New Voices in Psychosocial Studies

Psychosocial studies in the UK is a diverse area of work characterised by innovation in theory and empirical research. Its extraordinary liveliness is demonstrated in this book, which showcases research undertaken at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, highlighting three domains central to the discipline – psychoanalysis, ethics and reflexivity, and resistance. The book engages psychosocially with a wide variety of topics, from social critiques of psychoanalysis through postcolonial and queer theory to studies of mental health and resistance to discrimination. These ‘New Voices in Psychosocial Studies’ offer a coherent yet wide-ranging account of research that has taken place in one ‘dialect’ of the new terrain of psychosocial studies and an agenda-setting manifesto for some of the kinds of work that might ensure the continued creativity of psychosocial studies into the next generation. 

This book demonstratesthe ongoing development of psychosocial studies as an innovative, critical force and will inspire both new and established researchers from across the fields that influence its transdisciplinary approach, including: critical psychology and radical sociology, feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, critical anthropology and ethnography and phenomenology. 

Chapter 1: New Voices in Psychosocial Studies: Introduction; Stephen Frosh.- Part 1: Psychoanalysis.- Chapter 2: In the Closets of Fanon and Riviere: Psychoanalysis, Post-colonial theory and the Psychosocial; Marita Vyrgioti.- Chapter 3: One, two, too many; Felipe Massao Kuzuhara.- Chapter 4: On becoming a subject; Iulia Minulescu.- Chapter 5: Time follows from a wish; Kelly Noel-Smith.- Part 2: Ethics and Reflexivity.- Chapter 6: Alone with the Law: Ethics and Subjectivity; Javier Taillefer.- Chapter 7: The signifier of desire and the desire for signification: a psychosocial rereading of my research encounter with a Chinese older gay man; Chenyang Wang.- Chapter 8: Bridging the Social with what Unfolds in The Psyche: The Psychosocial in Ethnographic Research; Erol Saglam.- Chapter 9: The ‘feeling good’ economy: anxiety and hegemonic psy-cultures; Ana Carolina Minozzo.- Part 3: Resistance.- Chapter 10: Laing in the 21st century: Psychic suffering in the neoliberal landscape; Matt Oakes.- Chapter 11: ‘Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad’: Analysing the Political and Libidinal Economy of Homophobia; Jordan Osserman.- Chapter 12: Adopted daughters and biological fathers: trauma, loss and the fantasy of return; Elizabeth Hughes.- Chapter 13: Rethinking the Coping Perspective in the Context of Discrimination: Young Religious Minorities in Turkey; Bahar Tanyas.