ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to develop an ‘ecological-constructionist’ analysis of the context of disorientation and dizziness. The social constructionist aspect of this analysis is represented by a focus on how discourse and practice have contributed to contemporary conceptualisations and experiences of disorientation. Since medical discourse and practice have a particularly profound influence over the way in which ‘health problems’ are construed, the first half of the chapter will be devoted principally to a consideration of how complaints of dizziness have been interpreted and managed by medical professionals over the past century. However, medical and scientific discourse is embedded in a wider system of shared meanings and values, and in the second half of the chapter I shall explore some of the metaphoric connotations of orientation and disorientation conveyed in literary and philosophical writings, and contemporary language and culture. Material aspects of disorientation will be addressed by an ‘ecological’ analysis of the way in which disorientation affects the functional relationship between the individual and their environment. Whereas reductionist physiological explanations for dizziness attempt to isolate the physical from the psychic causes, the ecological perspective reveals that the material and psycho-social aspects of this functional relationship are intimately linked.
