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Pain, Overview
Robert Kugelmann
Department of Psychology, University of Dallas,
Irving, TX, USA
Introduction
Pain is a complex experience and activity. While
there is a tendency to think of pain primarily in
biomedical terms, it transcends that category.
Most basically, pain is an ethical issue that cultures reckon with, explain, justify, alleviate, and
cause. The world’s religions and philosophical
systems grapple with pain along with injustice,
suffering, and death. In order to begin to understand pain from the perspective of critical
psychology, it is useful to suspend judgments on
dichotomous notions of pain, such distinctions
between physical and emotional pain, chronic
and acute pain, and real and simulated pain.
In psychology, over the past century and more,
pain has been approached in a number of ways: as
a topic to be investigated, as a symptom to
be treated, as a stimulus to be used, and as
a means to modify behavior, extract information,
and enforce discipline.
Definitions
There are no theoretically neutral definitions
of pain. The International Association for the
Study of Pain (IASP) provides a widely used
definition of pain as “an unpleasant sensory and
emotional experience associated with actual or
potential tissue damage, or described in terms of
such damage” (International Association for the
Study of Pain Taskforce on Taxonomy, 1994).
This depiction improved upon earlier attempts
to define pain in more dualistic terms but
contains a number of ambiguities, including the
terms “potential” and “described” (Wright, 2011).
Since pain requires consciousness or sensibility,
any understanding of pain necessitates some
conception of consciousness. Medicine differentiates acute and chronic pain, chronic pain being
“pain without apparent biological value that has
persisted beyond the normal tissue healing time
(usually taken to be 3 months)” (Harstall &
Ospina, 2003, p. 1).
The complexity of concept of pain serves as a
point of departure. Pain, no longer regarded as
a simple sensation arising from stimulation of
nociceptors, has many components: perceptual,
emotional,
motivational,
cognitive,
and
behavioral. Wall (1979), emphasizing the ways
that pain incites changes in activities, compared
pain to hunger.
Pain has been defined in behavioral terms. The
behavioral approach can remain neutral regarding the experience of pain, central to the IASP
definition, and it contributes the notion that pain
is not simply a private or subjective phenomenon.
It has an existential dimension, evident in the
relationships that a person has in a lifeworld.
Significant pain entails the disintegration of this
T. Teo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7,
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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relationship, as projects and activities recede and
the lived body looms prominently. This depiction
draws on earlier phenomenological analyses of
pain (Buytendijk, 1943/1962), enabling a view of
the behavioral insights freed of functionalist
limitations.
The more serious the pain, the more it breaks
down structures of one’s everyday world and
instigates efforts to reorder them (Scarry, 1985).
Pain is “powerless effort . . . and [this] imparts to
physical injury its painfulness” (Buytendijk,
1943/1962, p. 118). Significant to pain is an
aversion or repulsion on the part of the person
experiencing it. Even if pain be cultivated,
the painful is something to be repulsed. Pain
behaviors and performances display characteristic
forms of movement, such as grimacing and
writhing, with cultural factors coproducing such
actions.
Narrative approaches to an understanding of
pain and disease have been developed in qualitative research, thus locating pain within a life story
and a lifeworld. Pain shows many faces in such
narratives, including shame, revealing its moral
dimension (Vroman, Warner, & Chamberlain,
2009). Since narrators are persons, issues of
gender, culture, ethnicity, and SES are necessary
in such studies.
Pain can instigate demand and desire. What do
I want when I say I am suffering? What is asked of
me when I am addressed by another in pain? Pain
has a problematic relation to language. It has
resulted in a common assessment tool used in
medical settings, of patients indicating the level
of their pain by pointing to one of a series of faces,
from a happy face to a grimacing face: Pain seems
to be that which we can indicate but not capture
with words. At the same time, pain explodes with
a rich metaphorical language, some of which
occurs in the McGill Pain Questionnaire. Speech
fails and overflows in the face of pain.
When pain is a medical symptom, it often has
little diagnostic significance beyond itself.
Referred pain deceives the patient as to the
location of the dysfunction that may be killing
him. Cancer pain comes too late to warn the
patient of the danger facing her. Pain can
be a deceitful stupidity, without an intentional
Pain, Overview
object, a sensation pure and simple; hence some
of the metaphors of pain: someone stabbing me, a
band about the head, a burning running down the
leg, a weight. Overwhelmingly presence, but of
what? An it, my ownmost, my invisible enemy,
the not-me.
Pain is not only experienced within oneself, but
as behavioral analyses indicate, we experience it
in others (Levinas, 1988). What they want in
addition to relief, or in the way of relief, is recognition, acknowledgement of the truth of their pain.
Pain disrupts the social order, and although in
a myriad of ways pain and suffering are accounted
for, there is always a remainder. Pain is a Hydra,
the mythological beast who sprouts an increasing
number of heads as its heads are lopped off. Its
insistence is endless.
Keywords
Chronic pain; qualê; sensation (or specificity)
theory; summation (or pattern) theory; gatecontrol theory; pain matrix; hedonic contrast;
pain behavior; violence
History
In the nineteenth century, pain was viewed in
psychology as a qualê or quality of conscious
experience. In that view, physical or sensory
pain was but one type; other types included
emotional, aesthetic, and moral pain (the pains
of grieving, of seeing an ugly building, of
witnessing an injustice, respectively). All modalities of pain were contrasted with corresponding
pleasures, with pain and pleasure as two poles of
the same qualê. Even though the qualê theory has
been displaced by more neurologically based
theories, it survives in a modified sense in the
opponent-process theory of Solomon (1980).
For Solomon, who was thinking of addictions,
pain and pleasure are linked in processes of
hedonic contrast, in which, for example, intense
pleasure produces a rebound in feelings of pain or
displeasure, and vice versa, in homeostatic
action.
Pain, Overview
With the sensation (or specificity) theory of
pain, formulated in the 1890s in conjunction with
psychophysical studies of the senses, pain was
seen as a sensory modality like vision. Pain nerves
were identified in the skin, alongside temperature
and pressure nerves. Pain results when pain nerves
are stimulated, even if not all such stimulation was
painful, leading to the irony of “painless pain.”
In competition with the sensation theory was the
summation (or pattern) theory, which claimed that
pain was the result of a certain intensity of neural
stimulation. Both theories contained an implicit
mind-body dualism (Lyons & Chamberlain,
2006, p. 199), such that emotional and aesthetic
pain became pain only metaphorically, and hence
not real pain, “real” here meaning identifiable in
neurological terms. The neurologically based theories, especially the sensation theory, dominated
medical treatment and psychological conceptions
for decades.
Vexing disorders such as phantom limb pain
defied the sensation and summation theories, and
in the 1960s, the gate-control theory of pain
largely superseded them. This model conceptualized both afferent and efferent processes in
pain perception, with central pathways providing
a means for the inclusion of psychological and
cultural factors in the structuring of the pain
experience. In line with this development, along
with others, such as psychological reframing of
pain in terms of behavior, there was a wholesale
reassessment of pain. Now, pain is an experience, not just a sensation, but an experience that
results from or resembles that which results from
tissue damage. This new thinking was in line
with a shift toward biopsychosocial models of
health and illness. Neurological investigations
into pain have included a search for a “pain
matrix” in the brain, a pattern of brain activity
that corresponds to the experience of pain
(Iannetti & Mouraux, 2010).
Traditional Debates
The very nature of pain continues to haunt psychology. The IASP has received criticism on
a number of grounds. An earlier version was
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cited as limited by including the phrase
“described in terms of such damage,” because
some, infants and others, cannot describe their
experience (Craig & Hadjistavropoulos, 2004).
These authors also point to the absence of cognitive aspects in the IASP definition. The stress
on the subjectivity of pain in the IASP definition,
while recognized as superior to sensory definitions, draws fire because it may suggest to some
practitioners an unreal quality of some pain, as
may the term “associated with” (Wright, 2011).
Accounts of pain can be understood in discursive
terms, as making claims, seeking legitimacy,
treatment, compensation, criticism of work conditions, etc. In traditional terms, discursive issues
have been framed in various ways: in reference
to possible malingering and pleas for credibility,
for example. The limits of biomedical accounts
of pain have been contentious; pain patients
often seek biomedical confirmation of their pain
and reject notions that it is stress-related or
psychogenic; they can be stigmatized by others
(Jackson, 2005). In medical contexts, the
undertreatment of severe pain is an issue, with
fears of addiction to painkillers and of legal
implications of treatment resulting in patients
suffering pain needlessly (Craig & Hadjistavropoulos, 2004). Pain management programs
raise the question of governmentality, in that they
promote possessive individualism.
Critical Debates
Critical debates surrounding pain have less to do
with the study and treatment of pain than with the
uses of pain. One topic with long roots concerns
vivisection and cruelty to animal and human
research subjects. In psychology pain has long
been an independent variable of research, especially if we use a broad definition of pain. Hunger
and electric shocks have been widely used in psychological experimentation with animals. Deception is validated in human experimental research,
and the Milgram obedience studies illustrate well
the ways that pain is produced in research subjects
(Nicholson, 2011), even if the emotional distress
was not an intended consequence.
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The political uses of torture and of psychologists’ participation in them are serious matter.
Torture has been defined as “any act by which
severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such
purposes as obtaining from him or a third person
information or a confession, punishing him for an
act he or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, or intimidating
or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason
based on discrimination of any kind, when such
pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation
of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public
official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising
only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful
sanctions” (Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, 1984).
Psychologists have been involved in providing
treatment for victims of torture (McColl et al.,
2010). They also have helped to develop psychological knowledge to teach interrogators how to
cause pain in prisoners with the intention of
extracting important information, and they
have participated in “enhanced interrogation
techniques,” often definable as torture (Halpern,
Halpern, & Doherty, 2008).
The use of pain in the disciplining of children
and others is also something that psychologists
have investigated and practiced, generally finding that such punishment is not very effective in
achieving its aims and leads to abuse of power
(Craig & Hadjistavropoulos, 2004). Owen (2005)
found corporal punishment inversely correlated
with social capital and that ethnic minorities were
more often subject to such disciplinary measures
than others.
Further critical issues concern the moral value
of pain. While pain is primarily discussed in
contexts that assume it is an evil, physical or
otherwise, in many cultures and religions, pain
is induced, by self or other, for purposes of selftranscendence. Ascetical practices, at times akin
to athletic training, provoke pain, deliberately or
incidentally, in order to draw the practitioner
nearer to the Divine or to spiritual states of consciousness. Precisely because pain breaks down
the self and the lifeworld, it can be the vehicle for
Pain, Overview
self-transcendence (Glucklich, 2001). Pain, elaborated, expressed, handled, and alleviated in
human cultures in a myriad of ways, has been
understood as the ground of profound insight, in
literature, the arts, and in sports (Morris, 1991).
The moral significance of pain is contested as
well in sadomasochismic practices, where critical
arguments contend such erotic practices are
not inevitably pathological, but, on the contrary,
can enhance the lives of the lovers (Langdridge,
2007).
International Relevance
Pain as a complex set of semiotic phenomena
demands attentiveness to social and cultural differences within and across international boundaries. A common thread across research studies is
that those other people suffer less pain and need
less treatment (Rollman, 2004). Equally as dismissive is the abstraction of pain as a sensation from
the matrix of significance in which local cultures
place it. The intensity of emotional expressiveness
is not a self-evident measure of an ability to enact
the local arts of suffering (Illich, 1976).
Practice Relevance
A critical approach to pain calls for attention to
both contexts and to uniqueness. The contexts
are cultural, social, political, economic, and ecological; the uniqueness of the person means that
above all, the ethical appeal of the other is paramount. Pain, being not only a sign of illness but
also a way of making sense of a situation, demands
a reply appropriate to the situation. A sense of what
is appropriate, or in other words, prudence, is
required. Summerfield (1999) provides an example of how attention to the particular must
trump our theories and training.
Future Directions
To cite a statistic from one nation, the Institute of
Medicine (2011) reports that 116 million US
adults suffer chronic pain, making it a public
health issue. The global extent of suffering from
Panic Disorders
pain of all types necessitates a critical approach
that would incorporate social, economic, cultural,
and political dimensions of pain.
References
Buytendijk, F. J. J. (1962). Pain: Its modes and functions
(E. O’Shiel, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. (Original work published 1943).
Craig, K. D., & Hadjistavropoulos, T. (2004). Psychological
perspectives on pain: Controversies. In K. D. Craig & T.
Hadjistavropoulos (Eds.), Pain: Psychological perspectives (pp. 303–326). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Glucklich, A. (2001). Sacred pain: Hurting the body for the
sake of the soul. New York: Oxford University Press.
Halpern, A. L., Halpern, J. H., & Doherty, S. B. (2008).
“Enhanced” interrogation of detainees: Do psychologists and psychiatrists participate? Philosophy, Ethics,
and Humanities in Medicine, 3, 21. doi:10.1186/17475341-3-21.
Harstall, C., & Ospina, M. (2003). How prevalent is chronic
pain? Pain: Clinical Updates, 11, 1–4. Available:
http://www.iasp-pain.org/AM/AMTemplate.cfm?Section
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Iannetti, G. D., & Mouraux, A. (2010). From the
neuromatrix to the pain matrix (and back). Experimental
Brain Research, 205, 1–12. doi:10.1007/s00221-0102340-1.
Illich, I. (1976). Medical nemesis: The expropriation of
health. New York: Pantheon.
Institute of Medicine. (2011). Relieving pain in America:
A blueprint for transforming prevention, care,
education, and research. Washington, DC: National
Academies Press.
International Association for the Study of Pain Taskforce
on Taxonomy. (1994). Pain terms: A current list with
definitions and notes on usage. In H. Mersky & N.
Bogduk (Eds.), Classification of chronic pain,
(2nd ed., pp 209–214). Seattle: IASP Press.
Jackson, J. E. (2005). Stigma, liminality, and chronic pain:
Mind-body borderlands. American Ethnologist, 32,
332–353. doi:10.1525/ae.2005.32.3.332.
Langdridge, D. (2007). Speaking the unspeakable: S/M
and the eroticisation of pain. In D. Langdridge & M.
Barker (Eds.), Safe, sane and consensual: Contemporary perspectives on sadomasochism (pp. 85–97).
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Levinas, E. (1988). Useless suffering. In R. Bernasconi &
D. Wood (Eds.), The provocation of levinas: Rethinking the other (pp. 156–167). London: Routledge.
Lyons, A., & Chamberlain, K. (2006). Health psychology:
A critical introduction. Cambridge/New York:
Cambridge University Press.
McColl, H., Higson-Smith, C., Gjerding, S., Omar, M. H.,
Rahman, B. A., Hamed, M., et al. (2010). Rehabilitation
of torture survivors in five countries: Common themes
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and challenges. International Journal of Mental Health
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Morris, D. B. (1991). The culture of pain. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Nicholson, I. (2011). “Torture at Yale”: Experimental
subjects, laboratory torment and the “rehabilitation”
of Milgram’s “obedience to authority”. Theory &
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Documents/ProfessionalInterest/cat.pdf
Owen, S. S. (2005). The relationship between social capital and corporal punishment in schools: A theoretical
inquiry. Youth & Society, 37, 85–112.
Rollman, G. B. (2004). Ethnocultural variations in the experience of pain. In K. D. Craig & T. Hadjistavropoulos
(Eds.), Pain: Psychological perspectives (pp. 155–178).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain: The making and
unmaking of the world. New York: Oxford University
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Solomon, R. L. (1980). The opponent-process theory of
acquired motivation: The costs of pleasure and the
benefits of pain. American Psychologist, 35,
691–712. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.35.8.691.
Summerfield, D. (1999). A critique of seven assumptions
behind psychological trauma programmes in waraffected areas. Social Science & Medicine, 48,
144–162. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(98)00450-X.
Vroman, K., Warner, R., & Chamberlain, K. (2009). Now
let me tell you in my own words: Narratives of acute
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Wright, A. (2011). A criticism of the IASP’s definition of
pain. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18, 19–44.
Panic Disorders
Lori Caplan
Department of Psychology, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
Introduction
Fear and anxiety play an integral role in how
we function as humans. Without the driving
force of fear or anxiety, are we not likely to lock
the door to our house at night nor would we feel
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the urge to wash our hands if we touch an
unknown substance. As Shields (2000) explains,
feelings of fear such as those associated with our
personal well-being and safety are normal for
people to experience. This author further
acknowledges that “If a person were to worry
excessively, or become extremely anxious about
an ordinary circumstance in life, he or she may be
suffering from an anxiety disorder” (Shields,
pp. 21). Panic disorder is categorized as
a specific type of anxiety disorder.
Definition
Panic disorder is one of the many types of anxiety
disorders that exist in the realm of mental illness.
An average of 1.5 % and 3.5 % of the population
are affected by panic disorders (Shields, 2000).
Stewart (2007) estimates that about 2.4 million
adult Americans are affected by panic disorder
with it being twice as common in women as in
men. The hallmark of panic disorder is the panic
attack (Mahler, 2003). A panic attack is the
sudden onset of an intense fear reaction even
though there is nothing to be afraid of (essentially
a “false alarm”) (Dozois, Frewen, & Covin,
2007). Extreme panic generally lasts for a few
minutes, although it is possible for the intensity of
fear to fluctuate in waves over time for up to two
hours (Bourne, 2005). The following symptoms
often occur during a panic attack: quick and
pounding heartbeat, sweating, nausea, feelings
of dizziness and faintness, chest pain, choking
or a smothering sensation, or numbness or
tingling in the extremities (Stewart, 2007).
Along with the physical experience is “the subjective feeling of fear; usually a fear of dying,
losing control, or ‘going crazy’” (Mahler, 2003,
pp. 200). The fear associated with panic attacks is
often recognized afterward by the individual as
both unreasonable and irrational for the situation
at hand (Bellenir, 2001).
Comorbidity, the instance of two conditions
to occur along with one another, is especially
prevalent among those with panic disorder.
Since panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder,
other types of anxiety disorders may be prevalent
Panic Disorders
in such people. These comorbid illnesses tend to
include generalized anxiety disorder (GAD),
phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar
disorder (Webb et al., 2005). All previously
mentioned diagnoses are forms of anxiety disorders, with the one exception being bipolar.
Bellenir (2001) mentions that bipolar disorder is
a type of mood disorder that vastly affects one’s
mood and energy levels and is often associated
with anxiety disorders. Those with GAD tend to
report feelings of being “shaky” and “on edge”
much of the time and generally tend to have
high levels of anxiety even in common and
daily-experienced activities that pose minimal
threat to their well-being (Shields, 2000). Since
these individuals tend to be anxious most of
the time, it is possible for any trigger, be it
environmental (such as taking off in an airplane)
or biological (feeling one’s heart begin to race),
to initiate a panic attack. Phobias vary from those
that are specific in nature, such as a phobia of
snakes, to those that are broader and more
generalized, such as social phobia. These conditions result in intense fear and the resulting
avoidance of such feared scenarios. A state of
panic is often endured when the phobic individual
is in the presence of the source of their phobia.
Hence, those with phobias may also be diagnosed
with panic disorder if they are prone to experiencing the panic associated with being faced with
their phobia.
Panic disorder is often treated by
a combination of cognitive and behavioral
therapies. In some cases, antianxiety and antidepressant medications are also considered
appropriate as panic is associated with a vast
network of neurons in the brain that can become
hypersensitive to particular stimuli (Bourne,
2005) Less frequently will patients take certain
heart medications, such as beta blockers, which
are used to control irregular heartbeats that may
trigger panic attacks in certain individuals
(Bellenir, 2001).
Cognitive therapy assists patients in identifying triggers of their panic attacks as well as
recognizing their thought processes after the trigger has initiated the panic response, for instance,
Panic Disorders
a fearful thought, a specific situation, or a change
in one’s physiological state (i.e., a quicker heartbeat). Behavioral techniques such as relaxation
training and panic-control therapy tend to involve
focusing on the physical sensations that tend to
accompany a panic attack (Bourne, 2005).
Sometimes a combination therapy, known as
cognitive behavior therapy, is applied as it
produces effective and long-term results
(Dozois et al., 2007). Hence, a patient may be
encouraged to induce a fast heartbeat by jogging
on the spot for a minute or spin around in a chair
to become dizzy in order to experience these
sensations in a nonthreatening environment.
Also, by having the patient be the cause of these
physical symptoms, the patient may also
recognize a sense of control in their condition,
which can be effective at the onset of a panic
attack (Hooper, 1999).
Keywords
Panic; anxiety attack; fight or flight; generalized
anxiety disorder; intense fear; trigger
Traditional Debates
There are often stereotypes and misconceptions
associated with individuals suffering from mental illness in general, and individuals with panic
disorder are no exception to this. Assumptions
regarding whether one is able to be treated and
live a “normal” life are commonly drawn from
non-sufferers of anxiety disorders. According to
Bellenir (2001), panic disorder is highly treatable, with a variety of accessible therapies. Furthermore, this author mentions that treatments
tend to be very effective and also reduce the
risks associated with untreated panic disorder
which can include alcohol and drug abuse, less
time spent on hobbies, sports, and other satisfying activities, financial dependence, feeling
less emotionally and physically healthy than
non-sufferers, and fear of being away from
familiar people or places for long periods of
time.
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Critical Debates
The types of triggers that may set off a panic
attack vary from culture to culture. Panic attacks
have been documented all over the world, yet the
sources of panic can range depending on where
these individuals are geographically located.
Cultural differences in anxiety are often the result
of cultural norms of socially accepted behavior
(Kirmayer, 2001). There are additional subtypes
of panic disorders, referred to as “culture-bound
syndromes” (Dozois et al., 2007, pp. 101) that
share many similarities with the more generalized view of panic disorders. One example, dhat,
is a term used in India that describes extreme
anxiety and fear related to the discharge of
semen, discoloration of urine, and exhaustion
(Kirmayer, 2001). Individuals with panic disorder who have internalized this culturally
acknowledged awareness may encounter
a trigger (internal or external) that may instigate
a panic attack. Other cultural specific panic
disorder subtypes exist, such as koro in South
and East Asia, shenkui in China, and ataque de
nervous among Latinos from the Caribbean
(Kirmayer). Each is, in part, a result of varying
cultural values, norms, and regulations.
The implication of these differing psychological
illnesses includes the need for providing culture –
and individual –specific treatment that are
interconnected so as to view the patient on both
personal and cultural planes.
There are researchers in psychology that have
attempted to demonstrate that cultural paradigmatic analyses can potentially be applied to assist
in understanding psychological illness. It cannot
be assumed that one definition or assessment
of panic disorder may in fact capture all individuals and even cultural differences influence these
factors. Hoepner et al. (2012) have conducted
research regarding the cross-validation of
smoking behavior among African American adolescents. This entry investigates the validity of
a measure developed using a sample of predominantly White individuals to determine factors
associated with smoking addiction in African
American adolescents. Results from this study
demonstrate that significant differences were
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found, with the hypothesized explanations of
both biological and environmental differences
between these populations and so the measure
cannot be assumed to be valid cross-culturally
(Hoepner et al.). For both theoretical and practical reasons, it is necessary to recognize the influence of cultural differences in mental illness.
A definition, theory, technique, communication
style, etc., may not be universally effective on all
populations, and this perspective is important for
all health care professionals to recognize.
Narrative psychology, a psychological perspective, is interested in the storied nature of human
experience. In treating panic disorder, narrative
psychology is significant in that it is concerned
with how patients communicate the experience
of their symptoms, including their affect, physiological responses, and cognitions. Haidet, Kroll,
and Sharf (2006) mention that patient participation
in communicating with their mental health practitioner is one of the major contributors in effective
treatment as it allows the therapist to interpret
the meaning behind each patient’s spoken words.
Furthermore, Haidet et al. (2006) highlight that
“patients are enacting a story as they deal with
their illnesses, and that physicians are key characters in these stories” (pp. 328) because they utilize
the patients’ stories to determine diagnosis
and treatment. In other words, it is important to
recognize the influence of both the patient and
therapist on how the patient’s experience of
panic disorder (expressed as a narrative) is understood and, ultimately, treated.
References
Bellenir, K. (2001). Mental health information for teens:
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Bourne, E. J. (2005). The anxiety & phobia workbook.
Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
Dozois, D. J. A., Frewen, P. A., & Covin, R. (2007).
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(Eds.),
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psychology:
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Haidet, P., Kroll, T. L., & Sharf, B. F. (2006). The complexity of patient participation: Lessons learned from
patients’ illness narratives. Patient Education and
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Panopticon
Hoepner, B. B., Redding, C. A., Rossi, J. S., Pallonen,
U. E., Prochaska, J. O., & Velicer, W. F. (2012). Factor
structure of decisional balance and temptations scales
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Hooper, J. (1999). Psychoactive drugs successfully treat
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Kirmayer, L. J. (2001). Cultural variations in the clinical
presentation of depression and anxiety: Implications
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Mahler, S. (2003). Anxiety disorders. In L. Slater, J. H.
Daniel, & A. E. Banks (Eds.), The complete guide
to mental health for women (pp. 197–203). Boston:
Beacon Press.
Shields, C. J. (2000). Mental illness and its effects on
school and work environments. Philadelphia: Chelsea
House Publishes.
Stewart, G. (2007). Many factors cause mental illness. In
L. Savage (Ed.), Mental illness (pp. 18–25). London:
Greenhaven Press.
Webb, J. T., Amend, E. R., Webb, N. E., Goers, J., Beljan,
P., & Olenchak, F. R. (2005). Misdiagnosis and dual
diagnoses of gifted children and adults: ADHD, bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, depression, and other disorders. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press.
Online Resources
Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada at. http://www.
anxietycanada.ca
Anxiety Disorders Association of British Columbia at.
http://www.anxietybc.com
Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba at. http://
www.adam.mb.ca
Anxiety Disorders Association of Ontario at. http://www.
anxietydisordersontario.ca
Association/Troubles anxieux du Québec at. http://www.
ataq.org
Panopticon
David Goodman
Psychology and Applied Therapies, Harvard
Medical School/Cambridge Hospital, Lesley
University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Introduction and Definition
The panopticon is an architectural design for
a prison proposed by the social theorist Jeremy
Bentham (1748–1832) in 1791 and was
Panopticon
popularized by the poststructural philosopher
Michel Foucault (1926–1984), who employed it
as a metaphor for social control in a variety of
modern institutions and practices. Bentham
(1995) used the Greek word Panopticon – meaning “all seeing” – to capture the distinctive feature of the prison design, the possibility of
maintaining control and providing reform by
creating a situation wherein a prisoner perceives
him or herself to be under constant surveillance,
inescapably visible to the prison guard.
A wheel-like model, the prison is characterized by cells that point inward around the entire
circumference of a circle, with a guard tower
placed in the direct center. Through careful
placement of windows and lighting pointing
toward the cells, along with angled slits in the
guard tower, prisoners are unable to discern
the activity of the guard(s) or whether the
guard’s gaze is directed at him or her. The
prisoner is perpetually visible and the guard
largely invisible, contributing to an “all-seeing”
ethos and loss of private space intended to deter
prisoners from violating rules and to forge
a consciousness regulated by the gaze of
a scrutinizing authority.
Keywords
Surveillance; control; prison; education;
regulation; technology of power; discipline;
punishment; visibility; fear
Traditional and Contemporary Critical
Applications
Bentham’s penitentiary design remained largely
unknown until Michel Foucault (1977) popularized it in his book, Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison. In this text, Foucault argues
that the panopticon model is descriptive of
a technology of power and control that is identifiable across many social institutions and whose
implications have significantly impacted the
shape of human subjectivity in reference to how
thought and behavior are regulated. Foucault’s
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use of this metaphor and its representation of
the mechanisms of coercion present in modern
society have been expansively applied within the
critical psychology, anthropology, and sociology
literatures.
Within these critical theory literatures, readers
find an application of Foucault’s use of the
panopticon to several social institutions and programs. Scholarship regarding contemporary
trends including open-street camera surveillance,
airport security regulations and impingements on
privacy during travel, and Internet monitoring
provides ready and clear application of Bentham’s
prison model to physical regulatory practices in
society. Other architectural and space-use-related
studies have explored more subtle panoptic elements that are present in many traditional classroom management models, hospital nursing
station layouts, and penitentiary models (Lyon,
1994, 2006; see also Foucault, 2007).
Other theorists consider more disguised and
insidious panoptic forms and effects including the
ways that particular parameters for the body, gender, and sexuality are normed and lived out, implicit
tactics involved in education models, motivational
theories in the workplace (industrial and organizational psychological approaches for increased productivity and management of the workforce), and
quality control measures (in education, work, etc.)
(see Dandeker, 1990). Still others consider how
socioeconomic and consumerist practices share
many characteristics with a panopticon model
wherein population interests are monitored and
then marketed in such a way that shape consumer
desire and volition. In each of these applications,
theorists are concerned to uncover how surveillance
practices and related models of governance create
the perception of a subject being watched and how
this translates into an induction of fear that creates
regulatory norms, shapes normative subjective
experience, and governs the definitions of societally
appropriate behaviors.
The regulatory power of the panopticon is
maintained through a fear of being seen, judged,
and punished. However, one fundamental consideration that Foucault and other later critical
thinkers articulate is the way that this regulatory
power continues to function even in the absence
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of another’s gaze or situation of actual surveillance (Deleuze, 1988; Foucault, 1982, 1997,
2007). That is, within modern society, discipline
need not be administered in a prison context but
rather is self-administered. The subject, at this
point in Western history, is self-regulating. This
is partly due to the saturation of the modern
subject in panoptic contexts ranging from early
education models to how one learns about gender
roles.
Applications of Foucault’s rendition of
Bentham’s prison architectural design continue to
be prevalent in the critical literature and take on
a variety of forms as new surveillance practices
emerge. Some recent theorists have applied
Foucault’s critique to the increasing prevalence of
virtual panopticons – the near ubiquitous use of
interactive technologies (e.g., social media) wherein
the “visibility” of the user is constant – and consider
the implications of these trends on expected, digital,
social practices and alterations in human subjectivity
and self-definition (Lyon, 1994).
Paranoia
Online Resources
Online articles related to Foucault and the panopticon.
(http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/
foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html)
Stanford encyclopedia entry on Foucault’s history of the
prison. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/#3.3)
Foucault and the Panopticon revisited: Contemporary
online site devoted to topic. (http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/journalv1i3.htm)
Foucault’s lecture on YouTube. (http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v¼Xk9ulS76PW8)
Paranoia
David Harper1 and John Cromby2
1
School of Psychology, University of East
London, London, UK
2
Psychology, School of Sport, Exercise and
Health Sciences, Loughborough University,
Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK
Introduction
References
Bentham, J. (1995). The panopticon writings. London:
Verso.
Dandeker, C. (1990). Surveillance, power and modernity:
Bureaucracy and discipline from 1700 to the present
day. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of
the prison (trans: Sheridan, A.). London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In
H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault:
Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Brighton,
MA: The Harvester Press.
Foucault, M. (1997). The essential works of Michel
Foucault, 1954–1984. In P. Rabinow (Ed.) Ethics
(Vol. 1, trans: Hurley, R). New York, NY: New Press.
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population:
Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978
(Ed.: Sennellart, M., trans: Burchell, G.). Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Lyon, D. (1994). The electronic eye: The rise of surveillance society. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Lyon, D. (Ed.). (2006). Theorising surveillance: The
panopticon and beyond. Uffculme, Devon, UK:
Willan Publishing.
Paranoia is one of the more contentious
psychiatric categories, both because of epistemological problems in proving whether belief claims
are false and because socially marginalized
groups are often seen as paranoid when, from
their perspective, levels of wariness and suspicion may be adaptive. In political contexts,
paranoia may be ascribed to activists and critical
scholars because of their delineation of
ideologies and power structures which powerfully influence perceptions of reality in an opaque
manner; critical scholarship work may then be
pejoratively compared with conspiracist
literature, which also adopts a suspicious perspective on the world.
Paranoia has also become part of everyday
language and critical scholars have explored
the development of paranoid narratives in the
public sphere – a so-called conspiracy culture
(Knight, 2000) – visible in films like The Conversation, All the President’s Men, and
Conspiracy Theory. Conspiracy theories are
seen by some as having a corrosive effect on
Paranoia
public discourse, and commentators have
suggested that their contemporary increase is
due to multiple influences, particularly the loss
of trust in public institutions (e.g., media and
governments) following Watergate and other
high-profile scandals.
Conspiracy tropes in culture have both benign
and malign effects. Benignly, conspiratorial
narratives can help personify the somewhat
abstract forces of neoliberal Capital, serving
as the “poor man’s [sic] cognitive mapping”
(Jameson, 1988) of such abstract forces.
Malignly, although there have been wellevidenced conspiracies throughout history
(e.g., Watergate), a concern with poorly
evidenced conspiratorial readings may distract
activists from important political questions.
Moreover, when poorly evidenced conspiratorial
narratives focus on the self, they may lead to
significant distress for the person and cause
discomfort and distress to those close to them.
Definition
Within psychiatric diagnostic systems, paranoia
appears in a number of places. In DSM-IV
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, fourth edition) it is seen as one of
the subtypes of personality disorder, delusional
disorder, and schizophrenia. Within these classifications a delusion is described as an idiosyncratic and false personal belief causing distress,
held despite countervailing evidence. A paranoid
or persecutory delusion is defined as a “false
belief” that others are intentionally conspiring
to cause one harm; clinically, these are one of
the most common types of delusion. However, in
the vernacular the meaning of paranoia is
broader and usually refers to a person who is
unnecessarily suspicious of – and hostile
towards – others.
Within psychoanalysis, Lacan’s thesis was on
paranoia, and Freud introduced the term projection in his account of paranoia which proposed
that the projection of hostile intent onto others
acted as a psychological defense for individuals
and even nations.
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Keywords
Conspiracy culture; conspiracy theory; delusion;
epistemology; Martha Mitchell effect; plausibility; schizophrenia; social inequality
Traditional Debates
Within mainstream psychology, debates have
concerned how paranoia is best conceptualized,
with implications for assessment and therapeutic
intervention. There has been a criticism of the use
of global and heterogeneous psychiatric categories
like schizophrenia, and instead some researchers
have advocated a focus on more phenomenologically homogenous experiences. Consequently,
a cognitive paradigm has developed which focuses
on identifying intrapsychic and demographic
correlates of paranoid or persecutory delusions
(Bentall, 2004; Freeman & Freeman, 2008).
Another debate concerns the threshold at
which paranoia is judged to move beyond
everyday suspicion to reach clinical significance.
Similar to many other psychiatric diagnostic
categories, large-scale community surveys of
mental health often report much higher incidences than are referred to mental health services.
This is true also of beliefs meeting the diagnostic
criteria for delusions, many of which will be
paranoid (Freeman & Freeman, 2008). This suggests that definitional thresholds are set too low.
However, some have argued that it is not the
presence of unusual beliefs per se which leads
to distress, but the associated levels of preoccupation, conviction, or distress (Peters et al.,
2004).
Critical Debates
Critical debates about paranoia have focused on
two broad areas: the epistemological status of
paranoia and the implications of links between
paranoia and social inequality.
In relation to epistemology, a key diagnostic
criterion for a delusion is that it is “false,” but this
is problematic on three grounds.
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Firstly, this criterion assumes that all belief
claims are unproblematically empirically verifiable but many – for example, those concerning
time travel – may not be.
Secondly, this criterion implies that mental
health professionals empirically verify belief
claims. However, in practice it seems that the
diagnosis of delusion is more often made
on the basis of clinician judgment rather than
independent empirical investigation. Diagnosis
is “typically made by a clinician on the basis of
‘common sense’, and not on the basis of
a systematic evaluation of empirical data,” and it
is not “customary to present counterevidence to
the patient; it is not even common to present
vigorous counterargument” (Maher, 1992,
p. 261). Consequently, diagnosis may be wrongly
ascribed and superficially unlikely beliefs may
turn out to be true. Maher has termed this the
“Martha Mitchell effect.” Martha Mitchell was
the wife of President Nixon’s Attorney General
who was involved in the Watergate scandal; she
leaked information to the press about the scandal,
prompting officials to discredit her by alleging that
she had mental health problems. The term is now
used to denote instances where an apparently delusional claim is subsequently seen as accurate
(Harper, 2011).
Thirdly, the influence of the social context on
judgments about the plausibility of belief claims
needs to be considered (Harper, 2011). Heise
(1988) argues that when a person is diagnosed
as delusional by a psychiatrist, this indicates that,
in a battle over versions of reality, the person with
the most social power wins. Qualitative
researchers examining belief claims by those
with a diagnosis of delusion have offered
differing interpretations of the discursive
strategies deployed to warrant belief claims as
plausible. Some have argued that those
considered delusional may differ in the way
they make their claims (e.g., by not orienting
appropriately to the hearer); others argue that
mental health service users may draw appropriately on evidence but that those considered
delusional may differ from hearers in what they
consider as appropriate evidence.
Paranoia
The epistemological ambiguity of paranoia is
the source of much humor in popular culture,
including the proto-joke: “just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.” This
leads to the second focus of critical debate about
paranoia: the links between feelings of paranoia
and one’s embodied location in the social and
material world. A range of research evidence
strongly suggests that paranoid feelings may
arise from the effects of social inequality
(Cromby & Harper, 2009). As one African
American family therapist puts it, “[w]hat is seen
through one lens as psychological paranoia, in
another can be seen as a logical result of discrimination and racism” (Hardy, 2001, p. 54). This has
led some to argue that paranoia may actually be
adaptive in some circumstances – for example,
after a history of discrimination, victimization,
and marginalization – and this is an important
consideration for mental health professionals
seeing clients from socially marginalized groups.
One possible trajectory of critical accounts of
paranoia is to escape the conceptual and methodological limitations of most research by moving
beyond both dualistic reductive biomedical
accounts and disembodied cognitive accounts.
References
Bentall, R. P. (2004). Madness explained: Psychosis and
human nature. London: Allen Lane/Penguin.
Cromby, J., & Harper, D. (2009). Paranoia: A social
account. Theory & Psychology, 19, 335–361.
Freeman, D., & Freeman, J. (2008). Paranoia: The twentyfirst century fear. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Hardy, K. V. (2001). African-American experience and the
healing of relationships: An interview with Kenneth V.
Hardy. In D. Denborough (Ed.), Family therapy:
Exploring the field’s past, present and possible futures.
Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Harper, D. (2011). The social context of ‘paranoia’.
In M. Rapley, J. Dillon, & J. Moncrieff (Eds.),
De-medicalising misery. Basingstoke, England:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Heise, D. R. (1988). Delusions and the construction of
reality. In T. F. Oltmanns & B. A. Maher (Eds.),
Delusional beliefs. New York: Wiley.
Jameson, F. (1988). Cognitive mapping. In C. Nelson &
L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of
culture. London: Macmillan.
Participatory Action Research
Knight, P. (2000). Conspiracy culture: From Kennedy to
the X files. London: Routledge.
Maher, B. A. (1992). Delusions: Contemporary etiological
hypotheses. Psychiatric Annals, 22, 260–268.
Peters, E., Joseph, S., Day, S., & Garety, P. (2004).
Measuring delusional ideation: The 21-item Peters
et al Delusions Inventory (PDI). Schizophrenia
Bulletin, 30, 1005–1022.
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Rooted in notions of democracy and social justice
and drawing on critical theory (feminist, critical
race, queer, disability, neo-Marxist, indigenous,
and/or post-structural), the term participatory
action research refers to an epistemology that
engages research design, methods, analyses, and
products through a lens of democratic participation and collective action.
inclusive practice of research defined both by
participation and a determination to produce
knowledge in the interest of social change.
While often regarded as simply a method, PAR
is actually an epistemological stance that values
knowledge produced from lived experience as
equal to that produced in the academy and, in so
doing, expands traditional notions of expertise.
In expanding what counts as “expertise,” PAR
also extends “the right to research” (Appadurai,
2006) and who can legitimately engage research.
This happens through recognizing and privileging knowledge, experience, and related analytical
frames traditionally produced in communities
excluded from the academy. Within PAR those
commonly situated as “the researched” (historically oppressed and marginalized groups such as
people of color, youth, disabled, LBGT,
indigenous, immigrants, undocumented, incarcerated, poor, working class) are repositioned as
fully participating researchers, collaborating in
designing research questions, methods, analyses,
interpretation, and products.
Both qualitative and quantitative in nature,
PAR projects are typically launched from
community-based organizations, schools, and
universities with the aim of gathering empirical
evidence to speak back to dominant narratives,
challenge unfair policies, and organize for
alternatives to injustice. Uniting participation,
inquiry, contestation, and action, PAR collectives
of youth, educators, organizers, immigrants,
people currently in prison, those formerly
incarcerated, and other activists have gathered
to respond to educational inequity; mass
incarceration; unjust labor, housing, and immigration policies; police brutality; constrains on
human rights; and discrimination based on race/
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and (dis)
ability around the world.
Definition
Keywords
Participatory action research (PAR) is an
approach to research committed to democratic
principles of justice and equality. It is an
Participation; action research; epistemology;
methodology; community research; public
science
Online Resources
Harper, D. (2008). The politics of paranoia: Paranoid
positioning and conspiratorial narratives in the surveillance society. Surveillance & Society, 5, 1–32. ISSN
1477-7487. Available at: http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles5%281%29/paranoia.pdf. Accessed
10 June 2012.
James, A. (2003). Voices of reason. The Guardian, 10
December. Available at: http://society.guardian.co.uk/
societyguardian/story/0,7843,1103141,00.html. Accessed
10 June 2012.
Knight, T. (2009). Beyond belief: Alternative ways of
working with delusions, obsessions and unusual
experiences. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lehmann. http://
www.peter-lehmann-publishing.com/beyond-belief.htm.
Accessed 10 June 2012.
Participatory Action Research
Marı́a Elena Torre
Graduate Center, City University of New York,
New York, NY, USA
Introduction
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Critical Debates
Participatory action research has an interdisciplinary history that spans the globe. Within
psychology, PAR has often been credited as one
of the legacies of Kurt Lewin, who articulated an
early form of action-oriented research in
a seminal article, “Action research and minority
problems.” The article published in the Journal of
Social Issues in 1946 insisted that “minority
problems are actually in fact majority problems”
(p. 44) and called for a practice of collective
research aimed at changing communities and
social institutions. Lewin’s description of action
research involved a spiral of self-reflective cycles
of fact-finding, action, observation, evaluation,
and then re-planning and more fact-finding,
action, and evaluation. Convinced that social
science should play a role in informing social
change, Lewin launched the Commission on
Community Interrelations (CCI) in partnership
with the American Jewish Congress (for
a detailed account of CCI, see Cherry & Borshuk,
1998). The mission of CCI was to develop
research and methodologies wherein community
groups joined researchers as “fact finders” to
study “real-life” situations and produce knowledge that would effect social change. One such
method, formalized through the leadership of
Margot Wormser and Claire Seltiz, was the community self-survey. Called a “tool of modern
democracy” by Gordon Allport (1951), community self-surveys brought together diverse teams
of community members and researchers to
engage in large-scale participatory research on
discriminatory practices in housing, employment, education, and public services in their
communities (see Torre & Fine, 2011). These
surveys echoed the early work of Jane Addams
(1896) and the residents of Hull House in Chicago and W.E.B. Dubois (1898) in Philadelphia
and Atlanta that rejected contemporary analytical
frames focused on the “the immigrant problem”
or “the Negro problem” that positioned people as
social problems. Instead they argued for structural analyses of race and class-based oppression,
and, in their own contexts, documented the
Participatory Action Research
policies, institutions, and social arrangements
that helped form and deform and enrich and
limit human development. In addition they
sought to understand how people resisted the
weight of injustice in their lives. Through their
research and activism, Addams and Dubois
reframed the “problem” as one of classed and
racialized patterns in housing, sanitation, education, criminal justice, and access to health care
and healthy environments.
Another lineage that shaped present practices
of participatory action research stems from
the liberatory popular education movements,
particularly in the southern United States and
Latin America. Working in communities in the
Appalachia Mountains, Miles Horton, a cofounder of the Highlander Research and Education Center used participatory education and
research to organize communities around worker
and civil rights beginning in the 1930s. Inspired
in part, and building on the ideas and democratic
practice of Addams’ Hull House, Horton’s work
emphasized community participation, arguing
that effective institutional change would come
about only with solutions determined by people
directly experiencing the problem and those
most affected by the action taken (Lewis, 2006).
With this participatory community-led emphasis,
Highlander played a critical role in the US civil
rights movement as one of the only places in
the South where Black and White activists,
scholars, and cultural workers could come
together to work and organize.
Further south in Colombia, the late sociologist
Orlando Fals Borda (1977) long argued for
the revolutionary potential of a “people’s
science” – one that brought together popular
education, community organizing, and social
science. Inspired early on by Lewin’s action
research, Fals Borda later shifted to an expressly
participatory action research in his work with
villagers that underscored the liberatory potential
of PAR. At the heart of PAR’s South American
lineage is Paulo Freire’s (1970) participatory
approach to social change through conscientization, a process wherein people develop
critical consciousness through collective inquiry,
Participatory Action Research
reflection, and action on the economic, political,
and social contradictions they are embedded in.
Deeply committed to what Antonio Gramsci
(1971) called “organic intellectuals,” Freire,
Fals Borda, and their colleagues believed a
research “of the people, by the people” that
encouraged collective critical reflection on
everyday experiences as a means to generate
theory, design research, and engage action,
could have the power to interrupt the oppressive
conditions of the status quo.
Participatory action research has continued to
be developed in and across universities and
communities in South America and around the
world in countries such as Australia, Bangladesh,
Canada, India, the United States, and England.
Pressing Questions
The important debates and questions within
the field of PAR revolve around the intertwined
relationship of knowledge and power. Much has
been written about the nature of participation,
what it looks like in practice, to what degree it
is engaged, and its relationship to ethics (Cahill,
Sultana, & Pain, 2007). Important critiques have
pointed out the ways participation has been
co-opted by global development organizations
to extract local knowledge and legitimate abuses
of power (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). More
recently there have been moves to reassert the
critical underpinnings of PAR and highlighting
its libratory history and connection to feminist,
queer, critical race, neo-Marxist, and indigenous
theories (Torre, Fine, Stoudt, & Fox, 2012). This
shift (or return) to a critical PAR raises a series of
pressing questions about participatory research
collectives, research purpose, and research products – questions that highlight issues common to
all types of research, but that participatory action
researchers deliberately wrestle with as part of
their fundamental commitments to addressing
power and privilege and engaging struggles for
social and political transformation.
On Research Collectives
Once the exclusive “knowledge monopolies”
(Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991) of the academy
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are broken, and research teams or collectives
expand out into communities, how should
research collectives be constituted? The formation of PAR collectives is an opportunity to intentionally think about issues of power, privilege,
and positionality in research. What types of
expertise, knowledges, experiences, and points
of view are necessary to have around the research
table? Where are the unsuspecting places that
these knowledges and expertise lie? When does
it make sense for collectives to be “participatory
contact zones” (Torre, 2005) in other words,
teams that bring together very differently
positioned people to research together? And
when might it be important to have separate
spaces for marginalized and oppressed groups to
research together? When do collaborations that
bring together those with significantly more and
significantly less power inspire productive
challenges and when are they too treacherous?
How will the diverse sets of knowledge and
expertise brought by co-researchers be shared
among the team? How will participation be
negotiated? What needs to be in place for
co-researchers to participate as equally as
possible/desired? What constraints are there?
What power and/or privilege exists among
individuals in the group, and how can it be leveraged as collective?
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On Purpose
All research must ask questions of purpose.
However, within PAR, commitments to producing research that engages urgent questions of
injustice are paramount. Questions about the
purpose of a specific piece of research are often
what bring co-researchers together in the first
place. What theoretical and policy/organizing
history is the research in conversation with?
What questions should be asked? Are there
dominant analyses that serve oppressive power
arrangements that should be reframed? How
might the research support local justice
campaigns? What types of data (narrative,
statistical) might be useful? What outliers (contradictory, exceptional) should be sought? How
might data collection methods and analyses
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processes be shared as community knowledge
building? How might “action” become an
ongoing part of the research process? How
might the research ignite individual and social
transformation? Where will the data live during
the project and after it’s over? What impact might
the results have – positive and negative?
How might the research betray individuals or
communities either as a result of misuse,
cooptation, or in the reproduction of oppressive
conditions?
On Products of Use
Related to questions of purpose, questions about
useful research products should also be asked of all
types of research. Within PAR, co-researchers are
often concerned about reaching audiences beyond
those in the academy. Research collectives often
produce multiple products: scholarly articles that
speak to (or back to) ongoing academic debates;
policy reports; popular journalism pieces; posters,
postcards, and flyers with infographics; performances, documentaries, and short films; and
websites and social media campaigns. Regardless
of form, the research collective must ask itself
what audiences do they hope to engage? Will the
interpretations be authored in an individual or collective voice? What might be too sacred or dangerous to make public? How might the research
evoke action and solidarity? What will happen
when the research is over? How can those most
vulnerable within the research be supported? What
are the non-negotiables?
Each of these questions underscore the
political nature of knowledge production that
PAR works to make transparent. The contextually specific ways they are answered lie at the
heart of PAR – blending systematic inquiry, democratic engagement, and liberatory organizing in
an expressly critical approach to engage research
for justice.
If PAR is to take hold in universities, critical
issues of funding, tenure, and promotion must be
addressed. While disciplines such as public
health have embraced participatory action
research, with robust funding streams dedicated
to what is often called “community-based
participatory research” or CBPR, psychology
Participatory Action Research
has yet to do the same. Despite the long history
PAR scholars can trace within the field, questions
linger in evaluation committees about how to
value multiple authorship, research products
that are not peer-reviewed journal articles, the
time it takes to conduct PAR projects, and
researcher “objectivity.” As a result, younger
scholars can be encouraged to wait until after
tenure to engage PAR, deferring important
research on social issues that need expert analysis
at the intersection of communities, policy, and
the academy. Changes are afoot however, as
communities are more commonly demanding
participatory engagement with university
researchers, taking a cue from liberation movements who have called for “nothing about us without us,” and as communities are wanting to use
PAR to fuel their campaigns for justice. Research
centers are beginning to spring up that bridge
universities and community organizers, offering
training institutes on PAR methodologies as well
as supporting PAR projects. In addition, it is now
standard to find PAR theory and methods included
in volumes on feminist, critical, and liberation
psychology. These efforts have not only served
to advance the field of PAR; they have generated
new and important contributions to psychology’s
understanding of the dynamics of social injustice,
of human capacities to individually and collectively respond, and at times resist, and of how
including the analytical lenses of those most
marginalized can shift dominant disciplinary
assumptions we take for granted.
References
Addams, J. (Ed.) (1896). Hull-house maps and papers:
A presentation of nationalities and wages in
a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the
social conditions.
Allport, G. W. (1951). [Foreword]. In M. H. Wormser &
C. Selltiz (Eds.), How to conduct a self-survey of civil
rights. New York: Association Press.
Appadurai, A. (2006). The right to research. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(2), 167–177.
Cahill, C., Sultana, F., Pain, R. (Eds.). (2007). Special
issue: Participatory ethics. ACME: An International
E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6, 3.
Pathologization
Cherry, F., & Borshuk, C. (1998). Social action research
and the commission on community interrelations.
Journal of Social Issues, 54(1), 119–142.
Cooke, B., & Kothari, U. (2001). Participation: The new
Tyranny? London: Zed Books.
DuBois, W. E. B. (1898). The study of the Negro problems.
Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and
Social Science.
Fals Borda, O. (1977). Por la praxis: El problema de cómo
investigar la realidad para transformarla. In O. FalsBorda (Ed.), Crı́tica y Polı́tica en Ciencias Sociales.
Bogotá, Colombia: Punta de Lanza.
Fals Borda, O., & Rahman, M. A. (1991). Introduction in
action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly with
participatory action-research (pp. 3–34). New York:
The Apex Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York:
Herder and Herder.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Prison notebooks. New York:
International Publishers.
Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems.
Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34–46.
Lewis, H. M. (2006). Participatory research and education
for social change: Highlander research and education
center. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook
of action research, concise paperback edition
(pp. 262–268). London: Sage.
Torre, M. E. (2005). The alchemy of integrated spaces:
Youth participation in research collectives of difference. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced
voices (pp. 251–266). Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Torre, M. E., & Fine, M. (2011). A wrinkle in time:
Tracing a legacy of public science through community
self-surveys and participatory action research. Journal
of Social Issues, 67(1), 106–121.
Torre, M. E., Fine, M., Stoudt, B., & Fox, M. (2012).
Critical participatory action research as public science.
In P. Camic & H. Cooper (Eds.), The handbook
of qualitative research in psychology: Expanding
perspectives
in
methodology
and
design
(2nd ed., pp. 171–184). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Wormser, M. H., & Selltiz, C. (1951). How to conduct
a self-survey of civil rights. New York: Association
Press.
Online Resources
The public science project. http://www.publicscienceproject.org/
The data center. http://www.datacenter.org/
M. Brinton Lykes’s participatory action research resource
website (tools, websites, and links to journals). http://
www2.bc.edu/lykes/research.htm
ACME special issue on participatory ethics. http://www.
acme-journal.org/volume6-3.html
The John Gardner center for youth and their communities.
http://jgc.stanford.edu/resources/tools.html
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Pathologization
Rachel Liebert
Graduate Center, Critical Social-Personality
Psychology, City University of New York,
New York, NY, USA
Definition
Deriving from the Greek pathos – “to suffer” –
“pathologization” ultimately refers to the process
by which an experience comes to be seen and
approached as something that elicits suffering.
It can thus broadly be interpreted as turning
something into a problem. More specifically,
however, the term evolved as a critical analytic
concept over the second half of the twentieth
century to mean turning something into
a psychological or physiological problem.
Pathologization is thus often used interchangeably with the term “medicalization” or “defining
a problem in medical terms, usually as an illness
or disorder, or using a medical intervention to
treat it” (Conrad, 2005, p. 3). Critical analyses
of this process are largely situated within a view
of medicine as a sociocultural and political institution, and notions of “health” and “illness” as
sociocultural and political constructions.
More recently, pathologization is also sometimes
used interchangeably with the term “criminalization” or the process by which a person/activity
comes to be understood and approached as
a criminal/crime. While I will return to this relationship with criminalization at the end of this
entry, in what follows I shall primarily overview
pathologization as it interacts with the
medicalization of people’s feelings, thoughts,
and behaviors, as this is how the concept has
been most commonly used within critical
psychology.
Keywords
Pathologization; medicalization; criminalization;
positivism; black liberation movements;
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feminist liberation movements; disability
liberation
movements;
gay
liberation
movements; anti-psychiatry; neoliberalism;
individualism; pharmaceutical industry; disease
mongering; hypoactive sexual desire disorder;
deviance; normality; social control; gender
identity disorder; disciplinary mechanisms;
citizenship; western imperialism; direct-toconsumer advertising; World Health Organization; diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders; psychological first aid; Schizophrenia
evidence-based practice; risk; corporeal turn;
assemblages; affective turn; public schools;
prisons; military
History
Attention to psychological or physiological
pathology arose out of the Enlightenment period
along with positivist methods of inquiry, capitalist economic relations, state penitentiaries, and
Western imperialism (Foucault, 1973, 1975).
However, it was sociologists Peter Conrad and
Joseph Schneider who galvanized the concept as
an analytic lens for critically engaging with social
relations through their 1980 text, Medicalization
and Deviance: From Badness to Sickness. This
scholarly attention followed decades of black,
feminist, disability, and gay liberation movements arguing against assumptions that African
Americans, women, disabled people, and queer
folk were biologically or genetically inferior to
European Americans, men, able-bodied, and
straight or cisgendered individuals, respectively.
Their activism included illuminating and
interrupting the role that the medical establishment played in enacting these ideas. In particular,
an ethos of “anti-psychiatry” developed within
and across these communities to challenge the
abuses of psychiatric diagnoses and practices
that occurred in the interests of dominant social
relations (e.g., Chesler, 1972; Metzl, 2010).
This critical scholarship and activism around
pathologization and psychiatry emerged during
the “expansion of medical jurisdiction, authority
and practices into new realms” in the United
States during the second half of the twentieth
Pathologization
century (Clarke et al., 2003, p. 161). Post World
War II marked a rapid development of, and
enthusiasm for, positivist science, including medical definitions and technologies. These shifts
nurtured a burgeoning crisis of legitimacy in psychiatry. Previously dominated by psychoanalytic
approaches that were increasingly coming under
critique for their “biases,” the field was drawn to
the supposed objectivity and progress of
medicine and its associated ability to engender
expertise and social status in researchers and
practitioners who used these models (Metzl,
2003; Valenstein, 1998). Deploying medical theories and practices thus provided an opportunity
for the psychiatric profession to reconfigure its
presence and power within this changing milieu.
Medicalization was also nurtured by the rise in
neoliberal politics over this time. From the late
1970s, neoliberalism cultivated economic and
cultural relations that shifted public goods and
services into “the free market,” thus inciting
moves toward managed care and mental
healthcare consumerism that reconfigured
“patients” as “consumers” and “markets”
(Conrad, 2005). These changes were embedded
within an emphasis on privatization and personal
responsibility, which dovetailed with existing
capitalist demands for individualism. Medicalization was symbiotic with these politics as it
enabled the “problem” of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to be located in individuals’
psychology or physiology, and thus the “solution” in technologies that treated the individual.
Lastly, the dominance of the pharmaceutical
industry – considered by Conrad (2005) to be
a “gatekeeper” of medicalization – increased
over this time with two overarching implications.
First, drug companies began to monopolize
research and prioritize commercial interests by
deploying methods of data collection, analysis,
interpretation, and reporting that emphasized the
benefits and downplayed the adverse effects of
drugs (Healy, 2002). Second, drug companies
pushed the notion that people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were problematic, arose
from biochemical imbalances, and required
psychopharmaceutical intervention. Otherwise
known as “disease mongering,” these framings
Pathologization
served to create and inflate the market for pharmaceutical products (Moynihan & Cassels,
2005). These two sets of practices thus increased
the circulation and influence of medicalized
discourses and technologies.
Critical Debates
The early 1980s saw the emergence of critical
psychological analyses around pathologization/
medicalization. Over time these have evolved
into five interwoven forms, all of which ultimately associate these processes with
reproducing social relations that maintain the
power of some people over others.
First, pathologization is critiqued for essentializing and individualizing people’s madness.
That is, with framing people’s distressing
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as caused by
an internal diseased entity thereby directing
attention toward their (supposed) individual
pathology and away from the contexts in which
their experiences may have emerged. For example, recently women’s sexual problems have been
framed as a mental disorder called “hypoactive
sexual desire disorder” that is caused by an
imbalance of the neurotransmitter serotonin and
therefore requires pharmacological intervention.
Feminist scholars and activists have critiqued this
interpretation for problematically diverting attention away from the historic and cultural context
(e.g., of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism) in which female sexual pleasure has been
repeatedly marginalized.
Second, pathologization is critiqued for
reconfiguring notions of deviance as sickness.
As such medical discourses, practices, and
technologies are seen as potentially functioning
to diagnose and treat those psyches that do not
conform to dominant ideals of “normality”; ideals
that by and large echo those of the white, male,
straight, middle-class majority. Pathologization in
these explorations is thus approached as a raced,
gendered, and classed means of social control. It is
important to note, however, that some activists are
arguing for medicalization as, given the currentday hegemony of medicine, it is seen as a means to
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legitimize people’s experiences and provide them
with access to support and resources. For example,
a critical debate in the transgender community is
whether or not the diagnosis of “gender identity
disorder” signifies a victory (in terms of allowing
people access to psychological, hormonal, and
surgical treatment) or a concern (in terms of
pathologizing gender nonconformity and thus further institutionalizing an oppressive gender
binary).
Third, medicalization is critiqued for the way
in which it constructs ideals of psychological
normality, thereby influencing the affective and
discursive repertoires for people to experience
and make sense of their experiences. In particular, Nikolas Rose (1999) suggests that psy
technologies have developed an increasing role
in governing people in ways compatible with the
principles of liberalism and democracy. It follows that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that
are interpreted as underproductive, inflexible,
and affronting the “obligation of freedom” (such
as independence, personal responsibility, choice,
and active self-fulfillment) are now medicalized
as pathologies and subject to intervention. This
process is by and large seen as an enactment of
productive (as opposed to repressive) power
(Foucault, 1975). For example, in her analysis
of “borderline personality disorder” and “bipolar
disorder,” Christine Martens (2008) argues that
the individual-level theories and therapies
applied to these diagnoses comply with a highly
politicized desire under neoliberalism for people
to have internalized, self-regulated, and moderated emotions and therefore collude in the production of the “good citizen.”
Fourth, critiques of medicalization consider
its relationship to people’s subjectivities.
Rose (2003) argues that there has been
a reconfiguring of Western countries as “psychopharmacological societies” where “the modification of thought, mood and conduct by
pharmacological means has become more or
less routine” (p. 2). This context is associated
with a reframing of people’s identities as “neurochemical selves,” or “the widespread mutation in
which we in the West, most especially in the
United States, have come to understand our mind
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and selves in terms of our brains and bodies” (p. 2).
Critical psychologists have explored the implications of these shifts for how people relate to their
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For example,
antidepressant use is thought to undermine the
social and political meaning of people’s experiences, construct people as chronically ill, and
increase people’s dependence on doctors and
drugs, and thus ultimately be disempowering
(e.g., Gammell & Stoppard, 2003; LaFrance,
2007).
Lastly, pathologization is critiqued for the way
in which it codes people’s thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors as negative, unproductive, and/or
meaningless and thus undermines their capacity
to be an “embodied dialogue” with, and therefore
expertise on, the world (Liebert, 2010a). Given
that this expertise is made up of bodies, emotions,
desires, and the unseen – knowledges that are
typically associated with more “irrational” feminine, non-Western, and/or indigenous ways of
knowing – these critiques moreover consider
the ways in which pathologization marks the
dominance of more “rational” masculine, white,
and Western epistemologies.
International Relevance
While the United States represents an overdetermined site for pathologization, the process has
considerable, increasing relevance to other parts
of the world. This is firstly because of the
dominance of drug companies who collectively
form the number one lobbyist in the United States
and comprise the third most profitable industry
worldwide (Angell, 2004). While direct-toconsumer advertising of pharmaceuticals is only
legal in the United States and New Zealand, the
industry deploys a number of other techniques
that encourage pathologization elsewhere including their sponsorship of research projects within
academia and “education” initiatives for mental
healthcare professionals. This leads to the dissemination of Western medical discourses and
technologies that can override local interpretations and practices, thus enacting a form of modern-day imperialism.
Pathologization
Second, the global expansion of medicalization
occurs vis-à-vis worldwide organizations that are
greatly influenced by the United States and have
major influence in “human rights” programs and
nongovernment organizations around mental
healthcare. The World Health Organization, for
example, deploys Western medical models in its
resources and guidelines such as an emphasis on
psychiatric diagnoses and psychopharmaceutical
treatments. Arguably, as more and more countries
are being restructured toward neoliberalism, the
appeal of this individualized, privatized approach
to mental healthcare will only increase. While this
approach is often framed in terms of (and sometimes received as) “progress” and “justice,” its
use is deeply politicized. As well as having the
imperialist potential mentioned above, it has the
ability to treat people whose distressing thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors are a response to structural
problems and thus detract attention from the injustices of globalization.
A third process influencing the spread of
medicalization is the globalization of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Published by the American
Psychiatric Association (APA) and financially
intertwined with the pharmaceutical industry,
the DSM encourages the interpretation of
people’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors as
psychological pathology. Moreover, the upcoming DSM-5 emphasizes neurobiological theories
and psychopharmaceutical interventions for
these experiences. Ethan Watters (2010) has
examined the effect of the DSM and drug companies across different geographic and cultural
contexts. For example, “Psychological First
Aid” initiatives in natural or man-made disaster
zones are thought to impose Western interpretations and treatments of “post-traumatic stress disorder” and therefore contribute to an overarching
homogenization of “acceptable” responses to
distressing circumstances.
Practice Relevance
Critiques of pathologization have two main
points of relevance for practice. First, whether
Pathologization
or not something is pathologized affects how
a problem is understood, and therefore the
solutions offered. For example, the anger and
paranoia of brown or black people could be seen
as caused by a “mental disorder” called “schizophrenia” that is characterized by an imbalance in
the neurotransmitter dopamine, genetically
inherited and best treated by antipsychotic
drugs. It could also be seen as emerging from
a historicized sociopolitical context of mass
surveillance and persecution of communities of
color, in which case one would be more likely to
see people’s anger and paranoia as both a source
of embodied expertise on these patterns and as
ultimately requiring intervention at the level of
structural racism. In this way, pathologization
also affects whether or not the responsibility for
the solution is on the individual (e.g., to have
“insight” into their “mental illness” and therefore
be a “good consumer” of psychopharmaceuticals) and/or more broadly lies with representatives of the public to refuse the continuation of
these structural injustices and develop
alternatives.
Second, critiques around pathologization – particularly those pertaining to the influence of the
pharmaceutical industry – have relevance for the
increasing emphasis on “evidence-based practice.” As mentioned above, much research on distress and madness is now funded and distributed
by the pharmaceutical industry and as such reproduces medicalized knowledges. For example,
the dominance of industry funding is thought to
foreclose attention to elements other than biochemistry, alternatives to psychopharmaceutical
intervention, and serious adverse drug effects.
An awareness of these implications by clinicians
and academics has led to important discussions,
campaigns, and policies around the production,
assessment, and use of “evidence,” many of
which advocate for more transparency and less
corporate involvement in research.
Future Directions
While nowadays somewhat of a “cliché of
critical social analysis” (Rose, 2007a, p. 700),
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the above explorations of pathologization and
medicalization have spawned several promising
new directions for future research and activism.
First, critical scholars are increasingly examining
the pathologization of risk. That is, the ways in
which people are being screened and preemptively intervened upon if they are deemed to
have the potential to develop a psychological
“disorder.” These shifts are being located within
both the “risk society” demanded of neoliberalism and the post 9/11 context of intensified
securitization (Dumit, 2010; Liebert, 2010b).
Importantly, they also fall along lines of race,
gender, and class (Liebert, 2010b): as Janet Finn
and Lynn Nybell (2001) argue, some are designated as “at risk” and therefore to be “protected,
cared for, and brought onto to the right path
again,” and some are designated as “risky,” and
therefore to be “controlled, contained, and kept
away from contaminating and undermining
society.”
Indeed, future scholarship must attend to the
classed and raced nature of pathologization (as
intersecting always with disability and sexuality).
To date, while feminists have worked to highlight
the role of gender, the vast majority of critical
scholarship has implicitly assumed the medicalized subject as white and middle class. Yet, given
that (as mentioned) emotions and irrationality are
racially marked and pathologization emerged out
of the imperialist project, this assumption is
problematic. In addition, people of color continue
to be underrepresented in practices and institutions of “choice” in mental healthcare, such as
private therapy and pharmaceutical advertising,
and overrepresented in practices and institutions
of compulsory treatment, such as public psychiatric hospitals and spaces for the “criminally
insane.” Indeed, it is here that there appears to
be a fork in the path of pathologization:
mirroring the abovementioned split in who is
deemed to be “at risk” versus “risky,” could it
be that some bodies and communities are
more likely to be medicalized and some are
more likely to be being criminalized? A future
direction for research then is to examine the differential circulation and sociopolitical implications of pathologizing discourses, practices, and
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technologies in sites that predominantly concern
poor communities and communities of color,
such as in public healthcare, public schools,
prisons, and the military.
Third, the “corporeal turn” in critical theory
has argued that traditional, anti-essentialist critiques have assumed, constructed, and naturalized biology and neurology as inert and thus
“regressive and politically dangerous” (Wilson,
1998, p. 13). In this way, medicalization scholars
are thought to have not only become complicit in
the very problems that they are trying to challenge but also foreclosed any political possibilities offered by engaging with biomedicine and
neuroscience. This turn complements another
direction in pathologization that demands an
acknowledgment of people’s agency when
engaging with medical discourses, practices,
and technologies. The concern here is that by
attending to medicine as (only) a form of social
control, critiques of pathologization may be
both reifying this institution as all-determining
and formidable, and constructing the people
interacting with it as oppressed and damaged –
both of which are thought to undermine possibility for change. Contemporary scholarship
therefore attempts to both nurture the potential
for dignity and resistance within a context of
intensified medicalization while also attending
to relations of power, corporate interests, and
political ideologies.
For this reason, the concept of assemblages
provides a fifth promising direction for medicalization. Rather than seeing people as discrete
entities imposed upon by oppressive forces,
assemblage theory enables pathologization to be
viewed as a heterogeneous and dynamic process
that is best understood in terms of instances,
multiplicities, and patterns (Liebert, 2010a). It is
the unique and emergent convergence of multiple, historicized bodies, and processes. This
approach is symbiotic with the “affective turn”
in critical theory (Clough, 2007; Stewart, 2007),
which furthermore perhaps offers critical tools
for exploring the ways in which pathologization
may not just influence how people interpret their
own and others’ bodies and feelings, but how
they actually come to enact and experience them.
Pathologization
References
Angell, M. (2004). The truth about the drug companies:
How they deceive us and what to do about it. New
York, NY: Random House.
Chesler, P. (1972). Women and madness. New York, NY:
Avon Books.
Clarke, A., Mamo, L., Fishman, J., Shim, J., & Fosket, J.
(2003). Biomedicalisation: Technoscientific transformations of health, illness and US biomedicine. American Sociological Review, 68(2), 161–194.
Clough, P. (2007). Introduction. In P. Clough & J. Halley
(Eds.), The affective turn: Theorizing the social.
Durhman, NC/London, England: Duke University
Press.
Conrad, P. (2005). The shifting engines of medicalization.
Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 46, 3–14.
Conrad, P., & Schneider, J. (1980). Deviance and medicalization: From badness to sickness. St. Louis, MO:
Mosby.
Dumit, J. (2010). Normal insecurities, healthy insecurities. In H. Gusterson & C. Besteman (Eds.),
The insecure American: How we got here and what
we should do about it. Berkley, CA: University of
California Press.
Finn, J., & Nybell, L. (2001). Capitalizing on concern:
The making of troubled children and troubling youth in
late capitalism. Childhood, 8, 139.
Foucault, M. (1973). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology
of medical perception. London, England: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of
the prison. New York, NY: Random House.
Gammell, D., & Stoppard, J. (2003). Women’s experiences
of treatment of depression: Medicalization or empowerment? Canadian Psychology, 40(2), 112–128.
Healy, D. (2002). The creation of psychopharmacology
(Vol. 2005). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
LaFrance, M. (2007). A bitter pill: A discursive analysis of
women’s medicalized accounts of depression. Journal
of Health Psychology, 12(1), 127–140.
Liebert, R. (2010a). Synaptic peace-keeping: Of bipolar
and securitization. Women’s Studies Quarterly Special
Issue, Market, 38(3&4), 325–342.
Liebert, R. (2010b). Feminist psychology, hormones
and the raging politics of medicalisation. Feminism
& Psychology, 20(1).
Martens, C. (2008). Theorizing distress: Critical reflections
on bi-polar and borderline. Radical Psychology, 7(2).
Metzl, J. (2003). Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing
gender in an era of wonder drugs. Durham,
NC/London, England: Duke University Press.
Metzl, J. (2010). The protest psychosis: How schizophrenia became a black disease. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.
Moynihan, R., & Cassels, A. (2005). Selling sickness:
How the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies
are turning us all into patients. New York, NY: Nation
Books.
Patriarchy
Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the
private self (2nd ed.). London, England/New York,
NY: Free Association Press.
Rose, N. (2003). Neurochemical selves. Society, 41(1),
46–59.
Rose, N. (2007a). Beyond medicalisation. Lancet, 369,
700–701.
Rose, N. (2007b). The politics of life itself: Biomedicine,
power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affect. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Valenstein, E. (1998). Blaming the brain: The truth
about drugs and mental health. New York, NY:
The Free Press.
Watters, E. (2010). Crazy like us: The globalization of the
American psyche. New York, NY: Free Press.
Wilson, E. (1998). Neural geographies: Feminism and the
microstructure of cognition. London, England/New
York, NY: Routledge.
Online Resources
The new view campaign. www.newviewcampaign.org
Pharmed out. www.pharmedout.org
Critical psychiatry website. www.mentalhealth.freeuk.com
The icarus project. www.theicarusproject.net
Madness radio. www.madnessradio.net
Mind freedom international. www.mindfreedom.org
81 words. www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/81-words
Patriarchy
Carolyn Hibbs
Department of Humanities, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
Introduction
Patriarchy is a hierarchical system organized
around the social, religious, and political rule of
older men. While it was originally based on kinship in nomadic tribal cultures, the understanding
of the term has expanded to include the organization of most current cultural systems, in which
the macrocosm of the political sphere, with a king
or president, is expected to parallel the microcosm of the family, in which the grandfather or
father exercises dominance. Although the
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existence of patriarchy dates to the earliest surviving texts, its form has changed and its importance has fluctuated over time. Patriarchy can be
seen as a form of sexism, because of its assumptions that men have greater value than women,
and operates alongside misogyny and androcentrism at the individual level and the institutional
level. In critical analysis, the study of patriarchy
has been pursued predominantly through feminist
analysis, which identifies patriarchy as the key
tool with which to subordinate people, especially
women, in a hierarchy.
Definition
Patriarchy literally means rule of the father, the
patriarch who is the father-ruler. Contemporary
cultures are widely recognized as patriarchal
systems, which confer privilege and power on
the basis of sex and lineage. Patriarchy, as
a transnational and historical hierarchy, is a core
concern for feminist theory and activism.
According to feminist theory, patriarchy operates
as a central hierarchy which relies on other hierarchies as organizing principles. Gerda Lerner’s
book The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) provides
a comprehensive overview and analysis of historical and contemporary patriarchy.
The textual history of the word patriarchy dates
to the Hebrew text Chronicles, written between
the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and referring to
the leaders of the tribes of Israel, though this use
referred simply to a father. In the early centuries
of the Common Era, the word patriarchy was used
in the Christian church to describe a geographical
region of ministry (“Patriarchy,” 1989). The
modern understanding of patriarchy developed
in the nineteenth century in the study of Western
history (Maine, 1861). In 1970, Kate Millett, an
American feminist, used the term during the
second wave of feminism in her book Sexual
Politics, a literary analysis. The term was subsequently popularized in the Western feminist
movement to refer to the ideology in which
contemporary culture consists of male rule at
many levels of society, which results in women’s
oppression and male dominance.
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The term is sometimes used to refer to a sex/
gender hierarchy in which men are seen as natural
rulers over women; however, in the sense of rule
of the father, patriarchy indicates not only
a hierarchy in which a male father rules over
a female mother but also multiple hierarchies in
which a male, elder, heterosexual father belonging
to a dominant ethnic group and descended from
a ruling lineage rules over the women, children
(in the sense of sons and daughters as well as
younger community members), and servants and/
or slaves who may belong to subordinated ethnic
or economic groups. Thus, patriarchy both relies
on and influences other hierarchical systems such
as ageism, racism, classism, heterosexism,
cissexism, and to some extent ableism. At the
same time, since patriarchy in its earliest forms
was based on kinship, patrilineage – descent
through the male parent – allows limited possibilities for transcending these systems. As such,
critical theory understands that patriarchy is not
simply the rule of men over women, but a system
in which all members, including males and
females, participate in the valuation of men over
women.
The historical development of patriarchal
cultures corresponds with an understanding of
paternity connected with the need to ensure
patrilineage in order to protect inheritance,
whether of property or rule. As such, patriarchal
cultures are intensely concerned with reproduction. Patriarchy operates on the basis of compulsory heterosexuality; the patriarchal hierarchy
relies on reproduction through a patriarch’s wife
or wives and thus limits female roles to mother or
potential mother (Rich, 1980). Patriarchy therefore entails strict control over women’s sexuality.
Contemporary theories propose that the advent of
city-states and accompanying urbanization
resulted in the concept of private property and of
a culture of warriors necessary to protect that
property (Stone, 1976; Thapar, 2002). Early
patriarchal cultures were based on a hierarchy in
which men were not only more valuable and
representative of the human being, as in androcentrism, but women, children, and slaves constituted
property – the chattel system. Even so, historical
texts contain ambivalent records on whether
Patriarchy
women were persons or chattel (Wegner, 1988).
