• Social relationships at school, 7,5 hp
• Research ethics, 7,5 hp (doctoral level)
• Children and young people in difficult situations in life, 7,5 hp
• Student essays (supervising), 15 hp

Keywords

High sensitivity, vulnerability, social categorization, neuropsychiatric diagnosis, expertise, discourse analysis, biosociality, citizenship.

Dissertation project

Title: Becoming the highly sensitive person: Discursive practices on identity, capability and dis/ability.

Supervisor: Mats Börjesson

Supervisor: Björn Sjöblom

Research area: Child and Youth Studies

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Biosociality in online interactions

  2021. Fanny Edenroth-Cato, Björn Sjöblom. Young - Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 1-17

  Article

  This article examines how young people in a Swedish online forum and in blogs engage in discussions of one popularized psychological personality trait, the highly sensitive person (HSP), and how they draw on different positionings in discursive struggles around this category. The material is analysed with concepts from discursivepsychology and post-structuralist theory in order to investigate youths’ interactions.The first is a nuanced positioning, from which youths disclose the weaknesses and strengths of being highly sensitive. Some youths become deeply invested in this kind of positioning, hence forming a HSP subjectivity. This can be opposed using contrasting positionings, which objects to norms of biosociality connected to the HSP. Lastly, there are rather distanced and investigative approaches to the HSP category. We conclude that while young people are negotiating the HSP category, they are establishing an epistemological community.

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• Kompetenta flickor med förmågor

  2020. Fanny Edenroth Cato. Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift 27 (1), 51-69

  Article

  This study analyses twelve children’s books that may be used to inform and educate both child-ren and adults about children’s experiences of having a neuropsychiatric diagnosis, or of being a highly sensitive person. From the perspective of poststructuralism, and through a problema-tization of concepts within the field of sociology of childhood, the study examines the subject formation of sensitive girls and dis/able-bodied childhoods. In the representations of the main characters the dis/abilities are mainly portrayed as abilities. Yet these stories also revolve around handling the children’s socially problematic behaviours and suffering. Children are seen as both competent and vulnerable agents – as beings and becomings. The article suggests that a subject formation that recurs in the books is an ideal child citizen. This type of competent child partici-pates in the decisions concerning her body and life, and demonstrates self-reflexivity, as well as a positive attitude towards interventions, which includes both engaging in therapy and openly disclosing the diagnosis. Through the process of identification, the girls become compliant to manage their behaviour and emotions according to the premise of the diagnoses, and on these terms, are redefining their personhood.

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• Det högkänsliga subjektets tillblivelse

  2019. Fanny Edenroth Cato (et al.).

  Thesis (Doc)

  This dissertation examines discursive practices about the highly sensitive person (HSP) from the perspective of knowledge production, categorization and community formation. In contemporary Sweden it has become increasingly common to talk about oneself in terms of being constituted in a particular way, e.g., as having a brain that functions differently than the average. The HSP often represents a person with exceptional capabilities and vulnerabilities, such as a sensitive nervous system and an empathetic disposition. The HSP discourse shares commonalities with the discourse of disability activism related to neuropsychiatric diagnoses. Namely, that by using specific discursive strategies, communities are being formed. The HSP community works to counteract the negative preconceived notions about high sensitivity, and bring to light the ignorance surrounding the needs of HSPs in society.

  This compilation thesis consists of a summarizing introduction and three articles. The empirical material covers posts from an online discussion forum for parents, and one aimed at young people, blogs composed by teenage girls, and children’s books written by different types of experts. These discursive arenas are analyzed with concepts from discursive psychology and poststructuralist theory. The results show how psychological and biomedical discourses are producing citizen subjects in relation to governing in specific social contexts. Within a Foucauldian tradition such forms of governance are termed biopolitics and biosociality.

