(2024-03-20 14:46)Shipaxe Wrote:  

(2024-03-20 6:28)Siris Wrote:  The article and pdf is free only the physical book is sold. I actually had the oppoortunity to participate in these focus groups it was an interesting expirence.

The PDF isn’t free..? How do you access it freely?

https://furscience.com/publications/
Very top of the page. The portion you are reading from is towards the end of the study book. I was actually speaking with them directly about it at TFF this past weekend even. You only have to pay if you buy the physical book and they did that intentionally because they view it as giving back to the community that gave to the study.

(2024-03-20 6:28)Siris Wrote:  The article and pdf is free only the physical book is sold. I actually had the oppoortunity to participate in these focus groups it was an interesting expirence.

The PDF isn’t free..? How do you access it freely?

The article and pdf is free only the physical book is sold. I actually had the oppoortunity to participate in these focus groups it was an interesting expirence.

I agree with Bag's initial post. Pups, and everyone for that matter, please do your research and introspect about your feelings and experiences!

Additionally, there is a huge difference between questioning and grilling someone. Questioning is an attempt to correct misused terms and their definitions and to help a newcomer think critically about themselves. Hopefully in doing so, the newcomer re-evaluates their experiences in order to communicate and then participate in the community.

Years ago, grilling tended to be done aggressively, to force people to learn. It was often met with kneejerk reactions of angry outbursts from newcomers who were confused and already questioning themselves. The initial reaction of this tends to be "but why don't you just believe me?!?" Because you need to prove you are what you say you are; the community doesn't need to automatically believe you just because you say so. Think of it like when a parent says to you "because I said so". I know for me, that never worked and I always questioned it. So if someone questions you, just think about it and then answer. And it's okay to simply say "I don't know" or "I'm confused".

When I first joined the community I was grilled. It was harsh, and at the time scary and frustrating because in order to be accepted within the group, I had to have answers. To get those answers, I had to look within and track my experiences. While it certainly wasn't fun, it did help me to think critically about my experiences and why I thought I was a therian.

If someone questions you or even grills you, just explain yourself as best as you can. Most members of the community are willing to give newcomers the benefit of the doubt, but the newcomers in turn must be willing to listen and learn.

Critical thinking and questioning to learn are never bad things!

I've been working on logging out during school hours, so far accomplishing about an hour a day. It's a slow progress, but I'm doing it.

(2024-03-17 20:59)DustWolf Wrote:  I'm glad to see things moving forward in this department.

By the way, it might be a good idea to check if we are allowed to post these quotes to places such as TG. Sometimes paid articles have limitations in this regard.

LP,
Dusty

That is a fair point. I redacted the larger bits. According to the APA, no permission is required if the excerpt totals under 400 words.

I'm glad to see things moving forward in this department.

By the way, it might be a good idea to check if we are allowed to post these quotes to places such as TG. Sometimes paid articles have limitations in this regard.

LP,
Dusty

The result of FurScience's interviews and focus groups with therians at Anthrocon since 2016 is finally out. Tens, possibly hundreds of therians were interviewed one-on-one in close to hour-long sessions, their responses recorded, transcribed, and later analyzed anonymously. The study was published in The Humanistic Psychologist and is 20 pages long, detailing the experiences of therians and otherkin, along with associated analyses and a suggested re-terming of what we call "mental shifts," at least in the context of psychology. The abstract & impact statement reads:

"How do we use the world around us to become oriented, when what we perceive situates our experience as otherness? This article explores the intersubjective and embodied experiences of therians and otherkin: those who identify as beings other than solely human, such as an animal or a mythological creature. Through an application of phenomenologist Sara Ahmed’s concepts of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation, along with psychoanalytic theories of the mirror stage from Lacan and Winnicott, this article develops an understanding of therianthropy and otherkinship that accounts for the contextual and contested nature of the lived body. The article argues for a stance of cultural humility when engaging with forms of embodiment and subjectivity that challenge ontological boundary-setting between what lies within and beyond the domain of the human.

With increased intolerance and violence against other and toward anything deemed different within our societies, our calling as psychologists is to attempt to transform the world into one that is livable for all. By providing in-depth descriptions about the lived experience of therians and otherkin, we hope to foster understanding. By bracketing the natural attitude toward therianthropy and otherkinship, we also hope to destigmatize and depathologize their experiences while providing suggestions about affirmative clinical practice."

While most therians will already be familiar with the what this study will reveal, I'd consider this the closest thing to a "therapist's guide" to therianthropy/otherkin that currently exists. It's accessible for $20 through the APA website linked above. For those who would not like to pay for it, I will summarize below:

• The study analyzes the experiences of many therians and otherkin and seeks to "destigmatize and depathologize" our experiences. They provide well-structured examples of what we experience, as well as its psychosocial connotations starting from early childhood and into adult life.
• They define a therian as "an individual who believes that they are not human—or at least not completely human. Instead, they identify as a species of non-human animal that either currently exists or has existed and is now extinct," and an otherkin as a person identifying "as a nonhuman being that is typically considered mythical or fantasy-based (e.g., fairy, elf, unicorn)."
• They apply Sara Ahmed's work on the ideas of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation to alterhumanity. They dive into our preference for natural environments over manmade ones, our disconnect from other humans and our own bodies, species dysphoria (which they describe but do not explicitly name), and reorientation by means of our own personal image, shifting, seeking out community, and "ontological doubling" - "living [a] human life with its human demands, alongside a pervasive feeling of being out of place."
• They suggest the "re-terming" of what we call "mental shifts" and "phantom shifts" and the like as embodied shifts instead (specifically in reference to a previous paper), seeing as they involve more than just a shift in consciousness and can include physical sensations (such as phantom limbs) and can occur in response to the environment, by one's own volition, or spontaneously. While some may be against outside individuals coining terms for us, these are professional psychologists and this likely has more to do with their own understanding of us than anything.
  

This resonates a lot with me actually. Not my personality though, mostly my psyche and spirit, although I will have mental shifts if I get super happy, which can change my personality somewhat. Although I don't fully relate, just to that bit!

I think I've posted here before but after some time of exploring my Therianthropy I've got a more indepth explanation of my experience.

My Therianthropy is due to me being/interpreting my personality and psyche as being very feline like. I Identify as a cat because of the way I interpret my sense of self. The way I narrowed down my Theriotype (Bombay cat) is by researching which cat most represents me and my personality.