Rules of inheritance based on patrilineage inform
the transfer of property, where the accumulation of
property including land, animals, goods, and
people is passed down through the rule of primogeniture – inheritance based on gender and birth
order, inheritance of the firstborn male.
Patriarchy operates in a continuum of sexism
along with androcentrism and misogyny. The historical shift into patriarchal cultural systems
accompanied a growing androcentrism, whereby
male views became dominant, central, and more
highly valued than female views. Those men who
gained power and privilege in patriarchal systems
also developed the terms of those hierarchies in
order to maintain their power. Thus, sex and gender analyses developed whereby women were
judged unfit to rule and in fact assumed to require
control (Freud, 1965; Rousseau, 1762). Patriarchal
hierarchies have shifted in intensity and form over
time, and individual women and specific cultures
have resisted strict patriarchal rule.
Keywords
Anarchism;
androcentrism;
anti-feminist;
biologization; capitalism; Christianity; cissexism;
colonialism; disability; essentialism; ethnocentrism; feminism; feminist psychology; feminist
theology; gaze; gender; gender bias; heteronormativity; hierarchy; LGBTQ psychology;
Marxism; masculinity; matriarchy; men’s
movement; monotheism; patriarchy; patrilineage;
postcolonialism; power; privilege; racism;
scientific racism; sex; sexism; transgender;
transsexual; womanist; women
History
All ancient texts give evidence of existing patriarchal cultures; therefore, patriarchy dates back
at least to the time of the earliest surviving written
texts from Mesopotamia during the twentyseventh or twenty-sixth century BCE. The
analysis of these texts also gives some evidence
of preexisting non-patriarchal cultures, and
Patriarchy
the archaeological analysis of prehistorical evidence argues for pre-patriarchal or matriarchal
cultures (see also entry, matriarchy). For example, analysis of the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh describes the defeat of the goddess Tiamat
as a means of legitimizing the preeminence of the
city state and its patron, the patriarchal god
Marduk (Ruby, 1980). Importantly, the textual
evidence of patriarchy, and the earlier oral traditions on which it is based, do not commemorate
the invention of patriarchy, but rather describe
the justification, enforcement, and codification of
a system already in operation.
In the Western world, patriarchal cultures
originate in the Jewish tradition, which traces
its history to the patriarch Abraham, the elder
male of a nomadic and pastoral tribe in the
ancient Levant, now known as the Middle East.
Abraham introduced monotheism in the worship
of a single male god, who was sometimes named
King or Father. This culture represents the patriarchal archetype, in which an individual male,
at the intersection of multiple privileged
identities, ruled over all other members of the
community, ranked lower in multiple hierarchies, as discussed in the definition above. The
Abrahamic traditions of Christianity and Islam
also follow this lineage, including Jesus Christ,
assumed to be the son of God, and the prophet
Mohammed, the central husband and father.
Feminist theologians also note the androcentrism and patriarchy implicit in monotheist
theology centered on a male God who is also
considered a father (Daly, 1973).
Patriarchy has become a topic of analysis only
in the modern period. During the nineteenth century, when education became more comprehensive
and more widely available for select women –
though usually still limited to elite women – and
the industrial revolution shifted the accumulation
of property, feminist movements began to critique
the limitations placed on women in terms of inheritance, owning property, and voting. These critiques inherently challenged the status of women
as property. Anxieties about shifting gender roles,
expressed through representations of the New
Woman, contributed to the evaluation of gender
roles and often their reification.
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In literature, in response to feminist movements since the nineteenth century, patriarchy
was expressed as the fear of women’s rule. Male
writers depicted women’s weaknesses, created
caricatures of matriarchal cultures which ultimately fail, or glorified existing patriarchal cultures as natural and ideal, in order to express fears
about the feminist movement (Russ, 1980). Feminist literary analysis developed during the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and
1970s (Millett, 1970).
In contemporary Western culture, patriarchy
operates in tandem with capitalism, whereby the
privileges conferred on the patriarch are predominantly economic and closely connected to class
hierarchy.
Traditional Debates
Early debates on patriarchy proposed that historical patriarchal cultures succeeded prehistorical
matriarchal cultures. Johann Jakob Bachofen
(1861) theorized an evolutionary model of society, whereby primitive matriarchal cultures progressively evolve into more advanced patriarchal
cultures (see entry, matriarchy).
Feminist historiography notes that contemporary patriarchies have appealed to historical patriarchies for their legitimacy and projected
patriarchal cultures backwards onto historic and
prehistoric cultures (Meskell, 2005). Prior to the
nineteenth century, biblical patriarchal law justified contemporary patriarchal culture, and fundamentalist religious traditions continue to do so
into the twenty-first century (Gross, 1996).
Many debates on historical patriarchy occur in
the subfield of feminist theology – which focuses
on the role of women in religious traditions.
Feminist theologians note the historical connection between religion and patriarchal systems and
theorize a shift from polytheistic religious traditions, which highly esteemed goddesses and
women, to monotheistic traditions with patriarchal gods. These religious shifts both reflected
a shift in existing cultural hierarchies and relationships and justified them (Stone, 1976). At the
same time, critiques of these analyses note that
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contemporary polytheistic traditions which
include prominent goddesses do not necessarily
correspond with a high status of women in the
culture; in fact, there seems to be an inverse
relationship between the prominence of goddesses and the status of women (Campbell,
1982). Likewise, these conceptions of prepatriarchal history risk essentialism on the basis
of sex and gender.
After Darwin published his theories on
evolution, biological determinism was used to
justify contemporary patriarchal culture (Miller &
Costello, 2001). (See also entries, evolutionary
psychology, scientific racism). However, the
most widely accepted theories of patriarchy
acknowledge historical and sociological reasons
for patriarchy, rather than divine or biological
reasons.
Despite the political and textual prevalence of
patriarchy, individual women and specific cultures have interpreted patriarchal rule in various
ways. During the second wave of feminism in the
1960s and 1970s, feminist theorists argued that
the patriarchal historical narrative was androcentric, in that it was depicted and analyzed from
a male perspective, and that androcentric perspectives could not tell the whole story (Gross, 2009).
Feminist critics argue that male writers incorporated an androcentric worldview into early texts,
and contemporary androcentrism on the part of
readers in existing patriarchal cultures leads to
uncritical acceptance of the narratives. Feminist
analysis has since examined historical texts from
a female perspective in order to discover alternative narratives and rewrite patriarchal narratives
from a gynocentric point of view (Trible, 1973).
Their work proposes the possibility of alternative
power structures and examines the possibility of
power in the absence of authority. Likewise, other
critical analyses have revealed marginalized perspectives which counter the narrative of patriarchal hegemony (Sugirtharajah, 1998).
Critical Debates
Marxism and other theories of socialism and
communism propose that patriarchy is
Patriarchy
a consequence of a capitalist economy and will
be subsequently overcome in communist cultures. Critics have pointed out that even in communist states, patriarchy remains prevalent
(Eisenstein, 1999; see also entry, Marxism).
Anarcha-feminists define patriarchy as a central
hierarchy by which oppression and domination is
effected (Goldman, 1917; see also entry,
anarchism).
Postcolonial theory examines how colonialism
and globalization have contributed to the development of contemporary patriarchal cultures. Due
to Western European ethnocentrism, the dominant Judeo-Christian culture came to be presented
as superior; as a result, it conveyed its patriarchal
cultural roots as an example of superiority
(Bannerji, 2001). Likewise, androcentric bias on
the part of early colonizers led them to assume
patriarchal rule in the cultures they encountered,
and they exchanged ideas and goods with the elite
men of a given culture, thus institutionalizing
patriarchal rule or strengthening existing forms.
During independence movements worldwide,
women played central roles, while at the same
time being told that sexism was a lesser concern
to address after independence.
Critical masculinity studies uses a feminist
analytical lens to examine the demands and limitations which patriarchy imposes on men, as well
as the ways which very few men benefit from
patriarchy but many experience oppression
under this cultural hierarchy (Kaufman, 1987).
Hierarchical definitions of roles in a patriarchy
allow limited expression in relationships and
expect that a patriarch will be authoritarian and
emotionally distant. These limitations may be
seen as negatively affecting even those who benefit most from patriarchy due to restrictions on
emotionally supportive relationships and repression of a range of expression and pursuits. Other
men’s movements include men’s rights groups,
typically anti-feminist groups which seek to
regain patriarchal privileges “lost” due to the
feminist movement, using language of equality
which neglects to examine existing institutional
patriarchies; and the mythopoeic men’s movement, a spiritual movement which seeks to return
to an imagined essentialist manhood through
Patriarchy
reaffirmation of powerful identities (Maddison,
1999). These aspects of the men’s movement are
generally seen as misogynist or colonialist, and
uncritically accepting of patriarchal hierarchies.
Many liberal feminist principles have been
critiqued by womanists – feminist women of
color – for their ethnocentrism. Liberal feminism
has sometimes assumed a sisterhood of women
under patriarchy. While the most obvious privileges in patriarchal cultures are conferred on the
basis of sex, patriarchy is part of a complex system which confers limited privilege and power on
most individuals through domination over others,
but which is understood to benefit few. For example, white women benefit from participating in
patriarchal systems in which they experience
oppression because they also gain power and
privilege on the basis of race (hooks, 2000).
Women in patriarchal cultures often participate
in enforcing patriarchal hierarchies because of
the power they gain in intersecting hierarchies.
Within queer theory, studies of transmen demonstrate that patriarchal privilege is conferred on
individuals who transition into presenting as male
(Butler, 1990; Schilt, 2010; See also entries, gaze,
transgenderism transsexualism).
International Relevance
Internationally, patriarchy has been affected by
colonialism and ethnocentrism. Where colonial
cultures were often patriarchal, and men almost
always were the first to travel and to interact with
non-European peoples, European men usually
assumed that the men in non-European cultures
were more important than the women. NonEuropean cultures were viewed through a lens of
patriarchal European values of men’s power.
Often expressions of women’s identity were
ignored, dismissed, or overlooked, following the
logic that men’s expressions represented a culture,
while women’s expressions were incomplete,
faulty, or deviant (McClintock, 1995).
Non-European patriarchal cultures also
originate in religious and philosophical traditions
which gave prominence to ancestors and elders in
a hierarchical structure based on kinship and
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supposed to reflect divine hierarchies. However,
colonial powers often reinforced existing patriarchies in practice and theory, although often the
concepts were imposed onto a similar structure,
rather than examining the differences (Hamilton,
1990). In some cultures, evidence suggests
a matriarchy coexisting alongside a patriarchy.
Ethnocentrism also informs patriarchy in
a multiethnic context, where women from nonWestern cultures are assumed to suffer under
patriarchy, and are assumed to have little autonomy or power (Mernissi, 1991).
Practice Relevance
Within psychology, feminist analysis has noted
that women’s psychology has received limited
examination, in both scope and time period.
These research limitations on women’s psychology stem from the limitations on female roles
constructed within patriarchal cultures (Gergen,
1990). Patriarchal cultures have likewise limited
access and respect for women in the field. Feminist psychology seeks to remedy the effects of
historical patriarchy and androcentrism on the
field of psychology.
The practice relevance and future direction of
patriarchy in psychology predominantly arises in
feminist psychology; see also entries androcentrism and feminist psychology.
References
Bachofen, J. J. (1861). Das Mutterrecht: eine
Untersuchung u€ber die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt
nach ihrer religiosen und rechtlichen Natur. Stuttgart:
Krais and Hoffman.
Bannerji, H. (2001). Inventing subjects: Studies in
hegemony, patriarchy, and colonialism. New Delhi,
India: Tulika.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the
subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Campbell, E. (1982). The virgin of Guadalupe and the
female-self-image. In J. J. Preston (Ed.), Mother
worship: Themes and variations. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press.
Daly, M. (1973). Beyond God the father: Toward
a philosophy of women’s liberation. Boston: Beacon
Press.
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Eisenstein, Z. (1999). Constructing a theory of capitalist
patriarchy and socialist feminism. Critical Sociology,
25(2–3), 196–217.
Freud, S. (1965). Femininity: Woman as castrated man. In
J. Strachey (Ed.), New introductory lectures on
psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton.
Gergen, M. M. (1990). Finished at 40: Women’s
development within the patriarchy. Psychology of
Women Quarterly, 14(4), 471–493.
Goldman, E. (1917). Anarchism, and other essays
(3rd ed.). New York: Mother Earth Publishing.
Gross, R. M. (1996). Feminism and religion: An introduction.
Boston: Beacon.
Gross, R. M. (2009). Androcentrism and androgyny in the
methodology of history of religions a garland of feminist reflections: Forty years of religious exploration
(pp. 55–64). Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press.
Hamilton, G. G. (1990). Patriarchy, patrimonialism, and
filial piety: A comparison of China and Western Europe.
The British Journal of Sociology, 41(1), 77–104.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center.
Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Kaufman, M. (Ed.). (1987). Beyond patriarchy: Essays by
men on pleasure, power and changes. Toronto, ON:
Oxford University Press.
Lerner, G. (1986). The creation of patriarchy. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Maddison, S. (1999). Private men, public anger: The
men’s rights movement in Australia. Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, 4(2), 39–51.
Maine, H. S. (1861). Ancient law: Its connection with the
early history of society and its relation to modern
ideas. London: John Murray.
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender,
and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York:
Routledge.
Mernissi, F. (1991). The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist
Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam
(M. J. Lakeland, Trans.). Reading, MA: Perseus.
Meskell, L. (2005). Denaturalizing gender in prehistory.
In S. McKinnon & S. Silverman (Eds.), Complexities:
Beyond nature and nurture (pp. 157–179). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Miller, E. M., & Costello, C. Y. (2001). The limits of
biological determinism. American Sociological
Review, 66(4), 592–598.
Millett, K. (1970). Sexual politics. New York: Doubleday.
Patriarchy. (1989). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian
existence. Signs, 5(4, Women: Sex and Sexuality),
631–660.
Rousseau, J. J. (1762). E´mile, ou, De l’éducation.
Francfort.
Ruby, R. (1980). State formation in Sumer and the
subjugation of women. Feminist Studies, 6(1), 76–102.
Russ, J. (1980). Amor Vincit Foeminam: The Battle of the
Sexes in Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 7(1),
2–15.
Pedagogy
Schilt, K. (2010). Just one of the guys: Transgender men
and the persistence of gender inequality. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Stone, M. (1976). When God was a woman. Orlando, FL:
Harcourt.
Sugirtharajah, R. S. (1998). Biblical studies after the
empire: From a colonial to a postcolonial mode of
interpretation. In R. S. Sugirtharajah (Ed.), The
postcolonial bible (pp. 12–22). Sheffield, UK:
Sheffield Academic Press.
Thapar, R. (2002). Early India: From the origins to AD
1300. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Trible, P. (1973). Eve and Adam: Genesis 2–3 reread.
Andover Newton Quarterly, 13(March), 74.
Wegner, J. R. (1988). Chattel or person? The status of
women in the Mishnah. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Online Resources
Rutherford, A., et al. Psychology’s feminist voices. http://
www.feministvoices.com/. Retrieved Nov 1, 2012.
Society for the Psychology of Women (2012). http://www.
apadivisions.org/division-35/. Retrieved Nov 1, 2012.
Pedagogy
Ben Bradley
School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University,
Bathurst, Australia
Introduction
Pedagogy, or the structured relationship between
the learning and teaching of psychology, tends to
escape critical gaze. Yet pedagogy is fundamental to
the maintenance and renewal of the discipline, being
traditionally the invisible flywheel that conserves
psychology’s distinctive qualities from generation
to generation, whether reactionary, mainstream, or
radical. Recently, attention to pedagogy has
suggested that psychology’s dominant experiencedenying “technical-rational” or “scientist-practitioner” model of learning and teaching is central to
the maintenance of professional psychologists’ status as an elite “guild,” distanced from everyday
insights, daily life, and common sense (Bradley,
2005; Joynson, 1974; Morawski, 1992). Critics of
the technical-rational model have proposed the need
Pedagogy
to adopt any of a variety of experience-based pedagogies, including “the pedagogy of the oppressed”
(qv) and the “reflective-practitioner” model.
Definition
Pedagogy is often understood as the “how” of
teaching and learning, as distinct from its
“what” (i.e., curriculum content). It is more properly understood as the whole kit and caboodle of
education, for example, being “an extensive
understanding of educational theory, interrelated
in practice, with a wide range of classroom management skills” (Levine, 1992, p. 197). Here Bill
Green’s (1998, p. 179) definition of pedagogy
will be used: “the structured relationship between
teaching and learning, as forms of social discursive practice.” Green goes on to argue that a fully
fledged pedagogy requires an ecological understanding of the learning-teaching relationship
which should embrace both a theory of education
and, something currently lacking, a theory of
learning.
Keywords
Experience; scientist-practitioner; guild; phronēsis;
evidence-based practice
Traditional Debates
The Boulder Assertion
A key moment in fixing the pedagogical model
for psychology, insofar as it champions “evidencebased practice,” was North American psychologists’
adoption of the “Boulder model” of professional/
clinical training (in 1949 at a conference in Boulder,
Colorado). This model not only asserts standards for
the training of clinical psychologists but often – as
clinicians are closer to God (i.e., the medical paradigm) than any other branch of the discipline – for
all psychologists. The defining tenet of the Boulder
model is that psychologists should be trained to base
their practice on an understanding of scientific principles and research evidence. Hence, on top of
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coursework dealing with scientific theory and
research, their training should include the production of an original research dissertation. Supervised
practice, if it were to occur, would be inserted right
at the end of the syllabus or, more often, in
a subsequent “Masters” degree, only accessible to
the top students. This model soon became synonymous with the “scientist-practitioner” model,
a model that has for decades underpinned training
in the USA, UK, Australia, and Europe (Bradley,
2005). A key motivation for this model’s success
has been territorial-cum-economic. David Shakow
(quoted in Bradley, 2009), who presided over the
Boulder process in the 1940s, had urged the adoption of the model to ensure that other disciplines did
not “take over the function[s] which are more properly the province of the psychologist.” This is still
a strong argument.
Medical Misgivings
The Boulder claim that a pure scientific training
in theory and technique, honed by doing an
undergraduate research project, would ensure
psychologists became competent practitioners
was supposedly taken from medicine. Unfortunately, the scientist-practitioner model and its supposed result, “evidence-based practice,” have
come in for swinging criticism – from medics!
Trisha Greenhalgh (e.g., Greenhalgh & Hurwitz,
1998) and her colleagues have found a hundred
eloquent ways to show that no training in scientific
principles, nor any statistical analysis of aggregated
data, can prepare a medic for the complex and
uniquely context-bound personalized conundra
she or he faces daily in the surgery. Good practice
is “narrative based,” not hypothesis based. And the
only way to educate/narrativize good practitioners
is for them to practice practice (with appropriate
coaching). This leads to the suggestion that undergraduate psychology courses should include
supervised practice just as the education of most
other professionals does, for example, doctors,
nurses, teachers, and architects.
No Pudding
True to the adage “the proof of the pudding is in
the eating,” the obvious retort to criticisms of the
scientist-practitioner model of psychological
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education should be for the proponents of “evidence-based practice” to pile up data from studies
of psychological practice which unequivocally
prove that (e.g., clinical) psychologists who
have had a full and no-holds-barred scientistpractitioner education achieve better outcomes
for their clients than “ordinary” psychologists
and paraprofessionals who haven’t had such an
education. Unfortunately or fortunately, the
evidence seems, if anything, to go the other way
(Bradley, 2009; Dawes, 1996; Pirkis et al., 2010).
Pedagogy
Critical Debates
pedagogy concerns the field’s professional bodies. Guilds of one sort or another have been in
existence for millennia. Essentially they are
exclusive associations of tradesmen, or later
professionals, which aim to promote and preserve the economic interests of their members.
Access to guilds has always been strictly controlled and is often only possible after applicants
have paid out considerable sums of money and/
or undertaken long periods of standardized
apprenticeship. Guilds often exert considerable
political power in the self-interest of their
members.
National professional bodies like the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association operate as guilds. In this
vein, the Australian Psychological Society (APS)
has long held the power to prescribe what education is required to become and remain a registered
“psychologist.” Without such registration, it is
illegal to practice as a psychologist in Australia.
This education is long and extremely costly and
hence prohibitive to many would-be psy-practitioners. A subsection of the APS is currently
attempting to ensure that only 6-year trained
“scientist-practitioner” psychologists can benefit
from new government funding for mental health
work – thereby undercutting the livelihood of
psychologists who have graduated from other
pedagogies. Yet history shows that guilds have
long “adversely affected quality, skills, innovation, and economic policy. Despite impairing
efficiency, guilds persist because they redistribute resources to powerful groups” (Ogilvie, 2008,
p. 175).
It is debatable whether broader society
and ordinary folk are well served by the
kinds of monopolistic self-promoting, selfaccrediting, self-proclaimed elites that currently govern the education of psychologists.
Certainly, if it is believed that psychology’s
pedagogy requires change, the power and
exclusiveness of psychology’s “guilds” must
be addressed.
Guilded Elites
The key political question facing any perceived
need to change or radicalize psychology’s
The Knowledge Basis of Psychology
What kind of learning makes a good psychologist? While technical reasoning may seem
No Debate
Traditionally, the best argument for the scientistpractitioner pedagogy has been guild-based
legislation. For decades, a scientist-practitioner
approach has been prescribed by monopolistic
professional associations and their accrediting
bodies. Courses that adopt a different approach
(e.g., reflective-practitioner) are simply not
accredited.
No Reflexivity
It is a deep and unpleasant irony that what Green
finds to be missing in educationalists’ understanding of pedagogy is a “learning theory.” Why don’t
educationalists come knocking at the door of psychology then? Psychologists do have a learning
theory, after all. Unfortunately for all, the learning
theory psychologists first devised to understand
the ways rats and pigeons respond to electric
shocks and the controlled distribution of food pellets – then endlessly tweaked for application to
humans – is absolutely unreflexive. It could not
be applied to students or academics learning about
mental life without farcical consequences. In short,
insofar as psychology is blind to its own implicit
theories of learning and teaching (pedagogy), this
is just part of a more widespread malaise: its incapacity to apply psychological knowledge to psychologists’ own assumptions and lives.
Pedagogy
appropriate to understanding and predicting
events in the natural sciences, its relevance to
analyzing human interaction is more dubious. If
one countenances the possibility that psychological practice may entail nontechnical forms
of reasoning, one finds that Aristotle has been
there before. Aristotle’s concept of phronēsis
refers to knowledge that addresses the concrete
human situation rather than abstract universals.
It aims to grasp the infinite variety of circumstances. In so doing, practice gains “a positive
ethical motif” that links practice with the
mœurs of the community in which the practitioner works (what Gadamer, 1991, p. 21, calls
“the Roman Stoic doctrine of the sensus
communis”).
For Aristotle, phronēsis is a way of thinking
which can only be demonstrated in action –
specifically, moral action. This kind of reasoning cannot be separated into theory and
application, as can technical knowledge. “The
task of making a moral decision is that of
doing the right thing in a particular situation –
i.e. seeing what is right within a situation and
grasping it” (Gadamer, 1991, p. 317). Practical
reasoning does not consist in formulae to which
applications must conform. It consists in openness to the unexpected particularities of the
novel situations one faces as a psychologist,
such that one can grasp them and appropriately
respond. There is no winnowing out of knowledge from experience, as in technical-rational
knowledge (and the Boulder syllabus): “for
moral knowledge contains a kind of experience
in itself and . . . this is perhaps the fundamental
form of experience (Erfahrung)” (Gadamer,
1991, p. 322).
Future Directions: Communal Praxis
If the psyche and subjectivities are collectively
reproduced and sustained, the idea that pedagogy should be based in a theory of individualized learning may require critique. There is
a need to develop “action research” techniques
that are increasingly participatory, communal,
and democratic. Needed too is a recognition
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that mental health and risk abatement may better be seen as a collective than an individual
achievement. Students old and young increasingly learn and study in groups, whether
face-to-face or virtual. Through the Internet,
knowledge is ever more available to all-comers.
And professional practice depends more and
more on interdisciplinary teamwork. Does psychology require a pedagogy based in communal
praxis?
References
Bradley, B. S. (2005). Psychology and experience.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, B. S. (2009). Rethinking ‘experience’ in professional practice: lessons from clinical psychology. In B.
Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 65–82). Rotterdam, Netherlands:
Sense Publishers.
Dawes, R. M. (1996). House of cards: Psychology and
psychotherapy built on myth. New York: Free
Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1991). Truth and method
(J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.) (2nd.
rev. ed.). New York: Crossroad. (Original work
published 1960).
Green, B. (1998). Teaching for difference: Learning
theory and post-critical pedagogy. In D.
Buckingham (Ed.), Teaching popular culture:
Beyond radical pedagogy (pp. 177–197). London:
Taylor & Francis.
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practice. London: BMJ Books.
Joynson, R. B. (1974). Psychology and common sense.
London: Routledge.
Levine, J. (1992). Pedagogy: The case of the missing
concept. In K. Kimberley, M. Meek, & J. Miller
(Eds.), New readings: Contributions to an understanding of literacy. London: A. & C. Black.
Morawski, J. G. (1992). There is more to our history of
giving: The place of introductory textbooks in
American psychology. American Psychologist,
47, 161–169.
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Pirkis, J., Ftanou, M., Williamson, M., Machlin, A., Warr,
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Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Richard Ruth and Laura Janowitch
Center for Professional Psychology, The George
Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Introduction
Paulo Freire’s ideas have had the most application in education and politics, but he was originally trained as a psychologist (of language) as
well as a philosopher and a lawyer (Gadotti,
1994; Schugurensky, 2011). In focusing on the
psychological aspects of his thought and work, it
is relevant to note that – while Freire evolved his
ideas in inner dialogue with psychological
thinkers (Gadotti, 1994) – he did not subscribe
to narrow disciplinary approaches; indeed, central to his contributions was a critical view of
intellectual disciplines divorced from appreciation of social, cultural, and political contexts and
from engagement in liberatory praxis.
Thus it might be in Freire’s spirit to frame
a reflection on his contributions to psychology
as an invitation for psychology to learn. In
a Freirian mode, about what is problematic in its
own self-definition and historical practice. The
invited focus of this article is Freire’s Pedagogy
of the Oppressed (1970). But it would do injustice
to confine this discussion to reviewing Freire’s
historic book apart from their taproots, applications, impact, and contemporary evolution. This
article will thus try to learn something about
Freire’s ideas in Pedagogy of the Oppressed by
also considering how he, and others, went on to
apply them, and built on his efforts, and how his
thinking has influenced contemporary developments in educational, community, social, and,
emergently, clinical psychology.
Definitions
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire
described how many societies, particularly the
industrialized societies of the global North, are
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
organized in a dichotomy – the oppressors and the
oppressed, the humans and the dehumanized, the
subjects and the objects, the haves and the havenots, and the powerful and the powerless. In
establishing the centrality of this organizing
frame, Freire drew on the ideas from liberation
movements of his time, primarily in the Third
World. Freire saw the distinction between the
oppressed and those who oppress them as the
fundamental and defining context for liberatory
practice of all kinds.
Freire defined oppression as the act that “prevents people from being more human” (1970,
p. 57). This takes place through coercive manipulation and propaganda. False dreams become
inculcated in the oppressed, forcing them to live
in the contradiction of two identities: their own
humanity and the dehumanized state defined and
imposed by the oppressor. Messages propagated
through oppressive education, rehearsed in daily
interaction, and epitomized in legends reinforce
to the oppressed that liberatory action is inconceivable and impossible. These messages then
become internalized in the oppressed and
reinforced with every future experience of
oppression.
Freire’s view – in this, different from some
other liberation theorists – was that the majority
of society is oppressed. Through the process of
conquest, manipulation, and cultural invasion,
broad social sectors lose their humanity.
Freire defined the “great humanistic and historical task” (1970, p. 44) of the oppressed: to liberate
themselves from the oppressors. He defined liberation not as becoming able to control others (as in
the Marxist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, though Freire was influenced in other
ways by Marxist thought [Freire, 2012; Gadotti,
1974; Gaztambide, 2009]), to move up society’s
ladder, or to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps.
The only meaningful liberation, Freire believed,
involved a particular kind of structural and transformational social change.
Freire saw liberation not as a shuffling of the
social hierarchy, but as a deconstruction of the
hierarchical ladder altogether. He explained that
liberation is not merely socioeconomic betterment, but more importantly entails a profound
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
awareness of others’ experiences and awareness
(1970, p. 95).
Freire argued that oppressors are unable to free
themselves, without dedicated and properly
focused work, of the implanted social hierarchy.
The structuralized tendency of the oppressor is not
to work with the oppressed toward liberation, but
to distrust the ability of the oppressed “to think, to
want, and to know” (1970, p. 60). For the oppressor wishing to work toward liberation, according
to Freire, constant reexamination of oneself and
one’s methods are the essential precondition.
Freire argued that true liberation can only
occur through genuine dialogue among all sectors
of a society. Both subject and object must have
experience of the other. In this way, empathy, the
experience of taking in an objective experience
and making it subjective, is at the core of Freire’s
view of the path toward liberation.
Freire described praxis as “reflection and
action upon the world in order to transform it”
(1970, p. 51). He explained that true change can
occur only with a combination of serious reflection and action. Neither intellectualization nor
action apart from reflection can lead to effective
change, he held.
This praxis occurs with what Freire defined as
the word. Freire defined true word as the dynamic
tension between reflection and action. He
explained that dialogue in the form of true
words can “change the world” (1970, p. 87).
For true words to be spoken, Freire saw a sense
of humility and a genuine desire to hear the other
as essential. Freire held that it was far from simple to put aside one’s own experiences sufficiently to engage in dialogue with another
person. Rather, engaged and transformative dialogue was seen as requiring a deep sense of faith
in the human capacity, hope for a better world,
and development of capacity for critical thinking
about differences in realities. Freire posited that
a true education could be that critical dialogue.
Freire defined the capacity to critically examine one’s sense of reality as consciousness. The
capacity to examine one’s actions was what
Freire saw as differentiating humans from animals and as the basis for our necessary reflective
capacity.
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Freire defined himself as a Christian socialist
and, over the course of his career, engaged in
broadly defined social praxis (Bhattacharya,
2011; Gadotti, 1994; Schugurensky, 2011). That
said, education of this oppressed was the central
focus of his life’s work.
Freire described education as a method through
which praxis can be accomplished and liberation
can be reached. However, he explained that the
prevailing model of education, what he termed
“the banking model,” structurally and fundamentally discouraged any true liberatory discourse and
praxis from occurring. He explained that, in the
prevailing education system, “the students
patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (1970,
p. 72), never asked to bring their own experiences
to the table. Students were thought of as empty
receptacles waiting to be filled with knowledge.
Freire saw the systematic invalidation of students’
experiences, followed by a flooding in of prescribed information, as inhibiting any possibility
of praxis. Further, the prescribed information often
contradicted students’ lived experiences, further
exacerbating the oppressive cycle.
In contrast, education respectfully engaged
with the subjective and objective realities of the
oppressed could facilitate true dialogue and
praxis, Freire felt. Education that acknowledged
students as able to describe and share their reality
was seen as a vehicle capable to equip them to
think about the past, present, and future in ways
that held transformative potential, and could help
students develop a sense of hope and of the
limitlessness potential of their experiences.
In the society of oppression, one’s human-ness
becomes lost. The very knowledge of being
human is annihilated by the oppressive societal
hierarchy, for both the oppressed and the oppressor. For the oppressor, Freire explained, being
meant having. Oppressors become defined by
their property and become driven to attain more
property. He described oppressors as “suffocat
[ing] in their own possessions and no longer
are; they merely have” (1970, p. 59). Those that
do not have are then considered lazy or
incompetent.
Freire described the act of oppression as an act
of sadism. He explained that the act of
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dominating turned a human into an object,
a thing. This taking away of someone’s being
Freire saw as the most violent act that could be
done.
Freire saw both the oppressed and the oppressor as playing roles that could be termed egosyntonic – so engrained in an individual’s culture,
values, and vernacular that the ability to step back
and examine the role became lost. Often, the pain
and tension of oppression was seen as becoming
manifested not in anger with the social hierarchy,
but as “horizontal violence” (1970, p. 62). Members of the same group fight each other over
mundane details, inhibiting their ability to see,
let alone fight against, the oppressors. The
oppressors then become viewed, and internalized, as invulnerable and immortal. When and if
the roles of either the oppressed or the oppressors
become ego-dystonic, immature defenses, such
as denial and repression, become activated, further impeding possibilities toward liberation.
In defining and considering some of Freire’s
concepts from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)
in psychological framings, the goals of this
discussion have been several: to demonstrate
their applicability to and utility in psychological
thinking, to demonstrate and not just explain the
Freirian practice of true words, and to suggest
possibilities of some Freirian pathways by which
psychology might consider liberating itself.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
endorsed effect. Several institutes throughout
the world continue to popularize and propagate
his ideas and methods.
Critical Debates
Keywords
Freire was a committed Christian and heavily
involved in and influenced by liberation theology
(Bhattacharya, 2011; Gadotti, 1994; Gaztambide,
2009; Schugurensky, 2011). As such, some of his
notions in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) –
for example, the possibility of dialogue between
oppressors and oppressed, the notion of oppression as a majority condition, and liberation as the
elimination rather than the transfer of hierarchical power relationships – have been criticized by
thinkers influenced by Marxism (McLaren &
Leonard, 1993). Others note the inherent
challenges in implementing Freirian techniques,
and caution that these difficulties lend
themselves to the possibility Freire’s methods
can be manipulated by those with their own
agendas (Blackburn, 2000).
But the predominant reaction to Freire’s legacy has been admiration (Bhattacharya, 2011;
McLaren & Leonard, 1993). Admiration can be
dangerous, as it can romanticize and sentimentalize, and thus distance, what needs to retain its
disruptive, and thus transformative, edge. In this
sense, perhaps the most important debate about
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is how to
make it happen in our time.
Oppression; education; liberation; true words;
subjects; banking model of education; praxis
International Relevance
Traditional Debates
What Freire did worked (Bhattacharya, 2011;
Gadotti, 1994; McLaren & Leonard, 1993;
Schugurensky, 2011) among his legacies was
that he taught hundreds of people to read, and
those he trained and influenced have taught thousands more. While critical psychology often
chafes at the empirical standard, by its measure,
his ideas have had large, robust, consensually
Freire lived from 1921 to 1997. During this time,
his work encompassed direct involvement in
basic education in his native Brazil, time as
a professor at Harvard, work as an education
advisor to the World Council of Churches and
in the former Portuguese colonies of Africa,
government work in Brazil, and extensive
involvement in writing and in speaking to
a variety of kinds of audiences, all over
the world (Bhattacharya, 2011; Gadotti, 1994;
Schugurensky, 2011). His ideas continue to be
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
applied internationally, primarily but not exclusively in the Third World.
Practice Relevance
Freire has had an enduring influence on educational practices, some of it transformative and
some of it appropriated toward antitransformative ends (Bhattacharya, 2011; Kidd
& Kumar, 1981; McLaren & Leonard, 1993).
Freirian education is difficult to achieve; it
makes demands on resources, time, and commitment. Some of its erstwhile adherents’ attempts
to popularize it have led to denatured applications, in which it turns into a process and product
at which Freire likely would have looked
askance. Like Che Guevara T-shirts, Freire is
everywhere – he has been reported to be widely
taught in schools of education (Bhattacharya,
2011; McLaren & Leonard, 1993) – but the educational problem he sought to address, it would
seem, is still everywhere, too.
Applications of Freire’s ideas and methods in
educational and school psychology (McLaren &
Leonard, 1993) have focused on, among other
targets, recasting the teacher’s role as mediator
rather than authority over students’ learning and
bringing in students’ experience and subjectivities as texts for their own learning. True to
Freire’s ethic and style, these applications appear
to be as much “in the trenches” as in scholarly
discourse (McLaren & Leonard).
Freire’s ideas have had significant impact in
social psychology in the USA (Brydon-Miller,
1997) and in Latin America (Burton & Kagan,
2005; Martin Baro, 1994). While Freirian thinking
cannot be said to have transformed the practice of
quantitative and experimentally oriented social
psychology, it has certainly opened fertile space
for alternative approaches to practice. Similarly,
a Freirian current in community psychology, especially but not only outside the USA, works against
tendencies in that field, sometimes offered in the
name of “accountability,” to restrict community
participation and authority in community-level
psychological interventions or to reduce these to
more individual,
de-collectivized
efforts
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implemented in community settings (Needal,
Duncan, & Lazarus, 2001).
Future Directions
Perhaps among the most interesting emerging
applications of Freirian thinking and practice
involves attempts to extrapolate the application
of Freire’s ideas and methods to the clinical situation. Ivey (1995), long concerned with how
psychotherapy can, but often does not, keep combatting oppression in mind and work as a force
toward liberation, has written about the role of
Freire’s ideas in this line of his thinking. Glassgold
(2007), from a feminist and pro-LGBT perspective, has pushed the clinical field to reconsider its
assumption that the problems people bring to mental health professionals are organized as individual-level problems, or can be helped outside of
working toward awareness of their social and
political dimensions – again, drawing heavily on
Freire’s thinking. Gaztambide (2012) has offered
important perspectives on how Freirian thinking
can be compatible with relational psychoanalytic
concepts and can fertilize clinical encounters,
most especially in work with ethnic minorities
and in cross-cultural contexts; he has also made
Freirian contributions to the psychology of religion. This work is beginning to spark wider
conversation about applications of Freirian thinking in contemporary clinical psychology.
References
Bhattacharya, A. (2011). Paulo Freire: Rousseau of the
twentieth century. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense.
Blackburn, J. (2000). Understanding Paulo Freire: Reflections on the origins, concepts, and possible pitfalls of
his educational approach. Community Development
Journal, 35, 3–15.
Brydon-Miller, M. (1997). Participatory action research:
Psychology and social change. Journal of Social
Issues, 53, 657–666.
Burton, M., & Kagan, C. (2005). Liberation social psychology: Learning from Latin America. Journal of
Community & Applied Social Psychology, 15, 63–78.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York:
Continuum.