  The first article examines how the HSP category is transforming notions of good motherhood. It suggests that mothers’ interaction in an online discussion forum reflects the intensive mothering norms of child-centered parenting. Mothers share their therapeutic narratives while highlighting the problems surrounding an incomprehensible social environment and the ordeals of having a guilty conscience. Through the prism of the highly sensitive child, however, motherhood acquires new anticipatory, considerate and susceptible norms, and strategies that constitute a highly sensitive parenting style.

  The second article studies how young people take different stances in discursive struggles concerning the HSP category online. The article illustrates how youths disclose the weaknesses and strengths of being highly sensitive, as well as objecting to norms of biosociality that are connected to the HSP. According to these findings young people are pioneering a new informed ethics of the self as they perform HSP subjectivity.

  The third article investigates children’s books that may be used as therapeutic tools aimed at informing and educating both adults and children about girls’ experiences of being HSPs, or of having a neuropsychiatric diagnosis. In these books dis/abilities are often transformed into exceptional capabilities. Through a process of identification, the girl protagonists may come to manage their behavior and emotions according to the premise of the diagnosis, thus, redefining their personhood as ideal citizen subjects.

  In conclusion, norms of biosociality and biopolitical governance regulate citizens to confess and assert their capabilities and dis/abilities, yet the discursive practices also reflect the construction of social problems and their potential solutions. Citizens appear to struggle to (re)define such problems in an identity political manner in order to (re)produce knowledge on their own terms.

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• Motherhood and highly sensitive children in an online discussion forum

  2018. Fanny Edenroth-Cato. Health

  Article

  Discourse on the highly sensitive child as a mode of individual coming-into-being is transforming notions of good motherhood. Mothering a child is weighted with practical challenges, normative expectations, and moral implications, all of which can be accentuated when parenting a child that appears to differ from the average. How mothers address themselves to a highly sensitive child can reveal much about contemporary currents in family life. Through analysis of the online discussions in a Swedish forum, I examine mothers’ discourse regarding categorization of highly sensitive children, elaboration on the behaviors that constitute this category of protean individuality, and the negotiation of motherhood norms. Three themes are identified: the way in which participants established entitlement to the application of the highly sensitive child label through a process of “enlightenment” based on observing their children and scrutinizing their own childrearing practices; discourse on the “allure” of the highly sensitive child since it depicts the children as super-normal and themselves as mothers called to the custodianship of a “different child”; and finally, how the highly sensitive child label deflects the guilt and frustration linked with handling challenging behaviors, in tension with permitting the sensitive child’s self-determined development. The article suggests that the mothers’ discourse reflects the intensive mothering norms of child-centered parenting that prevail in Western countries such as Sweden. Through the lens of the highly sensitive child, however, motherhood acquires new anticipatory, considerate and susceptible norms, and strategies that constitute a highly sensitive parenting style.

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• Självhjälpsgrupper som erfarenhetsutbyte och testa-dig-själv

  2016. Fanny Edenroth Cato, Mats Börjesson, Eva Palmblad. Socialt arbete och internet, 150-165

  Chapter

  Kapitel 9, Självhjälpsgrupper som erfarenhetsutbyte och testa-dig-själv, är skrivet av Fanny Edenroth Cato, Mats Börjesson och Eva Palmblad. I kapitlet beskrivs hur individer samlar sig på internet kring diagnoser och andra problematiska livsomständigheter. Kapitlet fokuserar på hur självtester integreras i dessa sammanhang: hur de är uppbyggda och hur de är tänkta att användas. Oavsett om den enskilda gruppen strävar efter diagnosstatus (som i fallet ADHD), eller inte (Highly Sensitive Persons) eller uppvisar ambivalens i diagnosfrågan (medberoende), så menar författarna att det finns gemensamma nämnare i de logiker som testa-dig-själv-manualer innebär. Teoretiskt intressant är även det faktum att tester i vår tid alltmer formuleras av företrädare för den egna gruppen, att jämföras med en tidigare historia där detta primärt sköttes av vetenskapligt skolade professioner och institutioner.

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Show all publications by Fanny Edenroth Cato at Stockholm University