paid to inequa…
Gendering of care and care inequalities in couple therapy
Reciprocal partner or spousal caregiving in romantic relationships has been identified as a key determinant of the quality of couple relationships. In this article, we interrogate this premise concerning the presumed reciprocity of caregiving in romantic relationships, focusing on cisgender heterosexual relationships and offering implications for relationships of all genders and sexualities. Looking beyond the conventional focus on individual or …
The cost of doing politics
Recent conversations prompted by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have put issues of workplace sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault into the global spotlight. This paper examines how members of the Australian Liberal Party made sense of, and responded to, accusations by female Liberal MPs of bullying and intimidation in their party. Transcripts of media interviews identified by searching the ParlInfo database (between August and Septembe…
My Skill Is Putting on a Mask and Convincing People Not to Look Closer”
Although anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorder in Australia, little is known about men’s anxiety help-seeking practices. This study investigates how male users of an online discussion forum accounted for engaging in troubles-telling in an online community. Posts on an online discussion forum written by men who identify as experiencing anxiety were analysed using discursive psychology, through the identification of four i…
Television commentary on women's and men's Australian Rules football
Commentators are reported to describe male and female players in different ways across a range of sports. The present study examines televised commentary on men's and women's games in the Australian Football League during the inaugural season of the women's professional competition. A two-phase thematic analysis was applied to television commentary on 10 men's and 10 women's Australian Rules football games. Semantic thematic analysis of the broad…
Deal me in”
Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the first female presidential candidate to represent a major party in the 2016 US presidential election represented a key moment in US history. The focus on her gender during the campaign was intensified following the accusation by Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump, that Clinton was “playing the woman card”. The present article explores US media constructions of Clinton’s orientation to the topic of gender dur…
I know you shouldn't compare to other people, but I can’t do anything most people can’
Despite its prevalence, men's anxiety is arguably under‐researched and poorly understood. The present study explores the reasoning provided by male posters to an online discussion forum about the source of their anxiety. Posts were collected from an Australian anxiety online discussion forum. This study utilises discursive psychology, informed by principles of membership categorisation analysis, to describe how age, occupation and family‐related …
Men’s talk about anxiety online
Although anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorder among Australian men, very little is known about men's experiences of living with, and seeking help for, anxiety. This article examines how male users of an online discussion forum for "anxiety" describe their anxiety in their opening posts. Of particular interest is how such descriptions attend to issues of authenticity and the types of support that men appear to be seeking…
I Feel Abused by My Own Mind
Men's experiences with anxiety are under-researched and poorly understood. Existing research gives little indication of how men talk about anxiety in situ, and little is known about how men describe their experiences of anxiety. Online discussion forums provide an opportunity to conduct naturalistic observations of how men describe their experiences with anxiety without the influence of a researcher. Thematic analysis, informed by principles of d…
“[It] does not explain everything ... , nor does it explain nothing ... it explains some things”
Despite advances in the representation of women in positions of leadership, gender-based inequalities persist. A particular dilemma for female leaders concerns whether to acknowledge, or avoid talking about, their experiences of gender and gender inequality in public life. Routinely, women who confront such discrimination experience social and personal repercussions; however, those who remain silent are often criticised for failing to support wom…
Dementia on Facebook
Your Brain Matters
The Internet has been argued to provide diverse sites for health communication and promotion, including issues that constitute major public health priorities such as the prevention of dementia. In this study, discursive psychology is used to examine how information about dementia risk prevention was presented on the websites of the most prominent English-language, nonprofit dementia organizations. We demonstrate how information about dementia ris…
Dealing with third-party complaints on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline
This article examines how third-party complaints were responded to by counsellors on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline. Much prior conversation analytic research has shown that third-party complaints in institutional settings are embedded in other activities and treated as secondary to the main interactional business. As such, complaints are routinely responded to with a shift to a new, institutionally relevant activity (e.g. the reason f…
The normalisation of body regulation and monitoring practices in elite sport
Prevalence of disordered eating is higher in athlete populations than in the general population. This paper explores the sociocultural context within which athletes are vulnerable to poor health behaviours and potentially poor mental health. Within sport settings, dominant ideals of body regulation and self-surveillance are normalised and leave athletes vulnerable to eating disorders. This paper explores how such ideals and understandings around …
