Postgraduate Course: Decolonising Counselling and Psychotherapy: Reflections from Psychosocial Perspectives (CNST11097)
Course Outline
School | School of Health in Social Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | This transdisciplinary postgraduate course examines the interlocking histories of colonialism, imperialism, and racism and their ongoing impacts on the everyday lived realities of individuals and communities with considerations of their implications on counselling and psychotherapy. It introduces students to psychosocial thinking on how these histories play out in the ongoing present and offers opportunities to reflect on counseling and psychotherapy as a political project for working through historical trauma, racial oppression, marginalisation and violence in the collective history. Topical issues such as the political totalitarianism, hostile environment, alt-right extremism such as the Incel movements, will be explored to prompt in-depth, personal, psychosocial reflections on the connections between sociopolitical issues and psychological experiences. Students will further draw on these explorations to form thoroughgoing reflections on how an anti-oppressive, politically responsive, and decolonial practice may be embodied in counselling and psychotherapy training, practice, and research as well as what barriers there are to these in relation to decolonising counselling and psychotherapy. |
Course description |
1. Academic Description of course (learning aims, nature and context)
This course is born out of the growing recognition of the need, as well as the political urgency, to decolonise counselling and psychotherapy as informed by post-colonial critiques and racial justice, with a key aim to challenge the Eurocentric lens which informs traditional therapeutic approaches to training, practice, and scholarship and to develop more politically progressive and responsive alternatives in line with the EDI incentives. This is the first course within the subject area that makes explicit its decolonial aims and centres the decolonial project in counselling and psychotherapy.
The course aims to develop and promote critical awareness of racial oppression and inequalities in the aftermath of colonialism and Eurocentric supremacy and how these are sustained by ongoing sociopolitical practices, policies and discourses which exclude and subjugate "the other". The course content situates the historical traces of colonialism as key shaping forces of the contemporary sociopolitical landscapes and social imaginations of how we perceive, understand, and relate to those who are subject to the oppressive processes. Students will be introduced to psychosocial thinking as a critical thinking apparatus to explore ways in which the inner world and the social environments are interrelated rather than separate and each permeate, influence, and give rise to the other in ways that are often unpredictable and non-linear. They will explore the role of the unconscious and unconscious processes in producing and maintaining sociopolitical and psychological mechanisms of forms of othering against the minority and disadvantaged groups and examine ways in which these impact on the psychological experience, identity, and social relations of the oppressed. Students will learn decolonial and postcolonial influences on counselling and psychotherapy to form creative and practical considerations of how relational, psychosocial approaches to counselling and psychotherapy may support and work with clients who are impacted by racial oppression as well as what may potentially generate and sustain oppressive practice in and through therapy.
2. Outline Content
The course introduces students to a range of topical, interrelated themes such as nationalism, whiteness, hostile environment, authoritarianism, and transgenerational racial trauma to facilitate psychosocial reflections on the impacts of racial oppression, marginalization and violence on culture and society at the macro level as well as on identity and psychological experiences of individuals and communities at the micro level, Most importantly, how these shape the past and present approaches to counselling and psychotherapy and inaugurate decolonial and postcolonial frames for counselling and psychotherapy training, practice, and scholarship. Each week students will learn key psychosocial theories addressing a topic, exploring the processes and the relationship between "psyche" and "social" in a context-specific, theoretically informed manner. Through this, students will be supported to develop a capacity to reflexively consider: "what is happening", "how is this happening", "how do people do what they do and feel what they feel". This will be done so in a manner that locates colonialism, racism and political violence as the empirical object of study. Connecting this with activist praxis, students will further draw on these understandings to develop reflexive connections between different forms of sociopolitical oppression and their implications for counselling and psychotherapy as a relational practice.
3. Student Learning Experience
The course will be a demanding learning journey, as it requires critical, explorative, interpersonal, and reflexive engagements with the course materials and course aims. To support the co-creation of an anti-oppressive, culturally sensitive learning environment, students and the teaching staff will collaborate on a learning contract at the start of the course that make explicit the expectations and demands of the course; the contract will outline ground rules that take respect for difference and diversity seriously and highlight the importance of self-care and wellbeing with signposts to ways and potential sources of psychological support. Please note that full attendance is expected of all students as an active member and co-creator of the learning environment.
The ongoing, sustained psychosocial reflections invite students to draw on their lived experiences in exploring and understanding ways in which the personal is impacted by the socio-political and vice versa. Students will be supported to make theoretical engagement in line with the weekly theme during lectures and will be invited to reflect on their positionality and how this informs their views to enrich and contextualise theoretical engagement. For example, they will reflexively consider how their own identity and socialpolitical positions may influence their understanding of "who is struggling" and how. Students will be encouraged to share personal reflections and professional experiences during the lecture and seminar and to both hold and consider divisive views across differences in order to bring together criticality and relationality, to critique as well as to remain reflexive of our own critiques. This is in line with the course's psychosocial premises that our own affective responses, viewpoints, and assumptions (and what generate these) have important, often implicit ramifications on how we relate to others and conceptualise counselling and psychotherapy. The learning experience on the course will be highly invigorating and rewarding as it equips students with frameworks and perspectives with which to understand the connections between forms of othering, oppressive mechanisms at the macro level and the psychological processes, relationships, identity, and interpersonal relationships at the micro level and how these may manifest in therapy and become worked through.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | None |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 40 |
Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 8,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 12,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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Additional Information (Assessment) |
10-min individual presentation (40% of the course mark)
reflexive essay (2,500 words) (60% of the course mark) |
Feedback |
Not entered |
No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Students will be able to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of psychosocial thinking by conceptualising the relationships between sociopolitical issues and psychological experiences.
- Students will be able to critically engage with decolonial and post-colonial thinking to examine the impact of racial oppression and inequality.
- Students will be able to reflexively examine their own identity, cultural experiences, and sociopolitical positions in relation to their perceptions, assumptions, and understanding of sociopolitical issues related to racial oppression and inequality.
- Students will be able to critically examine ways in which the psychological mechanisms of oppression, marginalisation, and othering impact counselling and psychotherapy.
- Students will be able to demonstrate critical and reflective thinking about the opportunities, possibilities, and challenges of counselling and psychotherapy as anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and decolonial praxis.
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Reading List
Beshara, R. K. (2021) Critical Psychology Praxis: Psychosocial Non-Alignment to Modernity/Coloniality. Milton: Taylor and Francis.
Brunning, H. (2018) Psychoanalytic reflections on a changing world. London: Routledge.
Frosh, S. (2015) Psychosocial imaginaries: perspectives on temporality, subjectivities and activism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Krüger, Figlio, K., & Richards, B. (2018) Fomenting Political Violence Fantasy, Language, Media, Action. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Mignolo, W. & Walsh, C. E. (2018) On decoloniality¿: concepts, analytics, and praxis. Durham: Duke University Press. |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Nini Kerr
Tel:
Email: nfang@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Krystal Hanley
Tel: (0131 6)51 3969
Email: Krystal.Hanley@ed.ac.uk |
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