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About the Authors. <p>Preface.</p> <p>1 The Nature of Psychology.</p> <p>2 Psychology and Society.</p> <p>3 Psychology, Intelligence, and IQ.</p> <p>4 Psychology and Race.</p> <p>5 Psychology and Women.</p> <p>6 Beyond Nature Versus Nurture.</p> <p>7 Psychology in Service to the State.</p> <p>8 Ethical Standards in Psychology.</p> <p>9 Personality and Personality Tests.</p> <p>10 Psychology and Mental Health.</p> <p>11 Freud and Psychology.</p> <p>12 Parapsychology.</p> <p>13 Psychology in Everyday Life.</p> <p>14 Further Issues in Psychology.</p> <p>15 Psychology at Issue?</p> <p>Selected Glossary.</p> <p>References.</p> <p>Index.</p>

"These issues aside, this is a compelling and wide-ranging book that encourages the reader to look for the moral values and cultural assumptions at the heart of the apparently unbiased science that is psychology." (The Psychologist, 1 November 2011) <p> "Presenting important ideas about the ways that psychologists view the knowledge they generate, this book would be a good companion to a textbook based on the conventional hypothetical-deductive model of research. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." (Choice, 1 October 2011)</p>

<b>Philip John Tyson</b> is Director of Studies for Biological and Behavioural Sciences in the Department of Natural and Social Sciences at the University of Gloucestershire. He has a special interest in mental health, neuropsychology and critical psychology.  <p><b>Dai Jones</b> is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Gloucestershire. His interests include psychology in a social context, everyday psychology, and connectionist approaches to cognition. </p> <p><b>Jonathan Elcock</b> is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire. His current research interests include historical and conceptual issues in psychology, and how psychology interacts with social class.</p>

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the weaknesses within orthodox views of psychology, and this has led to a surge in critical approaches to the discipline. Reflecting this trend, <i>Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates</i> provides an accessible introduction to current thinking and key ideas relating to the field of critical psychology.  <p>Taking a distinctive approach to addressing issues in psychology, this thought-provoking text considers a variety of historical controversies in psychology and the ways in which the discipline is embedded within particular socio-historical contexts. The team of authors draws on historical analysis to reveal the ways in which psychology interrelates with social context. Concepts are richly illustrated with many examples of how the discipline has engaged with such controversial social issues as race and IQ, psychology and gender, ethical issues in psychology, parapsychology, and the nature-nurture debate.</p> <p>Provocative and intellectually stimulating, <i>Psychology in Social Context</i> provides deep insights into the diverse nature of a discipline and its pursuit of the understanding of the mind and behaviour.</p>

<i>Psychology in Social Context</i> is a book that should be compulsory reading for all psychology undergraduates. However you define psychology, it is a discipline that is rooted in a social context with traditional underlying philosophical assumptions about how behaviour should be defined and explained. This book brings these important and much overlooked issues to life and will challenge students to think more deeply about many of the features of their psychology courses that both they – and their teachers – often take for granted.<br /> —<b><i>Graham C.L. Davey</i></b><i>, Professor of Psychology, University of Sussex, UK</i> <p>I wish <i>Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates</i> had been available long ago. This thought-provoking book is a useful corrective to traditional texts that, with little regard for psychology’s sociopolitical context, misrepresent the discipline's conventional ways of doing things as inexorably leading in positive directions. But rather than reject psychology as hopelessly irredeemable, <i>Psychology in Social Context</i> offers a constructive overview of the bottom line: students who understand psychology's historical and cultural trajectory can think more critically about the field's mainstream norms, learning to sort out when traditional approaches might be merely habitual rather than appropriate and useful, and when alternatives might make more sense. The book’s clear and engaging descriptions of controversial issues will generate animated classroom discussion in traditional introductory or social psychology courses as well as in critical psychology.<i><br /> —<b>Dennis Fox</b>, Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Psychology, University of Illinois, USA</i></p> <p>Informed by the latest conceptual and historical scholarship, <i>Psychology in Social Context: Issues and Debates</i> is an astute examination of a clutch of problems and controversies that derive from the recognition that Psychology is saturated with ethical values, social ambitions and political agendas. This radical yet accessible text has the potential to inspire an entire generation of psychologists into rethinking the processes they employ to develop practice and generate knowledge.<br /> —<b><i>Geoff Bunn</i></b><i>, Chair, BPS History & Philosophy of Psychology Section, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK</i></p>

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