Clients' resistance to therapists' proposals
Making arrangements in talk-in-interaction
Arrangement making is understood to be a “closing-relevant action” (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), but little attention has been given to how people arrive at mutually acceptable plans for the future. Telephone conversations between clients and staff of community and home care (CHC) services were studied to identify how arrangements for future services were made. A recurrent sequence was observed in which clients were informed of future arrangement a…
Career transitions and identity
Athletes’ career transitions have received widespread research attention and have been identified as potentially distressing for athletes. Yet, the transition back into elite sport following retirement, although rare, has not been a focus of research attention. The concept of athlete identity has been widely researched within sport psychology to give insight into the varied experiences of athletes, especially in relation to the transition out of …
Co-Implicating and Re-Shaping Clients' Suggestions for Behavioural Change in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Practice
This article uses conversation analysis to examine Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) interactions with clients diagnosed with depression. The analysis explicates some routine conversational practices used by therapists in CBT to involve or co-implicate clients in the decision-making process regarding behavioural change. The article illustrates how the co-implication of clients in plans for behavioural change involves complex, therapist-guided s…
I Just Want to Talk
Literature on men's health help-seeking suggests that, consistent with hegemonic masculine ideals, men display a general preference for solution-focused interaction. Men's health services routinely orient to this preference, emphasising assistance in the form of practical advice. Little research, however, has examined the nature of actual interactions between men and health professionals. The present paper analyses interaction on a men's telephon…
Accountability, monitoring and surveillance
Regulation of athletes' bodies is commonplace in sporting environments, despite evidence that athletes have a higher risk of developing disordered eating than non-athletes. This article explores how athletes' bodies are regulated in practice, building on examinations of body surveillance in other contexts. Over 40 interactions occurring during body monitoring are analysed. Athletes, pre-emptively or following an explicit request, accounted for th…
Hypothetical active-voicing
Managing accountability for domestic violence
Psychological research and popular discussion around domestic violence/intimate partner abuse have focussed on broad features of descriptive accounts such as victim precipitation, excusing of aggressors, and minimizing or denying the violence. Few studies have examined the finer detail of how such matters are routinely invoked in talk, and how they are regularly built in ways that make their authors appear credible and warranted. This study uses …
Self-sufficient Arguments in Political Rhetoric
This article focuses on the rhetorical and argumentative organization of a major political address by the Prime Minister of Australia on the topics of reconciliation and apologizing to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous peoples. The analysis documents the interpretative repertoires that were mobilized to argue around these sensitive, controversial issues in a public forum, in particular the deployment of discursive formulations of `togetherness…
Clients' resistance to therapists' proposals
Apologising to the stolen generations
Since the appearance of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997, text and talk about the appropriateness of a national apology for the past practices of forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities have appeared on a regular basis in national and local print media, on television and radio, In organised community meetings, and also in everyday discussions between ordinary people. This paper employs a critical discursiv…
Modern racism in the media
Recent discursive research suggests that contemporary racism is typically accomplished in terms of subtle, flexibly managed and locally contingent discussion of the `problems' associated with minority groups. This study contributes to this work by focusing on the ways in which a particular formulation: `the possibility of change' was repeatedly implicated in descriptions of two `riots' that received widespread media attention in Australia: one in…
Race’ and the Human Genome Project
At the public announcement of the completion of a draft map of the human genome (June 2000), Craig Venter, Head of Celera Genomics and chief private scientist involved with the Human Genome Project, claimed that ‘race’ was not a scientifically valid construct. This statement, based on an analysis of the genomes of five people of different ethnicities, has not served to end the considerable discussion and debate surrounding the concept of ‘race’. …
Managing accountability for domestic violence
Psychological research and popular discussion around domestic violence/intimate partner abuse have focussed on broad features of descriptive accounts such as victim precipitation, excusing of aggressors, and minimizing or denying the violence. Few studies have examined the finer detail of how such matters are routinely invoked in talk, and how they are regularly built in ways that make their authors appear credible and warranted. This study uses …
Lay Theories of Anorexia Nervosa
