Beginning from the premise that psychology needs to be questioned, dismantled and new perspectives brought to the table in order to produce alternative solutions, this book takes an unusual transdisciplinary step into the activism of Black feminist theory. The author, Suryia Nayak, presents a close reading of Audre Lorde and other related scholars to demonstrate how the activism of Black feminist theory is concerned with issues central to radical critical thinking and practice, such as identity, alienation, trauma, loss, the position and constitution of individuals within relationships,...

Beginning from the premise that psychology needs to be questioned, dismantled and new perspectives brought to the table in order to produce alternative solutions, this book takes an unusual transdisciplinary step into the activism of Black feminist theory. The author, Suryia Nayak, presents a close reading of Audre Lorde and other related scholars to demonstrate how the activism of Black feminist theory is concerned with issues central to radical critical thinking and practice, such as identity, alienation, trauma, loss, the position and constitution of individuals within relationships,...

In what ways has psychology become more influential in Western society? In this book author Ole Jacob Madsen considers the notion of a Therapeutic Turn in Western culture the tendency for psychology to permeate ever new spheres within society.

The Therapeutic Turn evaluates the increasing prevalence of psychology in several areas of Western society: Western consumer culture, contemporary Christianity, self-help, sport and politics. Madsen proposes that there are problematic aspects to this development which are seldom recognised due to a widely held assumption that...

Many people who work in education start out with enthusiastic ideals about education as a positive force that can spur change in the life of the learner and in society at large, yet find themselves frustrated with a bureaucratic system that often alienates and excludes many of its students. This is particularly true for students identified as having "special educational needs" (SEN) or disability, a label often used to justify the ways in which students are failed by a system that focuses on narrow definitions of knowledge, seeks to normalise and control behaviour, and values economic...

Many people who work in education start out with enthusiastic ideals about education as a positive force that can spur change in the life of the learner and in society at large, yet find themselves frustrated with a bureaucratic system that often alienates and excludes many of its students. This is particularly true for students identified as having "special educational needs" (SEN) or disability, a label often used to justify the ways in which students are failed by a system that focuses on narrow definitions of knowledge, seeks to normalise and control behaviour, and values economic...

Psychology defines people who take pleasure in the suffering of others as having a form of mental illness, while media representations frame such behaviour as evil . This is hotly contested territory, not least where sexual violence is concerned violence which feminist voices argue is related to power rather than sex.

Perverse Psychology examines psychiatric constructions of sexual violence and transgenderism from the 19th century until the latest DSM-5 diagnoses. It uses discourse analysis to interrogate the discursive boundaries between 'normal' and 'abnormal' rape,...

The methods developed by Freud and Marx have enabled a range of scholars to critically reflect upon the ideological underpinnings of modern and now postmodern or hypermodern western societies. In this intriguing book, the discipline of psychology itself is screened through the twin dynamics of Marxism and psychoanalysis. David Pavon-Cuellar asks to what extent the terms, concerns and goals of psychology reflect, in fact, the dominant bourgeois ideology that has allowed it to flourish.

The book charts a gradual psychologization within society and culture dating from the nineteenth...

Critical psychology argues that all ways of knowing involve power relations. Women s spirituality in the form of witchcraft and sorcery are prime examples of the way modernity and the European colonial project impacted indigenous peoples and women s ways of knowing. Feminist Spirituality under Capitalism discusses the importance of women s spiritual knowledge throughout history and under the current socio-economic consensus. Within a critical analysis of the subjugation of certain knowledges, it investigates in particular the role that psychology and psychiatry have played in the...