“This paper re-considers the relevance of peter sedgwick’s psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. psychopolitics offered an indictment of `anti-psychiatry’ the failure of which, sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of `mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. `the radical who is only a radical nihilist’, sedgwick observed, `is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of `mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed `to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. the paper contextualizes psychopolitics within the `crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside sedgwick’s continuing relevance. it considers the dilemma that the discourse of `mental illness’ – sedgwick’s critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental health movements yet remains paradigmatic within psychiatry itself. finally, the paper endorses a contemporary perspective that, while necessarily updating psychopolitics, remains nonetheless `sedgwickian’. social theory & health (2009) 7, 129-147. doi: 10.1057/sth. 2009.7”

“Author(s): robert s. robins and jerrold m. post published by: yale university press. (1997)”

“This article begins with the observation that multiple current uses of the term ‘bisexuality’ render the practice of sexual desire for both men and women invisible. it then centers on the use of the term in contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory and argues that here, too, its use to mean the mix of male and female genitals or of masculinity and femininity renders bisexual desire invisible. although theorists suggest that psychic bisexuality can work clinically to deconstruct gender polarities, the essay argues that any use of masculinity and femininity reinstates rather than challenges such polarities. (psycinfo database record (c) 2012 apa, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)”

“Abstract 1. traces various sources of attitudes toward homosexuality (hmsx) throughout history and explores the scientific and political forces that contributed to the depathologization of hmsx in the psychological community via the american …”

“Of the theoretical resources typically taken as the underlying foundations of critical social psychology, elements, typically, each of marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, one particular mode of critique remains notably absent: postcolonial theory. what might be the most crucial contributions that postcolonial critique can make to the project of critical psychology? one answer is that of a reciprocal form of critique, the retrieval of a ‘psychopolitics’ in which not only is the psychological placed within the register of the political, but—perhaps more challengingly—the political is also, strategically, approached through the register of the psychological. what the writings of fanon and biko make plain in this connection is the degree to which the narratives and concepts of the social psychological may be reformulated so as to fashion a novel discourse of resistance, one that opens up new avenues for critique for critical psychology, on the one hand, and that affords an innovative set of opportunities for the psychological investigation of the vicissitudes of the postcolonial, on the other.”

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Building upon the idea of a psychology without foundations and on vitalist approaches to health, the paper presents the concepts of ‘joy’ and of ‘gay science’ as theoretical points of contrast to seligman’s ‘happiness’ and ‘positive psychology’. defined by spinoza and nietzsche as the feeling of becoming more active in the world, joy emphasises the embodied connection between self and world. by contrast, we propose, a defining characteristic of the contemporary happiness dispositif is precisely the feature of splitting the subject from their world; of treating feelings and desires as purely internal, individual and subjective affairs; and of effectively cutting people off from any of their powers that do not correspond to a limited mode of entrepeneurial subjectivity and practice.

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“Purpose ? the purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between recent transformations of labour and corresponding predictions made to gender equity. it reflects in particular the german discussion on the subjective turn in labour, termed as subjectivation of work, and the diagnosis of a feminization of gainful labour work given in this context, by focusing on the governing of the psyche.design/methodology/approach ? the paper is both a theoretical reflection as well as a presentation of empirical findings. it refers to foucault’s concept of governmentality, thereby considering ?psychopolitics? as a new type of power, and taking it as an approach for qualitative empirical research. the empirical findings are based on narrative biographical interviews with female and male employees working in the ict sector.findings ? due to an under?elaborated conception of the subject (and its interrelation to power), the diagnosis of a subjectivation of work as a feminization of work is inadequate and misleading. instead, the empirical analysis gives evidence to the argument that the feminization of work turns out as a (re)masculinization of life and existence.originality/value ? by drawing on considerations within governmentality studies, the concept of ?psychopolitics? offers a new and fruitful approach for research, implying also a dynamic concept of the subject. the empirical analysis provides new insights on the discussion on the issue of gender equity within the realm of gainful work.”

“Power, money, and the welfare of millions of americans are today entrusted to a handful of psychiatric administrators, many of whom the author believes are inadequately trained for their jobs and often become entangled in political controversies that limit their effectiveness, if not their term in office. in many respects the philosophy and ideology of the psychiatric professional and the politician are opposites; yet it is the task of the psychiatric executive to reconcile these trends if the masses of patients dependent on governmental care are to benefit. today, state systems of care are extraordinarily vulnerable to political and news media attacks, and the citizens are aroused as never before. drawing on his many yr of experience in executive roles, the author describes what it is like to live in the center of the ‘psychopolitical’ arena, working to advance the goals of a mental health system within a complex political framework.”

