The Psychology Of Men's Health (Health Psychology) - Softcover

Lee, Christina; Glynn Owens, R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0335207057 ISBN 13: 9780335207053

Publisher: Open University Press, 2002

Synopsis

* How do traditional concepts of masculinity restrict men's life choices and affect their health?
* Why is it that men die earlier than women?
* Can men find new ways of negotiating masculinity that are not injurious to their physical and emotional health?
This book provides a clear and relatively concise social psychology, drawing together the variety of arguments, controversies and approaches that constitute the field. It is organised around three interrelated aspects of critics' dissatisfaction with social psychology: its methods and claim to be a science (the paradigm crisis); its mental concepts and especially its view of selfhood (the conceptual crisis); and its dehumanising character and the political effects of psychological practices and knowledge (the moral/political crisis).

Several critical tools have guided efforts to rethink the discipline, such as sociological and philosophical studies of science, the turn to language, discourse analysis, feminism and poststructuralism. These are described and their usefulness is examined in providing a critique of and alternatives to social psychology's subject and method. The emphasis throughout is on the variety of approaches to deconstructing and reconstructing social psychology, encouraging a broad appreciation of subsequent controversies such as realism and agency. Students will welcome the clarity of the author's approach to a field which has seemed daunting and impenetrable in the past.

About this title

About the Author

Christina Lee is Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Gender and Health at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She manages the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health and has published extensively on health and gender.

Glynn Owens is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His published research encompasses a wide range of health-related areas including sports psychology, cancer, terminal care, radiology, dermatology and eating disorders, as well as work on research methodology and ethics.

Review

"Essentially, the book offers a critical review of psychological work in the burgeoning field of men's health. It invites health psychologists to consider alternative theories and methods so that knowledge in this area can be developed is a timely attempt to incorporate feminist social constructionist thinking into health psychology and thus broaden the scope of the discipline." - Brendan Gough (Jnl of Health Psychology 2003-06-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: Open University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0335207057
• ISBN 13: 9780335207053
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192