The author develops a critical history to examine the nature, limits, and realities of contemporary school counseling, which tends to be student- or client-focused with a nonjudgmental and nondirective ethos. The book is concerned with the shifting notions of self and identity and develops a Foucauldian analysis that examines these inherently philosophical notions in relation to adolescents and youth as the primary clients for school counseling. Using the work of Foucault, this study examines changing notions of the self and identity and how psychological and sociological discourses have conceptualized and constituted adolescence/youth as the primary client in school counseling. Case studies of mental hygiene films in the United States and a moral panic in New Zealand are used to examine how youth were morally constituted in the postwar period—a time when guidance counseling emerged in Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The author uses Foucault's notion of governmentality to critically examine how counseling professionalized itself as a disciplinary body. The work examines the impact of neoliberalism and the new managerialism, with its demands for increased professional accountability and performance management as exemplified in various ways by professional associations such as ACA, ASCA, and NZAC. Finally, the narrative therapies of Michael White and David Epston are examined as a new poststructuralist therapy, strongly influenced by Foucault, that offers a substantial promise not only for school counseling, but for the whole school climate. Narrative therapy challenges liberal humanist notions of the self that are embedded in the psy-sciences and the assumption that therapy is a neutral activity. As an inherently political activity inscribed by power relations, narrative therapy addresses issues of truth, power relations, and the ethics of subjectivity.
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Series Foreword Foreword Introduction An Introduction to Foucauldian Analysis Counseling and Foucault: Identifying the Self Psychologising Adolescence Sociologising Youth The Moral Constitution of Youth School Counseling: The Ethics of Professional Self-Regulation Foucault, Narrative Therapy, and School Counseling Bibliography Index
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The first book in school counseling to provide a comprehensive introduction to the thought of Michel Foucault and his significance for understanding youth as the subject of counseling, the moral constitution of youth, professional ethics, and the new mode of narrative therapy.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780897898553
Publisert
2002-11-30
Utgiver
Vendor
Praeger Publishers Inc
Vekt
567 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
G, UU, 01, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
288

Forfatter

Biographical note

TINA BESLEY is Research Fellow in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Glasgow.