Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Gender and culture in psychology: a prologue
- 2 Categories and social categorization
- 3 Laying the foundation
- 4 Theories of gender in psychology: an overview
- 5 A turn to interpretation
- 6 Doing interpretative psychological research
- 7 Discursive approaches to studying gender and culture
- 8 Gender and culture in children's identity development
- 9 Identity and inequality in heterosexual couples
- 10 Coercion, violence, and consent in heterosexual encounters
- 11 Women's eating problems and the cultural meanings of body size
- 12 Psychological suffering in social and cultural context
- 13 Feminism and gender in psychotherapy
- 14 Comparing women and men: a retrospective on sex-difference research
- 15 Psychology's place in society, and society's place in psychology
- References
- Index
15 - Psychology's place in society, and society's place in psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Gender and culture in psychology: a prologue
- 2 Categories and social categorization
- 3 Laying the foundation
- 4 Theories of gender in psychology: an overview
- 5 A turn to interpretation
- 6 Doing interpretative psychological research
- 7 Discursive approaches to studying gender and culture
- 8 Gender and culture in children's identity development
- 9 Identity and inequality in heterosexual couples
- 10 Coercion, violence, and consent in heterosexual encounters
- 11 Women's eating problems and the cultural meanings of body size
- 12 Psychological suffering in social and cultural context
- 13 Feminism and gender in psychotherapy
- 14 Comparing women and men: a retrospective on sex-difference research
- 15 Psychology's place in society, and society's place in psychology
- References
- Index
Summary
It is difficult to imagine daily life in western, industrialized countries today without psychology – the academic discipline, the professions that use and promulgate psychological knowledge, and the burgeoning self-help industry. Psychology has undoubtedly played an influential role in modern societies. Over the last hundred years or so, psychologists' ways of explaining individual lives have become increasingly central to many people's self-understandings (Rose, 1989, 1996). In addition, psychological ways of helping people and addressing social issues have become commonplace and are increasingly advocated. If psychology did not exist, many of people's daily experiences would be understood in quite different ways than those now in vogue. If psychology creates particular ways of making sense of daily life, then, without psychology, people today would perhaps even have different kinds of experiences than they do.
While psychology has influenced the cultures of modern societies, those cultures also have influenced and molded psychology, such that one could talk about cultures of psychology. Could psychology in its current guise in modern, western, industrialized societies have developed elsewhere? Hardly. The social mores, traditions, and zeitgeists in European and North American societies were decisive in specifying and identifying the most pressing social problems for psychologists to investigate and solve. Psychologists, eager to promote their discipline, were keen to respond to such societal needs; psychology's aims and trajectory were thus shaped in line with social trends. As social needs and problems changed historically, so has psychology changed, both in its research foci and its societal roles and functions. For much of its history, the discipline was peopled almost exclusively by white, middle-class men; this, too, shaped the form and direction of psychologists' endeavors. This too has now changed. Change continues. Such continual change is to be expected of a field that is so firmly wedded to the social. It is also to be expected that the cultures of psychology will be different across regional and national boundaries.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Gender and Culture in PsychologyTheories and Practices, pp. 178 - 187Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012