"...the world was getting smaller" : women, agoraphobia and bodily boundaries.

Davidson, Joyce (2000) "...the world was getting smaller" : women, agoraphobia and bodily boundaries. Area, 32 (1). pp. 31-40. ISSN 0004-0894

Abstract

Drawing on individual and group interviews with agoraphobic women, this paper explores sufferers' accounts of agoraphobia as entailing apparent dysfunctions in spatial awareness. In particular, it examines the effects of agoraphobic anxiety on the lived boundaries of body and self and relates this to agoraphobics' contrasting experiences of the relative 'security' of the home and the unheimlich and disturbing architecture of the shopping mall.