Critical psychology and social constructionist approaches in mental health, paranoia, discourses of surveillance in contemporary culture.

This paper takes as its context widespread feelings of anxiety within neoliberal society caused by a combination of material and discursive factors including precarious access to work and resources. It is argued that the state uses 'discourses of affect' to produce compliant subjects able to deal with (and unable to desire beyond) neoliberal precarity and anxiety. Critical education theorists have argued that discourses of 'well-being', emotional support and self-help have gained increasing purchase in mainstream education and in popular culture. These discourses are dangerous because they are individualized and depoliticized, and undermine collective political struggle. At the same time there has been a 'turn to affect' in critical academia, producing critical pedagogies that resist state affective discourse. I argue that these practices are essential for problematizing neoliberal discourse, yet existing literature tends to elide the role of the body in effective resistance, emphasising intellectual aspects of critique. The paper sketches an alternative, drawing on psychoanalytic and practiced pedagogies that aim to transgress the mind-body dualism and hierarchy, in particular Roberto Freire's work on Somatherapy.

The label of mental illness is a demonizing indictment which gives power to one group [of professionals] over another [patients and caregivers], by way of its ability to pathologize human behavior. What is the basis of this nomenclature and how accurately can it map human distress? Does this categorization serve any purpose besides creating categories that then become ‘treatable’ via pharmaceutical interventions? Does it really end up treating people and help them reclaim their lives in any manner? From a social constructionist perspective this paper offers a critique of the current DSM based knowledge, and questions the hegemony of professionals in dealing with situations beyond their control.

Can we think of a Benedictine cloister around the year 1000 as reminiscent of a modern prison or a mental asylum? Was the monastery a medieval type of Erving Goffman's 'total institution' or Benthanian panopticon thoroughly structuring the thoughts and practices of its inmates? What did the power relations between the groups of monks in medieval St Gall look like? Wojtek Jezierski's thesis explores and expands the connection between the medieval forms of monastic life and modern social theories. It investigates the patterns of persecution and exclusion, the exercise of power and surveillance, as well as violent conflicts between the conventuals and their abbots. It analyzes also the social components of monastic habitus and subjectivity in the monasteries of St Gall, Fulda, Bury St Edmunds and others. Finally, the study examines the strategies monks used to cope with the demands made on them by the external lay world, i.e. the political, social, and cultural liaisons between claustrum and saeculum. Wojtek Jezierski (b. 1979) studied history and social anthropology the University of Warsaw. He conducts research at the Department of History and the centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. This book is his PhD thesis.

Conclusión inversa
Problematizando lo planteado y el diseño de investigación
“… hablar del desarrollo como una experiencia históricamente singular, como la creación de las características e interrelaciones de los tres ejes que lo definen: las formas de conocimiento que a él se refieren, a través de las cuales llega a existir y es elaborado en objetos, conceptos y teorías; el sistema de poder que regula su práctica y las formas de subjetividad fomentadas por este discurso, aquellas por cuyo intermedio las personas llegan a reconocerse a sí mismas como desarrolladas o “subdesarrolladas” (…)” (Escobar, 1996:31)

