Can you imagine that everything people do, say and think is shaped directly by engaging with our many environmental and social contexts? Humans would then really be part of their environment.
For current psychology, however, people only engage with metaphorical ‘internal’ environments or brains events, and everything we do somehow originates hidden in there. But what if all that we do and think originated out in our worlds, and what we call ‘internal’ is merely language and conversations which were also shaped by engaging in our external discursive, cultural and societal environments?
Exploring the Environmental and Social Foundations of Human Behaviour is an exciting new book series about developing the next generation of ways to understand what people do, say and think. Human behaviour is shaped through directly engaging in our diverse contexts of resources, social relationships, economics, culture, discourses, colonization, patriarchy, society, and the opportunities afforded by our birth contexts. Even language and thinking arise from our external social and discursive contexts, and so the ‘internal’ and brain metaphors will disappear as psychology becomes merged with the social sciences.
The series is therefore a-disciplinary and presents analyses or contextually-engaged research on topics which describe or demonstrate how human behaviour arises from direct engagement with the worlds in which we are embedded.
By Bernard Guerin, Eden Thain, Kristen Stevens, Adan C. Richards, Guilherme Bergo Leugi
June 27, 2024
This innovative book proposes an entirely new approach to social research, presenting practical ways to discover people’s life contexts in order to understand why they do what they do, which is essential for any forms of research that need to understand people. Taking a novel approach that goes ...
By Bernard Guerin, Millie Tait, Scarlett Kraehe, Nikia Bailey
June 18, 2024
This book rethinks the diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders by putting the spotlight on their social and societal contexts, examining how these behaviours are shaped by the difficult life conditions of those suffering. Drawing on the lived experiences of nine women, this book uses in-depth ...
By Eden Thain
March 01, 2024
This book is the first of its kind to apply social contextual analysis to the issue of poverty. It sets out detailed accounts of poverty based on original research and shows how understanding life contexts can give us a deeper understanding of the issue. The book highlights detailed life contexts ...
By Bernard Guerin
July 29, 2022
This book attempts to ‘shake up’ the current complacency around therapy and ‘mental health’ behaviours by putting therapy fully into context using Social Contextual Analysis; showing how changes to our social, discursive, and societal environments, rather than changes to an individual’s ‘mind’, ...
By Bernard Guerin
July 20, 2020
This book offers a refreshing new approach to mental health by showing how ‘mental health’ behaviours, lived experiences, and our interventions arise from our social worlds and not from our neurophysiology gone wrong. It is part of a trilogy which offers a new way of doing psychology focusing on ...
By Bernard Guerin
July 20, 2020
This groundbreaking book shows how we can build a better understanding of people by merging psychology with the social sciences. It is part of a trilogy that offers a new way of doing psychology focusing on people’s social and societal environments as determining their behaviour, rather than ...
By Bernard Guerin
July 20, 2020
This radical book explores a new understanding of psychology based on human engagement with external contexts, rather than what goes on inside our heads. It is part of a trilogy that offers a new way of doing psychology, focusing on people’s social and societal environments as determining ...
By Bernard Guerin
March 17, 2017
The world of mental illness is typically framed around symptoms and cures, where every client is given a label. In this challenging new book, Professor Bernard Guerin provides a fresh alternative to considering these issues, based in interdisciplinary social sciences and discourse analysis rather ...
By Bernard Guerin
May 17, 2016
Developed from the author’s long teaching career, How to Rethink Human Behavior aims to cultivate practical skills in human observation and analysis, rather than offer a catalogue of immutable ‘facts’. It synthesizes key psychological concepts with insights from other disciplines, including ...
By Bernard Guerin
July 10, 2015
Based on the author’s forty years of experience in psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences, How to Rethink Psychology argues that to understand people we need to know more about their contexts than the dominant modes of thinking and research presently allow. Drawing upon insights from ...