Psychology After the Crisis: Scientific paradigms and political debate
About this ebook
Psychology After the Crisis is the first volume in the series and addresses three important questions:
- What was the crisis in psychology and why does it continue now?
- How did debates regarding the traditional ‘laboratory experiment’ paradigm in psychology set the scene for discourse analysis?
- Why are these paradigm debates now crucial for understanding contemporary critical psychology?
The first two chapters of the book describe the way critical psychology emerged in Britain during the 1970s, and introduce four key theoretical resources: Marxism, Feminism, Post-Structuralism and Psychoanalysis. The chapters which follow consider in depth the critical role of Marxist thinking as an analytic framework within psychology. Subsequent chapters explore the application and limitations of critical psychology for crucial topics such as psychotherapy, counselling and climate change. A final chapter presents an interview which reviews the main strands within critical psychology, and provides an accessible introduction to the series as a whole.
Psychology After the Crisis is essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies, and for discourse analysts of different traditions. It will also introduce key ideas and debates in critical psychology for undergraduates and postgraduate students across the social sciences.
About the author
Ian Parker was Co-Founder and is Co-Director (with Erica Burman) of the Discourse Unit. He is a member of the Asylum: Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry collective, and a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester. His research and writing intersects with psychoanalysis and critical theory. He is currently editing a book series Lines of the Symbolic (on Lacanian psychoanalysis in different cultural contexts) for Karnac Books. He edited the 2011 four-volume Routledge major work Critical Psychology, and is editing the series Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary Boundaries Re-Thought. His books on critical perspectives in psychology began with The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology, and How to End It (Routledge, 1989), and continued with Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology (Routledge, 1992). His recent books include Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research (Open University Press, 2005) and Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation (Pluto Press, 2007).
