CFP: Intersectionality Research in Counseling Psychology (original) (raw)
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Intersectionality research in counseling psychology
Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2017
This article introduces the special section on intersectionality research in counseling psychology. Across the 4 manuscripts that constitute this special section, a clear theme emerges: a need to return to the roots and politics of intersectionality. Importantly, the 2 empirical articles in this special section (Jerald, Cole, Ward, & Avery, 2017; Lewis, Williams, Peppers, & Gadson, 2017) are studies of Black women's experiences: a return, so to speak, to the subject positions and social locations from which intersectionality emanates. Shin et al. (2017) explore why this focus on Black feminist thought and social justice is so important by highlighting the persistent weaknesses in how much research published in leading counseling psychology journals has tended to use intersectionality as a way to talk about multiple identities, rather than as a framework for critiquing systemic, intersecting forms of oppression and privilege. Shin and colleagues also point to the possibilities intersectionality affords us when scholars realize the transformative potential of this critical framework. Answers to this call for transformative practices are foregrounded in Moradi and Grzanka’s (2017) contribution, which surveys the interdisci- plinary literature on intersectionality and presents a series of guidelines for using intersectionality responsibly. We close with a discussion of issues concerning the applications of intersectionality to counseling psychology research that spans beyond the contributions of each manuscript in this special section.
Counseling Psychology and the Amelioration of Oppression: Translating Our Knowledge Into Action
The Counseling Psychologist, 2019
In the new millennium, counseling psychologists have answered the call to address oppression related to intersectional identities. We have played a major role in the development of practice guidelines and policies, as well as in the application of ethical principles in cultural contexts. The Counseling Psychologist has served to disseminate information addressing needs and interventions for diverse communities. In this article, we review the history and impact of our efforts to ameliorate oppression. The pressing challenges of economic and educational disparities are highlighted along with how counseling psychologists are uniquely situated to meet the needs of the underserved. Our research, training, and practice are anchored in methodological pluralism, global helping paradigms, participatory engagement, and the promotion of liberation and radical healing. We offer recommendations to deconstruct current models and reconstruct
Why Gender Psychology Needs Racial Intersectionality
Gender Psychology has been a field which has consistently relied upon information known for the past decade to intersect with other fields. Therefore; the question remains of; should this field be taught separately? And, within the viewpoint of this student; over 80 percent of this classes content has been taught within one of several other fields, including: Sociology, Social Psychology, Women"s Studies, and Black women"s studies. In addition; some of the course material within Gender Psychology actually conflicts with the material taught within these other disciplines. Thus; this paper attempts to question why there is not an immediate need for intersectionality within gender; while examining the socio-historical content which makes it necessary to reinforce its understanding within the very essence of "doing gender".
De-colonizing Multicultural Counseling and Psychology: Addressing Race Through Intersectionality
International and Cultural Psychology, 2014
on the other hand, views race as a system of inequality and as a vector of privilege and oppression that interacts with other systems and vectors, like those related to gender and class, to advantage or disadvantage groups of people. Essentialist notions of race in supposedly "multicultural" counseling and psychology paradigms are colonizing; that is, they help perpetuate practices that support inequities and injustices stemming from institutionalized White racism and White supremacy. Intersectionality, on the other hand, can be a decolonizing corrective to essentialist notions of race.
From Buzzword to Critical Psychology: An Invitation to Take Intersectionality Seriously
Women & Therapy, 2020
In this paper, I introduce a framework that invites psychologists to take intersectionality seriously. First, I revisit some primary tools of intersectional analysis and underscore their relevance to critical training. I then sketch out a flexible typology of what intersectionality is and, more consequentially, what it is not. Next, I consider how intersectionality can help to reimagine the relationships between complementary and competing paradigms in multicultural feminist theory. Finally, I extend Cole’s (2009) three-question framework for intersectional research in psychology to develop practical questions that might deepen psychology’s engagement with intersectionality at the level of critical pedagogy.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2019
Using intersectionality to change how psychologists think about the demographic profile of their participants is one readily available change that psychologists across the discipline can implement to improve psychological science. In this article, we aim to provide a guide for psychologists who are not already engaged with feminist practices and/or are unsure of how an intersectional approach to participants applies to their research. We argue that by engaging with four perspective shifts of intersectional thinking: multidimensionality, dynamic construction, structural power, and outcomes of systemic disadvantage and advantage, psychologists can more accurately represent the “person” that psychology, as a discipline, seeks to understand. We suggest changes at the researcher, journal, and grant-making agency levels to support an intersectional reconceptualization of participants. As psychology continues to change, in order to foster reproducible science practices and research with re...
Intersectionality in psychology: Translational science for social justice
Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2020
Intersectionality is an analytic tool for studying and challenging complex social inequalities at the nexus of multiple systems of oppression and privilege, including race, gender, sexuality, social class, nation, age, religion, and ability. Although the term has become widely used in psychology, debates continue and confusion persists about what intersectionality actually is and how best to take an intersectional approach to psychological science. This special issue of Translational Issues in Psychological Science on intersectionality includes a range of methodological tools and theoretical perspectives that advance psychological research on intersectionality. In particular, these projects constitute psychological research that takes intersectionality's political aspirations seriously and envisions psychology as a tool for social justice. The articles model responsible use of intersectionality through citation practices that reflect intersectionality's origins in Black feminist thought and women of color scholar-activism, as well as through analyses that reflect intersectionality's commitment to reflexivity, structural critique, and complexity. In this introduction, the editors reflect on intersectionality's challenge to psychology and consider the place of translational science amid global crises and what critical psychologist Michelle Fine calls "revolting times." What is the significance of this article for the general public? This paper introduces a special issue on the topic of intersectionality and situates this social justiceoriented scholarship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial justice uprisings of 2020, and ongoing debates about psychologists' role in addressing social problems.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and international engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality, leaving some authors to suggest that intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution that the field of women's studies has made thus far. Yet, consideration of intersectionality as a research paradigm has yet to gain a wide foothold in mainstream psychology. The current article uses a program of multimethod research designed in partnership with, and intending to center the intersectional experiences of, majority world women to propose a research agenda for the empirical study of intersectionality. Specifically, it is suggested that a research agenda rooted in intersectional understandings requires that: (1) researchers think carefully about social categories of analysis and how their methodological choices can best answer those questions, (2) psychologists reposition their research questions to examine processes by which structural inequities lead to power imbalances and gender-based norms that sustain women's experience of marginalization and oppression, and (3) we understand how intersectional experiences can be applied toward change. Intersectional investigations hold a key to interrupting the structural dimensions of power that result in egregious consequences to peoples' social, economic, and political lives, but only if we radically restructure what we think about knowledge, our roles, and the products of our research.
Using Creativity to Explore Intersectionality in Counseling
Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 2019
A counselor's understanding of a client's identity is crucial in culturally competent counseling. When counselors conceptualize clients from a singular lens, they may develop clinical blind spots in which crucial components of identity and context are ignored, the lived experience is missed, and counseling effectiveness becomes difficult to attain. In this article, the concept of intersectionality and its importance to counseling practice is discussed. Further, three creative interventions to explore intersectionality are presented. Finally, implications and recommendations for counselor education, supervision, and practice are explored.