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Sifting Critical Psychologies
for Emancipation and Social Change
Dennis R. Fox
1998
Prepared for a symposium organized by Tod
Sloan on
"Theory for a Change: Critical Psychology, Feminism, and Postmodernism"
I ended up not going to the 1998 APA convention, so I didn't get to expand
on this.
However, I've now expanded it into my chapter
in Tod Sloan's book Critical Psychology: Voices for Change.
Summary of my part in the symposium:
Self-defined critical psychologists who have adopted different approaches
offer sometimes-conflicting critiques of mainstream psychology's values,
assumptions, and practices. Some critiques that grow out of one psychological
tradition or another seek a more theoretically sound psychology, while
others from Marxism, feminism, and other external sources seek a more
just world. Postmodernists criticize traditional positivist research,
while others sometimes use that research to uncover inequality and injustice
and demonstrate alternative structural arrangements. Some avoid political
agendas or embrace moral relativism; others insist psychology should take
moral and political stands ranging from liberalism to radicalism; still
others claim psychology's priority should be ending the field's own oppressive
practices.
The conflicting terminologies and agendas as well as traditional academic
norms stimulate efforts to devise a single, internally consistent, sharply
defined critical psychology. Such efforts can spark intellectual interest
and theoretical advancement and focus psychological attention on issues
such as economic class and false consciousness. But to the extent that
they cause a splintering into self-contained, intellectually pure factions,
they are also potentially dangerous.
In my view, efforts to delineate the boundaries of a critical psychology
worth disseminating should focus on the area where many critical psychologies
already overlap: ending injustice and advancing emancipation. Our goal
should be to create an effective coalition of psychologists who seek to
raise consciousness about social injustice and work toward ending it.
Within such a coalition, differing theoretical, methodological, and political
approaches should flourish and be debated. But we should not lose track
of our primary focus: real people who are victimized by societal institutions
and sometimes by psychology itself.
Related Material
Book
Articles & Chapters
Presentations & Unpublished Papers
Organization
- Psychology & the
Status Quo
- Education, Training,
Research, & Publication
- Human Nature, Human
Origins, & Personality
- Family, Sex Roles, Feminism,
Developmental Psychology
- Mental Disorder,
Disability, & the Therapeutic State
- Societal Trends
(Technology, Community, Individualism, Inequality, Corporations, more)
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