Deconstruction Of Psychotherapy

`I enjoyed this book, and think that it should find a grateful and attentive readership in the practical field as well as being a central text in academic settings. It will also be well received by those, like myself, for whom the interest is more in deconstructing than psychotherapy′ - Dialogues This book takes the discursive and postmodern turn in psychotherapy a significant step forward and will be of interest to all those working in mental health who are concerned with challenges to oppression and processes of emancipation. It achieves this by: reflecting on the role of psychotherapy in contemporary culture; developing critiques of language in psychotherapy that unravel its claims to personal truth; and the reworking of a place in the transformative therapeutic practice. Deconstruction is brought to bear on the key conceptual and pragmatic issues that therapists and clinical psychologists face, and the project of therapy is opened up to critical attention and reconstruction. The book provides clear reviews of different viewpoints and will help readers to understand the complex terrain of debates.

`Fast becoming a contemporary classic... this book tries both to be critical and engender critical thinking in a number of ways. It offers an overview of a number of theories that address human distress as well as particular forms of "pathology". This book effectively highlights the way that western society has taken "normal"; and "abnormal" emotional states to be factual entities rather than the constructed understandings of human phenomena that they are.... should be on the reading list of every course/module that attends to human distress′ - Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis This practical and accessible critique of the institutions, practices and presuppositions that underlie the study of `psychopathology′ will be invaluable for students and practitioners who are working to understand mental health and distress. The authors - who come from backgrounds in clinical psychology, psychiatric social work, psychoanalysis, psychology teaching and action research - challenge the traditions of the field. They analyze the notion of `psychopathology′ as a conventional term in psychology and psychiatry through the language and institutions that hold it in place; and explore the implications of deconstructive ideas for the theories and practices that sustain clinical treatments; and offer an alternative way of seeing `psychopathology′, with accounts of critical professional work and good practice. Deconstructing Psychopathology is invaluable reading for students, academics and practitioners across a range of disciplines who are working to understand mental health and distress, including clinical and counselling psychology, psychiatry, psychiatric social work, counselling and psychotherapy.

`I enjoyed this book, and think that it should find a grateful and attentive readership in the practical field as well as being a central text in academic settings. It will also be well received by those, like myself, for whom the interest is more in deconstructing than psychotherapy' -Dialogues This book takes the discursive and postmodern turn in psychotherapy a significant step forward and will be of interest to all those working in mental health who are concerned with challenges to oppression and processes of emancipation. It achieves this by: reflecting on the role of psychotherapy in contemporary culture; developing critiques of language in psychotherapy that unravel its claims to personal truth

Ian Parker has been a leading light in the fields of critical and discursive psychology for over 25 years. The Psychology After Critique series brings together for the first time his most important papers. Each volume in the series has been prepared by Ian Parker, and presents a newly written introduction and focused overview of a key topic area. Psychology After Deconstruction is the second volume in the series and addresses three important questions: What is ‘deconstruction’ and how does it apply to psychology? How does deconstruction radicalize social constructionist approaches in psychology? What is the future for radical conceptual and empirical research? The book provides a clear account of deconstruction, and the different varieties of this approach at work inside and outside the discipline of psychology. In the opening chapters Parker describes the challenge to underlying assumptions of ‘neutrality’ or ‘objectivity’ within psychology that deconstruction poses, and its implications for three key concepts: humanism, interpretation and reflexivity. Subsequent chapters introduce several lines of debate, and discuss their relation to mainstream axioms such as ‘psychopathology’, ‘diagnosis’ and ‘psychotherapy’, and alternative approaches like qualitative research, humanistic psychology and discourse analysis. Together, the chapters in this book show how, via a process of ‘erasure’, deconstructive approaches question fundamental assumptions made about language and reality, the self and the social world. By demonstrating the application of deconstruction to different areas of psychology, it also seeks to provide a ‘social reconstruction’ of psychological research. Psychology After Deconstruction 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 within deconstruction to undergraduates and postgraduate students across the social sciences.

Since the early 1970s, social psychology has been in crisis. At the time Reconstructing Social Psychology (Armistead) provided a critical review of theories and assumptions in the discipline. Originally published in 1990, this title not only updates that review but illustrates the ways in which assumptions had changed at the time. The crisis is no longer seen as one which can be resolved within social psychology itself, but rather as one more deeply rooted in modern society. The contributors look at the issues raised by deconstruction in the other human sciences, as well as investigating the claims made by social psychology as a discipline. They examine the rhetoric and texts of social psychology, analysing how the texts which hold the discipline together obtain their power. The arguments include the political implications of deconstructive ideas, focusing on particular issues such as research, therapy and feminism. Deconstructing Social Psychology presents a strong selection of new critical writing in social psychology. It will still be a useful text for students of psychology, social science, and sociology, and for those working in the area of language.

Psychotherapists have a love-hate relationship with theories, often clinging to those that are unsatisfying and incomplete. Deconstruction of Psychotherapy examines the functions and failings of theory, and, most critically for clinicians, the gap between theory and practice. It looks at the purposes and perils of ardent allegiances irrespective of a particular school or strategy. This means examining the many uses and abuses of the clinician's belief system. While therapists need to be committed to a body of beliefs, an inability to look beyond it can be countertherapeutic; hiding behind a theory may be as bad as not having one to relinquish. Moreover, deconstruction of the positive and negative elements of theory reveals therapists' uncertainty as they acknowledge that one of their compasses resides somewhere between myth and truth.

This book reviews the significance of deconstruction for a new generation of psychologists, and shows how deconstructive approaches question underlying assumptions in psychology about language and reality, the self and the social world.