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The Critical
Psychology Project:
Transforming Society
and Transforming Psychology
Dennis Fox
Chapter in
Critical Psychology: Voices for Change
(Tod Sloan, Editor)
2000
Note
I wrote this chapter in response to questions posed to critical psychologists
by Tod Sloan:
1. In a nutshell, what does critical psychology
mean to you? What are the hallmarks of critical psychology?
2. What brought you to critical psychology? Mention
relevant influences, experiences, people, etc.
3. What do you see as the basic principles or concepts
of critical psychology? Explain why you emphasize these ideas.
4. What are the big debates in critical psychology?
What issues remain to be resolved?
5. What have you done, or what do you do, that exemplifies
these principles? In other words, how do you practice critical psychology
in your academic work, activism, personal life, etc?
6. From your standpoint in critical psychology, what
are the most pressing general social/political problems? What should
be done about them?
Note: This version may not exactly match the published version!
Related Material
1. In a nutshell, what does critical psychology mean
to you? What are the hallmarks of critical psychology?
Critical psychologists follow a variety of theoretical, methodological,
and political traditions differing in goals, substance, terminology, and
style. Yet it seems to me that critical psychology overall has two essential
components.
First, in common with many self-defined "critical" approaches in disciplines
such as sociology and law, our ultimate political goal is to help
bring about a radically better society. Using psychological insights
to evaluate, synthesize, and extend competing perspectives, critical psychology
explicitly or implicitly envisions what this fundamentally better society
might look like and how we might help bring it about. Our assumptions,
conclusions, and speculations often take us beyond the relatively minor
reforms advocated by politically liberal mainstream psychologists. Although
we may never reach our ultimate goal, it provides a fluid working model
today as we try to learn better how to expose and oppose injustice, oppression,
and other institutional barriers to a meaningful life.
Second and equally crucially--again departing from liberal mainstream
psychologists--we reject mainstream psychology's values, assumptions,
and practices as a legitimate framework for our work. Reflecting
the historical and cultural context that spawned them, many of these traditional
norms reinforce the status quo; they provide ideological support to dominant
institutions and channel psychologists' work and resources in system-maintaining
rather than system-challenging directions. And more: psychology itself
is a dominant institution with its own oppressive history, often stemming
from norms that demand or facilitate measurement, categorization, manipulation,
and control. So critical psychology aims not just to transform society
but to transform psychology, replacing its norms with emancipatory alternatives.
Up to top
2. What brought you to critical psychology? Mention
relevant influences, experiences, people, etc.
I became interested in psychology as a student in the late 1960s, following
an introduction to socialist Zionism during high school that combined
psychological and political theory (I recall reading Kurt Lewin on the
Jew as "marginal man"). A course I took at Brooklyn College on "the psychology
of prejudice" impressed me with social psychology's relevance to social
issues; other courses during that period of on-the-street "helping behavior"
research were fun. Clearly, I had not yet developed a critique of psychology
to match my Vietnam-era dissatisfactions with modern society.
Two years of early 1970s graduate work at Michigan State University eventually
and conveniently focused on social movement participation and value change
among members of a group I had helped organize that planned to start a
new kibbutz (collective settlement) in Israel. That group eventually splintered,
as did my first dissertation and my affinity for much of the Zionist agenda.
But my kibbutz-style, small-scale socialist impulses persisted; they were
later reinforced by my discovery of anarchist theory, modern communalism
and environmentalism, and the work of psychologists such as Erich Fromm
and David Bakan, who had understood that the psychological could not be
divorced from the sociopolitical. I spent a decade outside academia, working
for brief periods in the Social Security bureaucracy (the basis in part
of a later article on the politics of disability evaluation) and other
settings while participating in social movements such as the direct-action
opposition to nuclear power.
When I returned to graduate school at MSU in 1982, I discovered that,
a decade earlier, I had overlooked (or had never been introduced to, or
perhaps I had just forgotten) social psychology's late-sixties "crisis
of confidence," during which the field was confronted by persistent critical
challenges. Catching up on my reading, I came across something called
qualitative methodology and realized I could do a new dissertation based
on interviewing people about their values and politics, a topic always
very much on my mind. Frankly, because I adopted this qualitative approach
before I had read much that justified it, I quickly immersed myself in
a mostly anthropological, sociological, and feminist psychology literature
that dissected the political and philosophical ramifications of quantitative
"positivist" research. Frequent calls for a "paradigm shift" coincided
with my own interest in fundamental social change and my growing awareness
that the field I was once again pursuing needed changes of its own. During
this period I wrote several papers critical of psychology's methods, assumptions,
and political affinities and organized a "Psychology and Controversy"
student/faculty discussion group that debated critical ideas (an unpublished
paper on my website lists the discussion topics and describes the group's
experiences).
