ABSTRACT
In this chapter I argue that psychology contributes to the social regulation of children in ways, and for reasons, which usually remain unacknowledged. I consider psychology’s remit in this process of regulation to be dependent on two interdependent principles: first, through adopting a medicalized, hierarchical model of symptom definition, allocation and distribution, psychology is able to locate issues of mental hygiene and thus confirm the (social) pathologization of individual children (see Foucault, 1961; Ford, Mongon and Whelan, 1982; Barton, 1989; Hollway, 1989). Second, through the exercising of a professional expertise or knowledge, individual psychologists are required to conduct (often unwittingly) this regulation of children’s lives in accordance with the economic and political demands of government (Rose, 1989; Rose and Miller, 1992).
