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A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis Imogen Dempsey

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A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis Imogen Dempsey Disciplining psychology education – a Foucauldian discourse analysis Imogen Dempsey This paper explores: a) the impact of psychology education governance on our understanding of subjectivity and b) how this functions for neoliberal capitalist structures. The ways-of-knowing, power relations and perceptions of subjectivity are approached through texts selected from official documents governing the curriculum, and qualitative interviews with psychology students, including postgraduates with teaching responsibilities. Discourse is analysed using Foucauldian theory. The key findings are that a positivist psychology curriculum a) is largely market driven, b) is a way-of-knowing that subjugates and objectifies the subject c) works to substantiate individualist discourses and that, finally, d) despite claims of neutrality, constructs a subject that works to meet neoliberal capitalist objectives. Keywords: Critical Psychology, Education, Pedagogy, Ideology, Capitalism, Foucault. Background surrounding the positioning of the human HE DISCIPLINE of psychology, subject. The number of psychology students constructed in part through university in the UK more than doubled between Tcurricula, is undeniably influential, 1999 and 2009, standing at roughly 77,500 producing and shaping our understanding (www.hesa.ac.uk), this highlights the of the human subject, increasingly on a changing structure/function of the university. global platform (Vos, 2012). However, the There is an increasing number of psychology social, political and historical discourses on graduates who will enter careers that influ- which the psychology curriculum is founded ence and govern daily life in areas such as are largely ignored from UK psychology human resources, business and marketing (Prilleltensky, 1994; Martin, 2003). The and social policy. It is often the case that curriculum is dominated by the positivist these professions use psychological knowl- discourse, the focus of investigations increas- edge to manipulate and control individuals ingly lies with ‘internal factors’ as opposed in order to meet the demands of capitalist to ‘external factors’. This focus on the ideology. For example, marketing refers to ‘internal’ reifies abstract notions as material the use of psychological techniques and tools objects which has consequences in terms of to manipulate individuals into consuming agency, subjectivity and ethics (Rose, 1996; goods, many of which they do not need. Parker, 2007; Billig, 2009). Neoliberalism, emerging in the 19th The specific area of exploration here is Century shifted responsibility from the state the link between psychology pedagogical onto ‘rational’ and ‘responsible’ individuals discourse and capitalist ideology i.e. the rela- (Foucault, 2008:12). The shift of authority tionship between discourses produced and from the political to the expert arose out of reproduced in the pedagogy of psychology a claim to knowledge (Rose, 1996). Further- and the commodification of knowledges and more, Foucault argued that, subjects that can then function as labour power in the market place. ‘…rather than govern by dictating As Students of Psychology we stand to rights and responsibilities, neoliberalism become ‘experts’ and will become entangled proceeds by harnessing desires for inde- in power-knowledge relations and formations pendence and creativity to the interests of 12 Psychology Teaching Review Vol. 24 No. 2, 2018 Disciplining psychology education – a Foucauldian discourse analysis business, reconfiguring workers as entre- Foucauldian perspectives, although preneurs of their own skills and abilities, diverse, agree to the claim that our thoughts and reconfiguring the social relations have no shape without language, they are of capitalism to emphasize competition, constructed through language, and thus not between workers and capitalists, but language is the proper object of psychology between workers themselves.’ (Cromby & (Hook, 2007). Discourse analysis that treats Willis, 2013) language in this way therefore, works as a powerful means of enabling forms of critique Liberalism also marked a shift in power and resistance and identifying the mecha- form the state to the expert, with claims that nisms through which power works (Parker, psychology is an apparatus that is obsessed 1994). The adoption of Foucault’s notion of with surveillance and control (Banister et discourse is useful in this investigation as it al., 1994:104). The creation of experts in provides the idea that discourse constructs neoliberal societies leads to certain ways of knowledge and thus governs, through the subjectifying individuals and allocating them production of categories of knowledge and hierarchical social positions. The emergence assemblages of texts, what it is possible to of liberalism is therefore a key turning point talk about and what is not (the taken for in the way in which individuals and ‘the granted rules of inclusion and exclusion). As social’ are governed, both by themselves and such, discourse re/produces both power and by external systems of control (Cotoi, 2011). knowledge simultaneously (Hall et al., 1992). Undergraduate education exposes psychology students to biased and discrimi- ‘…because you cannot think outside of nating psychological understandings, and discursive rules they are strongly linked these are perhaps most evident in the rising to the exercise of power.’ (Hook, 2007) popularity and persistent reification of positivism and empiricism in psychological For Foucault, language generates meanings praxis. that change over time and work to consti- Ultimately, this work argues for a crit- tute different roles for human subjects, i.e. ical exploration of the psychology curric- language is a force that shapes conscious- ulum, allowing for the recognition of ness. In this way we can see that there is political, moral and historical components a particular concept of human subjectivity of discourse, an active encouragement of assumed by Foucault, that contradicts the the critical questioning of conformity concept of subjectivity assumed by main- promoting, individualising and patholo- stream positivist psychology as autonomous, gising notions of the subject, and to actively entirely individual and self-aware (as in place social change as the primary agenda ‘cognitivism’ described above). The concept in the pedagogy of psychology (Darleston- of subjectivity I use here is based upon Jones, 2015; Freire, 1970). Foucault’s concept of subjectification. Subjectification describes the construc- Theoretical approach tion of the individual subject, as the subject Critical theory and perspectives aim to here is ‘multiple and dynamic, always posi- address the oppression of particular tioned in relation to particular discourses discourses and the subjectification implicit in and practices and produced by these – the the production of particular ‘truths’ (Parker, condition of being a subject’ (Henriques et 2002; Hook. 2007; Rose, 1998). Therefore, al., 1984; 3). this approach provides a useful framework for opening up a multiplicity of perspectives ‘The crucial point is that subjectivity is in an increasingly polarised discipline. the point of contact between self and power.’ (Ball, 2016:1131) Psychology Teaching Review Vol. 24 No. 2, 2018 13 Imogen Dempsey My subject-position in this paper entails and delivery of the psychology curriculum. It views of four main psychological discourses. is these bodies which both direct and restrict Firstly, of positivist cognitive science and how psychology as a discipline is defined, psychological diagnostics and therapies as and thus, influencing how people under- discursive mechanisms. Secondly, of the stand themselves and those around them ‘knowing’ psychologist; the psychologist (Rose, 1989; 1996). in a position of a subject who is able to An interesting report published in ‘read minds’, a ‘subject who knows’(Ball, 2010 by The Psychology Network entitled, 1990:81). Thirdly, of individualising, respon- The future of undergraduate psychology in the sibilising, and, pathologising expertise; United Kingdom (Trapp et al., 2010), was the psychologists construct diagnoses in terms product of a meeting where members of the of (correctable) structural biological abnor- aforementioned bodies met to discuss the malities as opposed to political social oppres- future of undergraduate psychology in the sions. Fourthly, of the psychologist and the UK. The work of Bray (2010) was provided mind, the Cartesian cogito, this assumes the as a key reading for the participants. Bray mind as an autonomous entity under the full (2010) outlines the future directions of the control and self-awareness of the individual. American psychology and explicitly empha- The aim here is to understand the mech- sises the need for the discipline to posit itself anisms by which power/resistance operates firmly as a science, that is, the adoption of by identifying key ‘objects’ of the discourse. the positivist approach to study. This, he Identifying conflict within the text will allow suggests, will strengthen the case for the a potential resistance and problematisation prescriptive authority of psychologists, thus of the taken for granted within the discipline allowing them to become players in the of psychology to explore how it works to extensive and growing market of psycho- create both meaning and subject-positions pharmacology. He further asserts that, (Hook, 2001; Banister, 1994). ‘The failure to posit psychology as a ‘The real political task in a society
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