These words, written twenty years ago by renowned social constructionist Ken Gergen, are surely worth pondering today. "In important degree, identity politics is a descendent of Western, individualist ideology. It is not the single individual who commands our interest in this case; rather individual identity is conflated with group identity. Individual...
The assumption of an internal or mental world invites alienation, loneliness, distrust, hierarchy, competition, and self-doubt; favored is a society in which people become commodities and relationships are devalued. This concept of bounded being finds its origins not within the interior of individual minds, but within co-action. It is from...
I just got word that a new book to which I contributed is hot off the presses. It’s titled Critical Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling: Implications for Practice. Editor Del Loewenthal, Professor of Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Roehampton in the UK, has done an impressive job of bringing...
I few months ago I was invited to write a chapter for a book being published on the topic of critical psychotherapy, counseling and psychoanalysis. I’ve begun working on it this week and am at that early stage in writing (for me) where something is emerging, but I don’t know...
January 9, 2012 To go a bit deeper into the underlying problems with the theory and practice of psychology that the controversy over the DSM-5 exposes, I invite you to do some philosophizing. What assumptions must people be making— about persons; therapy, the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic discourse; illness, cure and treatment; emotions...