Plante-ando el problema
¿Acaso será pertinente establecer alguna consciencia del límite ante el desaforado fiordo del excurso del desarrollo? Y patentar desde ahí, un margen, los elementos constituyentes que provisionalmente se podrán nominar como preocupaciones de origen, el substrato epistémico de los discursos desarrollistas, la inquisitio  sobre fundamentos, saberes y problemas semánticos, y ante ello queda preguntarse si ha de entenderse este en tanto discurso o acontecimiento histórico, pero la disyunción resulta insuficiente, si a ella se opone como punto de partida en la elaboración el supuesto de que todo discurso pertenece a una trama histórica, y la historia en tanto tal tiene discursos, narraciones y sujetos desde quienes se enuncia y escribe.
Por ello, la propuesta de pensar la temática desde las narrativas del desarrollo  pasa por des-entrecomillar la cuestión , el debate entre que ubicaba como punto de inflexión la pregunta: ¿Desarrollo como narrativa o narrativa del desarrollo? la pregunta deviene en movimiento, pues increpa a partir de los discursos fundacionales de las “geografías imaginarias” que inventaron terceros mundos  de espacios geopolíticos. No obstante, esta lectura que se pretende sin thelos, post-histórica en su posicionamiento con respecto a los acontecimientos, presenta límites con respecto a la materialidad de los sujetos y las instancias que producen estos discursos –e implementan prácticas y procedimientos relacionados con el “desarrollo”-, o bien ante las dinámicas de desigualdad, acumulación y distribución sobre las que se ha teorizado con contundencia para situar el problema del “desarrollo” y del “desarrollismo” en América Latina. Podrían incluirse también las omisiones gnoseológicas en la crítica a otros correlatos presentes en la urdimbre de acontecimientos, como lo son el liberalismo, el evolucionismo –como correlato científico, el neocolonialismo y el necesario debate de los aportes de las posiciones marxistas latinoamericanistas y las del populismo; pero también de la discusión de los puntos de (des)encuentro entre las teorías decoloniales y las teorías de la dependencia, las cuales unas por su parte, articulan elementos críticos con respecto a la episteme, las relaciones poder/saber y las cuestiones culturales e identitarias que les son inherentes en sus discusiones y, por otro lado, las relacionadas con una teoría de la dependencia que en los últimos años ha sido revisada  como parte las lecturas que tratan de dar cuenta de una crítica profunda a los fundamentos del sistema en su organización económica y los mecanismos que devienen en la creación de emplazamientos diversos relacionados con los procesos de acumulación y con lo que otrora se identificó como una dicotomía entre espacios periféricos y centrales, y que hoy tendría eco si se tiene en cuenta la necesidad del capital de trascender los límites que encuentra como establecidos, y por ello deviene en reinvenciones espaciales, que pasan por el discurso, las representaciones y las narrativas.
Las narrativas del “desarrollo” trascenderían el planteamiento antes criticado en su exacerbación del pantextualismo , y en este sentido refiere a prácticas de apropiación del discurso y de las prácticas desarrollistas que en esta investigación se revisan a partir de un interrogatorio al caleidoscopio de fragmentos y a la trizada especularidad que pone la noción “desarrollo” en todas partes y en ninguna a la vez, a través de una maquinaria de procedimientos, desplazamientos, sedimentación y mimetización en el entramado de poderes y representaciones sobre el desarrollo en América Latina, las rutas que delimitan su cartografía reinventando límites para las mercancías y socavando entre lodo y sangre proyectos propios que no se correspondan con la matriz de prescripciones en los distintos instrumentos.
Para ello, el tránsito sugerido es de la narratividad del desarrollo a la narratividad de las teorías, y las narrativas serían pensadas como un espacio donde se articulan sintaxis y semántica de una teoría, espacio productor de sentidos para proposiciones teóricas (lógica de la teoría) y metateóricas (presuposiciones y fundamentos de la teoría), y donde se supera el bricolage posmoderno y las tentaciones del post-positivismo epistémico.
La apuesta epistémica pasa por la revisión crítica de los fundamentos y las discursividades “desarrollistas”, pero con la aspiración de aportar a la construcción de una semiótica del desarrollo, que lea contextual e históricamente los referentes, espacios y mediaciones del discurso  y prácticas del desarrollo en la cultura.
Entendida de esta forma, la lectura de las narrativas del “desarrollo”, es una lectura del substrato epistémico de los discursos desarrollistas, sus fundamentos, saberes, problemas semánticos y la propedéutica en el caso del Consenso de Washington, que a su vez tendría estaría de las primeras aproximaciones al análisis de los discursos institucionalizados del desarrollo.

This article contends that Don DeLillo’s novels from Underworld to Point Omega are centrally concerned with changes in the structure of subjectivity under contemporary capitalism. The essay analyzes these developments from a late Lacanian perspective: as a shift from a dominant neurosis to what Jacques-Alain Miller has called “ordinary psychosis”. Over the years, a few of DeLillo’s critics have problematized a standard account of his characters as postmodern, suggesting that the author was in the process of crafting “a new kind of subjectivity”. However, none of these scholars have taken the prominence of psychotic protagonists in his novels as a starting point to analyze DeLillo’s fiction. Madness thus plays an important but overlooked role in the author’s oeuvre. After briefly considering DeLillo’s earlier writing, the discussion concentrates on three representative novels: Underworld, The Body Artist and Point Omega. Where Underworld focuses on paranoia, The Body Artist moves ordinary psychosis to the center of DeLillo’s imagination, a development whose social impact is explored further in the final novel. The article counters traditional conceptions of insanity as irrational and pathological with an emphasis on the structural role madness plays in DeLillo. This reassessment counters a critical tradition that often views insanity as a sign of deep-seated illness, or opposes pathology by naively romanticizing it. The conclusion situates the analysis in the broader framework of the medical humanities.

Invitation-

My colleague Dr Mvikeli Ncube and I would like to invite you to our virtual conference on 5th May 2022.

This is the first Afro-Asian Critical Psychology Conference and we are very excited to host this event which will feature the work of scholars from around the world.

Our keynote speaker are -
Professor M. Değirmencioğlu
Professor Yasuhiro Igarashi
Dr Mvikeli Ncube
Dr Sonia Soans

We hope to grow our network and collaborate across academic communities. 

The conference is open to academics, activists, students and people with an interest in critical psychology. Please share this amongst your networks.

The conference will be held online. To book your place please register via this link- https://www.bps.org.uk/events/afro-asian-critical-psychology-conference/registration

We look forward to meeting you at the event.

Invitation-

My colleague Dr Mvikeli Ncube and I would like to invite you to our virtual conference on 5th May 2022.

