This thesis examines how female athletes relate to and interpret their experiences of pain. Starting from the position that the meaning of pain is not given but is interpreted, this thesis takes as its central question: what compels athletes to interpret their pain in the ways that they do? Previous sociological research argues that athletes accept pain, risk, and injury because they have become normalized aspects of sport. In contrast, this thesis explores the specific individual ways athletes find traction with the normalized practice of tolerating pain in sport. Drawing on the in-depth unstructured and semi-structured interviews I conducted with female athletes, I primarily turn to Kleinian psychoanalytic thought to read how these athletes relate to their pain and the discourses on pain they discuss. In particular, I consider how they psychically manage the difficult aspects of their pain experiences in the process of narrating them. Taking the interview conversation as a site of the social workings of pain, I analyze how the listener has a bearing on how the interviewees interpret and express their pain. In focusing on pain (rather than pain, risk, and injury) this research endeavors to hold onto the complexity and diversity of pain, as well as the full complexity of the athlete as a subject who interprets her experiences both consciously and unconsciously. On the basis of this research I suggest that an ethical response to athletes pain may not always entail trying to prevent or reduce this pain. Instead, I argue that it may be more important to acknowledge what is difficult about pain, which varies for different subjects. For some the difficulty of pain is what it signifies, for others what is difficult is acknowledging ones own relation to pain or having ones relation to pain acknowledged by others, and for others still, the pain may be unavoidable, and so what is at stake is not whether pain is suffered but how it is negotiated. Finally, I suggest we need to develop how sociologists understand processes of normalization, to account for the complex ways athletes may wittingly engage in experiences of pain.

La presente Tesis es un modo de concluir un largo proceso en el que la reflexión, la práctica y verificación clínica y la lectura de diversos textos se fueron combinando con una serie de viajes para la consulta de fuentes, incluso con entrevistas y búsqueda en archivos de París. El tema escogido desarrollará –desde una perspectiva histórica- una cuestión que se refiere a los fundamentos mismos del psicoanálisis. La hipótesis más general que se formula es que existe una relación estrecha entre psicoanálisis y lenguaje. El psicoanálisis es una experiencia de lenguaje, es decir, se trata de un sujeto que habla a un analista que tiene como respuesta la interpretación. Esta cuestión está presente en la obra de Freud y es una aportación original de Lacan el hacerla explicita y teorizarla. Por ello se hace necesario ubicar dos sujetos históricos (Freud y Lacan) para demostrar cómo está presente en el primero la cuestión del lenguaje y cuál es la aportación original de Lacan en su “retorno” a Freud. Se intentará demostrar que la cuestión del lenguaje es una constante a lo largo de toda la obra de Freud que, si bien no es teorizada explícitamente, marca sus elaboraciones. El recorrido histórico que se realizará se inicia pues con el descubrimiento freudiano. A partir de la escucha de lo que decían sus pacientes, se despierta en Freud una preocupación por la significación y el lenguaje; este interés es anterior a la creación del psicoanálisis. El objetiva que se persigue en este punto es poder demostrar que esta anterioridad lleva a Freud a definir el aparato psíquico, o más exactamente, que hay una definición que se aproxima a la de una cadena significante (frástica), y en la que Freud precisa cómo se crean los elementos que establecen cadenas asociativas y que el valor afectivo, que no se desgasta en palabras, es una satisfacción pulsional que opera como inercia. Un segundo objetivo, en lo que hace al descubrimiento freudiano, es demostrar que la referencia a la cuestión "Psicoanálisis y lenguaje” pasa por "los usos lingüísticos" y el lenguaje fundamental. Esta cuestión se halla ya explicitada en 1895 y se refiere a éste como “fuente común”, un término que Freud toma de Schreber. Para hablar de la aportación original de Lacan al tema objeto de estudio es necesario primero hacer un recorrido por los post-freudianos, y ver cómo tratan la cuestión del lenguaje, analizando a continuación cuáles de sus referencias son utilizadas por Lacan. Todo ello nos llevará al tercer objetivo, con el que se intentará demostrar que el camino de Jacques Lacan está orientado desde el comienzo por su preocupación por el lenguaje, un interés que es (como en el caso de Freud) anterior a su entrada en el psicoanálisis. Lo que Lacan llama el inicio de su "enseñanza” es el punto donde comienza a teorizar sobre el tema “Psicoanálisis y lenguaje". De hecho, dicha cuestión (formulada como tal) casi no existía antes de Lacan. Ciertamente, en Freud se constatan importantes referencias sobre el lenguaje y hay un valioso aporte a la semiología, pero no hay una teorización específica del tema. El cuarto objetivo es trabajar la diferencia que hay en la enseñanza de Lacan entre las “leyes de la palabra” y las “leyes del lenguaje”. Dada la amplitud de la obra de Jacques Lacan, esta Tesis se centra en el desarrollo de sus ideas hasta 1957, ya que interesa ubicar dos "momentos cruciales”; el primero, 1953, donde Lacan data el comienzo de su enseñanza. Lacan demuestra, en ese momento, que el psicoanálisis no es marginal a la cuestión del lenguaje pues el inconsciente está estructurado como un lenguaje y la palabra es su medio. Se trata de un campo de lenguaje organizado por la palabra sometida a la ley hegeliana del reconocimiento. El segundo momento se ubica en 1957. Después de reescribir el Edipo en términos significantes, Lacan hablará, tomando los aportes de la lingüística estructural, de las “leyes del lenguaje”. Es entonces cuando podrá precisar qué quiere decir “el inconsciente estructurado como un lenguaje": articulado por la metáfora y la metonimia. El apartado de conclusiones permite el pasaje de la investigación histórica al marco explicativo y la apertura de nuevos derroteros de trabajo.