I was fortunate in having as my MSU mentor the late Charles Wrigley,
who had left his directorship of the Computer Institute for Social Science
Research because, he said, he wanted to end his career working with people
rather than with machines. Wrigley, who taught courses in political psychology
and the psychology of social movements rarely offered in psychology departments,
agreed with much of my politics (a supporter of the peace movement, he
was intrigued that the Michigan State Police Red Squad had kept a file
on him for signing a newspaper advertisement protesting the Vietnam War);
trained in philosophy, he encouraged my growing awareness that social
psychology had become bogged down in trivia (as did a retired faculty
member, my decade-earlier adviser Gene Jacobson). Although impatient with
qualitative methods, Wrigley's endorsement kept my dissertation committee
from rejecting or mutilating my proposal. Unfortunately, he was unable
to persuade the core social psychology faculty to fund my research during
the whole three and a half years I was there--unlike my fully funded years
in the 1970s when I still dabbled with statistical analysis and hadn't
yet criticized the kind of research my professors were doing.
Wrigley gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me: To be a "good"
traditional psychologist one should read narrowly but in great depth,
writing for the ever-proliferating journals devoted to increasingly narrow
and irrelevant topics. But to be a "great" psychologist, and to publish
in journals read by generalists, one should read broadly and demonstrate
how different fields of study interrelate, thus introducing psychologists
to new literatures. Although I wasn't aiming for greatness, I did follow
Wrigley's advice in my first significant paper: Combining a critique of
centralized authoritarian solutions to environmental problems with a call
for utopian speculation, I described how anarchist theory paralleled and
enriched psychological thinking on the tension between individual autonomy
and a psychological sense of community.
When the paper was published in American Psychologist (Fox, 1985),
the American Psychological Association's primary journal, I realized I
could actually present radical ideas to a mainstream audience if I was
willing to jump through the necessary hoops (adopting a certain tone,
responding to reviewers' and editors' concerns either by revising as they
wanted or justifying not revising, recognizing good advice when it was
offered, letting go of the small stuff without losing sight of the big
stuff); dozens of supportive letters in response to the article made me
think it was worth it, both to spread my (admittedly recycled) ideas to
people who didn't read political journals and to find like-minded people.
Most of my writing since then thus has been for mainstream psychology
journals, though sometimes the hoops have remained insurmountable. On
the other hand, editors have sometimes solicited or facilitated my work,
making me think that real people in mainstream institutions vary among
themselves more than their formal gatekeeping roles might indicate.
A final graduate school story: Joel Aronoff, a personality psychologist
with his own early kibbutz experience and a broad range of interests,
told me that I could not be an academic and an activist at the same time.
I would have to choose, he insisted, and perhaps, given the department's
refusal to fund me, I would have to choose sooner rather than later. Aronoff's
advice foreshadowed a somewhat nastier comment by an untenured psychologist
responding to a short polemic of mine that criticized academic publish-or-perish
expectations; he suggested in print that "a competent vocational psychologist
might suggest pursuit of a different occupational environment." Although
at the time I found both comments amusing, my inability ever to find a
job in a mainstream psychology department and my subsequent career path
have since elicited occasional second thoughts. I did find a job eventually,
but only after another year outside academe and two years of postdoctoral
work in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's psychology/law program, where
Gary Melton's call for a values-based "psychological jurisprudence" offered
a starting point (and someone respectable to cite) as I began to look
at the psychology/law field with a critical eye (e.g., Fox, 1993, 1999).
Finally, though, I found a real job, in an unusual teaching university
that actually encouraged critical approaches. As a faculty member in an
interdisciplinary legal studies program, I spent a decade teaching, writing,
and organizing. I even got tenure. Unfortunately, the former Sangamon
State University, since taken over by the research-driven University of
Illinois, has succumbed to relentless efforts to weed out everything nontraditional,
paralleling efforts by universities across the United States to cut costs,
boost enrollment, eliminate faculty and student power, and persuade legislators
and alumni that their university needs more money to teach job-relevant
skills (Fox & Sakolsky, 1998). Now that I've chosen to go on permanent
leave, my department, pressured from above, is seeking to replace me with
someone whose work and politics are more mainstream. It is still the case,
I think, that academics can be critical theoreticians and sometimes even
off-campus activists without extreme jeopardy. But criticizing their own
institutions and rejecting traditional research and publication norms
makes academic life difficult, and sometimes impossible. In this respect
the university resembles other institutions designed to replicate the
status quo.
