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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses the entanglement of contexts which arise in the dynamic of relationships. It draws on Bateson’s theory of schismogenesis which describes relational processes oscillating between different styles of polarisation.

Paper long abstract

In an essay with the title ‘Glossing Emotions’ Crapanzano suggested that emotions ‘help call the context’ He referred to feelings and affect and the naming (glossing) of these. He noted that the emergence and expression of emotions and affect change the very context in which they occur. In this paper I expand on this idea by suggesting that emotions and affect are generated by a combination of processes, relational, psychological, biographical and social, experienced by individuals. This suggests that a psychological anthropology in which emotions are understood as forces which emerge relationally in specific contexts, constitute a fertile area for ethnographic study and one which, along with an interest in reflexivity, takes on particular urgency This is so for two reasons: 1) emotions and affect are phenomena which are evoked and ever present relationally between persons and between persons and things and contexts, and 2) because this is so for both ethnographer and participants. The paper suggests that in this way there are similarities between ethnographic and therapeutic, particularly, systemic therapeutic, enquiries. The paper will take us to the theory of schizmogenesis developed by Gregory Bateson. It will provide descriptions of sequences of systemic psychotherapy work in a mental health clinic with a mixed race couple in which psychological and mental states and family circumstances are hailed into a racist dynamic of polarisation and impasse. It will discuss positions open to the clinician/ethnographer researcher, who finds themselves in the middle of this dynamic, and the dilemmas they may face.