Previous studies on lay theories of anorexia nervosa have examined the 'accuracy' of lay knowledge, and the identification of factors by family and friends that would encourage early interventions (Huon, Brown, & Morris, 1988, 7, 239-252; Murray, Touyz, & Beumont, 1990, 9, 87-93). In contrast to these approaches, we examine lay theories of anorexia nervosa using a critical psychology perspective. We argue that the use of a discourse analysis meth…
Your Brain Matters
The Internet has been argued to provide diverse sites for health communication and promotion, including issues that constitute major public health priorities such as the prevention of dementia. In this study, discursive psychology is used to examine how information about dementia risk prevention was presented on the websites of the most prominent English-language, nonprofit dementia organizations. We demonstrate how information about dementia ris…
Hypothetical active-voicing
I am different
Although there has been an increasing interest in the notion of involved fatherhood, few studies have examined how fathers who work part-time and engage in child-rearing make sense of this experience. The present study explores how part-time working fathers positioned themselves in terms of their ‘at home’ and ‘at work’ identities. Thematic analysis was used to examine 30 interviewees’ accounts of their experiences. Three central themes were iden…
Men’s talk about anxiety online
Although anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorder among Australian men, very little is known about men's experiences of living with, and seeking help for, anxiety. This article examines how male users of an online discussion forum for "anxiety" describe their anxiety in their opening posts. Of particular interest is how such descriptions attend to issues of authenticity and the types of support that men appear to be seeking…
I Just Want to Talk
Literature on men's health help-seeking suggests that, consistent with hegemonic masculine ideals, men display a general preference for solution-focused interaction. Men's health services routinely orient to this preference, emphasising assistance in the form of practical advice. Little research, however, has examined the nature of actual interactions between men and health professionals. The present paper analyses interaction on a men's telephon…
Accountability, monitoring and surveillance
Regulation of athletes' bodies is commonplace in sporting environments, despite evidence that athletes have a higher risk of developing disordered eating than non-athletes. This article explores how athletes' bodies are regulated in practice, building on examinations of body surveillance in other contexts. Over 40 interactions occurring during body monitoring are analysed. Athletes, pre-emptively or following an explicit request, accounted for th…
Television commentary on women's and men's Australian Rules football
Commentators are reported to describe male and female players in different ways across a range of sports. The present study examines televised commentary on men's and women's games in the Australian Football League during the inaugural season of the women's professional competition. A two-phase thematic analysis was applied to television commentary on 10 men's and 10 women's Australian Rules football games. Semantic thematic analysis of the broad…
Dealing with third-party complaints on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline
This article examines how third-party complaints were responded to by counsellors on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline. Much prior conversation analytic research has shown that third-party complaints in institutional settings are embedded in other activities and treated as secondary to the main interactional business. As such, complaints are routinely responded to with a shift to a new, institutionally relevant activity (e.g. the reason f…
Gender and Disadvantage in the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Boys
This article offers a discursive analysis of accounts of boys’ underachievement produced during the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education (2002). Analysis focuses on two interpretative repertoires through which boys’ positioning as ‘educationally disadvantaged’ was accomplished. Both repertoires depicted current curricula and assessment as ‘favouring’ female students. One repertoire established boys’ ‘disadvantaged’ status within …
Deal me in”
Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the first female presidential candidate to represent a major party in the 2016 US presidential election represented a key moment in US history. The focus on her gender during the campaign was intensified following the accusation by Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump, that Clinton was “playing the woman card”. The present article explores US media constructions of Clinton’s orientation to the topic of gender dur…
I know you shouldn't compare to other people, but I can’t do anything most people can’
Despite its prevalence, men's anxiety is arguably under‐researched and poorly understood. The present study explores the reasoning provided by male posters to an online discussion forum about the source of their anxiety. Posts were collected from an Australian anxiety online discussion forum. This study utilises discursive psychology, informed by principles of membership categorisation analysis, to describe how age, occupation and family‐related …
I Feel Abused by My Own Mind
Men's experiences with anxiety are under-researched and poorly understood. Existing research gives little indication of how men talk about anxiety in situ, and little is known about how men describe their experiences of anxiety. Online discussion forums provide an opportunity to conduct naturalistic observations of how men describe their experiences with anxiety without the influence of a researcher. Thematic analysis, informed by principles of d…
Dementia on Facebook
Co-Implicating and Re-Shaping Clients' Suggestions for Behavioural Change in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Practice
