Zakir Husain Centre for Education Studies
School of Social Sciences
organising a seminar on
Psychology and its neoliberal masters: How trauma theory became a tool of oppression
Abstract: We are taught that the Psy-disciplines (Psychology, Psychiatry, Counseling etc.) hold the key to most human suffering and distress – it’s just a pill, a therapy session, or a self-help book away. While this narrative is fast spreading in cosmopolitan India, it has also come under severe scrutiny. In this conversation we will explore depoliticizing tendencies of Psychology -- how it is not only ineffective in assuaging suffering but actively creates social narratives that are inherently individualized, interiorized, and alienating. In effect, it neuters social change and sterilizes relational engagement. The talk will focus on the dark side of trauma theory and how it has been used in the service of neoliberal capitalism and rabid corporatism.
Dr. Ayurdhi Dhar
Assistant professor of psychology
University of West Georgia
Bio: Dr. Ayurdhi Dhar is an assistant professor of psychology at University of West Georgia. She has taught psychology in the United States and in India, where she also worked as a therapist. She is the author of Madness and Subjectivity: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Psychosis in the West and India. Her interests include discursive practices sustaining the concept of mental illness, decolonial theory, schizophrenic subjectivity, trauma and immigration, and critiques of ahistorical and acontextual forms of knowledge. She is currently the head editor of Mad in South Asia, an affiliate of Mad in America.
DATE: 29 March, 2023 (Wednesday)
TIME: 03.00 pm
Venue: # 207, SSS-II
All are Welcome
