In this wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between mental distress and social constructionism, eminent cross-disciplinary scholars rework modernist assumptions about the phenomenology of mental dysfunction. The authors address how specific cultural, economic and historical forces converge in contemporary psychiatry and psychology, how new syndromes, subjectivities and identities are being constructed and deconstructed in technological, culturally mediated and hyper-reflexive contexts, and what new critiques and understandings of pathology' seem viable, given these still emerging...

Uses discourse analytic terms to examine some of psychology's most fundamental concepts. Focusing on memory and attribution, the book shows the way their compartmentalization and failure to theorize adequately about language usage in everyday social practices has led to important weaknesses.

Explores the basis for a postmodern psychology. Contributors examine key themes within postmodernist/post-structuralist theory such as: the nature of knowledge, the central role of language, concept of self, and their implications for reworking psychology in the postmodern world.