Freire, P. (2012). Paulo Freire: Liberation theology
and Marx. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from
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http://youtube.com/watch?v¼www.youtube.com/watch?
v¼1Wz5y2V1af0
Gadotti, M. (1994). Reading Paulo Freire: His life and
work. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Gaztambide, D. J. (2009). Religion as a wellspring of
healing and liberation: Toward a liberation psychology
of religion. In J. Harold Ellens (Ed.), The healing
power of religion (Religion, Vol. 2, pp. 207–237).
Westport, CT: Praeger.
Gaztambide, D. J. (2012). Addressing cultural impasses
with rupture resolution strategies: A proposal and recommendations. Professional Psychology: Research &
Practice, 43, 183–189.
Glassgold, J. M. (2007). “In dreams begin responsibilities”: Psychology, agency, and activism. Journal of
Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 11, 37–57.
Ivey, A. E. (1995). Psychotherapy as liberation: Toward
specific skills and strategies in multicultural counseling and therapy. In J. G. Ponterotto (Ed.), Handbook
of multicultural counseling (2nd ed., pp. 53–72).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kidd, R., & Kumar, K. (1981). Co-opting Freire: A critical
analysis of pseudo-Freirian adult education. Economic
and Political Weekly, 16, 27–29, 31, 33, 35-36.
Martin Baro, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McLaren, P., & Leonard, P. (Eds.). (1993). Paulo Freire:
A critical encounter. New York: Routledge.
Needal, M., Duncan, N., & Lazarus, S. (2001). Community
psychology: Theory, method, and practice. Cape
Town, South Africa: Oxford University Press.
Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. New York:
Continuum.
Online Resources
Freire Institute (University of Central Lancashire). http://
www.freire.org/
The Paulo Freire Institute at UCLA. http://www.
paulofreireinstitute.org/
Perception
cognitive psychology. An individual is pictured
in an environment, through which it receives
stimuli, processes them, and reacts to them. This
view appears so naturally that it is hardly ever
questioned. It has, however, problematic
preconditions, implications, and consequences,
which distort the entire modeling of human
cognitive processes.
Definition
Perception is the capability of organisms to recognize and differentiate essential aspects of their
surrounding world, which are relevant for their
activities. Supported by receptors and central
nervous processes, perception enables an organism to control and adjust its activities according
to the surrounding circumstances. Human
perception is needed to organize cooperative
and work-sharing activities in a natural world,
but first and foremost in a cultural world
manufactured and modified by humans. Humans
learn to perceive in cooperative activities with
skillful partners in which speech supports the
direction of their attention. In that way, they
acquire the skill of apprehending relationships
in their cultural significance and of handling
them according to their “affordances” (Gibson).
This skill can be called orientation. Its acquisition
is in principle never complete or finished, and it
can be impaired or aborted individually due to
illness.
Perception
Keywords
J€urgen Messing
Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied
Science and GFP Social Pedagogy and Medical
Nurses School, Berlin, Germany
Activity; agnosia; affordance; culture; dementia;
disorientation; environment; language; orientation;
perception; senses; speech; stimulus
History
Introduction
Perception is a primary subject of general
psychology, commonly introducing an empiricist
view of psychological processes mainly in
Mainstream psychology of perception today is
primarily orientated towards the natural sciences,
as it was most of the time in the history of psychology. Since the creation of psychophysics by
Perception
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) in 1860,
efforts were made to ascertain connections
between stimulus and sensation strictly on the
basis of a natural science approach. For example,
mathematic equations were compiled in order to
emphasize the relationship between physical
parameters and sensations. It was attempted to
find out how the sensation changes in relation to
the stimulus, for example, the sensation of the
heaviness of a weight in relation to its actual
weight. This resulted in the conception that, within
certain limits, sensation is a logarithmic function of
physical intensity. It was also attempted to find out
which absolute and relative detection thresholds
are typical of different sensory organs and stimuli.
This led to increased knowledge about the
composition, physical constitution, and functions
of the sensory organs and about certain mechanisms in the stimulation of receptors in the sensory organs: the eye’s sensitivity in dependence
of amplitudes of light, conditions of sound transmission in the ear and conditions of oscillation in
the cochlea, and conditions and distortion of balance due to relationships in the vestibular system.
Today, it is possible to trace the consequences
of the stimulation of receptors back to the brain
and to analyze them with the help of magnetic
resonance imaging. Because the physiological
methods were increasingly refined, a lot of attention is still directed towards this field.
Critical Debates
Passive Perception Without a Subject:
Stimulation of Receptors (Psychophysics)
Today perception is often described as the information processing of specific stimuli in different
sensory organs, their nervous connection to the
brain, and the cerebral information processing.
The receptors are located in the vestibular organ
for the control of body movements regarding
balance, in the ear for auditory perception, in
the eyes for visual perception, in the skin for
haptic-somatic perception, in the nose for olfactory perception, and in the mouth for gustatory
perception. In animals, there are other receptors
as well, for example, for the electric field.
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Cognitive Construction of the World: Gestalt
Psychology and Cognitivism
In a counter movement against the atomistic
approach of psychophysics, gestalt psychology
has found many holistic principles of perception
(especially for visual perception) by means of
which human perception results in entities rather
than in an addition of given elements and single
items. “The whole is more than the sum of its
parts.” A melody is more than a number of
musical tones. These principles of gestalt or
whole form or “schema” (Bartlett (1886–1969),
Piaget (1896–1980)) constitute a constructivist
paradigm in the psychology of perception.
According to this paradigm, innate determining
laws organize cognitive processes: Natural organizing processes of the brain seem to combine the
perceptual elements of the world. Stored in
memory, they function in top-down brain processes to break the world down into cognized
parts. One might ask for the purpose of these
organizing processes as developed in human evolution. But such questions can only be answered
in another scientific context which points out that
a subject’s perception in principle directs the
subject to interpret the world according to its
affordances and dangers for the subject’s actions.
It is not an “evaluation-free” addition of elements
due to innate mechanisms.
In contrast to this cognitivist conception, the
criteria for building entities of orientation can be
found in social and cultural evaluations and
appraisals, which people assign themselves to in
common activities with others and which new generations adopt and examine.
It is a common assumption in the approaches
mentioned so far that all cognition or activity has
its origin in a form of perception in which the
perceiving subject is isolated from and passive in
relation to its social and cultural world: As an
object of its surroundings, the subject suffers
uncontrollable conditions in the form of stimuli
and has to process them and react to them through
its inner structures. It cannot approach the world
while actively looking out for its life-sustaining
aims, but subordinates itself to externally posed
tasks and aims (especially within experimental
psychological conditions). Results of such
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examinations inform us about how humans may
(statistically) behave when they adopt foreign
aims but not about how they act when they determine their aims themselves and pursue them
actively. This passivation of the subject also
makes researchers look for solutions to problems
of perception in the neurophysiology of the brain.
In a critical analysis of “The Concept of Stimulus in Psychology,” (1960) James J. Gibson
(1904–1979) showed that the term stimulus is
a problematic starting point for cognition because
it is used very contradictorily. Decades after Gibson’s objections there are still no clear-cut conceptions about this commonly used concept.
According to this it should not be used in
psychology but only in strictly physiological
studies with isolated receptors exposed to defined
physical stimuli.
Active Organisms: Preconditions of
Perception Within Movement (Gibson (1966))
Differentiation Instead of Generalization
James J. Gibson (1904–1979) was the first to
seriously investigate the preconditions of perception for people who move around in their world’s
life conditions and the first to overcome the
method of stimuli for passive organisms in the
psychology of perception. Gibson was able to
show that the relations of perception for moving
organisms are entirely different from what the
stimulus sequence theory (vision based on snapshots) suggested. We “carry” our sensory organs
to locations, where we act and want to perceive,
and we learn through our activities what we need
to do in order to see, hear, and feel certain results,
locations, and conditions. Therefore, perception
during mobility is the rule, perception in a static
position the exception (Messing, 1999).
The turn from passivity to activity of the
organism is accompanied by a turn from the
intake of all stimuli, which have to be collected
and analyzed in the brain, to the differentiation of
the world’s information in activity. Perceptual
learning therefore means to realize ever better
what needs to be focused on in an activity: to
learn how to see and observe better, to listen
closer, and to focus better on the tactile results
of one’s actions in order to be successful in
Perception
certain purposes. Gibson shows that this is
a process of differentiation rather than of
enrichment.
In comparison to the tendency to look for an
explanation for cognition in the brain mechanisms of a passive individual, which is still predominant today, his strategy is a different one – In
the words of Mace (1977): “James J. Gibson’s
Strategy for Perceiving: Ask Not What’s Inside
Your Head, but What’s Your Head Inside of.”
Specific Active Organisms and “Affordances”
of the World (Gibson (1979). The Ecological
Approach)
In developing his approach further, Gibson analyzes the aspects of the world (▶ Environment)
more closely for different organisms and their
specific life-sustaining processes. In actively
protecting their life, animals and humans are
interested in which possibilities their world has
to offer for their activities. He summarizes this
with the term “affordances.” Animals and
humans are looking for special affordances in
their world in accordance with their typical
requirements for survival. They do not passively
generalize, reconstruct, or represent stimuli from
their individual experiences, and what occurs is
not an enrichment of the brain via a reconstruction of the world, but a process of perceptual
learning, in which animals and humans learn
how to differentiate better between relationships
of successful and unsuccessful activities.
In conclusion, it is most important to learn
how to realize more effectively which aspects
are necessary for certain activities and to observe
better and to listen closer. This does not require
storing an exhaustive collection of “features” or
“prototypes” in the brain.
Active Cooperative Humans in Cultures:
Subjects (Holzkamp)
Gibson’s approach remains limited regarding two
aspects of human perception though these limitations can be overcome by following the principle
of his approach, “ask what’s your head inside of.”
It needs to be specified to the specifically human,
culturally produced and determined world and
human action. In mainstream psychology little
Perception
attention is directed at these aspects, which is
why Klaus Holzkamp spoke of “psychology’s
worldlessness” (Holzkamp, 1996).
These two missing aspects, (a) the specificity
of human activity and (b) the quality of the
cultural world, were addressed by the school
of cultural historical psychology (▶ Culturalhistorical Psychology) of L.S. Vygotskij
(1896–1934) and A.N. Leontjev (1903–1979)
and inspired by this tradition later by Critical
Psychology (▶ German Critical Psychology)
(Holzkamp 1927–1995): Human life takes place
in a world which has been modified and in many
respects created by humans themselves through
cooperative activity and which is, therefore, historically and culturally unique. The characteristic
human activity, in which humans create such
a world, is cooperative and based on the division
of labor in relation to historical, societal conditions. We are not dealing with one individual who
confronts an unspecific (natural) world and satisfies his inborn (natural) necessities, but with
societal human beings who create their culture
in collective activities. In that process, they also
create working materials for common usage, like
tools, groceries, means of transportation, means
of communication, as well as their societal relations. In this sense, they are the subjects of this
process. Since this occurs collectively, a culture
cannot exist and develop without the minutely
balanced contributions of many people participating in these processes. Accordingly, the essential aspects of the world, which individual
subjects must be able to perceive, are those
which serve their life within the culture and support its assembly, protection, and development.
The perceptual abilities that are necessary for this
process cannot be inborn and available inside the
brain, and therefore, they cannot be explained by
a physiological approach to sensory systems: The
cultures which have developed are thoroughly
different from each other and are continuously
created by humans (Holzkamp, 1983). In order to
differentiate between perception following from
naturally organized inborn abilities and perception within a culture, we may distinguish between
perception and orientation: Perception is then to
be understood as the potency for capturing the
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world that is given by the nervous system, receptors, nerves, and brain structures. Orientation, on
the other hand, is the ability, which is developed
by the activities of a subject, to recognize the
factual and cultural affordances, to act accordingly, and to use them in cultural activities in
cooperation with others. People only develop
their orientation in cooperative activities with
other people. Children learn the specific
affordances of other people and those affordances
that have been materialized in tools, methods,
and relationships. They learn how to consider
advice by participating in cooperative action
and by speaking to skillful people, and they
learn how to understand and create clues by
themselves. If this cannot be accomplished, for
example, in some autistic disorders or severe
mental disability, humans remain alienated from
their cultural environment. They may only gain
a limited orientation for their actions and for their
possibilities to cooperate with other people.
When persons fall ill with Alzheimer’s dementia
or other severe brain damages, or suffer from
intoxication or other severe metabolic disorders,
they do not lose their ability to perceive to the
same extent. They continue to see, hear, taste, and
smell but they lose their orientation (agnosia),
e.g., they lose their frame of understanding of
the actions and conditions of actions within the
culture. They become chronologically, spatially,
situationally, and personally disoriented, and
they are not (or only in a restricted manner) able
to coordinate their actions and cooperative activities with others in accordance with cultural
affordances. Since orientation not only is the
result of information composed from single
modalities but also includes the learned forms
of acting in the world and the linguistic knowledge about it, humans do not lose their orientation
completely; once such modality fails. But if the
ability to organize perception by acting and by
linguistic support from other people is lost,
perceptual information becomes useless.
The Role of Speaking (Holzkamp, Davidson)
Language (▶ Language and Speech) plays
a significant role in the assembly of human perception as orientation. Skilled humans give us
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clues during conversation regarding what has to
be considered in specific activities. Due to their
spoken utterances, our attention is drawn to
something prominent and general. Therefore,
the more we pay attention to those cultural
clues, the more we learn to act in that culture.
Keeping that in mind, the perceived thing cannot
be isolated from its linguistic “notion.” This new
quality in perception must be emphasized as
human orientation. An object is necessarily
perceived through its notion. Human perception
involves the recognition of the cultural general
within the specific actual information by the
senses (Holzkamp, 1973, p. 152).
The features of the object, or the modalities with
which it is perceived, are consequently losing their
significance. We need no addition of features to
recognize a cup. Our orientation indexes the concept of a “cup” by a thought, a spoken, or heard
word, via a haptic affordance in the dark or by its
sound when it is hit with a spoon, or when we
recognize a small part while most of the shape is
hidden by other objects. Donald Davidson
(1917–2003) has come to this conclusion through
philosophical reflection. “Language is not an ordinary learned skill; it is, or has become a mode of
perception. However, speech is not just one more
organ; it is essential to the other senses if they are to
yield propositional knowledge. Language is the
organ of propositional perception. Seeing sights
and hearing sounds does not require thought with
propositional content; perceiving how things are
does, and this ability develops along with language.
Perception, once we have propositional thought, is
direct and unmediated in the sense that there are no
epistemic intermediaries on which perceptual
beliefs are based, nothing that underpins our
knowledge of the world. Of course, our sense
organs are part of the causal chain from the world
to perceptual belief. But not all causes are reasons:
the activation of our retinas does not constitute
evidence that we see a dog, nor do the vibrations
of the little hairs in the inner ear provide reasons to
think the dog is barking” (Davidson, 2005, p. 135).
In contrast, the significance of language and
speech for perception does not appear at all in
a well-established modern textbook on the
Perception
psychology of perception, like the one by Bruce
Goldstein (2002). Here, speech is merely discussed
in considering the stimulus and its processing. In
this way, modern cognitivist descriptions do not
even reach the brim of what it would be necessary
to explain. Wherein lies the quality of the criticalpsychological approach to perception? It lies in the
understanding of humans, not as victims, as objects
of stimuli, but as active subjects who create their
life conditions themselves in a sociocultural context and who must develop their orientation
accordingly.
Practice Relevance
Attending to perception as orientation is as significant for pedagogical processes as for psychology. As many pedagogues have understood, it is
not so important to expose learners to many stimuli, but to make cooperative offers for mutual
actions and talk. Human perception in the form
of orientation originates in the activity of subjects, who use cooperative and linguistic clues
from others. The empiricist view on instruction
implies that one could learn how to structure the
world by means of innate mechanisms. This
approach overlooks the fact that the notional
structure of the world contains knowledge and
judgments about the culture in question that cannot be gathered in a solipsistic way. In this
respect, the linguistic and causal mediation in
cooperation is of especially high significance.
Therapeutic offers of perceptual training are to
be reflected in a similar way. Perceptual learning
does not work by exposing people to many “stimuli,” just like children do not learn to understand
merely by being placed in front of a TV. Learning
with computers does not replace collaborative and
guided processes in which practical and social
competencies with other people are learned.
Future Directions
The essential future task will be to give the
psychology of perception, and psychology as a
Performative Psychology
whole, the turn, which was initiated by the above
mentioned authors. It has to be led out of the
cognitivist, empiricist, and infertile natural science-oriented paradigm. Human perception and
orientation in a culture cannot be depicted by
ever more detailed analyses of brain structures
and can, therefore, not be described on the basis
of the natural sciences. Notions of the culture, in
which we perceive, are not available to the
natural sciences. “They are not in the cards”
(Davidson, 2001).
References
Davidson, D. (2001). What thought requires. In
D. Davidson (Ed.), Problems of rationality
(pp. 135–149). Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
Davidson, D. (2005). Seeing through language. In
D. Davidson (Ed.), Truth, language, and history
(pp. 127–142). Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
Gibson, J. J. (1960). The concept of stimulus in psychology. The American Psychologist, 15, 694–703.
Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual
systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual
perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Goldstein, E. B. (2002). Sensation and perception
(6th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Wadsworth.
Holzkamp, K. (1973). Sinnliche Erkenntnis. Frankfurt am
Main, Germany: Athen€aum Fischer.
Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie.
Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus.
Holzkamp, K. (1996). Psychologie: Selbstverst€andigung
€uber Handlungsbegr€
undungen. Forum Kritische
Psychologie Bd, 36, 7–112.
Leontjew, A. N. (1964). Probleme der Entwicklung des
Psychischen. Berlin: Volk und Wissen.
Mace, W. M. (1977). James J. Gibson’s strategy for
perceiving: Ask not what’s inside your head,
but what’s your head inside of. In R. Shaw &
J. D. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and
knowing (pp. 43–65). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Messing, J. (1999). Allgemeine Theorie des menschlichen
Bewusstseins. Berlin, Germany: Weidler.
Neisser, U. (1990). Gibson’s revolution. PsycCRITIQUES,
35 (8), no pagination specified.
Online Resources
http://www.psycholinguistik.uni-muenchen.de/publ/bewu
sstsein.html
http://www.journal-fuer-psychologie.de/index.php/jfp/article/view/163/100
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/ecopsyc/perils/
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Performative Psychology
Lois Holzman
East Side Institute, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Introduction
Performative psychology is a shift from a natural
science-based and individualistic approach to
understanding human life to a more cultural and
relational approach. It is critical of mainstream
psychology in two specific ways: as an alternative
understanding and practice of relating to human
beings (i.e., a practical-critical methodology
based in the human capacity to perform) and as
a newly evolving method of inquiry/research
(i.e., a performative way of doing social science).
Postmodern Marxists Fred Newman and Lois
Holzman are the initial and primary developers
of the former, and social constructionists Ken
Gergen and Mary Gergen are the initial and
primary developers of the latter.
Keywords
Education; Holzman; inquiry; Ken Gergen;
Mary Gergen; Newman; performance; performative; performatory; psychotherapy; relationality;
social science research; Vygotsky; zone of
proximal development
Conceptualization
Both orientations of performative psychology are
based in an understanding of human life as primarily performatory or performative. While these
terms have different origins, senses, and reference
in different disciplines, today both terms broadly
connote that people are performers and the world
a series of “stages” upon which we create the
millions of scripted and improvised scenes of our
lives. Contrary to mainstream psychology’s
premise that the essential feature of human beings
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is our cognitive ability (often accompanied by
a subordination of our affective ability), performative psychology puts performance “center stage.”
To performative theorists, researchers, and practitioners, people’s ability to perform – to pretend, to
play, to improvise, and to be who we are and
“other” than who we are – is simultaneously
cognitive and emotive. It is seen as an essential
human characteristic, essential to our emotionalsocial-cultural-intellectual lives – but dramatically
overlooked by mainstream psychology.
Practical-Critical Methodology:
Understanding and Relating to People as
Performers
In articulating their practice/theory as performative psychology, Newman and Holzman offer
performance as a new ontology (Lois Holzman,
2000a, b; Newman & Holzman, 1997, 2006/
1996). Primarily concerned with therapeutics,
development, and learning, their performatory
practice can be understood as a Vygotskianinfluenced psychology of becoming.
In his project to develop a Marxist psychology, Vygotsky rejected linearity and causality,
and the separation of theory and practice, and
process and product that follows. For Vygotsky,
method was not a means to an end, but “simultaneously the tool and result of the study”
(Vygotsky, 1978) (p. 65). He rejected the separation of learning and development into discrete
processes that are causally or linearly connected,
seeing, instead, a unity of human social activity in
which learning leads development (Newman &
Holzman, 1993; Vygotsky, 1987). Learning is
both the source and the product of development,
just as development is both the source and the
product of learning. As an activity, learning
and development are inseparably intertwined
and emergent, best understood together as
a dialectical unity.
Vygotsky showed that young children are
related to simultaneously who they are and who
they are not/who they are becoming and, in this
way, they develop. Through their joint activity,
young children and their caretakers create environments (what he called zones of proximal
developments or zpds, Vygotsky, 1987) in
Performative Psychology
which and by which they learn developmentally.
By creating zpds, people do things they do not yet
know how to do, and children learn and develop
by performing – “as if a head taller than they are”
(Vygotsky, 1978) (p. 102). In other words, development is the social activity of creating who
you are by performing who you are becoming
(Newman & Holzman, 1993).
Because becoming culturally and societally
adapted through performing too often turns into
routinized and rigidified behavior, people do not
keep creating new performances of themselves. An
effective way to intervene on the rigidity of roles
that comes with socialization and enculturation is by
creating environments for children and adults to
perform consciously and in new ways. Developmental performance involves creating the
performance “stage” and performing on that stage
(Holzman, 2006, 2009).
Performance theory and practice recognize
the emotional and social growth that occurs
when people create together theatrically on
stage. Practitioners typically use theatrical
performance techniques in nontheatrical settings
to support the expression of people’s creativity
and sociality in all areas of their lives. Additionally, academic study and research of performance, both on and off stage, is being carried
out in psychology, anthropology, and sociology
and in the professional disciplines of education,
psychotherapy, nursing, medicine, and community development.
Psychotherapy and education are two areas of
fruitful research and practice. Postmodern therapies, including social constructionist, collaborative, and social therapies, relate to therapeutic
discourse as performed conversation (McNamee
& Gergen, 1992; Neimeyer & Raskin, 2000;
Newman & Holzman, 1999; Strong & Pare,
2004). Social therapists, in particular, relate to
therapy sessions as therapy plays and clients as
an ensemble of performers who, with the therapist’s help, are staging a new therapy play each
session. In this way, clients can experience themselves as the collective creators of their emotional
growth (Holzman & Mendez, 2003). In education,
both mainstream educational psychologists and
postmodern and cultural-historical researchers
Performative Psychology
have become attentive to creativity as socially
performed and learning itself as a creative activity. Researchers and practitioners engage teaching
and learning as improvisational (Lobman, in
press; Sawyer, in press) and develop performatory
practices of student-teacher engagement
(Holzman, 1997; Lobman & O’Neill, 2011;
Martinez, 2011). For some, the goal of schooling
becomes supporting students and teachers to
continuously experience themselves as learners
and performers of their continuous development
(Lois Holzman, 2000a, b).
Method of Inquiry/Research: Performative
Ways of Doing Social Science
Performative psychology as an alternative mode
of communicating psychological concepts,
research, and practices originated in the work of
Ken and Mary Gergen (K. J. Gergen, 2006; M. M.
Gergen, 2000, 2001). The term came into use at
symposia presented at the American Psychological Association conventions from 1995 to 1999
organized by Ken Gergen. Presentations took
the form of dramatic monologues, dance, multimedia presentations, plays, and poems, each of
which dealt with a significant topic of psychological concern and expanded the representations
of knowledge psychologists make use of. Having
heard of Newman and Holzman’s performatory
therapeutic, educational, and communitybuilding practices, Gergen invited them to
participate in the 1996 symposium, entitled
“Performative Psychology Redux,” for which
Newman wrote a play in which Vygotsky and
Wittgenstein were in therapy. For several years
thereafter, Newman and Holzman presented
a live performance of an original Newman psychology play at APA conventions. At the same
time, they began to work with the Gergens on
creating a broader and multidisciplinary venue
for performance/scholarly work. In 1997, Newman and Holzman, through their East Side Institute, hosted an international conference,
“Unscientific Psychology: Conversations with
Other Voices” (Holzman & Morss, 2000). The
conference mixed traditional scholarly keynote
presentations with performatory responses by
the audience. In 2001, the two groups joined
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forces to sponsor another international gathering, “Performing the World: Communication,
Improvisation and Societal Practice,” whose
aim was to explore the potential of performance
for social change. It was a successful venture
and Newman, Holzman, and the East Side Institute have continued to grow it as a biannual
event, while the Gergens have continued their
mission to advance the performative in social
scientific inquiry.
Performative social science is defined by
Gergen and Gergen (Gergen & Gergen, 2011,
2012) as “the deployment of different forms of
artistic performance in the execution of
a scientific project. Such forms may include art,
theater, poetry, music, dance, photography, fiction
writing, and multi-media applications. Performance-oriented research may be presented in textual form, but also before live audiences, or in
various media forms (film, photographs,
websites)” (Gergen & Gergen, 2011). Central to
this endeavor is the need to develop awareness
among social scientists that making statements
about psychological acts does not represent reality
but rather is an expressive act. This draws upon
the philosopher John Searle’s now classic work,
Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Language, in which he highlighted the performative nature of language, i.e., that utterances
perform various social functions over and above
conveying content (Searle, 1969, 1979).
Readers wishing to become versed in the
history, multi-disciplinarity, and methods of this
approach are urged to read the complete article,
“Performative Social Science and Psychology,”
that appeared in FQS Forum, January 2011.
References
Gergen, M. M. (2000). Women as spectacle. In
L. Holzman & J. Morss (Eds.), Unscientific psychologies, societal practice and political life. New York:
Routledge.
Gergen, M. M. (2001). Feminist reconstructions in
psychology: Narrative, gender and performance.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gergen, K. J. (2006). Therapeutic realities: Collaboration, oppression, and relational flow. Lima, OH:
Fairway Press.
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Gergen, K. J., & Gergen, M. M. (2011). Performative
social science and psychology. FQS: Forum:
Qualitative Social Research, 12(1).
Gergen, M. M., & Gergen, K. J. (2012). Playing with
purpose: Adventures in performative social science.
Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Holzman, L. (1997). Schools for growth: Radical alternatives to current educational models. Mahwah, NJ: L.
Erlbaum.
Holzman, L. (2000a). Performance, criticism and
postmodern psychology. In L. Holzman & J. Morss
(Eds.), Postmodern psychologies, societal practice
and political life (pp. 79–90). New York: Routledge.
Holzman, L. (2000b). Performative psychology: An
untapped resource for educators. Educational and
Child Psychology, 17(3), 86–103.
Holzman, L. (2006). Lev Vygotsky and the new performative psychology: Implications for business organizations. In D. M. Hosking & S. McNamee (Eds.), The
social construction of organization. Oslo, Norway:
Liber.
Holzman, L. (2009). Vygotsky at work and play.
New York: Routledge.
Holzman, L., & Mendez, R. (2003). Psychological
investigations: A clinician’s guide to social therapy.
New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Holzman, L., & Morss, J. (Eds.). (2000). Postmodern
psychologies, societal practice and political life.
New York: Routledge.
Lobman, C. (in press). Improvising with(in) the system:
Creating new teacher performances in inner city
schools. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The teaching paradox:
Creativity in the classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lobman, C., & O’Neill, B. E. (2011). Play and
performance (Vol. 11). New York: University Press
of America.
Martinez, J. E. (2011). A performatory approach to teaching, learning and technology. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. (1992). Therapy as social
construction. London: Sage.
Neimeyer, R. A., & Raskin, J. D. (2000). Varieties of
constructivism in psychotherapy. In K. Dobson (Ed.),
Handbook of cognitive behavioral therapies (2nd ed.,
pp. 393–430). New York: Guilford.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky:
Revolutionary scientist. London: Routledge.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. (1997). The end of knowing:
A new developmental way of learning. London:
Routledge.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. (1999). Beyond narrative to
performed conversation (in the beginning comes much
later). Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 12(1),
23–40.
Newman, F. & Holzman, L. (2006/1996). Unscientific
psychology: A cultural-performatory approach to
understanding human life. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
(Originally published Westport, CT: Praeger).
Person
Sawyer, K. (in press). The teaching paradox: Creativity in
the classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy
of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the
theory of speech acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Strong, T., & Pare, D. (2004). Furthering talk: Advances
in the discursive therapies. New York: Kluwer
Academic.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Person
Jack Martin
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser
University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Introduction
Critical psychology has developed complex perspectives concerning persons by making visible
constitutive links between particular kinds of subjectivity and psychological discourses, practices,
and institutional power. On the one hand, it has
deconstructed the idea of the person as a sovereign
entity, entire unto itself. On the other hand, it has
promoted relational and contextualized conceptions
of persons as biophysically embodied and socioculturally embedded. The former project is critical of
conceptions of persons as unitary, fixed, and foundational entities with universal features that are prior
to and transcend particular times and places. The
latter project promotes a decentered, pluralistic, and
variable conception of persons as constituted within
communities of discourse and interactive relations
with others. A particular focus for the critical
psychology of persons and personhood has been
the ways in which disciplinary psychology, through
its research and intervention practices, has created
new conceptions of, and ways of being, persons –
ways that tend toward forms of instrumental individualism and imperialism readily apparent in
Person
contemporary liberal democracies (Cushman, 1995;
Rose, 1998; Spivak, 1999).
Definition
The concept of a person has been applied to
corporations and other nonhuman agents, but
such uses are obvious exceptions. Our concept
of a person, from the Latin persona or Greek
prosopon, is difficult to define but clearly is
a concept applicable to human beings, understood as entities that display certain capacities
or characteristics, especially when considered
in moral and legal contexts. Among the most
frequently mentioned of these capacities and
attributes are language use, culture creation,
self-consciousness, first-person perspective,
moral and rational agency, temporal awareness
of the past and future, two-way volitional control
(to do or not to do), social and psychological
identity, and entitlements of rights and duties.
Despite the close association of the concepts of
person and human being, the concept of a person
is not specifically substantive as is the concept of
a human being. Persons are more than their biophysical bodies. A long-standing tradition has
insisted on a bifurcation of the mind and body
of a person. More recently, this bifurcation
has led many to speak of persons as unique biological and cultural hybrids. The concept of
a person also has served to separate humans
from other animals.
Keywords
Person; personhood; self; selfhood; agency;
identity; critical psychology; psychology; deconstruction; sociocultural psychology
History
Ancient uses of the word persona referred to
masks worn by actors that represented different
roles or characters. By extension, Roman law
used the term to reference a legal entity – one
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who, as a privileged bearer of particular entitlements and obligations, could be held responsible
for fulfilling specific duties concerning other
persons, a category that excluded young children,
women, and slaves. For the Romans, “person”
was also a moral category, with an emphasis
on public obligations. With the advent of
Christianity, a long line of scholastics like Tertullian, Boethius, and Aquinas adapted person to
theological uses concerning the nature of God
and man, with much attention paid to the “persons” of the divine (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).
The Christian usage was refined to serve as a basis
of legal and philosophical thought through the
Enlightenment and beyond. For example, the
ascription of inalienable rights to persons that is
found in the United States Declaration of Independence is based on the rights of “man” as
a person in God’s image. Much twentieth-century
scholarship was devoted to excising the theological content from the concept of person to create
a secular, empirically amenable understanding.
In Western philosophy, person was given
a more individualistic and/or psychological
rendering in the works of Hobbes, Descartes,
and Locke. Hobbes emphasized the essential
separateness of each individual, understanding
all social interactions as contractual among
individual persons. Descartes and Locke, respectively, stressed the dual nature (mind versus body)
of persons and the maintenance of personal identity over time and place, giving rise to debates
concerning the unity and persistence of persons.
By stressing the crucial importance of processes
like thought and memory in attempting to address
such problems, Descartes, Locke, and their followers initiated a psychological interpretation of
personhood – what seems most basic to persons is
their inner lives. This general view gathered
strength in the eighteenth century despite
Hume’s claim that introspecting this inner realm
never could yield a personal self, only bundles of
impressions. Kant’s brilliant, yet tortuous, attempt
to reconcile Hume’s skepticism with a unified and
reasoning self on transcendental grounds seemed
only to fuel the gradual ascendency of psychological conceptions of personhood that incorporated
introspection and self-reflection as primary
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methods. To this psychological mix, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau added the idea that to be yourself is to
accept the task of self-making in a way that grants
authenticity to your own genuine feelings of the
moment. With Rousseau and his Romantic followers, all the ingredients were in place for
a new psychological view of personhood, one
related to objective truth and science on the
one hand (the Lockean legacy) and to subjective
authenticity and artistic creativity on the other
(the Rousseauian legacy).
However, it was not until the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries that conceptions of
persons were developed that were amenable to
psychological inquiry and intervention. During
the last half of the nineteenth century, medical
theories and treatments of psychologically troubled
individuals, especially those exhibiting “double” or
“alternating consciousness,” challenged longstanding, Lockean understandings of persons as
psychologically continuous, unitary, and primarily
self-conscious. The rise of psychology as an independent discipline with both scientific and professional aspirations was closely associated with the
emergence of the person as a psychological subject
and object in both conventional and pathological
senses.
During the early part of the twentieth century,
many well-known psychologists endorsed the
study of persons within their worldly contexts.
William James, James Mark Baldwin, John
Dewey, George Herbert Mead, William Stern,
Mary Whiton Calkins, Pierre Janet, Lev
Vygotsky, Heinz Werner, and Wilhelm Wundt
(especially in his later years) all were concerned
with the holistic activity and functioning of persons as uniquely capable psychological beings
within their social contexts (Valsiner & van der
Veer, 2000). However, it was not long before the
more speculative, philosophical, moral, and
sociocultural aspects of the work of these giants
of the new discipline were expunged or simply
overlooked, as the rapidly developing discipline
moved quickly to establish its scientific standing
in ways that would distinguish it from other academic disciplines such as mental philosophy and
from a host of dubious practices such as phrenology, physiognomy, mesmerism, spiritualism, and
Person
mental healing (Benjamin, 2007). In consequence, the early psychological laboratories
tended to focus on the study of components of
the mental lives of persons in isolation from the
contexts in which persons lived.
The struggles of disciplinary scientific and professional psychology to come to grips with its subject matter soon became acutely evident, as
experimentation to discern the basic elements of
consciousness began to flounder methodologically,
theoretically, and practically. In response, psychology and psychologists shifted focus, away from the
basic structures of consciousness to the study of the
behaviors of humans and other animals in carefully
controlled laboratory contexts. In a rush to establish
the viability of this new science of behavior, standards of objectivity and methodological procedures
borrowed from more mature sciences helped to
ensure that the latest version of psychological science would steer mostly clear of the everyday
experiences and actions of persons in those social,
cultural contexts in which they lived and worked.
Not only was the activity of research subjects
restricted to simple behaviors that could be studied
and counted objectively, but the contexts within
which such behaviors were produced were purposefully sterile, being stripped of any objects other than
those used to manipulate the particular behaviors of
interest to the experimenters.
With the dawn of cognitive psychology, it seemed
possible that psychology’s return to the study of
mental or cognitive structures and processes might
afford an opening for investigating important aspects
of personhood such as reasoned and intentional
action, moral concern, self-consciousness and selfunderstanding, and first-person experience, even if
the study of the embodied, situated interactivity of
persons in historical, sociocultural context was not
immediately in the cards. After more than 50 years
into psychology’s so-called second revolution (the
first arguably being the shift from mentalism to
behaviorism), the cognitivist reign certainly differs
from the behaviorism that preceded it, as reflected in
a proliferation of research and applications in
areas related to personhood such as self-esteem,
self-concept, self-efficacy, and self-regulation, all
rendered in the language of inner cognitive processes
and structures. However, a closer look at
Person
psychological theory and research in these areas
reveals little conceptual sophistication concerning
what the self is or how exactly it relates to conceptions of persons as anything more than their psychological interiors.
In sum, the history of disciplinary psychology
is a history of successive attempts to reduce
persons – first, to basic operations and structures
of their minds understood in mentalistic, componential terms, then to their behaviors as studied
mostly in highly restricted micro-environments,
and finally to internal cognitive, computational,
and neurophysiological structures, processes, and
patterns of activation. In addition, since at least the
1930s, a sustained attempt has been made to construct a psychological science of personality that
makes extensive use of psychometric measures
and statistical techniques that utilize self-ratings
of individuals concerning their understandings and
evaluations of themselves as scientifically valid
data about personality traits such as introversionextroversion and psychological attributes such as
self-concept, self-regulation, and personal identity. All these reductive strategies grossly simplify
the complex lives of persons understood as
embodied, rational, and moral agents interactive
within evolutionary and developmental trajectories that include histories of constantly unfolding
sociocultural traditions, practices, artifacts, and
conventions. For the founders and most practitioners of experimental psychology, interest was
fixed on general regularities of human functioning,
not on persons per se. For the founders and practitioners of psychometric personality psychology,
knowledge of individual differences replaced
knowledge of persons.
Nonetheless, the historical record is not all bad
news for a critical psychology of personhood.
As already mentioned, there was an impressive
first wave of what might be considered
a psychology of personhood during the founding
years of disciplinary psychology. Additionally,
despite the subsequent succession of highly
popular but mostly reductive systems of psychological science from mentalism to behaviorism to
cognitivism, small pockets of psychologists pursued less reductive approaches to psychological
inquiry and practice, continuing to understand
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and study persons in more holistic, contextualized, and pluralistic ways. Indeed, the ideas of
the first generation of psychologists of personhood (i.e., James, Dewey, the later Wundt,
Janet, Mead, Vygotsky, Stern) continued to
garner small numbers of supporters and advocates throughout the twentieth and into the
twenty-first century (Valsiner & van der Veer,
2000). Within American psychology, examples
included Gestalt psychology (as imported from
Germany before and during the Second World
War), postwar humanistic psychology (including
phenomenological, existential, and hermeneutic
approaches), more social forms of psychoanalytically informed psychology (especially as
developed by Adler, Horney, Sullivan, and their
colleagues), and a growing wave of social,
historical, and cultural psychologies that hit the
United States and Canada in the late 1960s, stimulated by the works of Lev Vygotsky and other
Continental psychologists.