“Lawrence r. alschuler uses the ideas of albert memmi, paulo freire, and jungian psychology to explain changes in the political consciousness of the oppressed. his analysis of the autobiographies of four native people, from guatemala and canada, reveals how they attained ‘liberated consciousness’ and healed their psychic wounds, inflicted by violence, exploitation, and discrimination. their lessons and alschuler’s proposed public policies may be applicable to the oppressed in ethnically divided societies everywhere.”

“ABSTRACT this paper considers some political and ethical issues associated with the ‘academic intellectual’ who researches social movements. it identifies some of the ‘lived contradictions’ such a role encounters and analyses some approaches to addressing these contradictions. in general, it concerns the ‘politico-ethical stance’ of the academic intellectual in relation to social movements and, as such, references the ‘theory of the intellectual’ associated with the work of antonio gramsci. more specifically, it considers that role in relation to one political ‘field’ and one type of movement: a field which we refer to, following the work of peter sedgwick, as ‘psychopolitics’, and a movement which, since the mid- to late-1980s, has been known as the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement— psychiatric patients and their allies who campaign for the democratisation of the mental health system. in particular, through a comparison of two texts, nick crossley’s contesting psychiatry and kathryn church’s forbidden narratives, the paper contrasts different depths of engagement between academic intellectuals and the social movements which they research. key”

“Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. this paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. this analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development. © 2017 southseries inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com.”

“While security has functioned historically as the major rationality for the subjection of populations to liberal governance, the rationality enabling that subjection is fast changing to that of resilience. this is not just a semantic shift. resilience entails a fundamental change in conceptions of the relationship of human beings to danger. to be secure, classically conceived, means to be free from danger. the discourse of resilience functions to prevent humans from conceiving danger as a phenomenon from which they might free themselves from and, in contrast, as that which they must now expose themselves to. this is because the modelling of human subjectivity under conditions of neoliberalism reifies its biological life as the domain of agency and governance. in this sense resilience represents a significant extension of the biopolitical drivers of neoliberal modernity. contesting the global injunction to give up on security requires a subject capable of imagining itself as something more than merely biological material. a political subject whose humanity resides in its freedom to secure itself from the dangers that it encounters. in context of which it is necessary we turn from the mere analysis of biopolitics to the theorization and practice of psychopolitics.”

“Ethnohistory.colonialism, and the cosmopolitan psychoanalytic subject: sovereignty in crisis / john d. cash ; denial, la crypte, and magic : contributions to the global unconscious from late colonial french west african psychiatry / alice bullard ; géza róheim and the australian aborigine : psychoanalytic anthropology during the interwar years / joy damousi ; colonial dominions and the psychoanalytic couch : synergies of freudian theory with bengali hindu thought and practices in british india / christiane hartnack ; psychoanalysis, race relations, and national identity : the reception of psychoanalysis in brazil, 1910 to 1940 / mariano ben plotkin — trauma, subjectivity, sovereignty : psychoanalysis and postcolonial critique: the totem vanishes, the hordes revolt : a psychoanalytic interpretation of the indonesian struggle for independence / hans pols ; placing haiti in geopsychoanalytic space : toward a postcolonial concept of traumatic mimesis / deborah jenson ; colonial madness and the poetics of suffering : structural violence and kateb yacine / richard c. keller ; ethnopsychiatry and the postcolonial encounter : a french psychopolitics of otherness / didier fassin ; concluding remarks: hope, demand and the perpetual / ranjana kanna.”

“Comments on the article by e. staub (see record 1999-15763-002) which discussed the origins and prevention of genocide, mass killing, and other collective violence. post proposes that in order to understand the psychological basis for ‘ethnic cleansing’ and man’s inhumanity to man, it is critical to understand the powerful relationship of malignant leaders and vulnerable followers. at times of political and economic transition, hate-mongering demagogues, serving as malignant group therapists to their wounded nations, can provide sense-making explanations for their beleaguered followers, exporting the source of their difficulties to an external target, justifying hatred and mass violence. the loss of enemies in the wake of the collapse of the soviet empire led to an intensification of ethnic-nationalist hatred as old enemies were revived and new enemies were created, providing a fertile climate for genocidal destruction. (psycinfo database record (c) 2013 apa, all rights reserved)”