In what ways can marginalized perspectives enrich mainstream Essay

In what ship canal can marginalized perspectives enrich mainstream psychology - Essay ExampleA minority stress model is employ to understand psychological well-being among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. Specifically, this model posits that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and ethnic minorities may be at increase risk for mental distress because of exposure to stressors related to social antigay attitudes. There has also been increased attention to understanding psychological resilience and the ways in which lesbians, gay men, and ethnic minorities successfully parcel out with stress and stigma. In addition, assertiveness as a positive psychological process is demonstrated by different aspects of coming out as a lesbian, gay man, or bisexual individuality commitment, personal identity disclosure, and community involvement. Edward Sampson (1993) argues that the dissatisfaction expressed by minority groups about mainstream psychology can be explained in sexual congress to the notion of identity politics. He defines identity politics asa politics based on the particular life experiences of people who seek to be in control of their own identities and subjectivities and who claim that socially dominant groups have denied them this opportunity (p. 1219).The ideology of identity politics may be admirable (or not), the earth is that, as often happens with ideology the political movement has lost touch with the analytic meaning of its detect concept. Just what is an identity The analytic potential needs to be extricated from ideologies of identity (Gainor, K. A. 2000). While the reduction of identity to power has its pitfalls, so too does an essentialist position. To argue that identity is race, or is sex, is to engage in a unmatched political maneuver. If identity is determined by an unchangeable lineament of the self, then we have the basis for arguments of separatism. If I am my race or my gender, then all those who do not share my essential characteristic are alien and separate. It becomes very difficult to confront racism and sexism on any terms separate than force or numbers. It is to argue that identity precedes existence. Current struggles over difference feminism reflect a great ambivalence over the political implications of this kind of argument.To juxtapose the essentialist argument to the thesis that identity is socially constructed through customs and conditioning is to be confronted with a contradiction. It is obvious that aspects of gender roles and racial stereotypes are socially constructed for reasons having to do with power, among other considerations. The implication of this proposition is that these roles and stereotypes can be deconstructed, as surely they can. But the caput remains what is left of identity when deconstruction has taken place Is there some primordial kind-hearted essence Or is each individual, thus released from social constraint, free to assert whatever identity seems large-hearted If this is so, w e are back to the self-centered individualism of classical liberal political theory. While images of autonomy and self-sufficiency have great appeal, they do not fit with what we know about the social interdependence that characterizes kind-hearted nature.