Abstract
Critical psychologies and cultural-historical approaches in psychology have common sources but have become separated in their historical trajectories. These divergent paths allow for mutual critiques and possible reconciliations. In this paper, differences and similarities are discussed, beginning with the role of critique, the society-individual nexus, the historicity of knowledge, and the ethical-political worldviews that engender these research programs. It is argued that critical theory, an umbrella term that encompasses both, requires theory development in order to do justice to the appearance of contemporary human mental life. This theory must be based on existing traditions as well as on intellectual innovations that have occurred in the humanities, the arts, and the concept-driven social sciences - in short, in the psychological humanities. Advancing and developing a critical theory of the psyche or theorizing that incorporates both programs as well as the psychological humanities cannot be confined to one particular methodology or a single framework, but should be diverse and pluralistic and move beyond methodologies and grand thinkers to psychosocial problems that people encounter in their daily lives.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aalbers, D., & Teo, T. (2017). The American Psychological Association and the torture complex: A phenomenology of the banality and workings of bureaucracy. Journal für Psychologie, 25(1), 179–204.
Barad, K. M. (2006). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bhatia, S. (2018). Decolonizing psychology: Globalization, social justice, and Indian youth identities. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Boltanski, L. (2012). Love and justice as competences: Three essays on sociology of action. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2011). Psychology as a moral science: Perspectives on normativity. New York: Springer.
Burman, E. (2006). Emotions and reflexivity in feminised education action research. Educational Action Research, 14(3), 315–332.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Cole, M., & Engeström, Y. (1997). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 1–46). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dafermos, M. (2018). Rethinking cultural-historical theory: A dialectical perspective to Vygotsky. Singapore, Singapore: Springer.
Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language. London: Sage.
Daston, L., & Galison, P. (2007). Objectivity. New York: Zone.
Davies, W. (2015). The happiness industry: How the government and big business sold us well-being. London: Verso.
De Vos, J. (2016). The metamorphoses of the brain: Neurologisation and its discontents. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). New York: Routledge (Original published 1993).
Devereux, G. (1967). From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences. New York: Humanities Press.
Enriquez, V. G. (1992). From colonial to liberation psychology: The Philippine experience. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Finlay, L., & Gough, B. (2003). Reflexivity: A practical guide for researchers in health and social sciences. Malden, MA: Blackwell Science.
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A politcial-philosophcial exchange. London: Verso.
Frickel, S., & Gross, N. (2005). A general theory of scientific/intellectual movements. American Sociological Review, 70(2), 204–232.
Fryer, D. (2008). Power from the people? Critical reflection on a conceptualization of power. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(2), 238–245.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1997). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1960)
Geerts, E., & van der Tuin, I. (2013). From intersectionality to interference: Feminist onto-epistemological reflections on the politics of representation. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41(Part 3), 171–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.07.013
Gilligan, C. (1977). In a different voice: Women’s conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard Educational Review, 47(4), 481–517.
Goertzen, J. R. (2008). On the possibility of unification: The reality and nature of the crisis in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 18(6), 829–852. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354308097260
Goodley, D. (2017). Disability studies: An interdisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The first 5000 years. London: Melville House.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interest (J. J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. (German original published in 1968)
Herman, E. (1995). The romance of American psychology: Political culture in the age of experts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie [Laying the foundation for psychology]. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus.
Horkheimer, M. (1937). Traditionelle und kritische Theorie [Traditional and critical theory]. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 6(2), 245–294.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1979)
Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1964). The German ideology. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers. (Original written 1845 or 1846)
Oudart, J.-P. (1978). Cinema and suture. Screen, 18, 35–47. (Original work 1969, trans. K. Hanet)
Pettit, M. (2013). The science of deception: Psychology and commerce in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Pope, K. S. (2016). The code not taken: The path from guild ethics to torture and our continuing choices. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 57(1), 51–59.
Power, M. (2016). Understanding happiness: A critical review of positive psychology. New York: Routledge.
Prilleltensky, I., & Nelson, G. (2009). Community psychology: Advancing social justice. In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.) (pp. 126–143). London: Sage.
Rosenthal, L. (2016). Incorporating intersectionality into psychology: An opportunity to promote social justice and equity. American Psychologist, 71(6), 474–485.
Roth, W.-M. (2016). The primacy of the social and sociogenesis. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 50(1), 122–141.
Sloan, T. (1996). Damaged life: The crisis of the modern psyche. London: Routledge.
Smith, K. R. (2009). Psychotherapy as applied science or moral praxis: The limitations of empirically supported treatment. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 29(1), 34–46.
Solovey, M., & Cravens, H. (Eds.). (2012). Cold War social science: Knowledge production, liberal democracy, and human nature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Spranger, E. (1929). Psychologie des Jugendalters. Elfte Auflage [Psychology of youth]. Leipzig, Germany: Quelle & Meyer.
Stetsenko, A. (2016). The transformative mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s approach to development and education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Sugarman, J. (2015). Neoliberalism and psychological ethics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(2), 103–116.
Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to postcolonial theory. New York: Springer.
Teo, T. (2008). From speculation to epistemological violence in psychology: A critical-hermeneutic reconstruction. Theory & Psychology, 18(1), 47–67.
Teo, T. (2015a). Critical psychology: A geography of intellectual engagement and resistance. American Psychologist, 70(3), 243–254.
Teo, T. (2015b). Historical thinking as a tool for theoretical psychology: On objectivity. In J. Martin, J. Sugarman, & K. L. Slaney (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of theoretical and philosophical psychology: Methods, approaches and new directions for social sciences (pp. 135–150). New York: Wiley.
Teo, T. (2017). From psychological science to the psychological humanities: Building a general theory of subjectivity. Review of General Psychology, 21(4), 281–291.
Teo, T. (2018a). Outline of theoretical psychology: Critical investigations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Teo, T. (2018b). Homo neoliberalus: From personality to forms of subjectivity. Theory & Psychology, 28(5), 581–599. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354318794899
Teo, T. (2019). Academic subjectivity, idols, and the vicissitudes of virtues in science: Epistemic modesty versus epistemic grandiosity. In K. O’Doherty, L. Osbeck, E. Schraube, & J. Yen (Eds.), Psychological studies of science and technology (pp. 31–48). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vicedo, M. (2013). The nature and nurture of love: From imprinting to attachment in Cold War America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber, & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (N. Minick, Trans.) (pp. 38–241). New York: Plenum.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology: A methodological investigation (R. Van der Veer, Trans.). In R. W. Rieber & J. Wollock (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 3): Problems of the theory and history of psychology (pp. 233–343). New York: Plenum.
Weis, L., & Fine, M. (2012). Critically bifocality and circuits of privilege: Expanding critical ethnographic theory and design. Harvard Educational Review, 82(2), 173–201.
Whitaker, R., & Cosgrove, L. (2015). Psychiatry under the influence: Institutional corruption, social injury, and prescriptions for reform (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation - an argument. The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Teo, T. (2020). The Primacy of Critical Theory and the Relevance of the Psychological Humanities. In: Fleer, M., González Rey, F., Jones, P. (eds) Cultural-Historical and Critical Psychology. Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2209-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2209-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-2208-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-2209-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)