Colonised Minds: Narratives that Shape Psychology

Psychology, as it is taught in the Global North, strives to be an objective science beyond reproach – but what happens when we examine the discipline critically, through an anti-colonial lens? This text pulls back the curtain on the existing canon to reveal the historical power structures that shaped the discipline, and examines the extent to which psychology today continues to uphold oppression. Colonised Minds situates current teaching and research of major topics in the field of psychology within the context of colonialism to better understand how some ideas were allowed to flourish while others were suppressed, censored, or left behind. This book will also direct you to critical, antiracist, and feminist approaches for the field and the modern university more generally – looking to voices and perspectives that have been marginalised for ways to rethink the way we see, and teach, psychology. Akira O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and the Institutional Race Equality Charter Chair at the University of St Andrews. Erin Robbins is a Lecturer in Psychology and the Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: The Canon and Systems of Thought 2. The Eugenics Problem: The Rotten Ideals Underpinning Today’s Statistical Tests 3. The Identification of the ‘Feeble-Minded’: How Psychological Testing and Segregation Go Hand-In-Hand 4. Mental Illness and Marginalisation: Psychiatric Diagnosis as an Untrustworthy Lever of Power 5. Phrenology, Neuroimaging, and the Technologies That Shape Our Understanding of the Mind 6. Hysteria, Happy Pills, and Hormones: Psychology’s Woman Problem 7. I Don’t See Colour: Psychology’s Race Problem 8. De-WEIRDING Research: A Stepping Stone to a Better Psychology? 9. #NotAllUniversities: How Higher Education Perpetuates the Inequities it Claims to Eliminate 10. Conclusion

About the Author :
Akira O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer who received his undergraduate and postgraduate education at the University of Leeds (England). He spent two and a half years working at Washington University in St Louis (USA), before taking up a permanent lecturing position at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). Akira researches memory, memory decision-making, and memory phenomena such as déjà vu. His parents are Irish and Japanese, and he grew up in North-West London—not British, but a mixed-race Londoner. He is a trade union member and serves at the Race Equality Charter Chair at the university, coordinating an institutional bid for a Race Equality Charter award. Erin Robbins is a Lecturer from the South of the United States. She completed her undergraduate education at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama (USA) and her postgraduate training at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). In-between she worked in a number of different jobs, from technical writer to conservationist. Her primary interest is in the role of culture in cognition and development which led her to pursue field work, primarily in Samoa and Vanuatu. She is queer, a trade union member, and serves as the Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for her department.

Review :
Psychologist new, old, or not a psychologist at all: this book is for you. O’Connor and Robbins honestly critique the narratives which shape psychology and thus influence societal understanding of concepts such as race, gender, sex, intelligence, and psychiatric diagnoses. In the academic field of psychology, we are all often lulled into a false sense of superiority; "we don’t need to read more about this, we know about WEIRD research!" However, the authors address issues which we are often blind to, and indeed, how we individually and collectively can do better to understand and do justice to the very subject we study: people. An incredibly insightful, eye-opening, and inspiring book, ′Colonised Minds′ is an essential read for everyone interested or involved in psychology. This work presents a brilliant examination of the power structures that have shaped the discipline of psychology from a critical, anti-colonial perspective. Compelling and self-aware, O′Connor and Robbins confront the discipline’s own role in maintaining oppression and perpetuating inequity, encouraging the reader to question and reflect on how we view, teach, and relate to psychology today. ′Colonised Minds′ speaks to the crucial transformations that the field of psychology urgently needs and offers an empowering re-imagination of psychology as a science that genuinely honours the diversity of human experience.