This year’s edpsy Resident, Dr Sean Octigan, talks more about the focus of this Residency series, the problems it’s designed to address and offers an overview of the 11 webinars.
Psychology isn’t working anymore
If we were being honest with ourselves, it hasn’t been working for a long time. Our professional practice is ineffective and unable to evidence impact in the face of a mental health crisis at breaking point. The research upon which our practice is based is looking increasingly shaky in the midsts of a long- term replication crisis that is showing no signs of letting up. The day-to-day nature of our jobs is pushing us further away from the caring role we were trained in, towards writing reports that few read and endless administrative tasks. Artificial intelligence is waiting in the wings to replace us. The times have changed, and yet there is no paradigm shift on the horizon, pushing for new forms of psychological practice that better fit the age.
If you are a psychologist who is feeling increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the current way things are, Radical Psychology, Real Change (RPRC) is for you.
RPRC will be a monthly seminar series that attempts to address the problems outlined above by reviving the legacy of our radical forebears, critiquing the false radicalism of current practice and presenting new ways of thinking in order to push for revolutionary new ways of thinking in the psychological professions, so that as psychologists we can go out into the world and make real change.
The central premise of the seminar series is that the kinds of liberal psychology taught in the West prioritise a psychology that detaches ‘the life of the mind’ from the complex social and material world within which it is situated. This results in a depoliticised psychology that presents human subjectivity as largely fixed, with what little change we can make being a change in ourselves, not the world around us.
We’ll reject this conception, emphasising the connections between our minds and our bodies, our bodies and the bodies of others, and also the ways we shape and are shaped by politics, history, culture and power.
In doing so, we will re-politicise psychology by emphasising both that our subjective wellbeing is dependent on the world around us, and that collectively, we have the power to shape the world. From here, RPRC will build a new, more radical psychology from the ground up, in both theory and practice, to ensure that our profession remains materially impactful in this time of crisis.
The seminar series will be accessible to all psychologists, at all levels of their career from training through to management. Its analytical framework will be founded on a different set of key thinkers and ontological presuppositions than you will find on psychology doctoral courses and will fundamentally challenge many of the established norms set out within those institutions.
There will also be plenty of time within the seminar space to ask questions and engage in discussion.
Joining the ‘Radical Psychology, Real Change’ series
All webinars will be recorded
Recording offers flexibility and means you can catch up at a time that suits. You must be a ticket holder to have access to webinar recordings.
Ticket prices
- Standard: £39
- Trainee/student: £20 (you must register using your .ac.uk email address)
A 10% discount when signing up to all 11 webinars
Between now and the 6th October (the date of the first webinar) you can benefit from a 10% discount when you sign up for all 11 webinars.
Once you’ve added all 11 webinars to your basket, use code RADICAL10 for the 10% discount.
Join all 11 webinars and you’ll get access to something extra
Access a private LinkedIn group* for Residency participants who have signed up to all webinars in the series. The group will provide a space to continue the conversation, share reflections and explore the ideas from the series together.
Residency webinars
1. Mind, bodies and the social nature of subjectivity (Ontology 1)
Date: 6th October
Psychology often disconnects our minds from the people and world around us. We’ll address this problem and look at how our relationships with one another co-produce our subjectivities and explore what this might mean for psychology and psychological practice.
2. Psychology under capitalism (Ontology 2)
Date: 3rd November
We’ll look at how society works under capitalism, how it allows us to act and prevents us from acting depending on where we lie in its hierarchies, in order to think about how we might change society to improve the psychologies of those who live within it.
3. Educational in the ruins of neoliberalism: an analysis of schools in the UK in the 2020s
Date: 24th November
We’ll explore what neoliberalism is and look at the ways in which 40 years of neoliberalism has shaped education and health.
We’ll focus specifically on the formation of the Multi-Academy Trust system and how this process was underpinned by neoliberal ideas such as ‘freedom of choice’ and competition’.
4. Solidarity with children
Date: 15th December
We will explore the way childhood is understood under capitalism, with children seen as a form of property and under-valued due to their economically unproductive nature.
We’ll think about how to overcome this to ensure that our work with children is based on solidarity, relationships and care.
5. A critical look at AI and educational technologies
Date: 19th January 2027
AI is at the forefront of the conversation when it comes to education and work. This session will take a critical look at AI and edtech more broadly to look at why it’s being promoted so heavily, what risks it poses in education and what we might do about it.
6. Intersectionality, neurodiversity and agency: pushing back on authority
Date: 23rd February 2027
In this session we will explore neurodiversity and neurodivergence to understand how the people we work with aren’t just passive agents being acted upon, but are agentic and push back. We will explore the implications of this, how it produces social change.
7. Critiquing and considering alternatives to therapy
Date: 18th March 2027
This session will explore the ways in which therapy can be effective, but also the problematic and damaging potential therapy has when centralising the individual.
We will consider whether therapy can be understood as equally successful for all and then move towards considering more collective and material forms of alleviating mental distress.
8. Intelligence as a social relation
Date: 20th April 2027
We’ll consider how intelligence is a social relation and explore what this means for more traditional understandings of intelligence, what this might mean for teaching, and the political ramifications.
We’ll explore how people learn, paying particular attention to Freire, Vygotsky Leontiev, and Holzkanp.
9. Consultation and materialism: a critique and ideas for ways forward
Date: 18th May 2027
Consultation is a centrepiece of educational psychology training and practice, yet its theory of change is fundamentally flawed. It suggests that if we can change how someone thinks, we might be able to change how they act.
This session will argue that, for consultation to be effective, it needs to be used as a springboard into material change.
10. Assess the system not the child!: systems theory and systems change
Date: 22nd June 2027
‘Systems theory’ within our profession takes the starting point that everyone involved is on the same team, it has no power analysis and it doesn’t really understand the logics by which systems work.
This session will correct that and help us understand how systems maintain themselves and how they might be changed by those of us working in the caring professions.
11. Towards activism, protest, hope and collective action in Educational Psychology
Date: 13th July 2027
The final session in the seminar series will be the most focused on political activism. It will look at how psychologists and those in the caring professions might engage in collective action to change the system in such a way that produces a kinder and more egalitarian society, which in turn will facilitate greater psychological happiness for those who live within it.
* You must have a LinkedIn Profile to join this group. Once you have signed up to all webinars, you will receive an invitation to join this group.
