Calling, Permission, and Fulfillment

The Interembodied Experience of Breastfeeding

Bibliographic Data

ID4610725
AuthorsK Ryan (0000-0002-6086-5730, La Trobe University, corresponding author), Les Todre, Les Todres (Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom), Jo Alexander (Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom)
Year2011
Volume21
Issue6
Pages731-742
Publication date2011-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Health Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1049-7323 • E-ISSN: 1552-7557
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1049732310392591
PMID21139042
OpenAlexW2112196671
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited36

Drawing on examples from in-depth interviews with 49 women, in this article we aim to open up a discursive space for women and health professionals to begin to explore the phenomenon of the interembodied experience of breastfeeding. Although acknowledging that social dimensions partially constitute the lived body, we further the view that the lived body's understanding is embedded in contexts far more complex than those that can be represented by language. We argue that women's narratives of their breastfeeding experience contained instances of the body "understanding" its emotional task at a prelogical, preverbal level. We identified three central, iterative dimensions of the phenomenon- calling, permission, and fulfillment-that occurred prereflexively in the protected space provided by the mother, a space that was easily disrupted by unsupportive postnatal practices. We offer this eidetic understanding and conceptual framework and suggest that it provides new (less damaging) subject positions and ways of behaving

Breastfeeding · Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Linguistics · Lived experience · Narrative · Permission · Phenomenon · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Breastfeeding Practices and Influences · Computer Science · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Medicine · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology

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