Lived experience

Experience by proxy?

I'd say it was knowing all the facts, perhaps as a therapist about addiction but not living with/being a drug addict.
One would have experience of drug addiction and the other person a lived experience if that makes sense?

Vicarious experience?

The phrase ‘lived experience’ is nonsense. Despite other people’s suggestions ‘experience’ can only ever be something an individual has done. Any other interpretation completely changes the meaning of the word.

Though I await the feeble ‘language changes’ comment 😆

MaizieD

The phrase ‘lived experience’ is nonsense. Despite other people’s suggestions ‘experience’ can only ever be something an individual has done. Any other interpretation completely changes the meaning of the word.

Though I await the feeble ‘language changes’ comment 😆

And it's coming in from me.........I suppose it all depends in which context the language is being use and which discourse is being employed. If in a literary context, then 'lived experience' becomes part of the text painting a certain concept. If it appears in a conversation between pretentious 'modernists', then it flags up that someone is trying to be à la mode.

You mean as a tautology? It seems to have replaced direct experience but in contexts which are challenging.

In both contexts, it’s the opposite of theoretical knowledge. Most people will have seen someone operating a cash register or driving a bus but they may never have done it themselves.

Nobody can really know what it’s like to live with say chronic illness, disability, grief, poverty, trauma, unless they have experienced it. Nevertheless, our society functions in such a way that those who only have theoretical knowledge still have the responsibility of making decisions that affect people who do.

It reminds me of the letter that Diane Abbott got into so much trouble about when she compared discrimination against black people to other forms of discrimination.