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Trance-Scripts is an analysis of the social construction of hypnosis, looking at the way in which versions of hypnosis are constituted in various kinds of texts and talk. The analysis is reflexive, in that it highlights its own constructed nature, including how it textually constructs the textually constructed nature of hypnosis. Taking a relativist and social constructionist perspective, hypnosis is revealed (or constructed) as a discursive and social practice, in how it is realized, conducted, reported, disputed, theorized, accounted for, debunked, and so on. The analysis examines a range of written materials on hypnosis, including historical, clinical, and social psychology textbooks, popular media, as well as transcriptions of hypnotic inductions. The thesis uses alternative literary forms (ALFs) as a way of highlighting the textual construction of its own, and others', claims to knowledge, and of creating, caricaturing, and analysing through parody, the thesis's topics. These topics include the connections between poetry, hypnosis, therapy and reflexivity proposed in the thesis, and also the standard uses of ALFs in reflexive work of this kind. Reflexive analysis is produced via a self conscious use of a metaphoric spiral, where analysis can take another turn upon a topic and offer another perspective. Thus, in a discussion on therapy, reflexivity becomes a therapeutic tool with which to confront and quieten the argument that reflexive analysis will result in an infinite regress. The presence of poetry in a social science thesis is intended to challenge conventional sociological and psychological analysis, in which poetry features (if at all) as some kind of social phenomenon, that folk called 'poets' produce, rather than being an appropriate and challenging analytic language, as it is used here. This abstract, given its contents, may be taking its work as a conventional abstract rather seriously. Time for the next turn.

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This dissertation presents an account of fictional discourse which is teleological. According to it, questions about what is said in fiction and how it ought to be said are answerable in terms of the goals and methods belonging specifically to fiction-making as a practice. Viewed in such a way, it is argued that the incompleteness of fictional discourse and its apparent tolerance of inconsistency are distinctive of it. Moreover, it is argued that there is a sense in which one can produce true statements in fiction without thereby committing one self to the thesis that words made use of in fiction are endowed with reference. Throughout the dissertation, the view espoused in it is contrasted with rival positions on the issues of what fiction is about, and whether it can be true. It is argued that a teleological account of fictional discourse can present a coherent alternative to these.

Women’s periodicals at the start of the twentieth-century were not just recorders but also producers of social and cultural change. They can be considered to both represent and construct gender codes, offering readers constantly evolving communal identities. This dissertation asserts that the periodical genre is a valuable resource in the investigation of communal identity formation and seeks to reclaim for historians of British modernist feminism a neglected publication format of the early twentieth century. I explore the discursive space of three unique women’s periodicals, Bean na hÉireann, the Freewoman, and Indian Ladies Magazine, and argue that these publications exemplify the importance of the early twentieth-century British woman’s magazine-format periodical as a primary vehicle for the communication of feminist opinions. In order to interrogate how the dynamic nature of each periodical is reflected and reinforced in each issue, I rely upon a tradition of critical discourse analysis that evaluates the meaning created within and between printed columns, news articles, serial fiction, poetry, and short sketches within each publication. These items are found to be both representative of a similar value of open and frank discourse on all matters of gender subordination at that time and yet unique to each community of readers, contributors and editors. The dissertation then discusses the disparate physical, political, and social locations of each text, impact of such stressors on the periodical community, and the relationships between these three journals. Ultimately, I argue that each journal offers a unique model of contested feminist identity specific to the society and culture from which the periodical arises, and that is established within editorial columns and articles and practiced within the figurative space of poetry and fiction selections in each journal.

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