DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THOUGHT ASSIGNMENT,
SEMESTER III
SUBMITTED BY: ANUSHKA
BACKGROUND OF THE THINKER:
Ian Andrew Parker (born on January 01, 1956 in the
United Kingdom) is a British psychologist and
psychoanalyst. He is an Emeritus Professor of
Management in the School of Business at the University
of Leicester.
Ian Parker is Co-Director (with Erica Burman) of the
Discourse Unit, Managing Editor of Annual Review of
Critical Psychology, Secretary of Manchester
Psychoanalytic Matrix, member of the Asylum Magazine
editorial collective, and supporter of the Fourth
International. He is a researcher, supervisor and
consultant in critical psychology and psychoanalysis.
Parker attended Ravens Wood School in Keston,
Bromley, UK, studied psychology at Plymouth
Polytechnic and the University of Southampton, served as a lecturer at Manchester Polytechnic
from 1985, was appointed Professor of Psychology at Bolton Institute in 1996, and returned to
Manchester as Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000.
In 2012 he was ejected for questioning, in his capacity as the departmental union representative
for the University and College Union, work-load and appointment procedures. An international
campaign for his reinstatement was set up alongside an online petition which claimed 'victory'
with 3772 signatures. In 2013 he resigned his post, and moved to the University of Leicester, and
also took up visiting professorial positions at Ghent University, Belgium, Universidade de Sao
Paulo, Brasil, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Universidad Complutense de
Madrid, Spain, Birkbeck University of London, UK, University of Roehampton, UK and
University of Manchester, UK.
Parker is also a practising psychoanalyst analyst and a member of the Centre for Freudian
Analysis and Research and the London Society of the New Lacanian School.
, WORK OF IAN PARKER:
The works contributed by Ian Parker have been remarkably noted and popularized. He has been a
prominent exponent of three quite diverse critical traditions inside the discipline. His work has
contributed compass points for researchers searching for alternatives to ‘mainstream’ psychology
in the English-speaking world (that is, mainstream psychology that is based on
laboratory-experimental studies that lessen behaviour to individual mental processes).
The three critical traditions Parker has promoted are ‘discursive analysis’, ‘Marxist
psychology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’.
Each of these traditions is adapted by him to encourage attention to ideology and power, and this
modification has lifted fierce debates, not only from mainstream psychologists but also from
other critical psychologists. Parker has several focus points in his writing and he uses each of the
different critical traditions to throw the others into question. His work bears particular relevance
to criticisms of psychological research and practice.
His criticisms of psychology and psychiatry commenced from his university days as a student.
He observed that while other social sciences were critical of their received knowledge and open
to contributions from the civil rights and women’s movements, psychology continued to
reinforce old power relations and pathologized these same social movements. Since then, Parker
has become one of the most well-known critics of mainstream psychology, and his work
repeatedly questions the role of ideology and power in the field. These contributions are evident
throughout his writing, including his four-volume major work Critical Psychology (2011) and a
Handbook of Critical Psychology (2015). He is currently the editor of the ‘Concepts for
Critical Psychology’ series for Routledge.
His work under ‘Critical Psychology: What It Is and What It Is Not’ cites that critical psychology
informs us of the limitations of mainstream research and it guarantees to put ‘social’ issues on
the agenda in the whole of psychology. A starting point of the stance of critical psychological
research is that the claims that psychologists make about humans often seem to fade almost as
quickly as they are identified. People, a group or a culture don’t necessarily behave or think like
the model would predict, and, more importantly, we find that our awareness, our reflection on a
process described by a psychologist alters that process. It is built in the nature of humans to
change, to change as different linguistic resources, social practices, and representations of the
self become available, and for human nature to change itself as people reflect on who they are
and who they may become. That means that any attempt to fix us in place must fail. But it will
only fail in such a way that something productive emerges from it if we do something different,
and one place to do something different is in psychology. We must reflect on the images of the
SEMESTER III
SUBMITTED BY: ANUSHKA
BACKGROUND OF THE THINKER:
Ian Andrew Parker (born on January 01, 1956 in the
United Kingdom) is a British psychologist and
psychoanalyst. He is an Emeritus Professor of
Management in the School of Business at the University
of Leicester.
Ian Parker is Co-Director (with Erica Burman) of the
Discourse Unit, Managing Editor of Annual Review of
Critical Psychology, Secretary of Manchester
Psychoanalytic Matrix, member of the Asylum Magazine
editorial collective, and supporter of the Fourth
International. He is a researcher, supervisor and
consultant in critical psychology and psychoanalysis.
Parker attended Ravens Wood School in Keston,
Bromley, UK, studied psychology at Plymouth
Polytechnic and the University of Southampton, served as a lecturer at Manchester Polytechnic
from 1985, was appointed Professor of Psychology at Bolton Institute in 1996, and returned to
Manchester as Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000.
In 2012 he was ejected for questioning, in his capacity as the departmental union representative
for the University and College Union, work-load and appointment procedures. An international
campaign for his reinstatement was set up alongside an online petition which claimed 'victory'
with 3772 signatures. In 2013 he resigned his post, and moved to the University of Leicester, and
also took up visiting professorial positions at Ghent University, Belgium, Universidade de Sao
Paulo, Brasil, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Universidad Complutense de
Madrid, Spain, Birkbeck University of London, UK, University of Roehampton, UK and
University of Manchester, UK.
Parker is also a practising psychoanalyst analyst and a member of the Centre for Freudian
Analysis and Research and the London Society of the New Lacanian School.
, WORK OF IAN PARKER:
The works contributed by Ian Parker have been remarkably noted and popularized. He has been a
prominent exponent of three quite diverse critical traditions inside the discipline. His work has
contributed compass points for researchers searching for alternatives to ‘mainstream’ psychology
in the English-speaking world (that is, mainstream psychology that is based on
laboratory-experimental studies that lessen behaviour to individual mental processes).
The three critical traditions Parker has promoted are ‘discursive analysis’, ‘Marxist
psychology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’.
Each of these traditions is adapted by him to encourage attention to ideology and power, and this
modification has lifted fierce debates, not only from mainstream psychologists but also from
other critical psychologists. Parker has several focus points in his writing and he uses each of the
different critical traditions to throw the others into question. His work bears particular relevance
to criticisms of psychological research and practice.
His criticisms of psychology and psychiatry commenced from his university days as a student.
He observed that while other social sciences were critical of their received knowledge and open
to contributions from the civil rights and women’s movements, psychology continued to
reinforce old power relations and pathologized these same social movements. Since then, Parker
has become one of the most well-known critics of mainstream psychology, and his work
repeatedly questions the role of ideology and power in the field. These contributions are evident
throughout his writing, including his four-volume major work Critical Psychology (2011) and a
Handbook of Critical Psychology (2015). He is currently the editor of the ‘Concepts for
Critical Psychology’ series for Routledge.
His work under ‘Critical Psychology: What It Is and What It Is Not’ cites that critical psychology
informs us of the limitations of mainstream research and it guarantees to put ‘social’ issues on
the agenda in the whole of psychology. A starting point of the stance of critical psychological
research is that the claims that psychologists make about humans often seem to fade almost as
quickly as they are identified. People, a group or a culture don’t necessarily behave or think like
the model would predict, and, more importantly, we find that our awareness, our reflection on a
process described by a psychologist alters that process. It is built in the nature of humans to
change, to change as different linguistic resources, social practices, and representations of the
self become available, and for human nature to change itself as people reflect on who they are
and who they may become. That means that any attempt to fix us in place must fail. But it will
only fail in such a way that something productive emerges from it if we do something different,
and one place to do something different is in psychology. We must reflect on the images of the
