School Of PsychologyContemporary Issues in Critical PsychologyWestern Sydney University Unit Code: 100537.1
Discipline: PSYCHOLOGY
Student Contribution Band: 1
Level: 4
Credit Points: 10
About this Unit
This unit will develop further the introductory knowledge of issues gained by students in Critical Debates in Psychology, providing an over-view of the main strands of current research and scholarship in critical psychology. It will give students a grounding in the various theoretical approaches which dominate the field of critical psychology today. This will include: an examination of epistemology and methodology in critical psychology – the turn to discourse; social constructionism; reflexivity and subjectivity in research and professional practice; ethics; and feminist epistemology and methodology. Several strands of critical psychology will be examined in detail: Ethics and Subjectivity: Theorising embodiment and corporeality; Spirituality and critical psychology; Culture and psychology: Black psychology, anti-racism and post-colonialism; Queer theory and performativity; and Psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis: The turn to psychoanalysis; Language and the unconscious: Lacanian theory and semiotics; Postructuralism and semiotics, the impact on critical psychology; Feminism and psychoanalysis: French Feminism, Klein and Horney, Discursive Psychologies. Emphasis is placed on the development of skills of critical evaluation of psychology, and of the intersection of psychology and cultural theory, in regard to content, ideology and disciplinary standpoint.