Marseille 2007
Marseille 2007
Abstract book
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Abstract #603  -  Using psychological discourse and living with HIV: gay men, positive thinking, moralism and uncertainty
Session:
  22.4: Stigma (Parallel) on Monday @ 16.30-18.30 in Auditorium/Overflow Chaired by Heather Worth, Osman Malik
Authors:
  Presenting Author:   Dr Martin Holt - University of New South Wales, Australia
 
  Additional Authors:   
Aim:
Since the introduction of antiretroviral treatments, there has been increased interest in the psychological aspects of living with HIV. While there has been concern about the remedicalisation of HIV there has been less concern about its psychologisation. This paper considers how gay men make use of psychological techniques and discourse to cope with and make sense of living with HIV. In doing so, it demonstrates that psychological techniques can be both enabling and constraining for HIV-positive people, implying that the deployment of psychological techniques warrants greater scrutiny.
 
Method / Issue:
A memory-work framework was used to generate insight into peoples experiences of HIV. 15 HIV-positive gay men from Sydney participated in three separate memory-work groups, meeting during 2002-2003. The groups were formed with the aim of discussing and analysing the ways in which the men negotiated living with HIV in the era of antiretroviral treatments. The mens ages ranged from the mid-20s to the mid-50s, with a length of time since HIV diagnosis ranging from one to 15 years. All the men had taken drug treatments for HIV, although some were not on treatments at the time of the study. Participants chose a topic to discuss at each meeting (e.g. feeling infectious, self-limitations, changing medication), and wrote a memory of an incident related to that topic to present to the group. The written memories acted as focal points for discussion and debate. Transcripts of those discussions form the basis of the data presented here. Analysis drew upon the techniques of poststructuralist discourse analysis.
 
Results / Comments:
Participants talked about using psychological techniques (e.g. self-affirmation, positive thinking) as everyday approaches to living with HIV and used psychological discourse to describe significant and normative aspects of their experience. The use of psychological techniques such as positive thinking or self-affirmation seemed useful for some participants in coping with the challenges of HIV, but also generated problems in increasing participants levels of self-regulation. The individualising aspects of psy techniques also supported a moral division of HIV-positive people into those were successfully coping and those who were failing to cope. Although there were problematic aspects to psy techniques, participants also modified psy terminology and discourse to describe important aspects of their lives e.g. participants reworked the concept of denial to describe the ways in which they were changing their relationship to living with HIV.
 
Discussion:
Psy techniques can help people cope with the challenges of living with HIV. Unfortunately, the individualising tendencies of some techniques can subject HIV-positive people to greater levels of self-regulation and support divisive hierarchies between those who are judged to be successfully coping and those who are not. However, psy discourse also provides fertile material to describe and interpret the changing experience of living with HIV, and HIV-positive people will inevitably make use of psy concepts to understand and make sense of their experiences. Attention should therefore be focused on countering the individualising and moralising tendencies of some psychological techniques while remaining open to the creative uses of psy discourse by HIV-positive subjects.
 
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