It is argued that physical (and not inherently psychical) properties are insufficient to constitute all else. Specifically they cannot constitute an instance (K1) of our knowledge that the number of existing things is at least one. This employs a new version of entry by entailment: Every fact as to the presence of a constituted trope is entailed by facts about the presence of the ontologically basic, where a property is ontologically basic if and only if the fact of its presence is not entailed (even allowing exhaustive definitions of all tropes in terms of their ultimate constituents) by facts about the presence of things non-identical to it. Existence is a mind-independent presence. Things can be present (to mind) as opposed to existing but must be accompanied by the presence of all of their parts and of anything else that their presence might entail. This includes some existing thing in the case that knowledge that something exists is present, since it is analytic that knowledge cannot be of what is not the case. Purely dynamical properties cannot exist apart from instances of some other property kind (on pain of regress as to what moves). Material properties can make a difference to cognitive states only in virtue of differences they can make to dynamical properties. Thus, any cognitive state present in some dynamical and material scenario must be present in an equivalent purely dynamical scenario, which cannot exist. Hence: 1) There can be no knowledge of existence, or thus trope K1, in a purely dynamical scenario. 2) There can thus neither be a trope K1 if only dynamical and material properties (and what they constitute) are present. So because there is a trope K1, there are one or more ontologically basic properties which are not dynamical or material. It is further argued that nothing ontologically basic is per se (directly and non-obscurely) conceivable except as psychicality or a categorical basis of a disposition to change or constancy (respectively, dynamism and materiality). Thus at least one ontologically basic property is either psychical or not per se conceivable. The latter proposition has less merit.

This thesis discusses the gift in terms of presence and interpretation using varied examples of image that form a visual culture. It contextualises the term "giftness" by analysing its use and our socio-cultural understanding of its function as it relates to the gift process. The hermeneutic processes attached to both the gift, and gifting, are multifarious and require examination of moments of instability present in the act of interpretation and meaning. The gift relationship is juxtaposed against the relationship between image and reader/observer to highlight the abstract quality of the gift and its inherent instability that exists within gift interpretation in general. The fundamental structure and unity of the gift, as is based upon relations between subjects, helps to identify and analyse systems of power and subjectivity developed in terms of investment in order to emphasise the complexities that arise through inter-subjective relations, particularly gift exchange, and those between subject and image. Certain theoretical models help to exemplify and illuminate this thesis, predominantly post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories. The gift’s condition of instability is further examined in terms of discursive formation and function, looking at how the gift is enunciated so that one can recognise a gift and giving, and acknowledge its problematic status. The relationship between subject and image is investigated to see if we are able to read this investment as a gift relationship within the context of giftness, that is when giftness operates as an instable and challenging element to discursive exchange in visual mediums such as film, painting, television, art and photography. An examination of the gift aporia in this thesis is directed towards a subject’s investment in the image. What transpires between subject and image is akin to what circulates between giver and receiver, on the basis of investment. On this basis, the present configuration of giftness is utilised in terms of the image.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-200). Filmography: leaves 199-200. Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR19816

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-302). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 253-259).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III, 1995. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (p. 587-597).