Living Outside Mental Illness demonstrates the importance of listening to what people diagnosed with schizophrenia themselves have to say about their struggle, and shows the dramatic effect this approach can have on clinical practice and social policy. It presents an in-depth investigation, based on a phenomenological perspective, of experiences of illness and...

Chicana voices are missing from the psychology of women. Though -Chicana feminisms- have only recently been enumerated, a feminist perspective has long existed in Chicano communities without ever having been explicitly named. Grounded in specific aspects of Chicano culture such as the contested role of La Malinche and the complexities of Marianismo, the distinguishing feature of Chicana feminisms has been their embrace of diversity. Chicanas readily acribe to many feminisms and do not expect there to be only one.

Focusing on young women between the ages of 20 and 30, Chicanas Speak...

Urban teens of color are often portrayed as welfare mothers, drop outs, drug addicts, and both victims and perpetrators of the many kinds of violence which can characterize life in urban areas. Although urban youth often live in contexts which include poverty, unemployment, and discrimination, they also live with the everydayness of school, friends, sex, television, music, and other elements of teenage lives. Inner City Kids explores how a group of African American, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Haitian adolescents make meaning of and respond to living in an inner-city community.

Psychotherapists have an ethical requirement to inform clients about their treatment methods, alternative treatment options, and alternative conceptions of their problem. While accepting the basis for this -informed consent- requirement, therapists have traditionally resisted giving too much information, arguing that exposure to alternative therapies could cause confusion and distress. The raging debates over false/recovered memory syndrome and the larger move towards medical disclosure have pushed the question to the fore: how much information therapists should provide to their...

In Flirting with Danger, Lynn M. Phillips explores how young women make sense of, resist, and negotiate conflicting cultural messages about sexual agency, responsibility, aggression, and desire. How do women develop their ideas about sex, love, and domination? Why do they express feminist views condemning male violence in the abstract, but often adamantly refuse to name their own violent and exploitive encounters as abuse, rape, or victimization?

Based on in-depth individual and collective interviews with a racially and culturally diverse sample of college-aged women,...

When, in 1992, the citizens of Colorado ratified Amendment 2, effectively stripping lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals of protection from discrimination under the state's constitution, the vote divided the state and left the gay population disspirited and angry. Their psychological predicament offered an opportunity to examine the precise intersection at which the individual meets social oppression.

Voted Out is the first to document the psychological impact of anti-gay legislation on the gay community, illustrating the range of reactions, from depression, anger, and anxiety to...

From Subject to Subjectivities profiles the recent debates about the role of qualitative and participatory methods in psychology, a discipline which has traditionally seen itself as a form of positivistic science. Contributors explain how fundamentally different views of the nature of reality and of scientific theory have shaped these debates, and how psychology is being transformed through the use of these methods.

At the heart of the book are 10 exemplars of interpretive and participatory action research which describe the rationale for and process of using these methods in...

Throughout the Western world our social fabric is being transformed, leaving few lives untouched. Girls growing up today face huge changes in the organization of family, education, and work.

Growing Up Girl explores the lives of girls who have grown up in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. It explores the complexities of class transformation as young women approach a radically altered labor market and examines the profound but different regulation to which young women of all social positions are subjected. Tracing three groups of girls from...

The Indian American community is one of the fastest growing immigrant communities in the U.S. Unlike previous generations, they are marked by a high degree of training as medical doctors, engineers, scientists, and university professors.

American Karma draws on participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore how these highly skilled professionals have been inserted into the racial dynamics of American society and transformed into -people of color.- Focusing on first-generation, middle-class Indians in American suburbia, it also sheds light on how these...

Autism has been defined by experts as a developmental disorder affecting social and communication skills as well as verbal and nonverbal communication. It is said to occur in as many as 2 to 6 in 1,000 individuals. This book challenges the prevailing, tragic narrative of impairment that so often characterizes discussions about autism.

Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone seriously engages the perspectives of people with autism, including those who have been considered as the most severely disabled within the autism spectrum. The heart of the book consists of...