This book offers a critical perspective of the dominant discourses within the field of psychological trauma. It provides a challenge to normative western constructs and unsettles assumptions about accepted notions of universality and the nature of trauma. Traditionally the concept of psychological trauma has been widely accepted within mental health professions. However, in a post-positivist era, the language of mental health is shifting and making room for alternative discourses that include wider contextual influences, such as the impact of sociological, cultural, and technological...

This book examines the emergence of psychologised discourses of the self in education and considers their effects on children and young people, on relationships both in and out of school and on educational practices. It undertakes a Foucauldian genealogy of the discourses of the self in education in order to scrutinise the ‘focal points of experience’ for children and young people.  Part One of the book offers a critical analysis of the discourses of the self that operate within interventions of self esteem, self concept, self efficacy and self regulation and their...