Up to top
3. What do you see as the basic principles or concepts
of critical psychology? Explain why you emphasize these ideas.
Four premises:
- a. Psychology's values, assumptions, and practices have been
culturally and historically determined, reflecting among other
things the prevailing socioeconomic setting, political affinities, responses
to external pressures, and battles over power, professionalism, and
turf. In contrast, mainstream psychology generally portrays itself as
progressing through objective, scientific, "value-free" progress. (For
example, demanding quantitative rather than qualitative methodology
cannot be attributed only to the experiment's supposed superiority;
also crucial are factors such as an interest in psychology's being perceived--and
funded--as a high-status hard science, one that can produce quantifiable
results sought by those who seek not just to understand behavior but
also to predict and control it.)
- b. Modern society is marked by widespread injustice, inequality,
and systemic barriers to both survival and meaning. To explain
the origins of the unacceptable status quo and to justify its continuation,
dominant institutions inculcate a psychologized ideology and
use the process of false consciousness to encourage widespread
belief in unjustified assumptions about human nature. Societal elites
may or may not believe the ideology they disseminate; in either case
it narrows the range of institutional arrangements the society considers
possible and desirable and encourages people to accept unjust outcomes.
(A capitalist economic system is justified by the insistence that human
beings are inherently selfish, competitive, and accumulative and that
people who fall behind have only themselves to blame; people learn to
expect the worst from others and from themselves. A legal and political
system whose essential principles, procedures, and styles were created
by white privileged men with substantial property is justified by the
false claim that today everyone is treated equally; because the law
is unconcerned with unjust outcomes so long as approved procedures are
followed, substantive justice is displaced by the perception
of procedural justice.)
- c. In their everyday work, mainstream psychologists too often
contribute to complacency at one extreme and oppression at the other.
This is the case whether they are well-intentioned and avowedly apolitical
helping professionals or, less commonly, conscious agents of social
control. Mainstream psychologists typically overemphasize individualism,
the narrow pursuit of personal goals, and either adapting to or bypassing
societal norms and expectations; they deemphasize mutuality beyond the
family, justice, and the need for institutional change. Mainstream psychology
and critical psychology differ, thus, in their level of analysis.
(For example, by reducing widespread job or relationship difficulties
to "manageable" personal problems, traditional psychotherapy diverts
energy and legitimacy from efforts to transform work, community, or
societal institutions; it reinforces the false belief that we can determine
our own outcomes if we simply work hard to find the socially appropriate
individual solution.)
- d. Critical psychology seeks to alter, and ultimately provide
alternatives to, both mainstream psychology's norms and the societal
institutions that those norms strengthen. Desired values
such as social justice, self-determination and participation, caring
and compassion, health, and human diversity must be advanced in a balanced
way, with awareness that some of these culturally specific values have
more potential for social transformation than others. Our ultimate goal
is to respect and enhance both individuality and diversity within a
mutually supportive just and equal society. (Isaac Prilleltensky and
I discussed these points in more detail in Critical Psychology: An Introduction--Fox
& Prilleltensky, 1997; Isaac's ideas are now so intertwined with
my own that I can no longer easily discern when I should be citing him.)
Up to top
4. What are the big debates in critical psychology?
What issues remain to be resolved?
Efforts to devise an internally consistent, clearly defined critical
psychology have led to debates among critical psychologists who bring
to their work differing emphases and motivations. Reflecting a variety
of "critical psychologies," these debates are valuable. They spark intellectual
interest; coalesce new insights into a more comprehensive whole; direct
needed attention to issues such as economic class and false consciousness;
and motivate both mainstream psychologists and critical psychologists
alike to question their own assumptions.
On the other hand, overemphasizing intellectual purity creates a risk
common to all movements seeking social change: splintering into factions
that devote more energy to distinguishing real but relatively minor differences
than to pursuing shared goals by different routes. This risk is magnified
by competitive academic norms demanding not just intellectual rigor but
also a substantial number of publications and other evidence that one's
views are influential. So for me, the big debate in critical psychology
is over the importance of theoretical consistency. I don't think we should
allow our differing approaches to mask the much more fundamental divide
between critical psychology and mainstream psychology.
Having said this, several overlapping issues confront critical psychology,
some of which I present here, mostly as oversimplified forced-choice questions.
Having a critical psychology perspective does not require answering them,
however, and specific critical psychology projects can proceed without
trying to accomplish everything all at once.
