Critical psychology
Critical psychology is both a critique of "mainstream" psychology and an attempt to apply psychology in more progressive ways (based, for example, on Marxist or feminist analyses) and contexts than have thus far been the case.
‘Critical Psychology’ is currently the preferred term for researchers in the discipline of psychology keen to find alternatives to the way the discipline of psychology reduces human experience to the level of the individual and thereby strips away possibilities for radical social change. In the 1960s and 1970s the preferred term was ‘radical psychology’ and, in psychiatry, the term ‘anti-psychiatry’ was often used. (Now the activists in Britain prefer the term ‘critical psychiatry’.)
Starting in the 1990s a new wave of books started to appear on critical psychology, the most influential being the edited book by Isaac Prilleltensky and Dennis Fox (1997, Critical Psychology). Various ‘introductions’ to critical psychology written in the United Kingdom have tended to focus on ‘discourse’, but this has been seen by some proponents of critical psychology as a reduction of human experience to language which is as politically dangerous as the way mainstream psychology reduces experience to the individual mind (See the books by Gough and McFadden, and Hepburn).
An influential manifesto was produced in 1999 by Ian Parker (psychologist) (which was published in the online journal Radical Psychology and in the first issue of Annual Review of Critical Psychology which Parker edits). This manifesto argues that critical psychology should include the following four components:
(1) systematic examination of how some varieties of psychological action and experience are privileged over others, how dominant accounts of ‘psychology’ operate ideologically and in the service of power;
(2) study of the ways in which all varieties of psychology are culturally historically constructed, and how alternative varieties of psychology may confirm or resist ideological assumptions in mainstream models;
(3) study of forms of surveillance and self-regulation in everyday life and the ways in which psychological culture operates beyond the boundaries of academic and professional practice; and
(4) exploration of the way everyday ‘ordinary psychology’ structures academic and professional work in psychology and how everyday activities might provide the basis for resistance to contemporary disciplinary practices.
There are a now international journals devoted to critical psychology, including the International Journal for Critical Psychology (which is edited in Cardiff, Wales) and the Annual Review of Critical Psychology (which is edited in Manchester, England). The journals still tend to be directed to an academic audience, though the Annual Review of Critical Psychology runs as a open-access online journal from the Discourse Unit website (www.discourseunit.com). There are, however, close links between critical psychologists and critical psychiatrists in Britain through the ‘Asylum’ collective (www.asylumonline.net). The Discourse Unit website contains resources on critical work (though the researchers in that research group now prefer to avoid the term ‘critical psychology’ because they believe it has become ‘recuperated’ by mainstream psychology – see Parker, 2003).
There are a number of textbooks of critical psychology and a number of critical psychology courses and research concentrations, including the Manchester Metropolitan University, Cardiff University, the University of the West of England in Bristol, the University of East London and the University of Adelaide. Compare: critical theory.
Critical psychology around the world
Germany
Critical psychology started in the 1970s in Berlin at Freie Universität Berlin, and the German branch of critical psychology predates and has developed largely separately from the rest of the field.
Critical psychology here is not really seen as a division of psychology; it follows its own methodology. It tries to reformulate traditional psychology on an unorthodox Marxist base, taking up and developing ideas from soviet cultural-historical psychology, particularly Aleksey Leontyev. Holzkamp also incorporated ideas from Freud´s psychoanalysis and Merleau-Ponty´s phenomenology into his approach. The appeal of critical psychology to socialists is that it is an attempt to come to grips with the social and the historical "conditionality" of human beings.
One of the most important books in the field is the Grundlegung der Psychologie (Foundations of Psychology) by Klaus Holzkamp (Frankfurt a. M. 1983), who might be considered the theoretical founder of critical psychology. His last major publication before his death in 1995 appeared in 1993 and contained a phenomenological theory of learning from the standpoint of the subject, as well as an extensive analysis on the modern state´s institutionalized forms of "classroom learning" as the cultural-historical context that shapes much of modern learning and sozialization. In this analysis, he heavily drew upon Michel Foucault´s "Discipline and Punish"; in his learning theory, he was inspired by social anthropologists Jean Lave (situated learning) and Edwin Hutchins (distributed cognition).
Some years ago the department of critical psychology at the FU-Berlin was closed and was added to the traditional psychology department. Nevertheless, this approach of psychology is still alive.
South Africa
The University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, is one of few worldwide to offer a masters course in critical psychology. For an overview of critical psychology in South Africa, see Desmond Painter and Martin Terre Blanche's article on Critical Psychology in South Africa: Looking back and looking forwards. They have also now started a critical psychology blog.
United States and Canada
Critical psychology in the United States and Canada has, for the most part, focused on critiques of mainstream psychology's support for an unjust status quo. No departments of critical psychology exist, though critical perspectives are sometimes encountered in traditional universities, perhaps especially within community psychology programs. North American efforts include the 1993 founding of RadPsyNet Radical Psychology Network, the 1997 publication of Critical Psychology: An Introduction (edited by Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky), and the action-focused PsyACT (Psychologists Acting with Conscience Together).
Extensions
Like many critical applications, critical psychology has expanded beyond Marxist roots to benefit from other critical approaches. Consider ecopsychology and transpersonal psychology. Critical psychology and related work has also sometimes been labelled radical psychology and liberation psychology. In the field of developmental psychology, the work of Erica BurmanLink title has been influential.
Various sub-disciplines within psychology have begun to establish their own critical orientations. Perhaps the most extensive are critical health psychology and community psychology (see the Monterey Declaration of Critical Community Psychology).
Criticisms of conventional psychology
One of the criticisms of conventional psychology raised by critical psychology is the inattention to power differentials between different groups - examples include between psychiatrists and patients, wealthy groups and the less financially well-off, or industrial lobbyists and the general public. This inattention to power has resulted in conventional psychology tending to assume that how things are is how they should be, that the current state of affairs is the natural state of things. As a result, conventional psychology has a tendency to uphold the status quo, victim-blame and situate problems within individuals rather than the social context they are embedded in.
See also
Bibliography
Key Texts – Books
Prilleltensky, I & Nelson, G. (2002). Doing psychology critically: Making a difference in diverse settings. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Additional material – Books
Key Texts – Papers
Prilleltensky, I. (1997). Values, assumptions and practices: Assessing the moral implications of psychological discourse and action. American Psychologist, 52(5), 517-535.
Additional material - Papers
Parker, I. (1999) ‘Critical Psychology: Critical Links’, Radical Psychology: A Journal of Psychology, Politics and Radicalism http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/danaa/index.htm
Parker, I. (2003) ‘Psychology is so critical, only Marxism can save us now’, http://www.psychminded.co.uk/news/news2003/oct03/psychologysocritical.htm