This article uses conversation analysis to examine Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) interactions with clients diagnosed with depression. The analysis explicates some routine conversational practices used by therapists in CBT to involve or co-implicate clients in the decision-making process regarding behavioural change. The article illustrates how the co-implication of clients in plans for behavioural change involves complex, therapist-guided s…
Lay Theories of Anorexia Nervosa
Previous studies on lay theories of anorexia nervosa have examined the 'accuracy' of lay knowledge, and the identification of factors by family and friends that would encourage early interventions (Huon, Brown, & Morris, 1988, 7, 239-252; Murray, Touyz, & Beumont, 1990, 9, 87-93). In contrast to these approaches, we examine lay theories of anorexia nervosa using a critical psychology perspective. We argue that the use of a discourse analysis meth…
Apologising to the stolen generations
Since the appearance of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997, text and talk about the appropriateness of a national apology for the past practices of forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities have appeared on a regular basis in national and local print media, on television and radio, In organised community meetings, and also in everyday discussions between ordinary people. This paper employs a critical discursiv…
Self-sufficient Arguments in Political Rhetoric
This article focuses on the rhetorical and argumentative organization of a major political address by the Prime Minister of Australia on the topics of reconciliation and apologizing to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous peoples. The analysis documents the interpretative repertoires that were mobilized to argue around these sensitive, controversial issues in a public forum, in particular the deployment of discursive formulations of `togetherness…
Race’ and the Human Genome Project
At the public announcement of the completion of a draft map of the human genome (June 2000), Craig Venter, Head of Celera Genomics and chief private scientist involved with the Human Genome Project, claimed that ‘race’ was not a scientifically valid construct. This statement, based on an analysis of the genomes of five people of different ethnicities, has not served to end the considerable discussion and debate surrounding the concept of ‘race’. …
Fiona Farewells Her Breasts’
In this paper, the authors examine a popular media account of prophylactic mastectomy—the surgical removal of 'healthy' breasts for preventive purposes—focusing on the ways in which the account works to normalize what might alternatively be considered extreme preventive health behaviour. Although the procedure remains controversial, prophylactic mastectomy is increasingly presented as a treatment option for women considered to be at high risk of …
“Asylum seekers”, “boat people” and “illegal immigrants”
This paper is concerned with representations of people entering Australia to request asylum. The study critically analyses the role of social categorisation in descriptions about these people, drawn from texts available through the Australian print media. The aim is to examine constructions that constitute marginalising practices toward people who request asylum in Australia. It is argued that traditional approaches to social categorisation have …
Modern racism in the media
Recent discursive research suggests that contemporary racism is typically accomplished in terms of subtle, flexibly managed and locally contingent discussion of the `problems' associated with minority groups. This study contributes to this work by focusing on the ways in which a particular formulation: `the possibility of change' was repeatedly implicated in descriptions of two `riots' that received widespread media attention in Australia: one in…
Representations of the stem-cell cloning fraud
The meteoric rise of Professor Wu Sook Hwang who had claimed to have successfully cloned embryonic stem cells in two landmark papers published in Science (2004, 2005) came to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the findings reported in both papers had been deliberately fabricated. Given the heightened expectations associated with therapeutic-cloning advances and their potential for alleviating a range of illnesses, this recent case of scien…
Managing accountability for domestic violence
Psychological research and popular discussion around domestic violence/intimate partner abuse have focussed on broad features of descriptive accounts such as victim precipitation, excusing of aggressors, and minimizing or denying the violence. Few studies have examined the finer detail of how such matters are routinely invoked in talk, and how they are regularly built in ways that make their authors appear credible and warranted. This study uses …
Gender and Disadvantage in the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Boys
This article offers a discursive analysis of accounts of boys’ underachievement produced during the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education (2002). Analysis focuses on two interpretative repertoires through which boys’ positioning as ‘educationally disadvantaged’ was accomplished. Both repertoires depicted current curricula and assessment as ‘favouring’ female students. One repertoire established boys’ ‘disadvantaged’ status within …
Hypothetical active-voicing
Accountability, monitoring and surveillance
Regulation of athletes' bodies is commonplace in sporting environments, despite evidence that athletes have a higher risk of developing disordered eating than non-athletes. This article explores how athletes' bodies are regulated in practice, building on examinations of body surveillance in other contexts. Over 40 interactions occurring during body monitoring are analysed. Athletes, pre-emptively or following an explicit request, accounted for th…