- a. Ultimate allegiances. Are critical psychologists
primarily psychologists interested in theoretical rigor, advocating
political goals only when they happen to be compatible with critical
theory? Or, perhaps motivated by sources outside psychology such as
Marxism or feminism or anarchism, are we really activists primarily
interested in social change, using psychology's theory and methods only
when they happen to coincide with our politics? We believe critical
theory supports political change, but what if we are wrong? If critical
theory ultimately justified only an apolitical stance, would we abandon
politics, or abandon the theory?
- b. Methods. Should we use traditional methods stemming
from positivist assumptions to uncover inequality and injustice and
achieve political and institutional reform, or should we refrain from
methods that strengthen mainstream claims to legitimacy?
- c. Legitimacy. Should critical psychologists claim special
expertise as psychologists to advocate social change, or does
rejecting positivist methods reduce our rationale for doing so? And
a related issue: Given psychology's historic role as a servant of the
state, on what basis can we legitimately advocate specific public policies
today? Should our goals merely be to keep psychology from doing more
damage and to avoid fooling ourselves about the value of our insights?
- d. Moral relativism. Can we advocate our politically
preferred values such as equality and empowerment or must we abandon
all value preferences because they are culturally determined?
- e. Audience and style. Should we primarily write in
journals, and use a style, that can be understand only by other theory-oriented
academics, or should we reach out instead to students, psychologists
who don't read critical theory journals, and the general public?
Up to top
5. What have you done, or what do you do, that exemplifies
these principles? In other words, how do you practice critical psychology
in your academic work, activism, personal life, etc?
It's difficult for me to distinguish between activities stimulated by
critical psychology and activities reflecting my preexisting political
perspective, and even between academics, activism, and the personal. However:
a. Academic work. My most significant critical psychology
academic project was organizing and editing with Isaac Prilleltensky the
book Critical Psychology: An Introduction. With chapters written by two
dozen psychologists on three continents, the 1997 book presented a relatively
readable overview of critical psychology's approach to different areas
of psychology. It's been used as a text in courses around the world, though
much more frequently in the United Kingdom and elsewhere than in the US
and Canada, where relatively few professors have even heard of critical
psychology. (Introductions to the book's chapters are on my website.)
In the past 16 years I've also published some two dozen articles, mostly
in psychology journals, and presented a similar number of conference papers--not
an impressive number by US academic standards but enough to get my basic
points across. Essentially all my work is critical of mainstream psychology
or of some aspect of society--not because noncritical work is never interesting
or worth doing, but because enough people already do it. None of my articles
is based on original empirical research; instead, they range from comprehensive
synthesizing essays to pointed polemics to short rebuttals; as a body
of work they pursue in different contexts several themes I've noted in
this chapter.
These themes also appear in my teaching, where I've tried with mixed
success not just to teach critical subject matter but to use a critical
pedagogy, encouraging students to think about the connections between
their studies and their lives. I'm always energized by the relative few
whose horizons are indeed transformed by what they discover. I'm also
repeatedly awed by the example set by colleagues whose creativity in the
classroom consistently demonstrates higher education's critical potential,
a potential we should defend against efforts to turn universities into
mere suppliers of state and corporate workers and data.
b. Activism. Beyond anti-nuclear, anti-war, and other direct-action
movements over the years, I've focused on issues related to my workplace
(e.g., faculty and staff unionizing, campus free speech) and to psychology.
I think it important not just to oppose injustice and oppression around
the world but also to turn a critical eye toward my own institutions.
From 1993 to 1999 Prilleltensky and I coordinated RadPsyNet: The Radical
Psychology Network. RadPsyNet evolved from a discussion group
we had organized at the 1993 APA convention on the topic "Will Psychology
Pay Attention to its Own Radical Critics?" We had proposed that session
after realizing that even though journals such as American Psychologist
published our articles, our work seemed destined to have no impact; the
well-known and mostly long-gone psychologists whose work we repeatedly
cited had published in the same journals and had written many books and
had even gotten lots of awards, yet not many people followed their advice.
Perhaps we were all just a novelty, serving only to justify the mainstream's
claim to open-mindedness. So, partly to avoid the lure of armchair radicalism,
we decided to move from writing to organizing.
RadPsyNet now has over 200 formal members in more than two dozen
countries (including many students), an active e-mail discussion group
run by David Nightingale, and a website with reading lists, conference
notices, position papers, teaching materials, and much more (see http://www.radpsynet.org
for membership information). Coordinating the group, editing its original
newsletter for two years, and maintaining the website for the past three
years have taken a lot of time. However, providing a forum for critical
psychologists to find, support, and debate one another has seemed to me
more useful than adding more publications to the proliferating literature
(though I am glad to report that three graduate students in three countries
have recently taken over most of the coordinating tasks).