In addition, several prominent personality
psychologists who had become enamored of
more robustly holistic conceptions of persons
and had begun to adopt biographical and narrative methods for understanding persons and their
lives began to meet together on a regular basis
under the banner of “personology” (Alexander,
1990), a term with diverse and ancient meanings
but used in the history of psychology by Henry
Murray and others to connote a broader and more
holistic study of persons in all of their complexity. Moreover, in some of psychology’s most
popular subdivisions like social, developmental
psychology, concern for the holistic activity of
persons in context resisted more reductive,
decontextualized forms of mainstream behaviorism and cognitivism. Such occurrences, together
with the development of more theoretically
informed, critical psychological discourses (e.g.,
social constructionism, dialogical psychology,
hermeneutic/phenomenological psychologies,
narrative psychology, poststructural and
postcolonial psychologies) during the last two
decades of the twentieth century and into the
first decades of the twenty-first century, have set
the stage for a revamped psychology of personhood – one that makes use of a plurality of critical
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theoretical and historical frameworks and methods
of qualitative, narrative inquiry to study a diversity
of persons embedded within particular contexts
and practices of living and inquiring.
Traditional and Critical Debates
Long-standing debates concerning persons
revolved around the questions of unity and persistence mentioned previously. However, closely
associated with these matters, and of even greater
importance to a critical psychology of persons,
has been a succession of arguments concerning
the social, cultural, and historical shaping and
constitution of persons. Against the pre-given
nature of persons assumed and rigorously
defended throughout the Christian era and
extending into traditional analytic philosophy,
a long line of socially and historically inclined
scholars have pointed to the diversity and particularities of persons and their ways of life across
places and times. In the twentieth century, Continental thinkers (existentialists, hermeneuts,
poststructuralists, deconstructionists, socialcultural activity theorists, and others) prepared
the way for a critical psychology that mounted
a detailed and convincing critique of mainstream
psychology’s attachment to decontextualized,
individualistic, monolithic, and reductionistic
conceptions of selfhood and personhood. Not
only did such conceptions and the research and
interventions they spawned fail to give adequate
attention to the many ways in which persons are
inseparable from their historical and sociocultural contexts, they actively promoted, when
enshrined in programs of psychological inquiry
and application, highly individualistic, instrumental, and imperialistic ways of being persons.
Critical thinkers of various stripes such as
Marx, Nietzsche, Kuhn, and Foucault laid the
groundwork for a latter twentieth-century wave
of social constructionist, postmodern, feminist,
and postcolonial scholarship. These critical perspectives and their practitioners systematically
dissected and questioned the ways in which mainstream psychology as an institution and set of
inquiry and intervention practices promoted
Person
forms of personhood that worked actively against
an understanding and valuing of indigenous
psychological practices, the working class, nonWestern cultures, visible minorities, and women.
When amalgamated with critical voices from
Vygotskian, Wittgensteinian, pragmatic, and
hermeneutic perspectives, a pluralistic critical psychology was available by the late twentieth
century that was capable of mounting a sustained
and multifaceted critique of the human-scientific
and ethical-political practices of mainstream psychology (Fox & Prilleltensky, 1997; Teo, 2005).
Central to this critical work was a concern that
persons not be understood in terms of their reified
psychological interiors or reductively eliminated
in preference to their biophysical, neuropsychological constituents. In sharp contrast to these
psychologistic formulations, persons were to be
understood as complexly embodied and inescapably embedded within their sociocultural, historical conditions and contexts. The constitution of
persons is not a matter of socially shaping and
grooming a pre-existent psychological essence,
but arises through the interactivity of persons
within a sociocultural, historical world of
practices, artifacts, institutions, and constantly
evolving ways of living. Our contemporary
understanding of our selves as deeply psychological beings is not a consequence of a natural
endowment, impervious to time and place, but
bears the marks of a long and complex history
of changing traditions and contested ways of life,
both active and reflective.
International and Practice Relevance
It would be difficult to overstate the importance
of a critical psychology of persons and
personhood. In an age of instrumental individualism and corporate imperialism and set against
a widespread social scientific empiricism that
manifests in narrowly focused, tractable inquiries
that avoid the political complexities of human
life, critical psychologies of personhood can
help us to recognize and see beyond our
self-interest and open us to the diversity of the
human condition in its historical, sociocultural,
Personal Construct Psychology
relational, and linguistic complexity. By
directing our view to the diversity of persons
and communities and encouraging an openness
to forms of, and possibilities for, personhood
drawn from other times and places, critical psychologies inform us about our ways of life with
others, both actual and potential. More specifically, critical psychologies help us to understand
psychology itself as a set of practices of personmaking and reveal mainstream psychology as
a significant source of the kinds of instrumental
individualism and imperialism currently celebrated in many corners of Western societies. By
confronting us with the products of our worldly
interactivity as embodied, context-dependent,
and context-creating beings, these psychologies
enrich our capacities for engagement across our
differences in ways that hold significant promise
for both emancipatory self-critique and rigorous
pluralism in thought and action.
Future Directions
The first decades of the twenty-first century have
witnessed a reawakening of interest in personhood
(e.g., Martin & Bickhard, 2012), not just in critical
psychology, but in some areas of mainstream psychology as well. As Shotter (1998) recognized,
“there is a movement afoot that has to do with an
increasing acceptance of talk about persons in
relation, engaged or involved agency, and what
this implies for new ways to understand ourselves.
. . . Instead of the classical kind of knowledge,
seemingly got from the position of the disengaged
spectator, we are beginning to wake up to the
character of our own involvements in our own
ways of knowing; and to what is involved in
knowing from a position of involvement with the
activities we are studying” (pp. 268–269). Exactly
how this project will fare remains to be seen.
However, critical psychology and critical psychologists can play an important role in keeping such
a project grounded, helping to ensure that
a reconstituted conception of the person in psychology remains tied to those diversely embodied
and contextualized particulars in which we exist
and hopefully might flourish.
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References
Alexander, I. E. (1990). Personology: Method and content
in personality assessment and psychobiography.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (2007). A brief history of modern
psychology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing
America: A cultural history of psychotherapy.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Fox, D., & Prilleltensky, I. (Eds.). (1997). Critical
psychology: An introduction. London: Sage.
Martin, J., & Bickhard, M. H. (2012). The new psychology
of personhood. Special issue, New Ideas in
Psychology, 30 (1).
Rose, N. (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power,
and personhood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Shotter, J. (1998). Resurrecting people in academic
psychology: A celebration of the ordinary. In W. E.
Smythe (Ed.), Toward a psychology of persons.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Spivak, G. C. (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason:
Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to
postcolonial theory. New York: Springer.
Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind:
Construction of the idea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Online Resources
Personal identity: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identitypersonal/
Personalism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism
Personal Construct Psychology
Trevor Butt
Department of Psychology, City University,
London, UK
Introduction
The psychology of personality is now dominated
by the psychometric tradition of individual differences: how people differ along a number of
specified dimensions. This, of course, is an objectivist approach that takes an external perspective
on the person. Personal construct psychology
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(PCP) is a phenomenological approach to the
person that focuses instead on making sense of
people by attempting to understand the world
from their individual perspectives.
Definition
PCP is a theory of the person devised by professor
of
clinical
psychology
George
Kelly
(1905–1967). He was strongly influenced by the
pragmatism of John Dewey and developed the
theory out of his clinical practice. The basic unit
in PCP is the personal construct. Elements of
experience are organized into likeness/difference
discriminations called personal constructs that, it
is proposed, form the basis of dimensions of
meaning for the person. These personal constructions are organized into chains and networks
called construct systems that the individual fashions in order to anticipate and act in the world.
Keywords
Personality; personal construct; constructivism;
pragmatism; phenomenology; hermeneutics;
choice; agency
History
Working in the Dust Bowl of rural Kansas in the
wake of the Great Depression, Kelly found neither psychoanalysis nor behaviorism of much
use. He tells us that psychoanalysis was marginally more helpful, since at least it attempted to
come to grips with human misery. It was full of
ingenious “interpretations.” But of course it is the
client who interprets – reads meaning into
events – not the therapist. Whatever the therapist
says is construed through a system of meaning
that each individual silently constructs. This
“construct system” is a prism through which
everything is refracted. One may see the person
as a battleground of unconscious forces, as
a laboratory rat, or as an information-processing
system. But Kelly proposed that we think of the
Personal Construct Psychology
person as like a scientist who develops and then
tests his or her own theories. Kelly’s two-volume
work The Psychology of Personal Constructs
(1955) elaborates this person-as-scientist
metaphor. Volume 1 sets out the theory in the
form of a fundamental postulate and a series of
corollaries that flow from it. Volume 2 was written as a practical clinical manual showing the
theory in practice. PCP took root in Britain in
the 1960s following the work of Don Bannister,
Fay Fransella, Miller Mair, and Phil Salmon.
It reached the rest of Europe and Australia in
the 1970s.
Kelly begins his 1955 book with a statement of
his philosophical position – “constructive
alternativism.” This holds that there are always
different ways of understanding the same event.
So, for example, the different ways of thinking
about the person listed above cannot be thought
of as either right or wrong, merely as more or less
useful in the project of counseling or therapy.
Here, Kelly’s thinking can be located within the
tradition of pragmatism, particularly that of John
Dewey. Contemporary constructivism can also
be seen as within this tradition. PCP can also be
seen as phenomenological in that it privileges
the meanings endowed on the world by the
person. There are many viable constructions of
a given event, and in order to help another, we
must appreciate the way in which they make
sense of things. This emphasis on understanding
rather than causal explanation also locates PCP as
a hermeneutic approach (Warren, 1998).
The hallmark of PCP then is its emphasis on
personal meaning. Like Dewey before him, Kelly
rejected the idea of any overarching Truth for
which we reach and discover through scientific
endeavor. The job of science is to construct versions of the world that enable us to get a grip on it
(see Cromwell, 2011). So an electron can be
thought of as either a particle or a wave, with
both having important constructive implications
in atomic fission and electronic engineering,
respectively. Alternative constructions are
judged in terms of their viability. There is no
God-given answer that we can refer to in order
to judge accuracy or truth. Each person-asscientist constructs their own theory of the
Personal Construct Psychology
world that channels their action in it. The early
pragmatists had cast the scientist in the role of
moral hero. However, some contemporary theorists prefer the model of a narrator (Butt, 2008;
Mair, 2003; Neimeyer & Baldwin, 2003). Each
person puts together stories about themselves and
the world in general, and it is these stories that
must be understood if they are to be helped by
a therapist or counselor.
Traditional Debates
PCP is often thought of as a cognitive approach to
personality. This is disputed within the constructivist community. In his 1955 preface, Kelly
warns the reader that they will find none of the
landmarks familiar to psychology. There is no
cognition, learning, motivation, unconscious,
emotion, or behavior. Following Dewey’s rejection of Cartesian dualism, Kelly steadfastly
refused any mind/body distinctions as well as
any carving up of the person into thought affect
and behavior (see Cromwell, 2011). Instead he
talked of “a person’s processes” and translated
Dewey’s “action” as “construing.” Kelly was
certainly not a cognitive theorist in the contemporary sense; “constructs” are not some prescientific way of talking about cognitions. Construing
occurs in action, not behind it. Constructs are not
yet another way of constituting the ghost in the
machine. Construing is also inherent in emotion.
The construct system continuously evolves as we
assimilate and accommodate to new experiences.
Kelly proposed that what we call emotion is
the awareness of construing in transition. When
the ground moves in different ways, we experience different emotions. Emotions are therefore
defined phenomenologically. So, for example,
anxiety is defined as an awareness of events that
are outside our range of understanding, threat as
the awareness of imminent change in core
structure, and guilt as the awareness of dislodgement from core role.
The concept of core role structure is an important feature of PCP as it denotes the way in which
the person is embedded in the social world,
reflecting the interpretation of roles we play
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with key people. It is when we sense the loss
of this social grounding that we experience
guilt. So guilt is defined not in terms of
a deviation from social norms but from the perspective of the person who has lost his or her
social bearings. Discussing guilt, Kelly states:
“The psychology of personal constructs
emphasizes the essential importance of social
constructions” (1955, p. 503). Of course, Kelly
was writing 30 years before the social constructionist movement emerged, and his notion of
social construction endows the person with
more choice and agency than does contemporary
social constructionism.
The relationship between personal and social
constructionism is the subject of ongoing debate.
Some social constructionists claim that PCP is
fundamentally an individualistic approach to the
person and does not fully appreciate the primacy
of the social world. Kelly’s social psychology
comes from that of George Mead (Butt, 2008).
Social roles and action emerge in the light of
our understanding of the constructions of others.
This concept of sociality is central to PCP, giving
it a clear moral and political dimension. Kelly’s
primary concern was in clinical practice, and
therefore his focus is on individual construing.
The clinician is interested in the unique nature
of clients and must not categorize them. The individual is indeed a social construction, but once
constructed is a center for choice and agency,
albeit limited by social and political factors.
Critical Debates
It is this focus on personal meaning that constitutes PCP’s political stance. Warren (1998) suggests that we might consider this at two levels: the
power relationships in therapy and in society
more broadly. As Warren argues, power is
located in those groups or institutions that are
able to define and then “treat” disorders. Labeling
psychological conflicts, disorders, and distress as
illnesses has of course been an all too frequently
used ploy (e.g., in the case of “deviant” sexualities) to either enforce change or encourage people to label themselves as in need of treatment.
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Kelly used “transient diagnoses” to identify avenues of movement available to the client rather
than any classification in terms of disease entities.
Construct theorists are keen not to “psychologize” politics but focus on the articulation
of the person and the social world (Bannister,
2003; Scheer, 2008). Scheer summarizes the
work of construct theorists on the politics of
South Africa, the USA, and Europe. Warren
(1998) argues that the implications of PCP in
politics are clear. Kelly believed that particular
social conditions promoted the possibility of optimal psychological functioning. An egalitarian
social world in which people valued each other
as equals is most likely to encourage open
questioning and non-prejudicial construing. We
can perhaps see here Dewey’s influence favoring
democratic societies. Bannister (2003) also
argued that PCP’s inherent values favored liberty, equality, and fraternity. He tells us that
Kelly had intended to elaborate the theory’s
approach to politics just prior to his early death
at the age of 62. Certainly he thought that appreciating the position of the other in the service of
cooperation was vital in everything from therapy
to international relations. He undertook a world
tour in 1960/1961 and was one of the few American academics to spend time in the USSR. In his
subsequent essay (Kelly, 1962/2003), he focused
on how the USA was seen from abroad, noting
the Scandinavian disapproval of urban poverty
and squalor and the well-founded Georgian
distrust of capitalism.
International Relevance
An international congress on personal construct
psychology is held every 2 years. There are active
constructivist groups in North America, Europe,
and Australia, each of which also holds biannual
conferences. In the non-Anglophonic world,
there are particularly strong constructivist movements in Italy and Serbia. These are each led by
clinicians promoting constructivist psychotherapy. In Italy, a free online electronic journal,
Rivista Italiana di Costruttivismo, is planned in
2013.
Personal Construct Psychology
Practical Relevance
Winter (2003) argues that what we see as disorders are frequently an imbalance in strategies of
construing. An example would be in an imbalance of tight and loose construing. This
tight/loose dimension refers to variation in the
exactness of anticipations in construing
strategies. Kelly argues that both tight and loose
construing are necessary and should ideally be
used cyclically in creative construing. In order to
change and so free ourselves of redundant dimensions of meaning, we loosen our construing before
tightening around more adaptive dimensions.
Exclusive loosening is evident in schizophrenic
thought disorder when anticipation is chaotic and
sense making lost. Many “neurotic” complaints on
the other hand can be thought of as strategies to
tighten and restrict anticipations to avoid anxiety
albeit at great cost. A transient diagnosis here
would identify a maladaptive construing strategy
and suggest ways of remedying this. In terms of
technique (but not theory), PCP is technically
eclectic. Loosening techniques might include
relaxation and dream recall, while tightening
might center on challenging cognitions and
carrying out behavioral experiments.
The therapeutic relationship in PCP can best
be thought of as like that of a research student
with his or her project supervisor. Like the
researcher, it is the client who has the intimate
knowledge of their life project. Supervisors,
counselors, and therapists have different expertise. They have experience of similar projects and
how they might best be approached. In diagnosis,
the therapist or counselor adopts what Kelly
termed “a credulous approach.” This involves
respecting the way that clients interpret their
biographies. It is not events either in the past or
in the present that impact on clients but their
construction of them, the meaning that is
endowed on events. The therapeutic program, as
already noted, is technically eclectic. But it is
undertaken and reviewed in a constructivist manner. So, for example, behavioral exercises are not
seen in themselves as the embedding of new
learning but as experiments to be reflected on
and learned from.
Personal Construct Psychology
Kelly (2003) recommends the job of the university teacher as not managing students (and by
implication, clients in therapy) but to challenging
them. As Mair (2003) notes, PCP is a psychology
of questioning. The answering of questions is
clearly important and might be thought of as
a tightening strategy. But replacing old questions
with new (loosening) is equally important.
McWilliams (2003) suggests the metaphor of
anarchism in thinking about our thoughts and
feelings, as well as notions like the self. We too
easily reify and institutionalize these processes,
which may, just like political institutions, outlive
their usefulness. Insurrection aims at reducing
certainties and loosening their grip on us. Therapy, like education, should be a process that
encourages the asking of new more fruitful
questions.
Future Directions
PCP is referred to in most introductory texts on
personality, but there is rarely reference to the
continuing interest in the approach. This is
probably due to the hegemony of cognitivism,
where PCP is often portrayed as a precursor of
cognitive-behavioral psychology. Kelly is however seen as a key figure within contemporary
constructivism, and PCP is one vital component
of this movement (Raskin, 2006). Constructivism
has extended into social, developmental, and
organizational psychology. Most interest probably still comes from those in the clinical field,
where there are various constructivist contributions, for example, on trauma (Sewell, 2003) and
loss and grief (Neimeyer & Baldwin, 2003), family therapy (Proctor, 2003), and psychotherapy
generally (Chiari and Nuzzo, 2010).
PCP is famous for its grid method (Bell,
2003), which was at its height in the 1980s. It is
less well known for the host of qualitative
methods (see DeNicolo, 2003; Fransella, 2003,
Salmon, 2003). These provide many ingenious
and flexible and ways of investigating personal
meanings that are often more appropriate than
semi-structured interviews. Given the current
interest in qualitative methods in psychology, it
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is likely that these strategies will be found useful
by the increasing number of researchers.
Fransella (2003) believed that PCP would also
find a place in many disciplines and professional
groups other than in psychology.
References
Bannister, D. (2003). Personal construct theory and politics and the politics of personal construct theory. In F.
Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 181–189). Chichester,
England: John Wiley & Sons.
Bell, R. C. (2003). The repertory grid technique. In
F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 95–103). Chichester,
England: John Wiley & Sons.
Butt, T. W. (2008). George Kelly and the psychology of
personal constructs. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave.
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (2010). Constructivist psychotherapy: A narrative hermeneutic approach. London:
Routledge.
Cromwell, R. L. (2011). Being human: Human being.
New York: iUniverse.
DeNicolo, P. (2003). Elicitation methods to fit different
purposes. In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook
of personal construct psychology (pp. 123–131).
Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Fransella, F. (2003). Some skills and tools for personal
construct practitioners. In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal construct psychology
(pp. 105–121). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs (2 Volumes). New York: Norton.
Kelly, G. A. (1962/2003). Europe’s matrix of decision. In
J. Scheer (Ed.), Crossing borders – Going places
(pp. 12–44). Giessen: Psychosozial.
Kelly, G. A. (2003). Teacher-student relationships at
university level. In F. Fransella (Ed.), International
handbook of personal construct psychology
(pp. 295–301). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Mair, J. M. M. (2003). A psychology of questions.
In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of
personal construct psychology (pp. 405–413).
Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
McWilliams, S. A. (2003). Belief, attachment and awareness. In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of
personal construct psychology (pp. 75–82). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Neimeyer, R. A., & Baldwin, S. A. (2003). Personal construct psychotherapy and the constructivist horizon. In
F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 247–255). Chichester,
England: John Wiley & Sons.
Proctor, H. (2003). Family therapy. In F. Fransella (Ed.),
International handbook of personal construct
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psychology (pp. 431–434). Chichester, England: John
Wiley & Sons.
Raskin, J. D. (2006). Don’t cry for me George A. Kelly:
Human involvement and the construing of personal
construct psychology. Personal Construct Theory &
Practice, 3, 50–61.
Salmon, P. (2003). A psychology for teachers. In
F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 311–318). Chichester,
England: John Wiley & Sons.
Scheer, J. W. (2008). Construing in the political realm –
reflections on the power of a theory. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice, 5, 76–85.
Sewell, K. W. (2003). An approach to post-traumatic
stress. In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook
of personal construct psychology (pp. 223–231).
Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Warren, W. (1998). Philosophical dimensions of personal
construct psychology. London: Routledge.
Winter, D. (2003). Psychological disorder as imbalance.
In F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 201–209). Chichester,
England: John Wiley & sons.
Online Resources
This site, hosted by Prof. Dr. J€
orn Scheer, provides access
to a free electronic journal, a PCP encyclopaedia,
and news from the world of personal constructs in
Europe, the USA, and Australia. There are also pages
devoted to PCP in politics and in the arts. http://www.
personal-construct.net/
Journal of Constructivist Psychology. http://www.
constructivistpsych.org/jcp
www.rivistacostruttivismo.it
Personality
Tod Sloan
Graduate School of Education and Counseling,
Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, USA
Introduction
The term “personality” generally refers to the
relatively stable characteristics of an individual’s
feeling, thinking, and action. Personality can be
a descriptive term, in the sense that it merely
describes how a person usually acts. It can also
be an explanatory term, for example, when it is
said that X was violent because he has an aggressive personality. Interest in personality arises
Personality
within psychological science as we try to explain
why individuals in the same situation do not all
act in the same manner. In practical use, such as
industrial psychology, personality is assessed in
attempts to predict future behavior, such as success as a salesperson or manager. In clinical
work, understanding an individual’s personality
is often part of determining what aspects of their
psychological being need to change in the process
of therapy. Within critical psychology, personality is usually seen as a reflection of the social
order and is therefore of great interest in
establishing psychological grounds for radical
social change.
Definition
Definitions of personality vary in accordance
with the theoretical perspective from which
personality is viewed. For example, humanistic
psychologies view personality as the locus of
individual uniqueness, growth, and integration.
Behaviorist approaches define personality as the
consequence of prior reinforcement and current
situational stimuli. Psychoanalytic theories see
personality as an expression of previously internalized interpersonal relations and various
unconscious compromises established in the
process of managing drives, desires, and prohibitions. What most approaches have in common is
that they treat personality as a synthesis of
cognition, emotion, motivation, temperament,
and many other aspects of psychological
functioning. Personality is as global a concept
as self or psyche.
The various methods for the systematic
description and assessment of personality also
reflect theoretical perspectives about what
constitutes personality. Personality inventories,
the most widely used methods, rely on selfreported responses to brief statements and are
therefore widely criticized and have limited
predictive validity. Projective tests such as the
Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT) are also viewed skeptically, but can reveal
tendencies in cognition and affect in a manner
similar to fantasies, dreams, or free association.
Personality
Systematic observations of social behavior can
give evidence of traits such as sociability or anxiousness, but cross-situational consistency is hard
to demonstrate. In short, despite persistent and
creative efforts, attempts to measure personality
objectively have been hampered by conceptual
and methodological issues.
Keywords
Personality traits; personality types; character;
temperament;
self;
identity;
individual
differences
History
Systems for describing and classifying personality types and traits can be found in ancient times,
for example, the four temperaments described by
Hippocrates (460–370 BC). In general, however,
interest has focused on “human nature” rather
than individual personalities. Similarly, in early
modern legal and theological contexts, there were
debates about whether certain humans, such as
women, could even be considered “persons,”
let alone have personalities (Danziger, 1997).
With the rising individualism and humanism of
the Renaissance, doors opened to explore the
varieties of ordinary individuals through
literature and essays, for example, Butler’s
(1613–1680) Characters (1908). Various forms
of systematic characterologie (e.g., Malapert,
1897) were prevalent in Europe in the 1800s but
are little studied despite the fact that many of
their elements and dynamics are reintroduced
in twentieth-century personality psychologies
as if original. To some extent, personality classification has overlapped with psychiatric diagnoses, as in the work of Sigmund Freud on the
neuroses. The field of personality psychology,
however, has always made a point of including
“normal” individuals as well. Carl Jung (1971)
did this with his extensive and important studies
of psychological types, which were constructed
by analyzing different combinations of traits
(such as introversion and intuitiveness).
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Systematic studies of personality spread
through leading universities in the United States
in the 1930s when scholars such as Gordon
Allport (1937) compiled previous models and
concepts in textbooks that were widely used.
Allport distinguished between nomothetic (seeking general laws) and idiographic (focused on
uniqueness) approaches to the study of personality, and the field is still divided about which
methods are more appropriate. The nomothetic
approach leads to quantification and statistical
analyses of data from self-report inventories
(e.g., Adorno et al., 1950; Eysenck, 1970). Idiographic methods lead to case studies and psychobiographies, perhaps best exemplified by the
work of Erikson (1902–1994). A more recent
sampling can be found in McAdams and Ochberg
(1988). Over the course of the twentieth century,
dozens of other theorists and researchers proposed comprehensive theories of personality
and related research methods or therapeutic
practices. Most university psychology curricula
offer a course that surveys these contributions,
usually starting with Freud and Jung, reviewing
Maslow, Rogers, Bandura, and others, then ending with contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific approaches as well as empirical findings
about traits and their determinants. A balanced
overview of the scholarly subdiscipline known
as personality psychology can be found in
McAdams (1990).
Traditional Debates
Given the broad and ambiguous territory covered
by personality psychology, controversies have
been numerous and extensive. Some of the key
questions have been: Are human personalities
basically the same or fundamentally unique?
What personality traits are the most central?
What aspects of personality are most important
to understand? How much does personality vary
from situation to situation? What factors shape
the development of personality? How important
are genetic influences on temperament and personality? Does personality change over the
lifespan, and if so, how and why? What is the
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relationship between personality styles and
psychopathology?
It makes sense to be curious about answers to
such questions, but each of them is so dependent
on how personality is defined and assessed, as
well as the context in which the question is
posed, that from a critical point of view, it is
best to be wary of the possible ideological functions of answers to these questions and also to
frame questions more meaningfully. How this
might be done is discussed in the next section.
Critical Debates
The primary analytic move associated with critical approaches to personality is to avoid fascination with the idiosyncrasies at the level of the
individual and to understand personality as
always constructed in and reflective of social,
cultural, and political processes. A second critical
step is to mobilize such analyses through critical
practice toward transformation of systematic
societal sources of suffering.
This strategy is informed by the types of interests that can be served by knowledge, as outlined
by Habermas (1972). Science can aim to increase
our technical control through explanation, or it
can foster understanding through interpretation.
Critical approaches, however, focus on the interest in emancipation, that is, enhancing human
agency to reduce oppression and exploitation.
Thus, critical perspectives on personality oppose
objectifying concepts and practices designed to
predict and control behavior (Sloan, 1986). They
tend to favor interpretive approaches that open
spaces for self-reflection, intersubjective understanding, and collective action.
With these aims in mind, many critical
approaches define personality in a way that
emphasizes how the problematic repetitiveness
or automaticity of individual behavior, which
comes to be seen as personality, is the product
of oppressive or alienating social relations. In
other words, personality can be viewed as the
crystallization of social relations at the level of
the individual. This outlook has been elaborated
from a variety of theoretical perspectives.
Personality
Reich (1971), Fromm (1947), and Marcuse
(1955) develop Marxist psychoanalytic analyses
of personality in capitalist modernity. These
stress the personal impact of societal repression,
especially in modern capitalist relations of
production. Sève (1978; Sloan 1987) and
Holzkamp (Tolman, 1994) also deploy orthodox
Marxist categories to analyze personhood under
capitalism, but are critical of psychoanalytic individualism. Jacoby (1975) reveals how existentialist and humanistic approaches to personality
serve primarily ideological functions, letting the
societal status quo off the hook, while holding
individuals accountable for their suffering.
Critical life-history studies of personality document the utility of analyzing personality from
the societal point of view. For example, Gregg
(1991) details how social class relations structure
affective experience.
Sloan (1996, 1997) defines personality as the
socially produced aspects of identity and affective experience that impede self-reflection,
autonomy, mutuality, and other capacities that
characterize meaningful living. He also examines
the extent to which capitalist modernization
accounts for the development of personality processes such as narcissism and depression. Sweeping statements about the impact of the particular
social orders on the personalities of individuals
who participate in them may be effective rhetorically, as a means of indicating issues and values,
but are likely to be overstated. For example, to
say that individuals develop narcissistic tendencies due to competition and status anxiety in
advanced capitalist culture might be true for
some sectors, but would be impossible to
establish empirically.
All of these critical approaches have in common an attempt to denaturalize personality, that
is, to show that it is not simply given by genetics
or human nature, but the product of complex
processes of socialization. This means recontextualizing observed personality types or traits and
understanding their meanings and functions in
relation to sociocultural practices, values, language, and power as it plays out through class,
ethnicity, and gender. Theorists within the
critical psychology perspective argue about the
Personality
extent to which the ideological structuring of
personality can be overcome individually or
through social transformation. The more optimistic approaches tend to draw on German critical
hermeneutics. Poststructuralist framings, while
supportive of resistance to oppression, posit that
power relations are ubiquitous and unlikely to be
transcended.
International Relevance
Personality psychology has for the most part been
Eurocentric, given the influence of its founders.
Sampson (1989), among others, recognized the
limitations of Eurocentric views of the person.
Cross-cultural studies of personality and psychopathology have been conducted extensively
and have determined the extent to which personality is always an artifact of culture and especially
language. The most important critical personality
analyses conducted outside North America and
Europe would be found in the work of Fanon
(1961) on the psychological dynamics of colonization. This work, however, is heavily informed
by Marxist and psychoanalytic concepts. This is
not necessarily a problem, but is mentioned simply to demonstrate that those compelling perspectives are hard to avoid within the horizons of
twentieth-century social thought. Martı́n-Baró
(1994) and Unger (1984) offer Latin American
critical perspectives on personality, also arguing
for radical social transformation and the recognition that what appears to be psychological is
always also deeply sociopolitical.
Practice Relevance
The purpose of critical analyses of personality
would usually be to accompany processes of
reflection, dialogue, and collective action for
social transformation. Practices of childrearing,
schooling, work organization, or community life
that shape personality through domination,
exclusion, oppression, and alienation can be
exposed and challenged and alternative social
arrangements established in their stead. Where
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biomedical approaches would push for pharmacological interventions, critical approaches
immediately turn the gaze back on society. For
example, one could link children’s problems with
“attention deficit” to their alienation from nature
and the meaninglessness of much of their schooling. Depression rates in women are likely to
reflect ongoing immersion in sexist social relations. From another angle, critical personality
psychology can make a contribution to peace
psychology in that it would hold that one cannot
point to “human nature” to justify war; aggression would be seen as a response to the arrangement of social relations between groups. These
analytic and practical moves could be repeated in
response to any attempts to load all responsibility
for behavior on the individual (or the brain), not
taking into account the effects of micro-systems
such as the family, as well as larger sociocultural
processes. If particular practices were associated
with the implications of critical approaches to
personality, they would include dialogue
methods, participatory democracy, community
development, anti-psychiatry, and the new social
movements in general (ecological, feminist,
queer, anarchist, etc.).
Future Directions
Oulette (2008) has charted some of the contemporary possibilities for personality psychology.
It is going to be especially important, given
the advances in neuroscience, to resist the
biologization of personality traits and types.
The fact that emotional and cognitive patterns
are reflected in brain processes does not at all
imply that the brain is determining these patterns,
nor that brain chemistry is the proper object for
manipulation when behavior change is sought.
It is important, however, to note that attention to
the social “determinants” of personality does not
simply replace one set of determinants for
another. In the social sphere, humans are seen as
capable of agency, meaning-making and collective self determination – quite the contrast to
passive subjection to biomedical treatment of
personality issues. The most exciting counter
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practices within critical psychology may draw on
postcolonial theory to deconstruct power and ideology as they appear in personality processes,
especially in affect and modes of embodiment.
These analyses would be accompanied by forms
of personal and collective action to disrupt power
and create prefigurative alternative forms of
social and economic life.
References
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., &
Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality.
New York, NY: Norton.
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological
interpretation. New York: Henry Holt.
Butler, S. (1908). Characters and passages from note-books.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology
found its language. London: Sage.
Eysenck, H. J. (1970). The structure of personality.
London: Methuen.
Fanon, F. (1961/2004). The wretched of the earth.
New York: Grove Press.
Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself. New York: Rinehart.
Gregg, G. (1991). Self-representation: Life narrative studies
in identity and ideology. New York: Greenwood.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests
(J. J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. (German
original published in 1968).
Jacoby, R. (1975). Social amnesia: A critique of contemporary psychology from Adler to Laing. Boston:
Beacon.
Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Malapert, P. (1897). Les éléments du caractère et leurs
lois de combinaison. Paris: Alcan.
Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and civilization: A philosophical
inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon.
Martı́n-Baró, I. (1994). In A. Aron & S. Corne (Eds.),
Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
McAdams, D. P. (1990). The person: An introduction to
personality psychology. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace.
McAdams, D. P., & Ochberg, R. L. (1988). Psychobiography and life narratives. Journal of Personality, 56, 1
[entire issue].
Oullette, S. C. (2008). Notes for a critical personality
psychology: Making room under the critical
psychology umbrella. Social and Personality
Psychology Compass, 2(1), 1–20.
Reich, W. (1971). Character analysis (3rd ed.).
New York: Simon and Schuster.
Sampson, E. E. (1989). The challenge of social change for
psychology: Globalization and psychology’s theory of
the person. American Psychologist, 44, 914–921.
Personality Disorders, Overview
Sève, L. (1978). Man in Marxist theory and the
psychology of personality. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press.
Sloan, T. (1986). Breaking the objectivist hold on personality psychology. Annals of Theoretical Psychology,
4, 226–231.
Sloan, T. (1987). Lucien Sève: Foundations for a critical
psychology of personality. In R. Hogan &
W. Jones (Eds.), Perspectives on personality (Vol. 2,
pp. 125–142). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Sloan, T. (1996). Damaged life: The crisis of the modern
psyche. New York: Routledge.
Sloan, T. S. (1997). Theories of personality: Ideology and
beyond. Fox and Prilleltensky. In Critical psychology:
An introduction (pp. 87–103). London: Sage.
Tolman, C. W. (1994). Psychology, subjectivity, and
society: An introduction to German critical psychology. New York: Routledge.
Unger, R. M. (1984). Passion: An essay on personality.
New York: Free Press.
Personality Disorders, Overview
Sanjay Nath and Patria Alvelo
Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology,
Widener University, Chester, PA, USA
Introduction and Definition
A personality disorder is a diagnostic label
utilized in the field of mental health that primarily refers to long-standing character styles or
personality dispositions that are part of
a diagnosable mental illness. The latest edition
of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) defines a personality
disorder as “an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from
the expectations of the individual’s culture, is
pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and
leads to distress or impairment.” The origin of
the diagnosis was the concept of borderline
personality organization (referring to a level of
functioning shared by all personality disorders),
whereby an individual was functioning on the
“border” between the neurotic and psychotic
levels of functioning.
Personality Disorders, Overview
The current edition of the diagnostic manual
includes ten types of personality disorders, typically grouped into three clusters. Cluster
A includes paranoid personality disorder (a pattern of distrust and suspiciousness such that
others’ motives are interpreted as malevolent),
schizoid personality disorder (a pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted
range of emotional expression), and schizotypal
personality disorder (a pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships, cognitive and perceptual distortions, and eccentricities of behavior).
Cluster B includes antisocial personality disorder
(a pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the
rights of others), borderline personality disorder
(a pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity), histrionic personality disorder (a pattern
of excessive emotionality and attention seeking),
and narcissistic personality disorder (a pattern of
grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of
empathy). Cluster C includes avoidant personality disorder (a pattern of social inhibition,
feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to
negative evaluation), dependent personality
disorder (a pattern of submissive and clinging
behavior related to an excessive need to be
taken care of), and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (a pattern of preoccupation with
orderliness, perfectionism, and control). Each of
these ten DSM-IV-TR personality disorders has
specific criteria that are necessary for a diagnosis,
as well as significant distress or consequences
and onset in adolescence and early adulthood.
A recent alternative conceptualization of
personality disorders has been put forward by
the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, offering
a dimensional classification of personality functioning. The PDM, unlike the DSM, attempts to
address the full range of human functioning.
Dimension I, “Personality Patterns and Disorders,” takes into account a person’s general
location on a continuum ranging from healthier
to more disordered (e.g., neurotic to borderline)
functioning and then describes the characteristic
ways that the individual interacts with the
world and functions mentally (e.g., dependent
personality disorder, passive-aggressive, or
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counterdependent type). The authors of the
PDM attempted to add to DSM descriptions of
disorders an understanding of a person’s subjective, internal experience. This is more in line with
theorists, such as Paris (1997), who have
described personality disorders as “pathological
amplifications of normal personality traits.”
Other authors have attempted to theorize
about common, underlying issues relevant to all
of the personality disorders. Livesley and Jang
(2000) proposed that two main factors in
a revised definition of personality disorders
could be (1) chronic interpersonal difficulties
and (2) problems with a sense of self.
Keywords
Personality disorders; character
personality types; axis II
disorders;
History
The concept of a personality disorder can be
traced back to nineteenth-century work on
moral sanity. In the early twentieth century,
Kraeplin, Bleuler, and Kretschmer described personality types or temperaments (e.g., asthenic,
autistic, schizoid, cyclothymic) that, at the time,
were thought to lead to less severe versions of
schizophrenia and manic depressive illness. In
the 1920s, Schneider wrote about psychopathic
personalities that co-occurred with other psychiatric disorders. Reich, a decade later, described
defensive “character armor” as a protective
shield, and Horney, in the late 1930s, described
character disorders. These early theorists, working within a psychoanalytic model of diagnosis,
were forerunners of the DSM’s Axis I (neurotic
disorders, psychotic disorders) and Axis II
(personality disorders) spectrum models.
