Doing Psychology Critically: Making a Difference in Diverse Settings

by Isaac Prilleltensky, Geoffrey Nelson

How can psychologists incorporate recent insights about power, values and inequality in their work? What is the role of social justice in the practice of psychology? In this highly readable book Prilleltensky and Nelson tackle these questions and propose workable solutions. This is the first book to translate into action the principles of critical psychology. Using a value-based framework the authors propose guidelines for training and critical practice in clinical, counselling, educational, health, community, and work settings.

The authors base their approach on a combination of values for the promotion of personal, interpersonal, and collective well-being. They propose a set of values consisting of self determination, caring and compassion, health, respect for diversity, participation, community support and social justice. Because of its wide coverage, the book should be of interest to students and practitioners in psychology, mental health, and to users of psychological services in most fields of practice.

Doing Psychology
- Translates critical psychology theory into practice
- Applies to most fields of applied psychology
- Is written in an accessible style
§ includes tables and diagrams that illustrate recommendations for practice
- Follows a coherent framework
- Is a useful resource for training programmes in health, clinical, counselling, educational, community, and organisational psychology

ISAAC PRILLELTENSKY is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Wellness Promotion Unit at Victoria University in Melbourne. He is the author of The Morals and Politics of Psychology and co-editor of Critical An Introduction (with Dennis Fox) and Promoting Family Wellness and Preventing Child Maltreatment (with Geoffrey Nelson and Leslea Peirson).

GEOFFREY NELSON is Professor of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. He has served as Editor of the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health and is the author of Shifting the Paradigm in Community Mental Health (with John Lord and Joanna Ochocka) and co-editor of Promoting Family Fundamentals for Thinking and Action (with Isaac Prilleltensky and Leslea Peirson).

Genres: Psychology

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Uğur · Rating 4 out of 5]

The psychology of poverty or the poverty of psychology?
The book has been prepared from a perspective that seeks and gives answers to this philosophical question. And in the end, it turned out to be a wonderful work.

Before going into the content of the book, I think it would be right to talk a little about the general situation. As it is known, psychology has been approaching the issue of poverty with an increasing interest since the 90s and considers the issue of poverty as a social problem. However, it pathologizes this identified social problem and blames the patient (ie the poor). Dominant psychological approaches have both a restrictive and a limited approach to the issue of poverty, as they seek the solution from this point of view. This contributes to the creation of a thinking environment exactly as the system wants and is used continuously. If I were to tie the subject to the book, our authors presented the misery of psychology in this world environment, first of all, they examined the diagnosis-treatment ways of the dominant ideology (mainstream psychology), their areas of interest, and the issues that they occupied the society, and presented the determination of the collapse in the human soul and body. Secondly, by addressing the psychology of poverty, they uncovered the real "patient".

Of course, it was unthinkable that psychology, whose influence could not be overlooked in almost every field from human belief to sexuality, would not be used as a weapon in the ideological field as well. At this point, there is no need to discuss how correct a point has been made with the criticism brought. I find this book, whose language is quite simple and fluent, and its content quite full, valuable in terms of seeing what is told to you, what is hidden, what is not told, and how they can make you feel guilty. Happy reading.

[Em Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not usually into rating textbooks, but reading parts of this has fundamentally changed my thinking about power and oppression

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