Coordinating RadPsyNet has clarified for me the degree to which
people have differing perspectives on what it means to be a radical or
critical psychologist. RadPsyNet has received some criticism for not having
a clearly defined theoretical approach, but as a loose network there has
been little member interest in excluding people willing to join a group
with "radical psychology" in its title. Radical psychology has as many
potential meanings as does critical psychology, and for many of us they
mean the same thing.
On the academic-activist borderline, I created a second website designed
to disseminate my own perspective beyond journals read only by other academics
and to draw connections between my academic activities and other aspects
of my work and political life. This project has led to a slow but steady
stream of e-mail, mostly from students and psychologists around the world,
some of whom have since joined RadPsyNet or made other critical psychology
connections.
c. Personal life. These days I live a fairly conventional
middle-class life, a sometimes-uneasy compromise between my ideals and
my reality. With varying degrees of both success and failure, I've tried
to implement my values in raising my children, interacting with family,
friends, and colleagues, making a living, and engaging in community and
other activities. I'd like to think that someday we will all create a
world where our compromises are harder to get away with, as well as less
necessary. Awareness that "the personal is political" may help clarify
certain issues, but it doesn't always help resolve them.
On a different personal note, an admission: Despite my politics, I sometimes
fantasize myself being not a critic but a true participant in the institutions
around me--fitting in rather than struggling against. After 35 years of
being "critical," at 50 I'm more tired of confrontation than in the past,
perhaps reflecting academic and activist burnout at least as much as a
fatiguing disability that's required simplifying my life. But inevitably,
the yearning for calm is overcome by the impulse to point out what should
be obvious, to place things in context, to try to get "to the heart of
the matter" (as I was recently told when I asked simple questions about
the parent-teacher organization at my daughter's school).
And when I do step forward I'm almost always reinforced. I don't think
there's ever been a time in my life that others didn't tell me my questions
or criticisms matched their unvoiced concerns. I appreciate this positive
feedback, but I appreciate even more those who move to active collaboration.
As critical theorists and radical activists we need to focus more attention
on how to remove systemic barriers to voicing opposition. Within psychology,
for example, we could do more to disseminate information to students and
faculty about how to pursue critical perspectives within mainstream institutions,
or about how to find alternative institutions, or we could create alternative
institutions. One loud individual can always be dismissed as a crackpot,
two as some bizarre pair. But three critics are the beginnings of a movement,
with a mailing list, and a future.
Up to top
6. From your standpoint in critical psychology, what
are the most pressing general social/political problems? What should be
done about them?
Critical psychologists should create an effective coalition that seeks
to raise consciousness about, and opposition to, the societal ramifications
of mainstream psychology's values, assumptions, and practices. Groups
such as RadPsyNet (centered in the US and Canada) and Psychology Politics
Resistance (in the United Kingdom) are a start.
This coalition should foster efforts to end class and other forms of
inequality, oppression, materialism, the degradation and homogenization
of social life, and the destruction of the environment. Because all these
problems are exacerbated by the power of multinational corporations to
reshape the political, economic, and natural environment, removing the
vestiges of corporate society is especially crucial to achieve our aims.
There already exists a widespread but struggling movement against corporate
power; its mostly sociological, environmental, and economic analysis could
be broadened by critical psychologists who can focus on the psychological
consequences of life in corporate society and on the psychological assumptions
and methods undergirding the status quo (Fox, 1996).
The ultimate long-term goal is to create a truly better society, the
kind many now dismiss as utopian (Fox, 1985). In my view, such a society
would reject capitalism's individualistic assumptions about a conveniently
selfish human nature and abandon efforts to find technological solutions
to social and political problems. The future society should foster decentralized
sociopolitical institutions that rely on mutually derived, environmentally
benign arrangements and enhance our ability to seek, and perhaps even
to find, meaning and mutuality in our daily lives. The kibbutz and other
forms of intentional community are potential models. Despite their flaws
and failures, small communities are our best hope of meeting conflicting
needs for both individual autonomy and a psychological sense of community.
And this I believe: We should state -- as psychologists -- that such a
society would be better for most human beings.
But this is my view. Clearly, we cannot--should not--clarify in advance
what will emerge from democratic participation in establishing the future.
There will always be many cultures with differing institutions, and no
doubt towns and cities as well, though these would likely take new forms
to reflect new understandings and priorities. People will always differ,
and crave different experiences at different times. Rather than restricting
us, the future society should allow a wider range of personal experiences
and social arrangements than most people around the world can even dream
of attaining today.
Up to top
Related Material
Book
Articles
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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