The work of Sigmund Freud dominated American psychiatry in the mid-twentieth century.
Freud believed that character disorders
represented preoedipal pathology and that these
conditions were ego-syntonic, meaning that
patients were less motivated to change than
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patients with neuroses (the equivalent of Axis
I diagnoses in the modern DSM classification).
Allport criticized Freud for suggesting
a continuum of personality pathology and
suggested that there was a division between the
normal personality and the neurotic personality.
Later prominent theorists of personality disorders were psychoanalysts such as Shapiro, who
described neurotic styles. In the 1970s, Kohut’s
model of narcissism and Kernberg’s model of
borderline personality organization served as
a base for intensive psychoanalytic treatment
models for patients with personality disorders.
Some variation of the concept of personality
disorders has been included in all editions of the
DSM beginning with the first in 1952. In the first
DSM, the personality disorders were grouped
into “personality pattern disturbances” (the most
ingrained, change-resistant conditions including
inadequate personality, schizoid personality,
cyclothymic personality, and paranoid personality), “personality trait disturbances” (in the
absence of stress, these patients could function
but under significant stress, patients with emotionally unstable, passive-aggressive, or compulsive personalities were thought to deteriorate in
functioning and were variably motivated for and
amenable to treatment), and “sociopathic personality disturbances” (antisocial reaction, dissocial
reaction, sexual deviation, addiction).
In 1968, the APA revised the DSM and made
an attempt to reach consensus on the observable,
measurable, and consistent conceptions of personality. The DSM-III in 1980 introduced the
multiaxial system: personality disorders were
included on Axis II in order to devote attention
to disorders that were commonly overlooked
when attention was given to “more florid” Axis
I conditions. This system was expanded in the
DSM-III-R revision from 1987, which was
meant to be more descriptive and to require less
inference on the part of the diagnostician.
Traditional Debates
Psychologists have debated the existence and
nature of “personality” itself for decades. Radical
Personality Disorders, Overview
behaviorists in particular have criticized personality disorders as “little more than tautological
summary labels for covarying thoughts, emotions, and behaviors” (Fowler, O’Donohue, &
Lilienfeld, 2007). A strong traditional debate
includes whether categorical or dimensional-/
trait-based models are best utilized when considering personality disorders. The DSM adopts
a categorical model of disorders, so that one either
meets the appropriate number of criteria and “has”
the disorder or does not. This implies that the
construct of dependent personality disorder, for
example, has clear boundaries in nature and that
people with dependent personality disorder are
qualitatively different from so-called normal people. A dimensional system would provide values on
a continuum of various personality traits, describing how much of a trait someone has or does not
have. Such a continuum would run from a normal
amount of dependency all the way to a pathological
level of dependency, with the trait increasing along
the continuum.
The reliability and validity of the diagnoses of
personality disorder have also been a longstanding source of traditional debates. Research
utilizing the DSM personality disorder criteria
has problems of internal consistency, test-retest
reliability, and interrater reliability. There are
continued debates regarding the most reliable
way to assess the presence of personality disorders. Semi-structured interviews such as the
International Personality Disorder Examination,
the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality
Disorders, and the Structured Clinical Interview
for DSM-IV are frequently used in research studies. Studies have shown that these interviews
have good interrater reliability but that interinterviewer agreement is poor.
There have also been concerns about the construct validity of particular personality disorder
categories. Systematic studies demonstrate a high
level of comorbidity on Axis II, which suggests
that the various personality disorder categories
may not be valid, independent constructs.
Widiger and Rogers (1989) looked at four
samples of people diagnosed with personality
disorders and found that the average proportion
of people who met the criteria for at least one
Personality Disorders, Overview
additional personality disorder was 85 %. There
is a high level of heterogeneity within each diagnosis. Due to the polythetic approach, it is possible for there to be little to no overlap between two
patients with the same diagnosis. For example,
a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder
requires a patient to meet five of nine criteria.
Thus, two patients could receive this diagnosis
while looking quite different clinically.
Another traditional debate is the etiology
of personality disorders. Traditional debates
included cultural/social causes versus biological/genetic ones. Psychodynamic perspectives
on etiology often include early childhood experiences and the possibility of childhood trauma
or abuse. Other etiological hypotheses include
deficiency-based models, such as problems with
affect regulation.
Critical Debates
One of the central debates about personality
disorders is their social construction and issues
related to stigma and labeling. Any label has the
potential to be problematic and personality
disorders are no exception. Mental illness carries
stigma and often results in others, including mental
health professionals, emotionally and physically
distancing themselves from patients. Professionals
may stigmatize personality-disordered patients in
particular, believing that those with personality
disorders possess self-control and therefore deliberately engage in “difficult” behaviors while those
with other forms of mental illness simply exhibit
pathology when displaying the same behaviors
(Aviram, Brodsky, & Stanley, 2006).
Many clinicians are reluctant to make an Axis
II diagnosis, partly because most insurance companies will not pay for the treatment of such
a diagnosis and partly because of the feeling
among many mental health professionals that
personality disorders are largely untreatable. Personality disorders are usually misunderstood by
the general public. Media portrayals or news
reports tend to focus on the dangerousness
of the person while ignoring the person’s life
circumstances (Haigh, 2006).
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Researchers have paid particular attention to
the stigma surrounding borderline personality
disorder, which has been called a “wastebasket
diagnosis” (Aronson, 1985). Pejorative terms
such as “difficult,” “manipulative,” “treatment
resistant,” “demanding,” and “attention seeking”
characterize the stigma (Aviram et al., 2006). The
term “borderline” has also been criticized for its
diagnostic “looseness” and has been said to be
applied to any client that provokes anger or
a negative countertransference reaction.
Feminist theorists have also critically examined personality disorders. One of the first feminist critiques of the personality disorders
suggested that the diagnostic categories were
too permeated with sexist values and malecentered assumptions to be useful in research or
in practice. Brown (1994) pointed out that stereotypically feminine behaviors are pathologized
more frequently than stereotypically masculine
behaviors, as in the case of borderline, dependent,
and histrionic personality disorders. Brown also
called attention to the fact that DSM diagnoses of
personality disorders do not attend to the frequent
occurrence and impact of traumatic events in
patients’ lives.
The DSM’s categorical model of personality
disorders does not take into account external contextual factors such as racism, homophobia,
classism, and sexism while giving too much
weight to biological or constitutional factors.
Sickness and dysfunction are located in the person rather than in the surrounding social norms.
Brown does not advocate doing away with Axis II
diagnoses entirely, but suggests that a feminist
perspective requires that the process of differential diagnosis includes a careful investigation of
“gender role socialization, abuse experiences,
and cultural oppression prior to consideration of
a diagnosis of personality disorder.”
Another critical lens through which to view
personality disorders is their culture-bound
nature. Included in the DSM definition of personality disorder is the specification that an individual’s pattern of inner experience and behavior
deviates markedly from the expectations of his
or her culture. However, each culture establishes
its own normative concepts of sanity and
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insanity. Traits that are considered adaptive in
one culture (e.g., dependency) may be considered
maladaptive in another.
In addition, the very concept of personality is
based on Western European and AngloAmerican values related to individualism and
independence. These values implicitly infiltrate
the criteria used to diagnose personality disorders
(Alarcón & Foulks, 1995; Brown, 1994; Calliess,
Sieberer, Machleidt, & Ziegenbein, 2008; Jordan,
2004). Because there are cultural biases inherent
in the study of personality disorders, we should
attempt to apply cultural contextualization to our
assessment and diagnosis of personality disorders. However, as Leising, Rogers, and Ostner
(2009) caution, we should not give too much
weight to the values of any given culture because
any given culture can have harmful expectations.
International Relevance
The International Classification of Diseases
(ICD 10) defines personality disorders in much
the same way as the DSM. It states that personality disorders are “deeply ingrained and enduring
behaviour patterns, manifesting themselves as
inflexible responses to a broad range of personal
and social situations. They represent either
extreme or significant deviations from the way
the average individual in a given culture
perceives, thinks, feels, and particularly relates
to others. Such behaviour patterns tend to be
stable and to encompass multiple domains of
behaviour and psychological functioning. They
are frequently, but not always, associated with
various degrees of subjective distress and problems in social functioning and performance.”
Despite the ICD adopting this DSM-based definition, there is limited research on how prevalent
particular personality disorders are in other cultures, and often this research utilizes DSM-based
criteria within other cultures. The development of
the construct of personality disorders has really
been borne out of the history of psychiatry in the
United States, so not many non-Western cultures
have developed ground-up or analogous characterizations. Cultural dimensions of personality
Personality Disorders, Overview
disorders of interest to practicing clinicians
include self-image, self-concept, adjustment,
and social context (Calliess et al., 2008).
Paris (1997) believes that versions of the DSM
personality disorders exist across cultures and
that some immigrants from traditional societies
without pathology in their country of origin might
develop disorders such as borderline personality
disorder in modern societies like North America.
One recent investigation of how often immigrant
populations versus indigenous populations would
be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder
in a psychiatric emergency service in Spain found
that immigrants showed a lower likelihood of
receiving such a diagnosis regardless of age and
gender. Another investigation concluded that
based on reported symptoms after administering
a DSM-based personality disorder interview to 75
patients who had recently attempted suicide in
India, borderline personality disorder exists in
India. The number of such cross-cultural investigations is few (especially in non-Western countries), and those that do exist tend to export or
utilize DSM or Western criteria with little regard
for whether these symptoms or criteria have the
same meanings or validity in other cultures. Similarly, there are few emic investigations that
examine the meaning of personality disorders in
non-Western cultures and study ethnographically
the language and meaning of such presentations
locally.
Practice Relevance
Epidemiological studies suggest that personality
disorders have a prevalence rate between 9 % and
13 % in the community. Traditionally, personality disorders are considered difficult to treat with
either psychotherapy or medication. Therapeutic
treatment has been guided by clinical experience
or practical wisdom (Oldham, 2009) or has been
based on psychodynamic models of treatment
that include use of the therapeutic relationship
for clients to reexperience some of their interpersonal issues in therapy and work through them. In
addition, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT),
developed by Linehan, is often proscribed for
Personality Disorders, Overview
borderline personality disorder. DBT combines
cognitive behavioral techniques for emotion
regulation with distress tolerance, acceptance,
and mindfulness techniques. More recently,
Bateman and Fonagy (2006) have developed
a mentalization-based treatment for borderline
personality disorder that focuses on the mental
states underlying the behavior of clients and
others and has shown much promise in early
research trials.
In the United States, there are no FDAapproved psychotropic drugs to treat personality
disorders, although such drugs are often prescribed
off label or to treat co-occurring Axis I symptoms,
such as depression and anxiety. In a review of forty
randomized trials of pharmacotherapy for personality disorders, Triebwasser and Siever (2007)
found that most research of this kind has been
done with patients with a diagnosis of borderline
personality disorder. Drugs such as antipsychotics,
mood stabilizers, antidepressants (MAOIs and
SSRIs), opiate agonists, and benzodiazepines
have shown some efficacy for patients with
a diagnosis of BPD in specific symptom areas.
Future Directions
The fifth edition of the DSM, which is currently
under review, proposes a hybrid dimensionalcategorical model for personality and personality
disorder assessment and diagnosis. DSM 5 may
retain six of the personality disorders currently
contained in DSM-IV TR (antisocial, avoidant,
borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive,
and schizotypal) while adding a new diagnosis
of personality disorder trait specified (PDTS) to
replace the current diagnosis of personality
disorder not otherwise specified. This diagnosis
will be measured using the Levels of Personality
Functioning Scale. The levels of personality
functioning are based on the severity of impairment in the domains of self and interpersonal
functioning. DSM 5 may also define five broad
personality trait domains (negative affectivity,
detachment, antagonism, disinhibition/compulsivity, and psychoticism). Like the PDM, the
new edition of the DSM intends to describe the
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personality characteristics of all patients, regardless of whether or not they have a personality
disorder diagnosis.
Critical approaches to personality disorders
must continue to question their validity as social
constructions and potential markers of how
a society denotes illness and psychopathology.
While clinicians often utilize the concept of
personality disorders uncritically and reify these
concepts, it is incumbent on all critical psychologists to continue to understand the power of the
label in terms of stigma as well as the way in
which personality disorder-related problems are
linked to sexism, gender role socialization, abuse
experiences that predominantly affect women,
and cultural oppression. Continued research on
the voice of those who are categorized as having
personality disorders and more nuanced understandings of how this diagnosis can be discussed
in a less hierarchical and oppressive manner are
much needed in the field of mental health.
References
Alarcón, R. D., & Foulks, E. F. (1995). Personality
disorders and culture: Contemporary clinical views
(Parts A and B). Cultural Diversity and Mental Health,
1(3–17), 79–91.
Aronson, T. A. (1985). Historical perspectives on the
borderline concept: A review and critique. Psychiatry:
Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes,
48, 209–222.
Aviram, R. B., Brodsky, B., & Stanley, B. (2006).
Borderline personality disorder, stigma, and treatment
implications. Harvard Review of Psychiatry,
14, 249–256.
Bateman, A., & Fonagy, P. (2006). Mentalization-based
treatment for borderline personality disorder:
A practical guide. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Brown, L. S. (1994). A feminist critique of the personality
disorders. In M. Ballou & L. S. Brown (Eds.), Personality and psychopathology: Feminist reappraisals
(pp. 206–228). New York: Guilford.
Calliess, I. T., Sieberer, M., Machleidt, W., & Ziegenbein,
M. (2008). Personality disorders in a cross-cultural
perspective: Impact of culture and migration on
diagnosis and etiological aspects. Current Psychiatry
Reviews, 4, 39–47.
Fowler, K. A., O’Donohue, W. T., & Lilienfeld, S. O.
(2007). Introduction: Personality disorders in
perspective. In W. T. O’Donohue, K. A. Fowler, &
S. O. Lilienfeld (Eds.), Personality disorders: Toward
the DSM-V (pp. 1–19). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Haigh, R. (2006). People’s experiences of having
a diagnosis of personality disorder. In M. Sampson,
R. McCubbin, & P. Tyrer (Eds.), Personality disorder
and community mental health teams: A practitioner’s
guide (pp. 161–177). New York: Wiley.
Jordan, J. V. (2004). Personality disorder or relational
disconnection? In J. J. Magnavita (Ed.), Handbook of
personality disorders: Theory and practice
(pp. 120–135). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Leising, D., Rogers, K., & Ostner, J. (2009). The
undisordered personality: Normative assumptions
underlying personality disorder diagnoses. Review of
General Psychology, 13, 230–241.
Livesley, W. J., & Jang, K. L. (2000). Toward and empirically based classification of personality disorder.
Journal of Personality Disorders, 14, 137–151.
Oldham, J. M. (2009). Personality disorders: Recent
history and future directions. In J. M. Oldham, A. E.
Skodol, & D. S. Bender (Eds.), Essentials of personality disorders (pp. 3–16). Arlington, VA: American
Psychiatric Publishing.
Paris, J. (1997). Social factors in the personality disorders.
Transcultural Psychiatry, 34, 421–452.
Triebwasser, J., & Siever, L. J. (2007). Pharmacotherapy
of personality disorders. Journal of Mental Health,
16, 5–50.
Widiger, T. A., & Rogers, J. H. (1989). Prevalence and
comorbidity of personality disorders. Psychiatric
Annals, 19, 132–136.
Online Resources
Resources and advocacy group information is available at:
http://psychcentral.com/resources/Personality/Support_
Groups/
Proposed changes to the new edition of the DSM can be
viewed at: www.dsm5.org
PubMed Health Personality Disorder Resources: www.
ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001935/
Persons with Disabilities
experience? It has been argued that viewing
persons with disabilities as a distinct group
despite their widely varying characteristics and
conditions is a Western artifact rather than
a universal concept spanning variations in time,
culture, or geography (Anand, 2009). Therefore,
although the construct now is used globally, as
evidenced by the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN General Assembly, 2006), this entry mostly addresses
“persons with disabilities” from a Western perspective, specifically grounded in the USA.
Definition
Two broad policy-based definitions useful in
understanding both the social and the embodied
experience of “persons with disabilities” are the
following:
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of
1990 states that “. . . the term disability means, with
respect to an individual: (a) a physical or mental
impairment that substantially limits one or more
of the major life activities of such individual.
(b) a record of such an impairment. or (c) being
regarded as having such an impairment.”
The United Nations Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that
“Persons with disabilities include those who have
long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory
impairments in which interaction with various
barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”
Persons with Disabilities
Carol J. Gill
Department of Disability and Human
Development, University of Illinois at Chicago,
Chicago, IL, USA
Keywords
Persons with disabilities; disabled people; disability experience; disability history; normal; disability classification; disability identity
Introduction
History
The term “persons with disabilities” is open to
various interpretations, definitions, and uses.
This entry addresses the broad question: Who
are persons with disabilities, and what is their
Historical Views of Persons with Disabilities
Historically, the idea of a collective experience of
disability, or of a group of persons whose identity
Persons with Disabilities
is shaped by that experience, is a modern conceptualization. Before the nineteenth century, individuals who were blind, deaf, or had impaired
physical, intellectual, or mental/emotional functioning were likely to be viewed as isolated cases
of deviance, personally afflicted by supernatural
forces. We know little about their lives or their
subjective perceptions because they were not
considered citizens worthy of attention, and historians have not recognized disability as a key
social dimension until just recently (Kudlick,
2003; Longmore & Umansky, 2001). During the
preindustrial period, individuals with mild
impairments might be allowed to participate in
the daily life of their families and communities,
performing useful work roles within their capacities. Individuals with more extensive or more
socially stigmatized impairments, however,
would be shunned, hidden, or turned away to
beg for subsistence.
As modern science produced rational biological explanations for impairments in functioning
and appearance, each condition became associated with its own history of public intervention.
Blind individuals were placed in residential
schools to learn Braille for literacy and to develop
manual skills for employment. Physically
disabled persons were treated as candidates for
medical restoration through surgery or therapies.
Intellectually disabled and emotionally disabled
individuals
were
often
institutionalized
(Braddock & Parish, 2001; Trent, 1994), and
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century eugenics movement, hundreds of thousands were subjected to forced sterilization
(Kevles, 1985; Lombardo, 2008). Deaf individuals became the target of heated public and professional debate about oral versus signed
communication, fueled by fears that unrestricted
use of sign language might foster deaf community building (Bayton, 1996).
Although frequently biased and objectifying,
the modern explication of human impairment as
a medical problem provided a means to cluster
disparate conditions together as a collective phenomenon. Persons formerly deemed anomalous
misfits were now viewed as members of
a category defined by functional or structural
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deficiency. Increasingly, labels changed to
reflect the idea that people with various forms of
deficiency constituted a group. In the first half of
the twentieth century, as medical knowledge grew
and post-World War I progressivism flourished,
“cripples,” “deaf-mutes,” “the feebleminded,”
and “lunatics” all became “the handicapped” –
a group deserving of public support and rehabilitation. Then in the latter half of the twentieth
century, “the handicapped” redefined themselves
as “people with disabilities” – a group entitled to
equal rights to education, employment, housing,
and access to the mainstream.
History of Psychology’s Relationship with
Persons with Disability
As a professional field, psychology addressed
persons with disabilities most notably through
refining the measurement of abnormal versus
normal mental functioning. IQ testing became
the gateway to a disability label for countless
people in the twentieth century (Trent, 1994). If
their intellectual impairments measured severe or
profound (or sometimes even moderate), their
families were commonly urged to place them in
institutions with other “retarded” people where
they remained warehoused for decades
(Ferguson, 2001). Psychologists also produced
tests for emotional and/or behavioral “psychopathology.” The approaches for diagnosing,
treating, or managing such conditions varied
according to the theory guiding practice. Psychologists inspired by psychoanalytic theory or
ego psychology relied on long-term talking therapies and the use of projective tests that have now
dropped out of use because of demonstrated low
reliability and validity. Psychologists guided by
behaviorism observed and documented behaviors, seeking to normalize them through manipulation of antecedents and consequences. People
with mental disabilities then, including those
diagnosed with schizophrenia, neuroses, mood
disorders, or autism, might be treated variously
with hours of guided talking, electric shocks,
food rewards, verbal feedback, restraints, or
freedom from restraints, depending on their
diagnosis, their psychologist’s school of thought,
and the historical moment.
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In their growing role as arbiters of mental and
behavioral normality, it was logical for twentieth
century psychologists to be drawn to the phenomena of intellectual and emotional disabilities;
however, they also commented on the lives
of people with physical and sensory disabilities.
In his writings about organ inferiority, personality theorist and psychoanalyst Alfred Adler theorized a direct causal connection between physical
impairment and psychological problems, such as
low self-esteem and narcissism:
Psychology is the understanding of an individual’s
attitude towards the impressions of his body . . . [C]
hildren who have suffered from imperfect organs
meet with greater hindrances than usual for their
mental development. It is harder for their minds to
influence, move, and govern their bodies towards
a position of superiority. A greater effort of mind is
needed, and mental concentration must be higher
than with others if they are to secure the same
object. So the mind becomes overburdened and
they become self-centred and egoistic. When
a child is always occupied with the imperfection
of its organs and the difficulties of movement, it has
no attention to spare for what is outside itself. It
finds neither the time nor the freedom to interest
itself in others, and in consequence grows up with
a lesser degree of social feeling and ability to cooperate. (Adler, 1932)
This image of physically disabled persons as
burdened, brooding, and potentially lacking in
social interest recalls moral notions of disability
that associate deviant bodies with deviant minds
or souls. In addition to moral implications of
disability, Adler’s views about the direct psychological hazards of physical impairment, bolstered
perhaps by his training as a physician, clearly
convey a medical framework for understanding
disability. In fairness, it should be acknowledged
that Adler’s thinking about organ inferiority
evolved over time, ultimately addressing the
power of social mediators to shape the psychological impact of physical limitations. In his later
years, he also foreshadowed current disability
studies ideas about the universality of human
vulnerability. Nonetheless, his portrait of persons
with physical and sensory disabilities as a group
at risk for psychopathology could be discerned in
psychology’s approach to people with disabilities
for many decades.
Persons with Disabilities
Through testing, research, and clinical observation, psychologists contributed efforts to manage and rehabilitate people with disabilities in
institutions, schools, workshops, and families.
They wrote about this work under headings such
as “abnormal” and “exceptional,” usually splitting people with mental, emotional, or intellectual disabilities off from people with physical or
sensory disabilities. The latter were treated as
having greater potential to overcome their deficiencies and assimilate into the mainstream
because their minds were not affected by their
conditions. After World War II, the return of
injured veterans needing support to reintegrate
into work and home life drew psychologists into
medical and vocational service settings and
prompted the establishment of rehabilitation psychology as a division of the American Psychological Association in 1958 (American
Psychological Association, 2012; Elliott &
Rath, 2012).
The specialization of rehabilitation psychology was initially led by social psychologists
who believed that the problems confronting people with disabilities were rooted in society as
much as in their bodies. They viewed people
with disabilities as a social group subject to prejudicial attitudes (Barker, 1948; Wright, 1960).
By the late 1960s and 1970s, however, rehabilitation psychologists had apparently lost much of
their social consciousness (Gill, 2001). Although
studies of public disability attitudes continued,
the focus of research and clinical work had
shifted to the individual and to a neo-Adlerian
notion that people with disabilities were at risk
for maladaptive psychological responses to their
conditions.
Traditional Debates
Impact of Disability on the Individual: Is
Impairment Destiny?
The question about disability that occupied many
psychologists for decades is its effect on personality and quality of life. As indicated
above, Adler’s early writings suggested that
impairments in function or structure had a direct
Persons with Disabilities
and negative impact on development. Over the
years, he discussed personal and social factors
that could moderate this outcome, and he
reported cases of individuals who successfully
compensated for their defects and achieved satisfying lives and relationships despite their disabilities. This “overcoming” theme was taken up and
elaborated by developmental, clinical, and rehabilitation psychologists who identified factors
that could offset the hazards of disability, including healthy parenting, positive “premorbid”
adjustment, temperamental factors such as
motivation and persistence, supportive social
environments, and therapeutic intervention.
Two ideas about disability are embedded
throughout this discourse. First, disability is
a problem to be analyzed and addressed at the
level of the individual or, at most, the family.
Second, disability is a direct risk factor for
maladjustment of the individual and, through
collateral damage, those closest to the affected
individual.
The focus on the individual is exemplified by
a huge body of research on stages of disability
adjustment. Like stage theories of adjustment to
terminal illness, disability adjustment theories
posited the importance of assisting individuals
through serial reactions such as shock, denial,
anger, and mourning before a healthy acceptance
of life with disability could be attained (Livneh &
Antonak, 1997). Despite decades of psychological research devoted to the validation of disability
adjustment stage theory, however, results indicated that disability is too complex, human
beings are too flexible and diverse, and environmental factors are too influential to allow characterization of disability adaptation in terms of
universal linear steps. The idea of disability as
a risk factor for psychological damage is exemplified in much of the literature on families, siblings, and caregivers of people with disabilities
(Ferguson, 2001; Olkin, 1999). These studies and
clinical recommendations conceptualize disability as a burden and stressor whose impact on the
family must be contained. These traditional
views of disability permeate most of the psychological research and clinical texts addressing disability in the twentieth century.
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Identifying and Counting: Who Are “Persons
with Disabilities”?
The matter of defining and estimating the size of
the disability population has also been a topic of
long-standing debate. The World Health Organization (2011) estimates there are over a billion
people with disabilities globally or about 15 % of
the world’s population. The corresponding numbers for the United States are approximately 56.7
million or 18.7 % of the civilian noninstitutionalized population (Brault, 2012). These figures underreport the actual number of people with
disabilities, in that individuals living in institutions or individuals who are not identified as
having impaired functioning (such as persons
with mild impairments) are not counted.
It is difficult to determine the number of people with disabilities who resides in any country or
in the world because population estimates vary
according to one’s definition of disability (World
Health Organization, 2011). Definitions based on
functional limitations may yield different
numbers than definitions based on ability to
work, independence in activities of daily living,
diagnosis/condition, or policy-based criteria.
Judgments about disability also vary across
cultures; an impairment that is considered insignificant in some social environments may be considered moderate or severe in others. The
prevalence of disability also varies with factors
such as age, socioeconomic status, and living
conditions. About half of people age 65 and
over who live in the USA have disabilities
(Brault, 2012). Low individual and national
income is associated with increased prevalence
and degree of impairment (World Health Organization, 2011). In 2001, the World Health
Organization published the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health
(World Health Organization, 2002) as a means
to standardize measurement of health and disability according to both physiological factors
(such as the body’s structure and function) and
social factors (participation and environment).
Although conceptualized as a compromise
between medical and social models, disability
critics charge that this scheme still frames life
with functional limitation negatively in terms of
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deficits; it fails to account for cultural factors in
defining and shaping the disability experience,
and it implies that embodied limitations are the
primary source of the problems of disability
(Barnes, 2012; Helander, 2003).
Most persons with disabilities regard themselves as ordinary in most respects. Despite
what “outsiders” may imagine, they generally
do not view themselves as tragic or preoccupied
with their limitations (Olkin, 1999). Rather than
feeling heroic for getting on with life, they see
themselves as individuals who, like everyone
else, are simply doing what needs to be done.
Since the advent of the contemporary disability
rights movement, however, people with disabilities have been more likely to view themselves as
a social group. For example, in a 1986 poll, Harris
and Associates found that 74 % of Americans
with disabilities surveyed reported feeling
a sense of common “group” identity with other
disabled people that cut across age, severity of
impairment, and employment status. Furthermore, 45 % believed that people with disabilities
composed a minority group in the same sense as
Black and Hispanic people.
Critical Debates
Disability as a Social Construction
By the end of the twentieth century, many
psychologists engaged in disability research, education, and counseling began to acquire
a renewed appreciation of the social components
of the disability experience. Here are some of the
developments that contributed to and/or reflected
this shift:
1. The disability rights movement – and related
movements, such as independent living, psychiatric survivor, developmental disability
self-advocacy, and deinstitutionalization –
redefined disability from the grass roots up as
a collective sociopolitical status.
2. Laws such as the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) and school inclusion mandates
formally acknowledged people with disabilities as a socially disadvantaged minority
group, regardless of their different types of
Persons with Disabilities
impairment. These legal victories called attention to the fact that people with disabilities
experience a disproportionate amount of
poverty, educational exclusion, employment
discrimination, abuse, lack of access to their
communities, and social devaluation.
3. People with disabilities around the world
began to tell their stories and articulate
their own critical analyses of disability in
unprecedented volume. This “insider” view
of disability often challenged conventional
psychological knowledge and commanded
notice by community, political, and critical
psychologists who began to reference disability as a dimension of diversity alongside
race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of
oppression (Trickett, Watts, & Birman,
1994). Recognizing people with disabilities
as a sociopolitical community countered the
ghettoization of disability in rehabilitation
psychology and stimulated new questions
about the disability experience for research
and application.
4. As they gained protection of their rights to
inclusion in higher education and employment, people with disabilities became more
visible, more vocal, and more widely
published in the professions, including psychology. They contributed to research, training, and clinical work and advocated
vigorously for disability initiatives in APA
and in their local settings.
5. Funders of disability research, including
research conducted by many psychologists,
began to incorporate elements of the social
model of disability in their funding priorities
and guidelines. For example, the National
Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation
Research has highlighted the importance of
involving persons with disabilities in the
direction of research and of attending to
the complex social and policy contexts that
shape outcomes for the disability community
(Pledger, 2003).
Another key development was the establishment of disability studies in the 1980s as a critical
academic field. Critical disability studies, which
encompasses the humanities, social sciences, and
Persons with Disabilities
other fields focusing on disability, has shifted
the analysis of disability from the individual
level to a sociopolitical or systems level. Theoretically, the field promoted the “social model of
disability” to replace individualizing medical
views of disability (Wendell, 1996). The social
model posits a cross-impairment, collective
experience of disability emanating from socially
constructed disadvantages – such as poverty, educational exclusion, employment discrimination,
and social isolation – imposed on people judged
to be physically or mentally abnormal (Linton,
1998). Scholarship and programs in critical
disability studies have spread internationally,
including Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and
South America but have been established longest
in the UK and North America.
Critical disability studies scholars investigate
and challenge the systemic underpinnings of disabled people’s marginalization rather than
assume that social disadvantages are the natural
consequence of physical or mental differences.
Their work is guided by principles analogous to
those of other critical disciplines, such as viewing
disability in social context in terms of social
practices, policy and power, cultural values,
human rights, and justice movements; interrogating the origin, use, and perpetuation of conventional knowledge and representations of
disability; practicing reflexivity and self-critique
in theory, research, and praxis; centering the perspectives of persons with disabilities; supporting
social change to end oppressive social arrangements and to promote the well-being of people
with disabilities; and exploring disability across
cultures and with respect to intersecting axes of
oppression, including race, class, sexuality, age,
and gender (Linton, 1998; Meekosha &
Shuttleworth, 2009).
As the field of critical disability studies
matures, it has produced self-critiques of disability studies scholarship. This diligent work has
excavated new debates that are relevant to critical
psychology. A question of particular relevance to
psychologists concerns the place of individual
experience in critical scholarship on disability.
Because traditional understandings of disability
have been mired in dramatic personal stories of
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affliction, critical disability studies scholars have
often avoided personal narrative in favor of social
and cultural analysis. Likewise, to counter medical model views of disability, experiences of
impairment or embodied limitations have been
de-emphasized. This is changing as some disability studies scholars, many working from feminist
frameworks, have urged colleagues not to
exclude the body or personal experience in their
zest to view people with disabilities as a socially
designated group (Hughes & Paterson, 1997;
Prilleltensky, 2009; Wendell, 1996).
These concerns about the place of individual
experience in critical scholarship are important
for psychologists. Psychology’s traditional positivist suspicion of subjectivity, combined with
stereotypes of disabled people’s incompetence,
has contributed to the suppression of the voices
of persons with disability in psychological
research and praxis. Yet how might psychologists
rely upon and interpret personal stories in ways
that still acknowledge disability as a social designation? How can they respect standpoint without neglecting complex social dynamics that
might not always be apparent to the storytellers
themselves? “Insider” knowledge derived from
personal experience will help psychologists
avoid invalid interpretations of their data
(Teo, 2009), but it must be analyzed in broader
social and cultural context.
Critical psychologists will continue to challenge the traditional idea that life with
a disability is intrinsically unfortunate. Like
critical disability studies scholars, however,
they must grapple with related questions that
evade facile answers. For example, how does
the social model of disability apply when
impairments cause significant physical or psychological pain? Is a life with suffering necessarily inferior to a life without it? Are efforts to
cure or prevent disability oppressive to or disrespectful of persons with disabilities? Are they
ableist, eugenic? How do we reconcile the
diverse and sometimes conflicting views on
these issues expressed by persons with disabilities themselves? In addition, critical psychologists will also confront questions about the role
of people without disabilities in conducting
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disability research and how to practice reflexivity regarding this form of privilege.
Disability as Culture, Identity, and Basis of
Pride
After reattributing the problems of disability to
social oppression rather than to embodied differentness and claiming their right to equality,
the next step for many people with disabilities
has been redefining life with disability as positive. Historian Paul Longmore (2003) referred
to disabled people’s growing group identity as
the “second phase” of the disability rights
movement, building upon the legal victories of
the “first phase.” In 1990, the preamble to the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
referred to people with disabilities as
a discrete “minority who have been faced with
restrictions and limitations [and] subjected to
a history of purposeful unequal treatment,”
thus officially codifying the collective and
sociopolitical experience of disability. Since
the 1980s, people with disabilities in the UK,
the USA, and other countries have participated
in efforts to explore, articulate, and celebrate
a “disability culture,” including history, art,
worldviews, values, ideas, humor, and language
(Gill, 1995). Linked to disability culture is
a large volume of writing and discussion about
“disability identity.” In its most positive incarnation, interest in disability identity has nurtured a “disability pride” movement taking
multiple forms of expression, from poems to
tee shirts to youth leadership programs to
annual parades. All forms seek to subvert the
conventional equation of physical or mental
limitations with impaired quality of life. In
fact, disability pride activists assert, the disability experience, like other alternative or minority
perspectives, can be a source of valuable
knowledge and enrichment. Increasingly, persons with disabilities are persons who value
who they are.
One facet of identity and self-definition has
been language preferences. As has been true for
other socially marginalized groups, the words
used to refer to people with disabilities have
changed over time and have differed across
Persons with Disabilities
sub-constituencies. For now, the terms “disability” and “disabled” are most widely accepted,
though softer versions, such as “challenged” and
“special needs,” have their proponents, too. Disability activists generally have been derisive of
the latter terms, calling them euphemistic and
suggesting that they have been promoted by
nondisabled people who have been unable to
come to terms with disability, figuratively and
literally. Another debate persists regarding person-first language, such as “person with
a disability” or “person with autism,” versus disability-first language, such as “disabled person”
or “autistic person.” The strongest proponents of
the former seem to be people with intellectual or
developmental disabilities and their families and
supporters who wish to underscore the personhood of people with disabilities. The strongest
proponents of the latter are individuals involved
in disability rights and disability studies, especially in the UK, who wish to underscore the
sociopolitical dynamics of disablement. Leaders
in the blind community and autism community
have also criticized person-first terminology as
unwieldy and unnecessary for people who are
unashamed of being different (Vaughan, 2009).
Many writers in North America use person-first
and disability-first forms interchangeably to
avoid repetition and awkward phrasing. The
debate is likely to continue unresolved until
supplanted by future changes in terminology.
International Relevance
The international community of people with disabilities is growing, largely because advances in
health care have resulted in increasingly older
national populations and more people surviving
with chronic health conditions. According to
information from the United Nations, the World
Bank, and the World Health Organization
(reported in the World Report on Disability
2011), persons with disabilities internationally
have lower employment rates and lower
educational attainment than persons without disabilities. They also experience higher rates of
poverty and abuse, poorer health outcomes, and
Persons with Disabilities
less participation in community activities, including living independently rather than living with
family or in institutions. According to United
Nations’ sources, the global literacy rate of people with disabilities has been estimated at about
3 % and even lower for women. Eighty percent of
persons with disabilities live in developing countries where 90 % of children with disabilities do
not attend school.
In accounting for these disadvantages, most
international sources incorporate social analyses
and human rights frameworks rather than relying
on traditional medical explanations. They link the
problems of people with disabilities to the
environment and to social, economic, and policy-related barriers, such as negative public attitudes, inadequate policies and standards, lack of
services, poor accessibility, inadequate consultation, and insufficient data on which to base
programs and initiatives.
Unfortunately, less than a quarter of the
world’s nations have laws to protect the rights
of citizens with disabilities. In 2006, the United
Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international treaty to promote and protect the human
rights of persons with disabilities throughout the
world. Its articles address key areas such as
accessibility, health, education, employment,
the status of women and children, participation
in political and public life, freedom from abuse,
and equality and nondiscrimination. At this writing, the CRPD has been ratified by 125 countries.
Advocates believe that the convention reflects
a shift in thinking about disability from a social
welfare concern to a human rights issue that
acknowledges that societal barriers and attitudes
are themselves disabling. This shift in framing
disability problems reflects the fact that disability
rights activists and disability studies scholars
from around the globe participated in the development of the treaty.
Practice Relevance
Critical psychologists engaged in clinical work
may realize that many of their clients could be
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regarded as persons with disabilities, whether or
not they explicitly identify themselves as such.
In addition to diagnosed “disorders” in emotional, mental, or behavioral functioning, clients
may have learning disabilities, physical functional limitations, low vision, conditions affecting hearing, or noticeable differences in
body structure or appearance. Some may be
encountering functional changes associated with
aging. Others may not have “official” disabilities
but find themselves treated as if they do by others;
disability studies scholars have become interested in these experiences at the border of
disability, such as chronic illnesses, obesity,
addictions, or sensitivities to environmental
hazards.
Reframing disability in terms of diversity
rather than abnormality, oppression rather than
poor adjustment, is a conceptual shift that
generally enhances therapeutic approaches and
goals. For one thing, a critical view of the social
dynamics of disability can shed light on the
causes of clients’ complaints. Apparent symptoms of anxiety actually may be appropriate fear
resulting from real experiences of abusive treatment. Low self-esteem may be internalized
prejudice.
