Full Description
Class Identity, Social Hierarchy, and Psychotherapy explores the often-ignored influence of class identity on psychological care. Written by two psychologists with working-class roots, this book explores the development of American psychology both within and in support of a capitalist social structure. Through surveys, interviews, and personal experiences, it is revealed how the middle-class norms and neoliberal values in which the practice of psychotherapy is rooted often alienate many of the working-class people it seeks to help.
Through the voices of both working- and middle-class clients and clinicians, authors demonstrate how hidden rules about emotional expression, vulnerability, and competence often shape therapy spaces. They explore how those living between socioeconomic worlds experience both marginalization and pressure to conform within clinical spaces not built for them. A model of critical narrative humility is introduced, which encourages therapists to interrogate their own class position, training, and biases, and re-consider how these factors might impact their ability to authentically hear the complex and nuanced accounts of their clients. Urging a shift from individual practice to systems-level thinking, the book offers a radical reimagining of therapeutic practice grounded in critical self-reflection.
This book will appeal to advanced students, trainees, and early-career professionals and practitioners interested in decolonizing practice and moving to consider class as an integral aspect of intersectional identity.
Contents
Part 1: Foundations of a Class-blind discipline
Chapter 1: Mapping Mental Health within the Logic of Market Values
Chapter 2: Advancing Psychology through Scientific Authority
Chapter 3: Framing Identity by the Productivity of the Market
Part 2: Class identity, distress and help-seeking
Chapter 4: Turning Collective Postwar Wounds to Individual Symptoms
Chapter 5: Standardizing Care in Service of the Market
Chapter 6: Performing Competence While Preserving the Hierarchy
Chapter 7: Sustaining Individualism in the Face of Collective Need
Chapter 8: Dividing the Dispossessed in Defense of the Social Order
Part 3: Towards a more just practice
Chapter 9: Getting Proximate as a Prerequisite for Ethical Practice
Chapter 10: Reimagining Psychological Practice through Critical Narrative Humility
