Abstract

Abstract:

The three books under review here, Jane Walton's Fair Sex, Savage Dreams; Lewis R. Gordon's Existentia Africana, and Paget Henry's Caliban's Reason, all offer information, concepts, and insights that can motivate the development of a coherent paradigm and methodology for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and others who treat those with mental disorders. These books present the latest research and theoretical developments in feminism and critical race theory. With thorough research and incisive analysis, Walton shows that the imbrication of the cultural construction of gender with the cultural construction of race has been repressed throughout the history of psychoanalysis. Gordon shows that struggles for identity by Africana (Africa and the African diaspora) and other oppressed people are existentially linked to struggles against oppression. Gordon maintains that a phenomenologically constituted, coherent theory of maturity can restructure the human sciences so as to encompass and ground liberatory theory and practice. Paget Henry develops the theme of Husserlian phenomenology and the human sciences in his explorations of the work of Caribbean philosophers. Henry shows that African religious and cultural sources inform recent and contemporary Caribbean thought and contribute to making Caribbean thought a unique reformulation of philosophical psychology along phenomenological lines.

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