The disabled child who resists going to school
because he feels no one there likes him may be
more insightful than paranoid. The “workaholic”
may be realistically concerned that she must be
more productive than her nondisabled coworkers
to qualify for a desperately needed pay raise.
The elderly man with a progressive neurological
condition who rationally requests assisted suicide may be experiencing social despair and
masked depression that could respond to
intervention.
Acknowledging that many problems of disability have been created by unjust social
arrangements may help end cycles of learned
self-blaming, may moderate exhausting efforts
to overcome permanent functional limitations,
and may open up a new repertoire of achievable
goals for improved well-being. Most disabilityrelated impairments are irreversible, but there is
always hope that social dynamics are amenable to
change. Peer networking, activism, legal
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remedies, family support, government benefits,
and personal assistance services are just some of
the strategies people with disabilities use to
increase self-determination and life satisfaction.
Clinicians can also learn from people with
disabilities that “fixing” is not always needed.
Autistic persons have written about the validity
of “neurodiversity.” The psychiatric survivors
movement reminds us that some forms of professional intervention have been more destructive than the emotional/mental conditions they
were designed to address. Many persons with
the most extensive functional limitations do not
wish to be different. They demonstrate
a quintessentially human complexity that
seems paradoxical to many observers. In the
face of multiple significant restrictions, they
lead full, satisfying lives. And while needing
and receiving a high level of support to live,
they concurrently offer a high level of support
to others. Such lives in themselves offer
a pointed social critique. They highlight the
folly of narrow standards of physique and performance, and they dispute the achievability
and even the wisdom of human perfection or
complete independence. They suggest alternate
ways to define personhood, family, strength,
and care. They claim that vulnerability is the
universal
human
condition
and
that
interdependence is the most human response.
Future Directions
The idea that persons with disabilities are
a sociopolitical group, a minority people, and
possibly even a cultural community has been
acknowledged by many psychologists focused
on justice and improved social conditions. Community psychologists, social psychologists, political psychologists, and critical psychologists
have brought their work on empowerment, participatory action research, social movements and
politics, cultural competence, public attitudes,
and social devaluation into the context of disability. Much of this scholarship, teaching, and
community work bridges into disability studies,
a field well populated by psychologists.
Persons with Disabilities
As disability studies scholars expand and
deepen their focus to include the experiences of
individuals and subcommunities within the broad
disability population, and as they attend more to
the impact of social arrangements on individuals,
they will produce more knowledge that resonates
with and challenges critical psychology. Current
disability studies theory and research regarding
the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and
disability and the identity and experience of
persons with disabilities who live at those intersections will be directly relevant to critical psychology. Disability history and disability policy
scholarship will also offer perspectives and contextual data for critical psychology research.
In turn, disability studies scholars can benefit
from exposure to critical psychological research
and analysis of social conditions, power dynamics, and their effects on the well-being of individuals and groups.
Thinking about the life experience and social
status of persons with disabilities has invigorated
discourse in a wide range of academic and
professional disciplines, in the social sciences,
humanities, health fields, education, and arts.
Inevitably, centering people with disabilities in
one’s lens also illuminates nondisability – as
a construct and as an experience – and culminates
in deepened insights about humanity. Laudably,
critical psychology is already engaged in this
process. It is well positioned for the future to
contribute to and benefit from the disability
knowledge base and to apply this knowledge to
its goal of improving well-being across the
human spectrum.
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Phenomenological Psychology
Definition
Phenomenological Psychology
Moshe Landsman
Kaye Teachers College, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Introduction
According to Herbert Spiegelberg, the grand historian and explicator of the phenomenological
movement (Spiegelberg 1960, 1972), phenomenology is the product of seven historical factors:
(1) the decline of speculative philosophy, (2) the
growth of a relative historicism as a result of
progress in the natural and historical sciences,
(3) an attempt to build philosophy on the foundations of the empirical sciences, (4) scientific
materialism and monism, (5) the rise of positivism, (6) an attempt to psychologize philosophy,
and (7) an attempt to revive abandoned
phases of European thought, particularly NeoKantianism and Neo-Thomism.
Today, phenomenology thrives as a method of
qualitative inquiry, especially in psychology,
a discipline for the study of mind and consciousness, featured in some neuropsychological
studies, analysis of culture, and what might be
called “ontology of mind,” meaning the experience of causality.
Although contemporary psychology has
largely been influenced by behaviorism, phenomenology has had a decisive influence on some
important branches of psychology, especially
the existential-humanist therapies and research.
As neuropsychology attempts more to study
subjective experience, phenomenology has
become more dominant in this field. Also, as
qualitative research becomes more acceptable in
psychology, phenomenology has taken a more
prominent role.
The custom of discussing a patient’s
“phenomenology” in clinical psychology and
psychiatry has no relation to phenomenology as
a psychological method or analysis, but rather
merely hearing how the patient sees his or
her symptoms.
T. Landsman (1958) has given a parsimonious
definition of phenomenological psychology as
“the theory or science of experience (p. 29).”
However, the term has been used historically
to denote rather widely different concepts.
Landsman proposes four differing definitions
of phenomenological psychology: The first is
the MacLeod-Katz model, based on classical
Husserlian phenomenology, MacLeod and
Katz (MacLeod, 1947) deal chiefly with
world of experience and consciousness and
its most common method is the phenomenological reduction. The definition of phenomenological psychology from this point of
view is “a method for the preliminary exploration of the world of perceptual phenomena,
involving
principally
an
attitude
of
‘disciplined naiveté’ by the researcher to
differentiate perceptual phenomena more
clearly” (Landsman, 1958, p. 30).
The second definition is suggested by Snygg
and Combs (1949), in a now-classical work that
they hoped would revolutionize psychology.
This phenomenology is defined as a frame of
reference for understanding human behavior
from the point of view of the subject. This
phenomenology was influenced by Rogerian
clinical psychology and emphasizes the self
concept, the phenomenal field, and the phenomenal self.
A third definition is offered by the existential
therapists, first proposed in the USA by Ulrich
Sonneman in 1954. Sonneman (1954) was much
influenced by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig
Binswanger, who thought of himself as
a student of Heidegger. This version of existentialism uses phenomenology as a method for
the study of being. Sonneman presents his existential therapy as based on phenomenology,
although it is somewhat distant from the two
versions of phenomenology mentioned above.
It may be defined as the science of being
(as opposed to knowing) and deals with discovering the structure of the individual’s phenomenal world.
Phenomenological Psychology
The fourth definition is that of Husserl (1982),
which, although he rejects psychologizing phenomenology, he must nevertheless admit that phenomenology relates directly to the mind and
therefore should be central to psychology as
a science. The direct application of philosophical
phenomenology to psychology, then, may be
defined as a systematic investigation of consciousness, bracketed off (i.e., by use of the epoche) from
physical reality. Its data are essences, the product of
the phenomenological reduction. Since Husserl’s
time, several phenomenological methodologies
have been used that result in the reduction, among
them descriptive phenomenology (Giorgi &
Giorgi, 2003), existential analysis (Condreu,
1988), and intentional analysis (Keen, 1975).
In summary, all four phenomenological psychologies seem to have the following
characteristics:
1. Phenomenological psychology is the systematic study of the lived world.
2. The lived world is embodied, that is, the world
is perceived through the physical self.
3. The human being (whose experiencing is
usually called dasein, after Heidegger
(1962)) actively reaches out into the world
and creates meaning.
4. Its methodologies analyze the conscious world
as perceived by the individual.
5. The focus is on things in their appearing to the
person.
6. Data is collected from interviews, first-person
accounts. The data are usually analyzed by the
epoche in one of its forms.
7. After the initial analysis, the analyst becomes
more present by his or her reflection, and
through this reflection searches for themes.
8. The perceptions of the world are understood
through their social and physical context,
called “horizons.”
Keywords
Phenomenology; Husserl; epoche; consciousness; mind; perceptual field; intention; horizon;
dasein; phenomenological reduction
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History
Although Husserl is generally considered the
father of phenomenology, there was much activity in this area before him. The spirit of the times
at the end of the nineteenth century seems to have
spawned visions in philosophy and the
burgeoning psychology that developed in tandem. Husserl’s two major works, Logical Investigations and Ideas; General Introduction to
Pure Phenomenology, were published in 1900
and 1913, respectively. Husserl was a student of
Franz Brentano, the father of Gestalt psychology,
and was greatly influenced by him. Carl Stumph,
founder of experimental phenomenology,
slightly preceded Husserl and also had some
influence on him, although Husserl believed that
his philosophy went far beyond the psychology of
Stumph. William James, on the other hand,
formed a fast friendship with Stumph, which
continued throughout both the men’s careers,
with strong mutual influences.
Parallel to Husserl and under his strong influence, two groups emerged, one in Munich and the
other in Gottingen. Major phenomenologists of
this period were Max Scheler and Nicolai
Hartmann.
Husserl had two students who would carry his
phenomenology far afield, having significant
influence on twentieth-century philosophy
and psychology, as well as on modern life in
general. Martin Heidegger was, for several
years, Husserl’s prominent student and heir
apparent. Although he often used phenomenology as a method, Heidegger broke with Husserl
near the end of the latter’s life. Jean-Paul Sartre
came to Germany from France to study with
Husserl – and somewhat with Heidegger. Sartre’s
major work, Being and Nothingness (1943/1958),
is almost completely phenomenological in its
analysis. Other French Philosophers closely
related with phenomenology are Maurice
Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. Although
Sartre was more phenomenological in his work,
and had a chapter on existential psychoanalysis,
Heidegger had the most influence on psychology
(or more precisely, psychotherapy), through the
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work of the Swiss psychiatrist Meddard Boss.
Boss developed a method of analysis based on
Heiddeger’s “existentials,” which has been rather
influential in existential psychotherapy.
Another
Swiss
psychiatrist,
Ludwig
Binswanger, was deeply influenced by
Heidegger, although in debates with Boss,
Heiddeger supported Boss, and he also gave
some seminars in Boss’ home.
In America, although the early James was
greatly influenced by phenomenology, the first
work specifically mentioning phenomenological
psychology was probably published by Donald
Snygg in 1941. McLeod contributed several
papers in the 1940s and Combs joined Snygg in
the 1949 book mentioned above. In the 1950s
the works of the European existential psychotherapists first became available to the English
reader through the edited volume Existence,
by May, Angel, and Ellenberger (1958), whereas
Sonneman (1954), mentioned above, wrote an
original contribution based on Binswanger’s
work in Europe. Amadeo Giorgi and Adrian
Van Kaam have also been quite influential in
American phenomenological psychology.
During the last twenty years, phenomenology
has had important contributions in clinical psychology (Owen, 2009; Sass & Parnas, 2003)
research (Hein & Austin, 2001), theoretical psychology (Bertelson, 1999; Vernon, 2005),
counseling and psychotherapy (Wertz, 2005),
and both qualitative and quantitative research
(Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003; Rennie, Watson, &
Monteiro, 2002).
Traditional Debates
A long-standing issue has been debated
concerning the relationship between phenomenology and psychology, where Husserl himself
laid in the foundations of his philosophy the
keeping of a distance from what he called
“psychologisms.” What he meant was that the
psychology of his time saw conscious as part of
the natural world. In His Logical Investigations
(Husserl, 1900/1973), Husserl asserted that
Phenomenological Psychology
psychologism confuses reasoning with thinking,
which is a neurophysical characteristic of the
brain. He argued that logic has a priori
status that is independent of particular empirical
content.
Another pivotal debate in the phenomenology of mental health was that mentioned above,
between Binswanger and Boss. Boss criticized
Binswanger concerning Binswanger’s interpretation of Heidegger’s work in individualistic
and subjectivistic terms. This controversy
resulted in a break between them after Heidegger supported Boss. Binswanger did not
relent, calling his position his “creative error.”
Later, Boss became the major interpreter of
Heidegger as applied to psychotherapy and
Binswanger became more marginalized in
this area. He became more and more close to
Husserl and Buber (to whom Heidegger showed
little respect) in his version of therapy.
Daseinsanalise has become associated with
both Binswanger and Boss.
Smith (1950) summarized the reaction of the
mainstream psychological world to Snygg and
Combs (1949) when he wrote that their phenomenal frame of reference for psychology poses
difficulty for both the unconscious and objective
observation. He claimed that not all subjective
experience is phenomenal (conscious) and that all
phenomenal experience must be explored objectively in order to have scientific validity. As he
does this, he makes an interesting distinction,
now widely accepted, between the self (which is
amenable to direct phenomenological analysis)
and ego (which has unconscious elements and is
therefore not amenable to direct analysis
under the phenomenological methodology).
Both Snygg and Combs (1950) and May
(in May, Angel, & Ellenberger, 1958) addressed
the issue of phenomenology and the unconscious
in much the same way. They contend that the
fundamental human need is the preservation of
the integrity of the phenomenal field, especially
the self. When this integrity is threatened, the self
mobilizes resources to defend the integrity of the
field, and theses can be studied under the
phenomenological method.
Phenomenological Psychology
Critical Debates
Phenomenology has had some influence in
critical social psychology, where it has been
used to analyze multiple points of view and
basic dimensions of experience-in-context. Intentional analysis, where one analyzes experience
within its concentric horizons (Landsman,
2002), could also make a contribution to critical
social psychology. The phenomenological
process is also an integral factor in reflexivity,
which is a significant contribution to critical
social psychology. Phenomenology could also
specifically make a strong contribution to
participatory action research, a radical branch of
social psychology.
Finlay (2009) has outlined six major issues in
present phenomenological research: (1) How
loosely or tightly should phenomenological
research be defined, (2) ideographic versus
normative descriptions of phenomena, (3) how
much interpretation is acceptable, (4) the importance of researcher subjectivity, (5) should
phenomenology be more a science or an art?,
and (6) is phenomenology a modernist project,
a postmodernist project, or neither? She
concludes that the competing visions of how
phenomenology is conducted depend on the
philosophical values, theoretical preferences,
and methodological procedures of the enterprise.
As the field of qualitative research develops, the
contribution of phenomenology will continue to
develop and change dynamically.
International Relevance
Although phenomenology seems to particularly
Euro-American in scope, there have been some
attempts to extend its relevance to other cultures.
Phenomenological investigations across cultures
have been conducted in areas of psychopathology
(Postert, Dannlowski, M€uller, & Konrad, 2012),
personal identity (Tafarodi, 2008), psychotherapy McIntosh, 1996), supervision of psychologists, and other cross-cultural interpersonal
interactions. Phenomenological analysis has
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also been used in an attempt to understand horizons of inter-ethnic conflict (Landsman, 2002).
These studies illustrate the relevance of the
phenomenological method in dealing with international issues, but it seems that there is room for
a great deal of expansion in this area.
Practice Relevance
There are two major areas of practice relevance
for phenomenological psychology: psychotherapy and qualitative research. Existential psychotherapy is based on phenomenology and was
popularized by Yalom (1980), who wrote
a textbook, several books of clinical studies, as
well as fiction. The existential approach has
been accepted in both psychodynamic and
cognitive-behavioral therapies. Some therapeutic
approaches tend to be more “pure” phenomenology (Keen, 1975), and these are practiced in the
field, although they are less popular.
Although it is not always explicit, most qualitative research is more or less based on phenomenological methods, although some would take
issue with calling them phenomenological. Phenomenology has been also explicitly credited
with several approaches to qualitative research
and has important advocates (e.g., Giorgi &
Giorgi, 2003).
Future Directions
As the horizon of qualitative research expands,
phenomenological psychology will become
a significant force in methodology. There are
already several journals dedicated exclusively to
phenomenology, and almost every branch of
psychology has contributions based on phenomenology. This does not mean that phenomenological psychology will ever be mainstream.
Psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and cognitivebehavioral therapy, on the other, will have
a phenomenological approach in their margins
that will be legitimate, but not strongly
influential.
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There is much room for phenomenological
cross-cultural psychology. The phenomenological method can contribute much to this discipline.
The coming years will probably see a significant
expansion of this methodology.
Social psychology has traditionally been the
home of phenomenological psychology; articles
with this approach have been consistently
appearing for the past seventy years. It is likely
to see the phenomenological approach branch
out from this discipline into feminist psychology, liberation psychology, community psychology, and the postmodern and activist
orientations.
Neuropsychology is becoming a dominant
aspect of psychology, and as the study of consciousness, more and more research in this field
will be based on phenomenology.
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New York: Basic Books.
Online Resources
Phenomenological psychology website. http://phenomenologicalpsychology.com/
Husserl:
http://www.husserlpage.com/,
http://www.
husserlcircle.org/, http://hiw.kuleuven.be/hiw/eng/husserl/
Heidegger: http://www.heideggercircle.org/
Sartre: http://www.sartre.org/, http://sartresociety.org/, http://
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/index.htm
The Saybrook Institute: http://www.saybrook.edu/
Phenomenology Center Duquesne University. http://
www.duq.edu/phenomenology/
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more appropriately to the “matters at hand”; and,
for psychologists, this suggests that we bring
ourselves to the “affairs” [Sachen] of everyday
life – a return to the intentionality of conscious
beings within their worlds of experience.
Husserl would spend almost four decades producing intricate analyses of consciousness in all
of its transcendental manifestations (perceiving,
remembering, fantasizing, empathizing, and so
on) while serving as inspiration for the work of
his disciples Edith Stein, Eugen Fink, Alfred
Schutz, Maurice Natanson, Aron Gurwitsch (to
name a few); the existential phenomenologists
Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas; and
critical thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Herbert
Marcuse, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor
Adorno, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida.
Phenomenology
Definition
Scott D. Churchill
Department of Psychology, University of Dallas,
Irving, TX, USA
Introduction
Phenomenology was born of Edmund Husserl’s
epistemological project to found philosophical
knowledge upon an indubitable basis. Wishing
to overcome the pitfalls of any form of relativism
(historical, sociological, psychological), Husserl
looked to consciousness itself as the source and
matrix of all knowledge. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl (1901/1968) issued forth what
has come to be regarded as the “battle cry” of
phenomenology: “we want to go back to the
things themselves” – a challenge for phenomenologists to ground their ideas and concepts, like
all good scientists, in evidence: Wir wollen auf
“die Sachen selbst” zur€
uckgehen … und wollen
wir uns zur Evidenz bringen (p. 6). With this
statement, Husserl was asserting that phenomenology must be evidence-based; in this manner,
phenomenology would, for Husserl, become a
“strict science.” The German expression die
Sachen selbst refers less to “things” per se, and
The term itself – phenomenology – contains the
clue to its own meaning: it is based upon the
Platonic (and later, Kantian) distinction between
the noumenon or “thing-in-itself” – Husserl’s
Gegenstand – and the phainomenon, which
means the “showing-itself-from-itself” of some
entity. If the term “phenomenon” thus refers to
the self-disclosing of some object or entity to
consciousness, then the term “phenomenology”
enjoins the logos or “illuminating presence” of
the observer as co-constitutive of the observed
(this would be true for perceiving, imagining,
remembering, sensing, empathizing, and so on,
in relation to the object intended as such). Phenomenology is thus the allowing to be and the
illumination of that which shows itself from
itself. As Heidegger observes, “The word merely
informs us of the ‘how’ with which what is to be
treated in this science gets exhibited and handled” (1927/1962, p. 59). We shall begin, then,
with the “how” and proceed to the “what.”
Definitions of phenomenology (Churchill &
Richer, 2000; Embree et.al., 1997; Levinas,
1973; Natanson, 1973; Spiegelberg, 1982)
typically begin with Husserl’s method, the “transcendental reduction,” which opens the
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“immanent” field of “intentionality” for subsequent analysis and description. Because attending to natural reality is our everyday attitude, we
need the special method of “the reduction” –
a special kind of reflective focusing – to turn
our attention back to consciousness. The “natural
attitude” of everyday life is the belief that the
world actually is the way it appears to us or, to
put it another way, it is the belief that the
objects of consciousness exist as they appear to
us, independently of that appearing. The phenomenological reduction, as enacted by the phenomenologist, focuses upon this taken-for-granted
world of experience and subjects it to analytic
scrutiny, whereby this worldly experience –
which a moment ago was taken as “simply
given” (as a “bare fact”) – is viewed now as
a performance of consciousness. Attending to
the “constituting acts” (“noeses”) of consciousness within this “reduced” focus is what happens
when one “suspends” the natural attitude. Prior to
this suspension, one must first perform an
“epoche” or “bracketing” of the naturalistic prejudice (by which the world of experience has
typically been reduced to the world of nature as
understood by the natural sciences). Only once
this “second-order” prejudice has been set aside
can the phenomenologist begin to attend to the
“intuition of essences” (Husserl’s Wesensschau)
with regard to categories or sub-universes of
lived experience.
The “what” that phenomenology targets are
experiences such as emotions, perceptions, memories, and fantasies – virtually any realm of
experience to which our conscious lives are
directed. The “what” is not the object per se, but
the experience of the object. What gets disclosed
are not ‘things’ or ‘bare facts’ but rather the
“affairs of consciousness” themselves [die
Sachen selbst] through which things become
apparent to us. It is the “event” itself of our
feeling, imagining, perceiving, and remembering – and not the “object itself” that is felt, imagined, perceived, or remembered – that falls into
relief under the reduction. This event of conscious life does not exist in the realm of transcendent objects, but rather belongs to what Husserl
called the immanent domain of intentionality.
Phenomenology
It is “immanent” because it does not exist in the
“outer world” of objects but rather in the transcendental realm of intending acts, which have as
their correlative the world “as intended” (i.e., as
felt, imagined, perceived, remembered). It is this
“intending” –namely, our modes of attending to
things as they appear—that, along with the
appearances themselves, constitute the “what”
of phenomenology.
This transcendental starting point is often
misunderstood by psychologists as a return to
Descartes’ cogito, due to Husserl’s emphasis on
the “egological” (first person singular) frame of
reference. (Even philosophers are known to
misleadingly refer to Husserl’s “Cartesianism,”
as though he were adhering to some epistemological or even ontological dogma from a bygone
era.) However, in his final and greatest introduction to phenomenology – The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
(1939/1970b) – Husserl took great pains to distinguish his starting point from that of Descartes;
and so we will develop our definition of phenomenology with Husserl’s assertion of a more
radically intersubjective point of departure –
one that carries us far away from what Husserl
referred to as “the bare facts” [die blosse Sachen]
of Descartes. It was Merleau-Ponty (1960/1964c)
who made the bold statement that for Husserl
“transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity”
(p. 97, emphasis added). This is indeed the very
precondition that would be taken up implicitly
by Husserl’s younger colleagues Heidegger and
Levinas in their own first excursions into
phenomenology.
We always already exist within a world of relations, which both Dilthey and Heidegger referred
to as a Zusammenhang (a “referential totality” or
“nexus”). Indeed, phenomenology always begins
and ends in the first person plural – in what Alfred
Schutz (1967) called the “we-relationship” – since
our research interests are drawn from our own
social realities, and our research findings are
presented to an intersubjective context of consociates for verification and critique.
Phenomenology always implies an interfacing
of the observer with the observed (whether in acts
of perceiving, imagining, remembering) – an
Phenomenology
interfacing that begins with the object’s selfshowing to an observer (the “what”), and which
is further facilitated by the “logos” in which the
observer “allows” the phenomenon to show itself,
to shine forth (the “how”). This is perhaps why
Heidegger in his later works referred to the
human being as a “clearing” (die Lichtung) –
literally, a “lighting place” where light shines
through and illuminates all beings. As agents of
logos, our presence to others as well as to entities
encountered within the world is an illuminating
presence. The seer and seen are bound together in
an ontological unity that Heidegger (1927/1962)
called “Being-in-the-world.” (In the first
paragraph of the first chapter of Husserl’s
(1913/1982) Ideas, he too refers to “being in the
world” as an overarching unity within
which meanings emerge – but it was Heidegger
who radicalized the relationality implied in
this expression by adding the hyphens.)
Relationality is thus one’s definitive starting
point as a phenomenologist (see Heidegger
1985/2001).
Whether one is focusing directly upon one’s
own lived experiences or vicariously upon those
of another person, the phenomenologist is aiming
at uncovering two things: the latent intentionality
within the lived experience grasped at the individual level and the essential structure of this intentionality at the individual, typical, and/or universal
levels. The “disclosing of intentionality” – which
is the ultimate goal of phenomenology – means
articulating the constitutive aspects of our experience that enable an object of consciousness to be
experienced “as such”: the “what” of experience is
brought back to the “how” of the experiencing,
and viewed as a function of that “how.”
Phenomenologists explicate the ways in which
lived experiences are “reducible” (i.e., within the
reduction) to the constitutive frames of reference
(meaning contexts, motivational contexts, interests, goals) of the “subject.” What is sometimes
called “reflexivity” is precisely this “turning” from
the object of consciousness to the act by means of
which the object is constituted and thematized
“as such.”
Husserl often referred to this “reflexive turn”
as a special kind of reflection [eine Art der
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Reflexion] that opens the field of intentionality
for viewing [erschauen]. What is reflexive about
this kind of seeing is that one’s attention
withdraws from the object of consciousness
taken-as-already-constituted (i.e., the object as
experienced within the natural attitude) and
instead turns back upon the constituting acts of
consciousness by means of which the object
appears in “this” way rather than another. The
“way” that the object (or experience) “appears”
is taken to be a function of the “way” that
consciousness is present to the object. Thus
Sartre would observe, in his Psychology of
Imagination (1940/1948, pp. 89–90), that the delicate hands of the beloved are apprehended as
such only under the delicate regard of the lover
(or observer) who is beholding those hands.
There is thus a delicate quality that belongs to
both the object perceived and the act of perceiving. This method of analyzing perception is analogous to the principle behind the Rorschach
Inkblot Test: the diagnostician is interested in
the Rorschach protocol only insofar as it is revelatory of the perceptual style of the perceiver;
there is indeed no psychological interest in the
protocol insofar as it might tell us something
about the inkblot itself. Likewise, in an “intentional analysis,” one works one’s way back
from the noema to the noesis, from the object of
consciousness to the illuminating rays of
consciousness under which the object appears
“as such.” Under the reduction, what was
originally experienced as “given” within the
natural attitude (i.e., data, as such) is instead
recognized as capta – that is, as “taken” or
“captured” by consciousness from an otherwise
elusive matrix of happenings (Laing, 1967,
p. 62). The “explications” of the phenomenologist are, by definition, descriptions of the
intentional relationships that are revealed under
the reduction.
Once these explications have been accomplished at the empirical level, there is a
subsequent turning towards the eidetic or “essential” – a change of focus in which the phenomenologist looks for what is invariant (in contrast to
what is accidental) within phenomena that appear
at individual, typical, and universal levels of
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generality. One might say that phenomenology
begins with the idiographic and moves towards
the nomothetic. The generality that the phenomenologist seeks is what Husserl called a “unity of
sense” (or “eidos”); the move towards universal
structures of conscious experiencing requires that
the phenomenologist shifts the attention away
from the individual experience grasped for its
own sake and towards the “category” or class
of experiences of which the individual experience
is now taken as merely an example. Hence,
Husserl spoke of this as a “categorial intuition.”
For example, one might begin with one or more
individual experiences of fear or happiness to
arrive at an understanding of “being afraid” or
“being happy.” In traditional psychology, this
would be the move from the sample to the
population (here, from the “instance” to the
“category”), which might be thought of as
a “condition of possibility” for “external validity” (generalizability).
To arrive at universality, the phenomenologist
engages in the procedure known as “free variation in fantasy” wherein a series of imagined
variations of the phenomenon are used as
a basis for arriving at an “essence.” Husserl
(1948/1973, pp. 340–344) described this process
as running through a plurality of instances until
a unity of sense becomes apparent. This unity of
sense is the eidos or essence or “idea” that
emerges from the phenomenologist’s practice of
eidetic intuition. (It is these very “ideas” or
“essences” or “structures” that are called into
question by critical theorists who are wary of
how such knowledge might be used or misused
politically within social institutions and societies.) The important point here is that without
the employment of this procedure of “free variation,” one cannot make claim to having produced
genuinely “phenomenological” analyses of experience. A literary account of an experience, for
example, comes replete with all kinds of detail,
not all of which is “essential” to that experience,
even if such detail captivates our attention with
the “texture” of the experience. The phenomenologist’s art is to sift through all that texture to
arrive at the “structure” or essence of the experience – that without which it would no longer be
Phenomenology
representative of a particular “category” of
experiences.
Given the phenomenologist’s starting point in
the “phenomenological reduction” – that is, in the
“reduced sphere” wherein the naturalistic prejudice (i.e., the impulse to explain everything in
terms of cause and effect) has been suspended
and the affairs of conscious life are allowed to
appear on their own terms – we can turn to
Heidegger for further elucidation. For him,
phenomenology revealed itself etymologically
as “[letting] that which shows itself be seen from
itself in the very way in which it shows itself
from itself” (1927/1962, p. 58). This “letting
show itself” is a way of speaking of the phenomenologist’s posture towards the phenomenon, which
can be described as one of open-minded generosity
and noninterference. In phenomenological
research, one’s preconceived notions about
a phenomenon are at once put aside in order to
allow the researcher to experience firsthand the
process of discovery of the phenomenon through
direct contact or “intuition.” For Heidegger, of
course, it would be impossible to completely suspend all of one’s assumptions, for that would
amount to a denial of perspectivity, the
latter being an essential feature of any act of
consciousness.
Herein lies the controversy between
“descriptive” (Husserlian) and “interpretative”
(Heideggerian) phenomenologies: the former
presumes the possibility of a fully “bracketed”
(or “naive”) starting point; the latter presumes the
impossibility of such a perspective. Indeed, the
moment one attempts to articulate an experience,
one draws upon language, which already contains
many implicit assumptions that cannot all be
brought under the epoche. (This “hermeneutic”
observation of Heidegger became a foundation
for the subsequent work of Gadamer and Derrida.)
To achieve a phenomenological understanding, the aim would be for the phenomenologist to
allow the phenomenon to appear concretely in its
own self-givenness and then to proceed to reflect
upon and describe its appearance as best one
can, without the mediation of theories or hypotheses. For Heidegger, the very term “description”
already implies that what is described has been
Phenomenology
phenomenally encountered and interpreted “as”
something. Moreover, what is revealed at first to
consciousness is never the “whole” phenomenon,
much less all that can appear in connection with
a particular phenomenon. Thus, for Heidegger
there can be deeper layers buried beneath the
surface that await uncovering, and this requires
that the phenomenologist develops a hermeneutic
sensitivity to “what lies beyond” a phenomenon’s
initial givenness. (This, then, opens the way
towards further interfacings between phenomenology and depth psychology, as well as social
theory and deconstruction.)
Keywords
Appearance; being-in-the-world; conditions of
possibility; consciousness; description; empathizing perception; empathy; encounter; epochè;
event; existential; explication; givenness; hermeneutic; intentionality; immanent; intersubjectivity; lifeworld; logos; natural attitude; naturalistic
prejudice; noema; noesis; perspectivity; reciprocity; reduction; reflexivity; relationality; transcendental philosophy
History
Husserl often cited Descartes’ work as the point
of departure for phenomenology, which can be
understood as a “radicalization” of Descartes’
insights regarding mind-body dualism and the
priority of the mind (consciousness) in that
dualistic system. The radicality of phenomenology lies in its transcendence of Descartes’
mutually exclusive categories of mind and
body, subject and world, towards a mutually
reciprocal “intentionality” of consciousness
and lifeworld. In particular, phenomenology
owes its development to a reappropriation of
Cartesian doubt, a method that Husserl
transformed into phenomenology’s hallmark
“epoche” or “phenomenological reduction.”
Descartes had argued that while it is conceivable to doubt the existence of any worldly event
(one might be dreaming, Descartes mused), it is
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not possible to doubt the existence of the act of
doubting itself. One can be in touch with the
acts of one’s own consciousness in an indubitable way that distinguishes, and gives priority to,
subjective consciousness over and above any
mundane objective event; and, for Husserl,
this is true of all aspects of conscious experience, not just the experience of doubting.
Husserl goes beyond Descartes, however, in
his phenomenological method, which yields neither a stream of simple mental events nor a
self-enclosed ego, but rather a field of “noesis
and noema”: intending acts and apprehended
objects. What is opened up by employment of
Husserl’s “phenomenological reduction” is
accordingly not the Cartesian “cogitatio” (i.e.,
the mental process during the subject’s undergoing it) but rather the sphere of pure selfgivenness, so that nothing of what is intended or
grasped by consciousness fails to be given (cf.
Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1907/1970, pp. 48–49).
While taking his point of departure from
Descartes, Husserl’s method stands also in contrast to that of Descartes: instead of employing a
systematic doubt with regard to the evidence of
perceptual experience, Husserl begins with
pre-predicative (receptive) experience and then
“suspends belief” in the objective validity of this
experience. What gets “bracketed” in the reduction is the world as thematized from the “natural
standpoint,” namely, the belief that the world
exists independently of subjectivity, together
with the belief that the world actually is the way
it appears to the perceiver. In its place, a different
belief comes into play – a belief that experienced
meanings are the correlative of particular attitudes that are assumed wittingly or unwittingly
by someone. There is a turning, then, from “given
facts” (data) to “intended meanings” (noemata).
Indeed, when one hears phenomenology defined
as a study of “appearances,” this means precisely
that it is focusing on the individual’s experience
of what is given [phainomenon] rather than the
object itself that is given [noumenon]. It asks
the “transcendental” question regarding the
“condition of the possibility” of our experiencing
objects and events as meaningful.
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From Kant, Husserl took the idea of a transcendental method, whose task would be the
analysis of mental events as synthetic acts constitutive of a world. The “idealism” attributed to
Husserl’s phenomenology is based on his interest
in these transcendental “conditions of possibility” that (a) are transcendental because they are a
priori and thus transcend the level of their empirical givenness and (b) are conditions of consciousness that make possible our concrete lived
experiences as acts of perceiving, imagining,
remembering, and so on. While Husserl accepted
the idea of the transcendental, he rejected Kant’s
definition of the transcendental in strictly logical
terms. Instead, Husserl wanted to turn to the lived
acts of consciousness (noeses) that make possible
or “constitute” [Husserl’s term] our experience of
mundane reality. This emphasis on acts of consciousness, rather than ontological preconditions,
derives from Franz Brentano’s (1874/1973)
work, insofar as he subordinated the definition
of the content or subject matter of one’s science
according to the mode of access that one would
utilize to make this content evident.
In addition to Descartes and Kant, Hegel’s
philosophy is often (erroneously) cited as a precursor to Husserl’s phenomenology, particularly
because Hegel introduced the term “phenomenology” in the title of one of his major works,
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Hegel used the
term to delineate a field of investigation characterized by the description and analysis of the
stages involved in the evolution of the mind’s
absolute knowledge of itself. Because he was not
interested in the lived acts of consciousness and
the experienced meanings that make possible
mundane existence, the connection between his
work and Husserl’s is indirect, despite the fact that
his earlier use of the term “phenomenology”
undoubtedly influenced Husserl. (Hegel’s thought
did, however, have a profound influence on the
critical thinking of Sartre and found its way not
only into Sartre’s (1943/1956) early ontological
reflections but also into his later analysis of the
relationship between praxis and reason.)
Of significant import to the development of the
“phenomenological paradigm” is hermeneutical
thought, which had its origins in Greek philosophy
Phenomenology
as well as theology, but has been given its more
decisive formulation for psychology in the writings
of Wilhelm Dilthey. In fact, Husserl acknowledged
his own debt to Dilthey in his summer lecture
course Phenomenological Psychology (1925/
1977); and, in the same year, Heidegger articulated
the connections between Dilthey’s hermeneutics
and Husserl’s phenomenology in his own summer
course Prolegomena to the History of the Concept
of Time (1925/1985). In Dilthey’s (1894/1977)
view, human and cultural phenomena manifested
neither the exactness nor the mechanical regularity
of physical nature, and consequently did not lend
themselves well to quantification and causal explanation. Indeed, the human realm was considered to
be distorted, rather than truthfully disclosed, by
exact mathematical language and naturalistic
reductionism. Dilthey foresaw the need for an
approach that would be adequate to the structural
complexity of the human order and characterized
the orientation of the human sciences with the
simple remark: “We explain nature; we understand
psychic life” (1924/1977, p. 27). With Dilthey we
gain an appreciation for the process of understanding by which we as researchers comprehend our
data; with Heidegger, we realize that our data
themselves consist of the self-interpretations of
our participants, and as such, we become more
attuned to the importance of nuance and subtlety
in our “reading between the lines.”
Two early phenomenologists who bore
the influence of both Husserl and Dilthey were
Jaspers (1913/1968) and Pf€ander (1900/1967),
each of whom made significant and lasting
contributions with their studies of psychopathology and motivation, respectively, each drawing
heavily upon empathy and Verstehen [compassionate understanding] to better understand their
subject matters. (For contemporary discussions of
empathy as it comes to play in the understanding
of others, see Churchill 2006, 2012a, 2012b;
Rosan, 2012).
Traditional Debates
There are two primary debates within phenomenology: that of phenomenological realism versus
Phenomenology
phenomenological idealism and that of descriptive phenomenology versus interpretive phenomenology. The phenomenological realists
(Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfaender, Roman
Ingarden, Max Scheler) seemed to want to have
their cake and eat it too: they believed in the
critical examination of consciousness as the
source of all knowledge, but they wanted to
bestow the accent of reality upon the productions
of their own consciousness. In some cases this
meant a wish to ground their own religious beliefs
in a foundation outside of themselves, hence the
reference to a realism (see the more recent developments of this trend in Josef Seifert’s International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein
and Santiago). With the exception of this one
contemporary offshoot, the phenomenological
realists faded away in the early twentieth century.
With respect to the debate between descriptive
and interpretive phenomenology, this can be
traced back to Heidegger’s radical departure
from the phenomenology of his teacher Edmund
Husserl. In performing a phenomenological
analysis of Verstehen (human understanding),
Heidegger disclosed what he called the forestructure of understanding, namely, that we
always already have an operative perspective
that cannot be bracketed away. This forestructure of understanding manifests itself in our
acts of interpretation whereby implicit preconceptions [Vorgriffen] guide our “ways of seeing”
[Vorsichten] in the direction of entities and others
that surround us within the world that we “have”
in advance [Vorhaben] within our referential
totality. Thus, following Heidegger, MerleauPonty (1945/1962, p. xiv) would cleverly
remark (in his Preface to the Phenomenology
of Perception) that the attempt to perform the
reduction teaches the impossibility of
a complete reduction (since it was within the
phenomenological reduction that Heidegger recognized this irreducible perspectivity of human
understanding). This “phenomenological hermeneutic” analysis of understanding would become
an essential foundation for Gadamer’s own hermeneutics as presented in his Truth and Method.
