2024/04/01 by Eduardo Duran, Eduardo Durán · 1 citation
Psychology · #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications #Social Representations and Identity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/07352751241240527
openalex publication_date 2024/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
This study explores the centrality of the senses for the maintenance or disruption of people’s commonsensical familiarity with the world. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people affected by depersonalization/derealization, which the American Psychiatric Association defines as a dissociative condition in which people perceive the world as dream-like, I conceptualize what I term somatic defamiliarization. I define somatic defamiliarization as a process whereby people experience previously unquestioned sensory phenomena, such as mundane objects or their bodies, as unfamiliar. Building on Berger and Luckmann’s work, I contend that somatic defamiliarization is a perpetual, albeit latent, condition of social life that threatens reality maintenance. I discuss how the concept of somatic defamiliarization can be applied to explore the somatic qualities of experiential ruptures that people may undergo in various circumstances, such as immigration or war.