re-envisioning psychology: debating paradigmatic foundations

This book studies the ideological nature of mainstream scientific psychology. It raises critical questions about the dominant forms of psychological theorization and praxis, based on their validity, social relevance and power privileges. Re-envisioning Psychology critically interrogates scientific images of the mind, individual, gender, development, society and culture that mainstream psychology promotes. The issues taken up in this book revolve around the pivotal concerns of psychology’s scientific basis, its dominant quantitative research methodology, the construction of ’individual’ as the unit of analysis, the conceptualization of ’social’, ’cultural’ and ’gender’ in relation to individualism, and the understanding of abnormality as shaped by the discourses of medical science and capitalism.

Comprehensive and topical, the book will be useful to students, researchers, and teachers of psychology, applied psychology, social work, gender and women studies, and sociology. It will also be of interest to professional counsellors and psychotherapists.

Parul Bansal is Associate Professor of Psychology at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, India’s premier liberal arts college, affiliated to the University of Delhi. She received a BA in psychology from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, and an MA and a doctorate degree in psychology from the University of Delhi. Her teaching career spans over 20 years, during which she has served as the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Lady Shri Ram College for Women twice. In addition, she has been actively involved with curriculum development and course writing at the University of Delhi and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). She has to her credit a well-received research text, Youth in Contemporary India: Images of Identity and Social Change, which uses a psychoanalytically informed qualitative research methodology. Her academic and research interests are in psychosocial studies of identity, intimacy, ideology and social change, critical psychology, psychoanalysis and mental health, and qualitative research methodology. She was awarded Shashikala Singh Gold Medal for being a topper of University of Delhi in her Masters. She has also received ICSSR Doctoral Fellowship to conduct her PhD work. She has published in several journals of international repute.