Career transitions and identity
Athletes’ career transitions have received widespread research attention and have been identified as potentially distressing for athletes. Yet, the transition back into elite sport following retirement, although rare, has not been a focus of research attention. The concept of athlete identity has been widely researched within sport psychology to give insight into the varied experiences of athletes, especially in relation to the transition out of …
Co-Implicating and Re-Shaping Clients' Suggestions for Behavioural Change in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Practice
This article uses conversation analysis to examine Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) interactions with clients diagnosed with depression. The analysis explicates some routine conversational practices used by therapists in CBT to involve or co-implicate clients in the decision-making process regarding behavioural change. The article illustrates how the co-implication of clients in plans for behavioural change involves complex, therapist-guided s…
I Just Want to Talk
Literature on men's health help-seeking suggests that, consistent with hegemonic masculine ideals, men display a general preference for solution-focused interaction. Men's health services routinely orient to this preference, emphasising assistance in the form of practical advice. Little research, however, has examined the nature of actual interactions between men and health professionals. The present paper analyses interaction on a men's telephon…
Making arrangements in talk-in-interaction
Arrangement making is understood to be a “closing-relevant action” (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), but little attention has been given to how people arrive at mutually acceptable plans for the future. Telephone conversations between clients and staff of community and home care (CHC) services were studied to identify how arrangements for future services were made. A recurrent sequence was observed in which clients were informed of future arrangement a…
The normalisation of body regulation and monitoring practices in elite sport
Prevalence of disordered eating is higher in athlete populations than in the general population. This paper explores the sociocultural context within which athletes are vulnerable to poor health behaviours and potentially poor mental health. Within sport settings, dominant ideals of body regulation and self-surveillance are normalised and leave athletes vulnerable to eating disorders. This paper explores how such ideals and understandings around …
Clients' resistance to therapists' proposals
Dealing with third-party complaints on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline
This article examines how third-party complaints were responded to by counsellors on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline. Much prior conversation analytic research has shown that third-party complaints in institutional settings are embedded in other activities and treated as secondary to the main interactional business. As such, complaints are routinely responded to with a shift to a new, institutionally relevant activity (e.g. the reason f…
“[It] does not explain everything ... , nor does it explain nothing ... it explains some things”
Despite advances in the representation of women in positions of leadership, gender-based inequalities persist. A particular dilemma for female leaders concerns whether to acknowledge, or avoid talking about, their experiences of gender and gender inequality in public life. Routinely, women who confront such discrimination experience social and personal repercussions; however, those who remain silent are often criticised for failing to support wom…
Dementia on Facebook
Your Brain Matters
The Internet has been argued to provide diverse sites for health communication and promotion, including issues that constitute major public health priorities such as the prevention of dementia. In this study, discursive psychology is used to examine how information about dementia risk prevention was presented on the websites of the most prominent English-language, nonprofit dementia organizations. We demonstrate how information about dementia ris…
Men’s talk about anxiety online
Although anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorder among Australian men, very little is known about men's experiences of living with, and seeking help for, anxiety. This article examines how male users of an online discussion forum for "anxiety" describe their anxiety in their opening posts. Of particular interest is how such descriptions attend to issues of authenticity and the types of support that men appear to be seeking…
I Feel Abused by My Own Mind
Men's experiences with anxiety are under-researched and poorly understood. Existing research gives little indication of how men talk about anxiety in situ, and little is known about how men describe their experiences of anxiety. Online discussion forums provide an opportunity to conduct naturalistic observations of how men describe their experiences with anxiety without the influence of a researcher. Thematic analysis, informed by principles of d…
My Skill Is Putting on a Mask and Convincing People Not to Look Closer”
Although anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorder in Australia, little is known about men’s anxiety help-seeking practices. This study investigates how male users of an online discussion forum accounted for engaging in troubles-telling in an online community. Posts on an online discussion forum written by men who identify as experiencing anxiety were analysed using discursive psychology, through the identification of four i…
Psychology (27 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Political science (22 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Politics (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (10 works) · Medicine (10 works)