Overview

Configuring Psychology offers a vibrant, multimodal sociological analysis of clinical psychology as a profession and practice in the UK. Starting from the widely-accepted principle and goal of enhancing access to care, it examines how political, economic, legal, and social dynamics intertwine with clinical norms and expertise. These interactions configure broader healthcare contexts, defining not only entry into therapy but also exclusion from it. Through close attention to policy developments, professional strategies, and psychologists' experiences, Martyn Pickersgill reveals how access reforms shape clinical knowledge, therapeutic practice, and understandings of psychology itself. He shows how expanding access has become both a moral imperative and a managerial project, with clinical psychologists balancing competing bureaucratic, ethical, and emotional demands in an increasingly strained NHS. As such, Configuring Psychology provides essential insights for social scientists as well as clinicians and policymakers navigating reform. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Full Product Details

9781108494250

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Martyn Pickersgill here configures a rich and compelling account of clinical psychology. This vital book tells an important story of how clinical psychology is configured, including through its encounters with other disciplines such as law, and the implications of these encounters. Pickersgill invites us to reflect on how bureaucratic, technological, social, legal and political dynamics shape care, care providers and the subjects of care themselves, and the ethics of these configurations, along the way.' Kate Seear, Professor of Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University, Australia 'With Configuring Psychology, Martyn Pickersgill offers a careful critical inquiry of the complex makings of therapeutic life. The outcome is an exemplar of highly incisive sociological analysis: attentive to institutional processes and social relations that shape the constitution of knowledge; reflective on the meanings and ethics of access; provocative in its deeper questioning of what care means in contemporary societies. A compelling and necessary work by a leading scholar in the field.' Emilie Cloatre, Professor of Medical Law, King's College London, UK 'At once confrontational, invigorating, and disquieting, Pickersgill's incisive work is a much-needed to call to all sociologists of science and medicine to look far more closely at psychology as a site of knowledge production, health care provision, and complex inequalities. This book is truly essential for those seeking insight into the ways psychology itself produces the social problems it alone seeks to solve.' Patrick R. Grzanka, University Diversity & Social Transformation Professor, University of Michigan, USA 'Integrating years of empirical data, Pickersgill compellingly demonstrates how interactions among professionals, patients, and policymakers shape mental health definitions and pathways. We learn how disorder classifications, treatment modalities, along with concepts of compliance, risk, and treatability are made amenable to quantifiable targets of care in response to political and economic conditions. Such alignments form a particular ethics of access. Readers will recognize how well these insights apply beyond clinical psychology and local geographic sites.' Linda F. Hogle, Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Emerita, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA 'In these crisply written pages, Pickersgill reveals how much the configuration of psychology (policy, regulation, professions, finances, conflicts and so on) matter as much as the facts that support its science. An eye-opening read for anyone interested in mental health, illness, or disease.' Annemarie Jutel, author of Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society and The Sociology of Diagnosis: A Brief Guide 'In this brilliant analysis of the 'ethic of access' for psychotherapy, Martyn Pickersgill shows how clinical psychologists struggle to allocate resources and define the boundaries of care, while working against time and economic pressures. A rare look inside a profession with a huge public impact, the book has ramifications far beyond the UK, on the global fight against the 'loss of meaning.' Junko Kitanaka, Professor of Medical Anthropology, Keio University, Japan 'Offering keen insights into the ethic of access to UK mental health services, most particularly clinical psychology, Pickersgill takes readers through the practices, policies, and everyday tensions that shape the possibility of care. The result is a detailed examination of how negotiations within health systems configure professionals' and patients' subjectivities.' Stephanie Lloyd, Professor of Anthropology, Université Laval, Canada 'Pickersgill offers readers a sophisticated analytic sociology into the social shaping of mental health care, its professions, and its recipients. In demonstrating the many ways professional health care is socially made, negotiated, and flexible, he provokes us to ask what kinds of therapeutic futures do we want and need as we are shown how the systems of care can be otherwise. An excellent read.' Laura Mamo, Professor of Public Health, San Francisco State University, USA

Author Information

Martyn Pickersgill is Professor of the Sociology of Science and Medicine, University of Edinburgh. Known internationally for his scholarship on the sociology of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience, he is an elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and winner of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Henry Duncan Medal.

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