Alec Grant

This autoethnographic volume gathers a multiplicity of different voices in autoethnographic research from across psychology and mental health disciplines to address topics ranging from selfhood, trauma, emotional understanding, clinical psychology, and the experience of grief. Edited by two leading figures, this volume broadens the concept of psychology beyond its conventional, mainstream academic boundaries and challenges pre-conceived and received notions of what constitutes 'psychology' and 'mental health'. This book collects new autoethnographic writers in psychology and mental health from across as diverse a range of disciplines and in doing makes a strong case for the legitimacy of subjectivity, emotionality and lived experience as epistemic and pedagogic resources. The collection also troubles the related concept of 'mental health.' In contemporary times, this is either biomedically over-colonised (welcomed by some but resisted by others), often regarded by lay and professional people alike in terms of an 'ordered or disordered' binary (comforting for some but associated with stigma and othering for others), or, at worst, is reduced to a set of hackneyed memes - the stuff of Breakfast television (well-intentioned and undoubtedly reassuring and helpful for some but patronising and naïve for others). Overall, the volume promotes the subjective and lived-experiential voices of its contributors - the hallmark of autoethnographic writing. Autoethnographies in Psychology and Mental Health will be of interest to psychology and mental health students and professions with an interest in qualitative inquiry as it intersects with autoethnography and mental health

Although literature exists on the methodological development of autoethnographers in the classroom context, little has been written about achieving such development in online networks of dispersed individuals, and the social psychological difficulties between senior members of such networks that might ensue. This conversational autoethnography developed after Alec Grant, the first author, angrily withdrew by email from the South Coast Autoethnography Network (SCAN). Since its inception in 2013, the hub, or centre of operating activity of SCAN has historically been mostly shared between a small number of academics working in, or associated with, Sussex University and the University of Brighton in the south coast of England. With around 65 participants, SCAN aims to facilitate the development of autoethnographers, with many of its members inexperienced in the approach to differing degrees. In their conversational exchange, the authors explore, respond to, and try to make sense of and resolve, the tensions that developed in the group before and after Alec’s withdrawal from it. The authors believe that this article captures many of the interpersonal difficulties that might inevitably arise between senior members, in autoethnographic networks internationally. They therefore hope that it will serve as a useful resource for individual readers and network groups.