‘It is a bit like being a parent’: A discourse analysis of how nursing identity can contextualize patient involvement in Danish psychiatry

Abstract

During an ethnographic field work in Danish psychiatry taking place between 2011 and 2013, the emergence of an exemplary textbook symbolized a dominant perception of the relationship between psychiatric nursing professionals and patients that contextualized their ways of involving the patient in clinical practice. Drawing on the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, this article elucidates how this particular textbook articulates the relation between two gendered subjects: a dominant and caring mother, and a childlike male patient. This article takes up the discussion about how nursing discourse is embedded in a range of ideological structures about gender, theory of science and ethics of the psychiatric field. It proceeds to discuss what possibilities and problems it delineates for the nursing profession and for patients, and involvement and recovery of patients in daily clinical practice.