This is the first Afro-Asian Critical Psychology Conference and we are very excited to host this event which will feature the work of scholars from around the world.

Our keynote speaker are -
Professor M. Değirmencioğlu
Professor Yasuhiro Igarashi
Dr Mvikeli Ncube
Dr Sonia Soans

We hope to grow our network and collaborate across academic communities. 

The conference is open to academics, activists, students and people with an interest in critical psychology. Please share this amongst your networks.

The conference will be held online. To book your place please register via this link- https://www.bps.org.uk/events/afro-asian-critical-psychology-conference/registration

We look forward to meeting you at the event.

In the state of Yucatan, Mexico, the suicide rate more than doubles the Mexican national average. This article uses ethnographic data to argue that 1) local understandings of suicide in Yucatán reflect a logic of health among Yucatec Maya people hinging on the belief that spiritual, bodily, and spatial balance must be maintained in order to prevent “illness,” understood as bodily and spiritual suffering; and 2) that Yucatec Maya users of Mexico’s public health system readily adapt the biomedical model to existing paradigms that comingle spiritual, mental, and bodily health due in great part to the inherent contradictions in both systems that simultaneously attribute responsibility for suicide and take it away. This apparent contradiction is thus a sympathetic template on which biomedical discourse and its imperfect application can map itself.

It is often argued that self-help books negate citizenship and the public sphere by promoting a hyper-responsibility in which individuals are rendered entirely responsible for their own
life experiences, without reference to social relations. This article argues that discourses of responsibility in self-help literature are more complex and ambiguous, and that this is in part due
to the widespread influence of codependency theory, and in part due to tensions within liberal democratic political ideologies.

Περίληψη:
Στο ακόλουθο άρθρο, αναδεικνύεται πώς συγκροτείται το Καλό και το Κακό ως δίπολο που καθορίζεται από την τοποθέτηση των υποκειμένων και καταδεικνύει διαφοροποιημένες ταυτότητες και τοποθετήσεις. Αντλώντας από ένα κλινικό παράδειγμα θεραπείας με τον πολιτισμικά “Άλλο” γίνεται μια συνοπτική ανασκόπηση συστημικών θεωριών και θεραπευτικών πρακτικών σε σχέση με τη χρήση και την αποδόμηση του διπόλου Καλού-Κακού και διαφαίνεται ότι ο φακός της διαθεματικότητας (intersectionality) είναι αναγκαίος στη θεραπευτική πρακτική, για να διακρίνουμε τις ταυτοτικές διαφορές και τη θεραπευτική εξουσία όπως (ανα)παράγονται στις τοποθετήσεις των ανθρώπων στην αλληλεπίδραση, όπου και εμπεριέχουν σημασία. Κοιτάζοντας με αυτόν τον φακό, το δίπολο Καλού-Κακού τίθεται σε νέα βάση, μιας που προσεγγίζουμε τη συνεργατική προσέγγιση του «μαζί» και όχι «απέναντι» στον άλλο, χωρίς ταυτόχρονα να έχουμε αγνοήσει την ύπαρξη των δικών μας διπόλων και της διαφορετικότητάς μας. Σε μια τέτοια προσπάθεια, χρήσιμο εργαλείο μπορεί να είναι η οργάνωση πρακτικών λογοδοσίας. 

Abstract:
It the following article, we discuss how the notions of Good and Bad are constructed as a binary, determined by subjects' positionings in discourse and therapeutic interaction; the construction of this binary is indicative of differentiation in identities and positioning. Drawing on a clinical case of therapy with a cultural Other, we attempt a brief review of systemic theories and therapeutic practices vis-a-vis the use and/or deconstruction of the Good/Bad binary in therapy, we debate that the lens of the theory of intersectionality is necessary in therapeutic practice, in order to be able to distinguish the  identity differences and therapeutic power/authority, as (re) produced in the persons' positionings in the therapeutic interaction, where they are meaningful. By looking through this lens, the binary of Good/Bad is set on a different basis, since we approach a collaborative perspective of “withness”, not “across” the other person, while we, as therapists, have not ignored the existence of our own binaries and our difference. In such an effort, a useful therapeutic technique could be the design of accountability practices.

In this paper, we frame career choice in terms of “choosing problems” using the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) framework as a semiotic resource to explore youth’s sociopolitical
motivations. This has implications for career guidance practitioners who want to promote values
of sustainability and social justice in their work. Using social semiotics theory, we explore how a
10th grade boy who studied at a government school in Delhi articulated his sociopolitical
motivations to address a local problem in terms of one or more of the seventeen SDGs using the
resources he had and/or aspired to access through future learning and work. The paper
reimagines career counselling in facilitating youth to construct new narratives as they make
connections between local “problems” they are motivated to address with their career aspirations
on the one hand, and the global challenges that are being addressed by SDGs on the other.