International Society of Critical Health Psychology

~Britta Wigginton (b.wigginton@uq.edu.au)

The field of critical psychology can seem overwhelming.

I speak from personal experience. I completed my PhD in a department that was entirely positivist (‘scientific’), with the exception of my supervisor who encouraged me, despite being in the first month of my PhD, to attend the 2011 ISCHP conference in Adelaide. For me, critical psychology has been as much a professional as it has a personal (re)education into the world.

If you’re new to critical psychology or to ISCHP, I want to let you know that there’s no need to worry about where to begin reading or learning. This blog is dedicated to you. To be honest, I wish I started my PhD with a blog like this – a guide through what is a complex and evolving field.

However, I want to preface this by saying that this is by no means an exhaustive list of potential readings but rather a starting guide¹ for those who are new to, or interested in learning about, critical psychology. We have an incredible community of critical psychology scholars so this is just a small selection of our many critical texts.

I’ve separated this starting guide into three sections: books, articles and other resources/texts, with hyperlinks where appropriate.

Books:

• Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2^nd Ed). London: SAGE. The following two chapters are publicly available:
  • Chapter 1: Critical psychology for social justice: Concerns and dilemmas by Fox, Prilleltensky & Austin.
  • Chapter 3: Philosophical concerns in critical psychology By Teo, T.
• Gough, B., & McFadden, M. (2001). Critical social psychology: An introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• Lyons, A. C., & Chamberlain, K. (2006). Health psychology: A critical introduction: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Murray, M. (2015). Critical health psychology (2^nd Ed). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Parker, I. (2015). Handbook of Critical Psychology. London: Routledge.
• Rohleder, P. (2012). Critical Issues in clinical and health psychology. London: SAGE.
• Stainton Rogers, W. (2011). Social Psychology (2^nd Ed). England: Open University Press.

Articles:

• Crossley, M. (2008). Critical health psychology: Developing and refining the approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 21-33. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00041.x
• Hepworth, J. (2006). The emergence of critical health psychology: Can it contribute to promoting public health? Journal of Health Psychology, 11(3), 331-341. doi: 10.1177/1359105306063298
• Stainton Rogers, W. (1996). Critical Approaches to Health Psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 1(1), 65-77. doi: 10.1177/135910539600100106
• Prilleltensky, I., & Prilleltensky, O. (2003). Towards a critical health psychology practice. Journal of Health psychology, 8(2), 197-210.

Other resources/texts:

• Teo, T. (2014). Encyclopedia of critical psychology. New York: Springer.
• Podcast of the history of psychology’s declassification of ‘homosexuality’ as a mental disorder: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/81-words
• Section of the Journal of Social & Personality Psychology Compass entitled “Critical psychology“
• Dennis Fox’s critical psychology website and RadPsyNet website provide a good introduction to the field and links to relevant material.

If you can recommend any other key readings, we’d love you to share these in the comment section at the bottom of this blog.

Can’t access the texts? Often researchers will send you their article free of charge if you email them. Otherwise you can always tweet the link under the hashtag #Icanhazpdf and somebody with access may tweet you the article. Finally look out for websites like Sci Hub that are part of the open access publishing movement (breaking down expensive firewalls and making research papers free). At the time of writing the Sci Hub’s website appears to be down but you can read about it here.

Happy reading!