Indeed, with Heidegger, description and
interpretation can no longer be thought of as
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separate: “Our investigation itself will show that
the meaning of phenomenological description as
a method lies in interpretation. . .. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates
this business of interpreting” (Heidegger, 1927/
1962, pp. 61–62.). With Merleau-Ponty (1961/
1964a), the relationship between eidetic and
empirical (as well as between nomothetic
and idiographic) inquiry is seen as less logical
and more dialectical, thereby preventing one
from assigning a priority to one over the other.
Rather, in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology,
eidetic inquiry is always already grounded in
empirical or concrete reality, just as every empirical investigation is guided in advance by a precomprehension of the nature of what is to be
investigated. Even before Merleau-Ponty,
Heidegger had departed from Husserl’s
formulations when he radicalized the
“hermeneutic-existential” relationship between
essence and existence in his statement: “the
essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (p. 67).
The foundation of human essences in human
factical life has a double consequence for Heidegger (1985/2001): on the one hand, it means that
we arrive at an understanding of what is essential
at both individual and general levels by looking
first at concrete appearances of existence; and, on
the other hand, it means that the purpose of developing an understanding of the essential categories
or “existentials” that define human life is, by
design, so that we can return to individual existence and explore the depth dimensions that are
opened up by these categories, when the latter are
taken as part of the “fore-conceptual” scheme of
the hermeneutic phenomenologist. Indeed, for
Heidegger (1988/1999), the tendency towards
self-interpretation is itself an intrinsic characteristic of our very “facticity,” which is precisely the
meaning of his expression “the hermeneutics of
facticity” (see Churchill, 2013, for illustration).
Heidegger’s own existential-hermeneutic
method would lead him to thematize what was
“unthought” in earlier thinkers’ philosophical
works, as in his various reflective and expository
works on Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and
others. Indeed, his search for the depth dimension
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of all Being would lead Heidegger to a “turning”
that was a turning away from phenomenology
towards a meditative thinking grounded in
Gelassenheit (roughly translated as “letting be,”
“releasement,” or “serenity”). Husserlian phenomenologists prefer not to walk this path with
Heidegger, and so they stay on the “descriptive”
side of the divide between the two great German
masters of phenomenology. This debate has
continued in the “human science” application of
phenomenology, particularly in the field of psychology (see Giorgi, 2000 for further exposition).
Other “debates” within the field include discussions of whether one can speak of “early” and
“later” periods in the individual development of
Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty
that would be marked by shifts that might be
considered radical in nature. One can certainly
make a case for the influence of Marx on Sartre’s
thinking, which exhibited a fundamental shift
from his psychological and ontological reflections of the 1930s and 1940s towards examination of contemporary economic and political
realities, culminating in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1985/2004). With the others, it is
really not so easy to argue for radical
reorientations of their thinking. Husserl and
Merleau-Ponty remained focused on the same
central issues from their earliest work in phenomenology to their later writings. And even if Heidegger admitted to a “turning” in his thinking
after the early 1930s, this may have been more
based upon his turning away from National
Socialism than by any fundamental change in
his philosophical interests. A review of his lecture courses from the early 1920s through to his
last lecture in 1945 (which was interrupted by
his being drafted into the army) shows that
Heidegger was continuing to reflect on the same
fundamental issues pertaining to the meaning of
Being.
Traditional debates would also include the
actual correspondences between Heidegger and
Sartre and between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. As
for Heidegger’s relationship to Husserl, and to
the question of whether Heidegger was simply
extending Husserl’s phenomenology or critiquing it and moving beyond it, the evidence is fairly
Phenomenology
clear from Heidegger’s 1923–1924 lecture
courses that he was already at that early point in
his career moving in a fundamentally different
direction than Husserl. If Husserl emphasized the
move towards essences, Heidegger was interested more in using his own eidetic intuitions
to illuminate factical life, which he (following
Aristotle) saw as the real purpose of philosophy.
Critical Debates
Both Husserl and Heidegger had a formative
influence on the critical thought of Adorno insofar as neither considered the phenomenological
reduction to be a light switch that could be turned
on and off at will. There is a constant selfquestioning, a constant self-doubting, that is
characteristic of the work of the phenomenologists. For Husserl, phenomenological doubt is not
the same as Cartesian doubt. In the phenomenological reduction, one is loath to take for granted
the status quo, the way things appear within the
natural attitude of everyday life, according to
which we believe that the world exists independently of our presence to it. For critical thinkers
like Adorno, seemingly innocuous statements
about reality are shown to actually have political
consequences that one does not recognize right
away. For example, Adorno was critical of his
teacher Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, insofar as one can argue that such a concept also has
its shadow side (to borrow a Jungian expression):
There is more to be seen than one thinks at first
when looking at such concepts (see Adorno,
1964/1973 The Jargon of Authenticity). The
self-questioning of the phenomenologist involves
taking a position where one does not pretend to
know the answer before one begins – or, in the
case of Heidegger’s early ontology, not assuming
one’s own authenticity just because one
writes about authenticity. The politically oriented
critical theorists like Adorno believed that there
can be shown to be a political dimension even
in the most transcendental concerns of thinkers
like Husserl, Gurwitsch, Schutz, and Fink.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari argued in
Anti-Oedipus (1972/1977) that simple declarative
Phenomenology
statements are really imperatives, that all statements are really slogans that amount to the putting
forth of a politics.
Welton and Silverman (1987) suggest that
“more than any other issue, the problem of action
in a situation of social alienation moved phenomenology beyond its contemplative to its interpretative and dialectical mode” (p. xiii). The
descriptive phenomenological work of the early
phenomenologists thus gave way to critical discussions of the social unconscious by people like
Foucault, as well as critical reflections on the
foundations of psychoanalysis by others such as
Ricoeur and Lacan.
Notwithstanding critical theory’s attacks on
phenomenology, the very foundation of critical
theory is traceable to Husserl’s own questioning
of the most taken-for-granted aspects of our daily
experience, such as our belief in the existence of
the world. Husserl asks, “How can I believe that
the world exists independently of me?” What
seem to be the most fundamental truths require
critical scrutiny for the phenomenologists.
Husserl’s early interest in empathy (1910–1911/
2006), which became the foundation for Edith
Stein’s classic work on the problem of empathy
(1917/1989), already opened the field of transcendental philosophy to include the concerns
of other people. Husserl’s phenomenology was
already a study of the intersubjective foundations
of truth long before Heidegger, Gadamer, or
Adorno came along.
However, even if we grant that Husserl was
already intersubjective in his approach to the
analysis of subjectivity, there is another dimension of his analysis where questions have been
raised about his metaphysical foundations. For
Husserl there is an irreducible difference between
perception and symbolic representation, and it is
here that the crisis in Husserl’s theory of signification can be glimpsed. Husserl insists there is
a radical and irreducible difference between signs
that indicate or signify something other than
themselves and perceptual intuitions which do
no indicating or signifying at all. But, what if
this were not the case? What if even the most
primordial intuitions always already signify
something other than themselves? What if there
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were no autonomous self-identity in the contents
and fabric of experience? What if even the contents of Husserl’s “primordial intuitions” in fact
constituted a text comprised of signs? Then this
would mean that even the most basic perceptual
experience refers us on from nonautonomous elements to a network of signs upon which the
subject is dependent for ascertaining the identity
of the perceived. Such a semiotic network would
bring us to the notion of language as a system as
found in de Saussure and elaborated by the structuralists. And this in turn would take us to the
“arche writing” and “differance” of Derrida as
well as to the “Other” (with a capital O) of Lacan
in his theoretical elaboration of Freudian psychoanalysis (amongst other conceptual positions),
making the “poststructural turn” out of existential
phenomenology. For Lacan, the mediation of the
symbolic system is a game changer for theoretical paradigms capable of giving us an adequate
account of the human subject. For, if all experiences were mediated through sign systems,
then the (allegedly) tautological self-identical
perceptual intuitions that were to provide the
solid foundation upon which the edifice of existential phenomenology was to be erected would
be, strictly speaking, a metaphysical mythology.
Not only does otherness infuse the transcendental
reduction of the subject, showing how all subjectivity is (always already) intersubjectivity, but
also the mediating symbolic system can never be
made present as an object of an immediate intuition. It goes without saying that this would have
enormous implications in the domain of methodology for research. From a poststructuralist perspective, the crisis in the phenomenological
theory of signification is the crisis of the empty
sign (i.e., a sign not filled with a “given” from
intuition). For Derrida, contrary to what Husserl
wished to be the case, the meaning of signs would
not be governed, regulated, and revised according
to the data from a phenomenological reduction of
experience. Meaning would not be constituted by
experience or its verification in an intuition. (With
thanks to Terry Pulver, personal communication,
March 26, 2012).
Deconstruction, Lacanian Psychoanalysis,
Foucault’s analyses of power and discourse,
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Adorno, and Feminist Theory are just some of the
theoretical paradigms that have been spawned out
of the critical confrontation with transcendental
phenomenology.
International Relevance
There now exist over 125 phenomenological
organizations worldwide. Its primary influence
has been felt in Western Europe and North America; but there is also an increasing presence of
phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe,
East Asia, and Latin America. A worldwide
Organization of Phenomenological Organizations was founded in Prague in 2002 (see
L. Embree for elaboration). Various international
conferences meet annually that are devoted to
phenomenology in general and to individual phenomenologists: the Husserl Circle, Heidegger
Circle, Merleau-Ponty Circle, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, International Human Science Research Conference, and
the Interdisciplinary Consortium of North
American Phenomenologists are but a few to
serve as evidence that phenomenology continues
to bear impact on the international scene. There
is significant interest in Husserl’s phenomenology today in Japan, while China and South
Korea increasingly welcome phenomenologically oriented researchers and methodologists
into the Asian academy. Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, and England have active phenomenological communities today, while Germany,
France, and Italy have their own enclaves of
phenomenologically oriented scholars.
Practice Relevance
There are two primary fields of application of
phenomenology within psychology: psychotherapy and qualitative research.
Psychotherapy: Not only our world but also
our past is constituted by acts of consciousness
that are fundamentally future oriented. Just as
there is no brute reality to the world independent
of meaning-giving acts of consciousness, there is
Phenomenology
no brute reality to people’s past. We can at any
time reconstitute the meaning that the past holds
for us, and in that sense we can reconstitute
the past itself; as always for phenomenology,
experienced meanings have priority over and
determine reality, whether it is the reality of the
world or the reality of the past. Existential phenomenology thus opens the door for a hopeful
approach to psychotherapy, one based on the
possibility that disturbed people can choose to
constitute their lives in less disturbing ways. We
are neither trapped by our situation nor trapped
by our past. Nowhere does this liberating aspect
of phenomenology become more explicit than in
Heidegger’s radical reorientation of Hegel’s
statement “das Wesen ist was gewesen ist”
[“essence” is what already exists] to read instead:
“Das ‘Wesen’ des Daseins liegt in seinem
Zu-sein” [the “essence” of Dasein lies in its “tobe”] (1927/1962, p. 42). Thus, instead of lying in
the past, our essence lies in our Existenz: in our
projection of ourselves into our “to-be,” into our
future [Zukunft]. It is in the “not yet” rather than
in the “already been” that we shall truly find
ourselves. Existential psychotherapy is thus an
opening up of the individual’s conscious life to
embrace one’s future possibilities, from wherever
one finds oneself “thrown.”
Psychological Research: The hallmark of the
phenomenological method in psychology is its
thematization of how an individual subject “coconstitutes” the world of experience that has been
described in self-report data, therapy transcripts,
or other forms of expression. Data analysis
consists of the identification of constitutive “horizons” or “modes of presence” that make possible
the experience of the situations described. There
is a turning, then, from “given facts” (the data as
presented) to “intended meanings” (the data as
understood by the researcher) – from the simple
“givenness” of the situation in the subject’s
experience to a reflective apprehension of
that situation’s meaning as having been
co-constituted (“intended”) by the subject’s consciousness or “existential presence.” This by no
means a return to introspectionism: As Sartre
(1939/1970, pp. 4–5) dramatically observed, if
one could ever get “inside” a consciousness, one
Phenomenology
would be seized upon by a whirlwind and thrown
back out into the world! Phenomenological
psychology is, emphatically, the study of persons
in situations.
The psychological work of empiricalphenomenological research consists of the
researcher’s entering into dialogue with the
data. The researcher’s involvement in
co-constituting the findings is often attacked as
a form of subjectivism; however, from within the
phenomenological understanding of the interpretive process, such an involvement of the knower
with the known is inevitable. Indeed, it expresses
the implication of the principle of intentionality
for the research process itself. This does not
mean, however, that the procedure involves
some kind of “introspection” that is inaccessible
to someone wishing to verify the reliability of the
findings; nor does it imply some kind of relativism or “privatism” in the understanding of data.
This is, first, because what is being known here is
not some “inner” realm, to which there exists
only private access; rather, what is being known
here is precisely the relationship of the individual
to the world, and this relationship is not accessible by a “turning inward” (wherever that might
lead). Merleau-Ponty (1945/1964b) has argued
that whenever we do succeed in having something worthwhile to say about our own experience, it is precisely when we look at it the way we
would that of another person, that is, from
a third-person point of view. Furthermore, the
researcher, upon entering into a “dialogue” with
the data, is not attempting to look “inside” his or
her own consciousness of the data, but is, rather,
engaged in a narrative act of understanding
a life situation. The interpretive process here is
circumscribed, of course, by the researcher’s perspective on the data. But this perspective is made
explicit to anyone reading the analysis, in the
form of a set of research questions and guiding
principles. This leads not to relativism, but to a
simple acknowledgment of the relativity (and
reflexivity) of understanding.
Following
Heidegger,
existentialphenomenological psychologists acknowledge
the impossibility of presuppositionless knowledge, and hence have accepted the notion that
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interpretation is always embedded in acts
of description. This means that no claims of
“universality” (as was the case in Husserl’s
“pure phenomenology”) are to be made in empirical-phenomenological research; rather, research
results are presented as tentative statements opening upon a limitless field of possible interpretations. While following hermeneutic principles
first articulated by Dilthey, phenomenological
psychologists stop short of the kind of relativism
associated with the more recently emerging
“postmodernist” traditions. The evidence for
this is to be found in the insistence that research
results be adequate to a body of facts or data
(a modified version of the “correspondence”
criterion for truth) rather than merely being
required to “hang together” in a clear and cogent
manner (a “coherence” criterion for truth favored
by “narrative psychologists”). The emphasis
of this research paradigm can be described as
a “fidelity towards the phenomenon.” A
psychological “phenomenon” is understood here
not as an event “in itself” but rather as something
that occurs “for someone.” The situations in
which I experience anger, jealousy, joy, futility,
intimacy, courage, self-esteem, self-deception,
clinical insight, being victimized, and so on are
not approached by the phenomenological
psychologist as though there were some objective
reference point from which to observe and
describe the events taking place. Rather, there is
an acknowledgment of an “always already”
existing perspective through which the individual
experiences his or her world and, in turn, through
which the researcher takes up the experience of
the research subject.
One of the critical concerns with the application of phenomenology to the field of qualitative
research is that while more and more researchers
are calling their work phenomenological, it
seems that only a very small percentage of
contemporary qualitative studies bear a faithful
relationship to the guiding principles of phenomenology (for good examples, see Fischer, 2006;
Giorgi et.al., 1971; Pollio et. al., 1998; Valle,
1998). The problem here stems from the fact
that many researchers consider their research to
be phenomenological simply because the data
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consist of first person reports or testimonies. This
would qualify the study as “qualitative” research,
while begging the question of whether or not it
qualifies as phenomenological; the key issue is
whether the method of data analysis is phenomenological, and this depends upon the
researcher’s method of reflection – namely,
whether it is grounded in (a) an empathic taking
up of the data, (b) the performance of the “reduction” upon that empathized experience, (c)
the thematization of intentionality within that
experience, and (d) the “intuition of essences”
by means of “free variation in the imagination.”
Furthermore, following the example of the early
formulators of an empirical phenomenological
method in psychology (primarily at Duquesne,
led by Amedeo Giorgi), the essential findings
should be formulated as a structural description,
where “structural” means that each of the
thematic findings is shown to be related
essentially to the rest of the themes (Giorgi,
1970, pp. 178–184). Much of what comes under
the rubric of phenomenological research in contemporary psychology consists of what Braun and
Clarke (2006) referred to generically as “thematic
analysis,” which stops short of a genuine
“intentional analysis,” stops short of arriving at
essences, and stops short of a structural interweaving of these essential thematic findings. At best,
thematic analyses serve as guides for future studies that might lead to mixed methods research, or
even as pilot studies for further phenomenological
investigation. The bottom line here is Heidegger’s
remark about phenomenology defining the “how”
(the method of analysis) and not the “what”
(the data) of the research.
Future Directions
Phenomenology has served as a foundation for
various developments in other areas of contemporary thought, including depth psychology
(Binswanger, Boss, Lacan, Minkowski, Ricoeur),
social theory (Adorno, Paci), and deconstruction
(Derrida, Foucault). It has also more recently
begun to serve as a philosophical anchor for neuroscience (Gallagher) and the emerging field of
Phenomenology
neurophenomenology (Gordon). Outside of philosophy and psychology, phenomenology
has seen developments throughout the world
in disciplines as diverse as architecture,
communicology, economics, ethology, film studies, geography, music, nursing, pedagogy, political science, psychiatry, and sociology. In
addition to enhancing these other fields of
research and reflection, there is still a vast frontier
to be explored following the original program for
research into the fields of consciousness initiated
by Husserl and his colleagues.
The future of phenomenology will be entirely
dependent upon current scholars’ interest and
willingness not only to “return to the things themselves” but to attend to and engage themselves
with the primary source texts within the field,
which are often challenging and difficult, yet
infinitely rewarding if one is ready and willing
to go to the encounter.
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http://www.o-p-o.net/
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
Bryan Reuther
Center for Psychological Studies, Nova
Southeastern University, Davie, FL, USA
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
concepts such as subjectivity, the nature of
consciousness, and more narrowly the nature
and essential features of human mental life.
Within these subject matters, psychology also
addresses epistemological concerns, such as the
nature of knowledge and the appropriate methodologies for its acquisition. Consequently,
psychology is a hybrid discipline that integrates
concepts from other fields including biology,
neurology, neuroscience, cognitive science,
anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and
computer science.
In addition to the pursuit of human reality and
epistemology, psychology has inherited many of
the concepts and problems dealt with in philosophy of mind, such as, but not limited to, the mindbrain relationship as well as mind/body and subject/object distinctions. Botterill and Carruthers
(1999) contend that the basic ideas, concepts, and
positions addressed in philosophy of mind are
critical as a backdrop of the philosophical constituents for how to do psychology. However,
despite its intimate relationship with philosophy
of mind, philosophical psychology tends to deal
with the nature of cognitions, emotions, perceptions, and behaviors of the human being. Included
in this is how (and even if) we are able to (and in
what ways) acquire accurate knowledge of ourselves, others, and the world surround, as well as
whether or not any psychological knowledge is
generalizable and independent of our individual
experience.
Introduction
In no other discipline is it clearer than in psychology that so much of the investigated subject
matter is so intimately bound up in the investigator. In other words, the faculties used by the
investigator are the central aspects and phenomena being investigated! The various philosophical foundations of psychology attempt to
explain the wide range of questions, including
what exactly is considered psychology’s subject
matter to its legitimacy and ontological status as
an actual academic and practical discipline. As
a discipline, psychology seeks to identify and
study the nature of human experience and reality on an individual or personal level, handling
Definition
Most broadly, philosophical psychology investigates the philosophical foundations of the field of
psychology. It is to this extent that much of the
material being investigated historically overlaps
with that of philosophy in general and, consequently, retains a rich history. Human psychology, both historically and currently, centers on
the nature of human mind and most specifically
thought, cognition, and behavior. Bermúdez
(2005) defines the philosophy of psychology as
“the systematic study of the interplay between
philosophical concerns in the study of cognition.”
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
Current investigations in psychology emphasize
this subject matter using empirical, experimental,
and/or statistical basis. While cognition remains
the major emphasis, especially amongst cognitive neuroscientists, clinical psychologists, and
analytically trained philosophers, it remains but
a small portion of philosophical psychology.
As a result, it addresses different foundational
positions and ways of understanding and
studying the phenomena of individual human
experience – more specifically emotion, behavior, culture, society, and action as well as how
they are related or intertwined.
Keywords
Philosophy of psychology; mind/body dualism;
subject/object dualism; empiricism; rationalism;
psychoanalysis; cognitivism;
behaviorism;
critical theory; existentialism; philosophy of
mind; neuroscience; materialism; biological
reductionism
History of Ideas
While psychology is young in terms of
a formalized discipline, philosophical inquiry
into psychological concepts and the nature of
individual human experience dates back to the
ancient Greeks, most notably with that of Plato
and Aristotle and later with the Stoic philosophers. The word psychology breaks down to the
Greek root “psyche” to be rendered as the study
of the “soul” or “mind.” As we can see, the
emphasis is placed on the human mind as the
central feature. In keeping with the early Greeks,
the development of Plato’s theory of forms had
clear metaphysical inclinations that positioned
this “psyche” as something at the very least distinct from corporeal and earthly existence. Conversely, Aristotle took a more pragmatic and
naturalistic view in that human psychology was
the result of our sensory systems interacting with
the world.
Positions in philosophy of mind have greatly
influenced how human psychology is viewed and
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understood. One of the most famous is that of
dualism. René Descartes (1641/1993), likely the
most renowned supporter, promoted a mind/body
dualistic position that has influenced philosophical and psychological thinking to this day.
To Descartes, the body along with the rest of the
physical world consisted of matter which was
governed by physical laws, while the mind or
soul remained immaterial and contained
a prior knowledge of a seemingly metaphysical
nature. His contention was that these disparate
substances interacted through the pineal gland.
However, clearly, this fails to provide
a satisfactory account. Consequently, the interaction between two separate substances that make
up a “mind” and a “brain” or a “mind” and
a “world” for that matter is a central problem to
dualistic theories.
Reactions and criticisms of dualism run deep
in philosophy of mind. Materialists or physicalists contend that the only substance that exists is
matter, which makes up everything, including
the mind and consciousness. The most notable
of these positions is the mind-brain identity theory, which holds that mind states or states of
consciousness are brain states.
Another classic refutation of dualism, not
associated with the materialism of physicalism,
is explained in philosophical or logical behaviorism, which deals with mental states as behavioral
dispositions or interactions, not as something
internal to the person. It is in that way, this type
of behaviorism avoids any problems that arise
with dualism.
The basic epistemological tenants of modern
psychology can be traced back to the philosophical movements of both the empiricists and
rationalists. Rationalism suggests that all psychological knowledge can be deduced from basic
principles, such as innate concepts or mathematical premises. René Descartes was one of the
main proponents of this perspective. The empiricist traditions sprang from the work of John
Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
Empiricism, put simply, holds that psychological
knowledge is obtained largely through experience and what can be observed. Arising from
this tradition is the scientific realism of
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psychology within the movements of behaviorism, cognitivism, as well as neuroscience.
To this day, we see remnants of both traditions
embedded in the various ways we do psychology.
It should be noted that they are not mutually
exclusive, with many current theories containing
elements of both traditions. This is quite clearly
seen in the subscription to the Cartesian-based
mind/body, individual/world, and internal/external differentiations (however, greater emphasis
and rigor has gone into analyzing how each part
of a particular duality interacts). Additionally
empiricism remains the dominant methodological approach in psychology, which currently
takes the form of experiments that undergo statistical analysis to understand human psychology.
The previous sections provided an abridged
account of the philosophical foundations of psychology and overlapping concepts in philosophy
of mind. This section will address the different
philosophies of psychology, with an emphasis
on how we come to acquire an understanding of
our own mental life and that of other people.
What is interesting is that many of these theories
sprang from clinical work with people with
abnormal or dysfunctional thinking and behavior. As such, some general aspects from the
philosophy of psychopathology will be mentioned within the context of the psychological
theory.
Freud’s psychoanalysis was an attempt to construct a dynamic psychological theory based in
the natural sciences and medicine (Freud, 1960,
1995). His ideas were largely birthed from his
observations of and work with patients diagnosed
with hysteria – which at the time was a rather
inclusive diagnosis (given mostly to woman)
which consisted of somatic and neurotic symptoms. The creation of a tripartite structure, which
includes the id (das Es, “the It”), ego (das Ich,
“the I”), and superego (das Uber-Ich, “the OverI”), accounted for the functioning of the human
mind and the basis for his metapsychology. Freud
also wrote extensively about the unconscious.
Although the unconscious was anticipated by
the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich
Nietzsche – amongst others – Freud made significant contributions in understanding the role of
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
the unconscious in human psychical life. Moreover, he cast human beings as irrational subjects
in constant conflict between the primitive power
of the Id and the moralistic superego.
Psychoanalytic thought over the course of the
last century has evolved through the work of
many contemporaries of Freud, such as Carl
Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Alfred Adler, Harry Stack
Sullivan, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Jacques
Lacan, and Ferenczi. From classic Freudian Psychoanalysis came many other variations, including ego psychology, individual psychology (see
Alfred Adler), self psychology (see Heinz
Kohut), interpersonal (see Harry Stack Sullivan),
object relations (for the American School see
Otto Kernberg and Margaret Mahler; for the British School see Ronald Fairbairn, Melanie Klein,
and John Bowlby), relational psychoanalysis (see
Stephen Mitchell), as well as intersubjective and
post-Cartesian models (see Robert Stolorow,
Donna Orange, and George Atwood). All of
these psychoanalytic movements generally
attempt to build upon, recast, and/or revise
Freud’s seminal work.
In addressing how we come to have an understanding of the mental life of other people, folk
psychology is a long-standing philosophical psychology that emphasizes a “common sense”
approach we acquire through socialization. Two
main folk psychological perspectives include
theory-theory and simulation theory. Both
versions contend that human mental activity is
unobservable; however, theory-theory positions
our knowledge of others as accomplished through
applying theoretical inference to the relationships
between observed behavior and situational context, while simulation theory suggests that we
understand others’ mental states by “simulating”
the other person and projecting our mental states to
others (Herschbach, 2008). It has also been argued
that folk psychology is not a static theory due to
the absorption of some of Freud’s thought,
specifically with regard to the inclusion of
the unconscious and the ego (Botterill &
Carruthers, 1999).
Another form of behaviorism, called methodological behaviorism, came into existence from
the field of psychology. Despite philosophical
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
behaviorism’s refutation of substance dualism,
methodological behaviorism upholds, in a way,
a variation of dualism, that which is needed for
empirical inquiry. It maintains that the mind is
not the subject of scientific inquiry since it cannot
be observed. For the methodological behaviorist,
the mind may very well exist, but it is of no
concern since it is immeasurable (the mind as
the infamous “black box”). Moreover, all concepts to be explored in psychology must be operationally defined in order to be empirically
investigated. Prominent figures in methodological behaviorism are John Watson, Pavlov, and
B. F. Skinner. Classical conditioning and operant
conditioning are two forms of behaviorism. Classical conditioning involves the manipulation of
involuntary behavior, such as in Pavlov’s class
example of manipulating a dog’s salivation to
respond to a simple bell ring. Operant conditioning involves voluntary behavior and is manipulated through positive and negative reinforcers
that change the likelihood of behaviors. Overall,
behaviorism focuses on the external manipulation of behavior and therefore holds a causal,
mechanistic, and deterministic philosophy of
psychology.
The linguistic philosopher Noam Chomsky’s
critique of B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism was influential in demonstrating the limitations of behaviorism as well as launching the cognitive
movement in psychology. Moreover, many psychologists were dissatisfied with behaviorism
because it neglected cognitive processes such as
thought. The cognitive revolution in the
mid-twentieth century demonstrated a return to
internal mechanisms of mind as a reaction to
behaviorism. Cognitive psychology takes
a “computationalism” approach which likens the
human being to a living “computer,” such that the
brain is the “hardware” that runs the mind, which
is a variety of “software” programs. Within the
mind, these software programs are cognitive
schemas, which act as blueprints or representations of objects that govern a person’s
interactions with others and the world. This
perspective has received much attention over
the last 50 years and remains the dominant
paradigm in psychology.
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Humanistic psychology, often referred to as
the “third force” (with psychoanalysis and behaviorism as the other two forces), came largely from
Carl Rogers (1961) and the field of counseling
psychology. Humanistic psychology integrates
the entire person and focuses on present experience. Existential perspectives in psychology are
often associated with the humanistic movement
and provide somewhat of a philosophical ground
for it. Existential psychology is also viewed as
more of an “attitude” toward approaching
psychology than a defined theory (Yalom,
1980). Central concepts include death, meaning,
freedom/responsibility, meaninglessness, choice,
responsibility, and isolation. A person’s phenomenological or subjective experience is emphasized in how the world is disclosed to them and
how they are “thrown” into confrontation with
these central concepts. Main thinkers include
Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl,
Irvin Yalom, Medard Boss, and Ludwig
Binswanger.
In the latter part of the last century and into the
current one, there have been several movements
in psychology spurred by sociohistorical
reflection and cross-fertilization with related
fields. These include feminist, indigenous,
postcognitive (Giobbi, 2010), discursive
(Potter, 2000), narrative, social constructionist,
post-Cartesian, and embodied approaches.
Post-Cartesian psychoanalysis is a movement
spearheaded by Robert Stolorow (2011), George
Atwood, and Donna Orange. The emphasis of
these movements is on the intersubjective and
contextual nature of human reality and removal
of dualistic remnants in psychological thought.
For example, Stolorow accomplishes this task
by importing the continental philosopher
Martin Heidegger’s concepts of Dasein and
being-in-the-world.
Traditional Debates
The tiresome nature/nurture debate still
continues, although the common understanding
is that both perspectives contribute to human
psychology. Within the interaction questions
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remain concerning how much can be attributed to
our inborn, genetically based biology and how
much is due to socially based factors.
The debate of dualism versus monism, which
is a central feature of philosophy of mind, does
not escape the discourse within psychology.
Despite the rejection of pure substance dualism
by most philosophers (and psychologists) nowadays, indeed, some evidence of dualism, albeit
likely a “weak” rendition, still exists as the
foundation for the epistemologies of many modernist psychological theories today in either the
form of mind/body or internal/subjective/mindexternal/objective/world dualism. Much of this
residual dualism can be found in the foundational philosophies of modern psychology,
including psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and
cognitivism.
In regard to the legitimacy and direct accessibility of mental states, two distinct positions
exist, that of realism and antirealism. Realism,
as a philosophical basis for psychology, is
a position borrowed from the philosophy of
science. It suggests that we are able to access,
locate, and measure mental states using various
scientifically based methodologies. Antirealism,
on the other hand, suggests that we are unable to
measure mental states directly and accurately
because even with all the data collected (and
that will be collected for that matter), there will
not exist a complete understanding. An antirealist
will acknowledge the empirical accuracy of these
investigations; however, in the end this information can only be interpreted in the context it was
acquired, and as a result there is information
missing to understand the totality of the processes. However, most investigations and theories in psychology subscribe to some variation of
realism.
Critical Debates
Philosophical psychology also intersects with the
philosophy of psychiatry, specifically in the context of the nature and processes of human mental
disorders. In the United States, these disorders
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
have been captured by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which
is currently on its fourth edition, text revision
(DSM-IV-TR). The DSM has gone through
many revisions and at least two paradigm shifts
since it was first published in 1952 (First, 2010).
With the DSM-V approaching release, questions
remain on whether or not these manuals
pathologize and medicalize everyday human
experiences. Echoes from previous figures in the
anti-psychiatry movement such as R. D. Laing,
Thomas Szasz, and Michel Foucault ring true to
this day, such that whether or not these labels are
used for purposes of social control or as avenues
of profit generation for the pharmaceutical industry. Szasz (2005) has vehemently supported these
points as well as arguing that mental disorders
should not be considered disease processes
because they lack a clear physiological etiology.
As such, if there is something such as a mental
disorder, how should it be categorized, and more
importantly, how should it be treated?
With the advancement of neuroscience and
further discoveries in the neurological and psychobiological basis of behavior and thought, does
subscription to these findings endorse a form of
biological or empirical reductionism? What is the
impact of neurological and psychobiological
understandings of mental disorders? Is it the
case that neurological and biological mechanisms
have some superordinate priority? If these trends
continue, will psychology be absorbed into
neurobiology or neuroscience?
Given the scientific and empirical realism that
dominates current mainstream psychology due to
the need to objectify and decontextualize what is
being studied, debate exists on whether or not this
is the best way to study psychology. Stedman,
Sweetman, and Hancock (2008) discuss scientific
realism in contrast with hermeneutic perspectives. These hermeneutic positions generally
espouse that psychological “truths” are embedded in history, culture, and social practice and
that these truths do not hold beyond these particular contexts in any objective and independent
manner to personal experience (which is the
claim of scientific realism).
Philosophical Psychology, Overview
What is the role of the individual in a global
society? Should psychology be a normative
science? Does the study of psychology today
encroach on or perhaps act superior to socioculturally specific or indigenous interpretations of
human phenomenon? Most of psychology as we
know it is influenced by western thought and
therefore focuses heavily on notions of individuality. There is seemingly a de-emphasis on the
sociocultural and political contexts in which psychology takes place. Still, many attempt to pay lip
service to these concerns; however, they still
remain positioned within individualist psychology. Critical psychology addresses this fundamental concern of psychology by using critical
theory, that is, perspectives that challenge the
mainstream individualistic and interpersonal
focus and move to a higher sociocultural and
politically oriented focus (see Fox, Prilleltensky,
& Austin, 2009).
International Relevance
Topics in philosophical psychology are extensively addressed in several international journals,
including Philosophical Psychology; Journal of
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology; Theory and Psychology; and Philosophy, Psychiatry,
and Psychology.
Organizations that are dedicated to philosophical psychology include American Psychological Association divisions 24 (Society for
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) and
32 (Society for Humanistic Psychology), the
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the
European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and International Society for Theoretical
Psychology.
Practice Relevance
Philosophical underpinnings are important as
a basis for a method of inquiry and way of understanding human psychology. Each theory and
methodology carries its own strengths and
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weaknesses in addressing basic philosophical
concerns. Teo (2009) contends that psychology,
as it stands now, is problematic in that it has not
effectively addressed three key issues (1) ontology and subject matter, (2) epistemology and
methodology, and (3) ethical-political praxis.
He argues that a psychology of the future needs
to be more reflective, inviting diverse methodologies to study the embedded contextuality of
psychological and mental phenomenon as well
as ethically sound practices to deal with relevant
global issues and to challenge entrenched
traditional perspectives.
Future Directions
This entry is but a brief overview of a very
complex and much researched topic and is by
no means an exhaustive account. We must recall
the first position addressed in this entry – that
of identifying exactly what is psychology’s purpose. The limitations and narrow focus of individualistic psychology are clear and there are
movements that look to recast psychology in
intersubjective, embodied, embedded, contextual, ecological, feminist, indigenous, and sociocultural ways. Furthermore, many of these
perspectives close dualistic gaps that occur
frequently in psychology, which have been mentioned previously in this entry. Consequently, the
question remains whether or not current empirical methods are able to accommodate the shift, or
if other methods need to be borrowed from other
fields, or perhaps created.
References
Bermúdez, J. L. (2005). Philosophy of psychology:
A contemporary introduction. New York:
Routledge.
Botterill, G., & Carruthers, P. (1999). The philosophy of
psychology. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Descartes, R. (1993). Meditations on first philosophy: In
which the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul are demonstrated (3rd Edn., trans: Cress, D.A.).
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Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. (Original work published in
1641)
First, M. B. (2010). Paradigm shifts and the development
of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders: Past experiences and future aspirations.
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 55, 692–700.
Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009).
Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Freud, S. (1995). The basic writings of Sigmund Freud.
New York: Random House.
Freud, S. (1960). The ego and the id. (trans: Riviere, J.).
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Giobbi, M. (2010). A post cognitive negation: The sadomasochistic dialectic of American. New York: Atropos.
Herschbach, M. (2008). Folk psychological and phenomenological accounts of social perception. Philosophical Explorations, 11, 223–235.
Potter, J. (2000). Post-cognitive psychology. Theory &
Psychology, 10, 31–37.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin.
Stedman, J. M., Sweetman, B., & Hancock, C. (2008).
Hermeneutics and scientific realism: Rival philosophical claims in psychology. Contemporary Philosophy,
28(3), 40–48.
Stolorow, R. (2011). World, affectivity, and trauma:
Heidegger and post-cartesian psychoanalysis.
New York: Routledge.
Szasz, T. (2005). What counts as a disease? The gold
standard of disease versus the fiat standard of diagnosis. The Independent Review, 10, 325–336.
Teo, T. (2009). Philosophical concerns in critical psychology. In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.),
Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.,
pp. 38–53). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York,
NY: Basic Books.
Online Resources
Cognitive Processes Classes, Muskingum College,
Department of Psychology (Fall, 1997). History of
cognitive psychology. Retrieved from, http://www.
muskingum.edu/psych/psycweb/history/cognitiv.htm
Chalmers, D. (n.d.). Guide to philosophy of mind.
Retrieved from, http://consc.net/guide.html
Kelly, S. D. (2007). Harvard philosophical psychology
laboratory. Retrieved from, http://www.fas.harvard.
edu/ppl/
Mason, K., Sripada, C. S., & Stich, S. (n.d.). The philosophy of psychology. In: D. Moral (Ed.), Routledge
companion to twentieth-century philosophy. London:
Routledge. Retrieved from, http://www.rci.rutgers.
edu/stich/Publications/Papers/PHILOSOPHYofPSY
CHOLOGY.pdf
Mergel, B., (1998). The basics of cognitivism. Retrieved
from,
http://www.utc.edu/Faculty/Mike-McIntyre/
basics_of_cognitivism.htm
Place
Place
Stephanie Taylor
Department of Psychology, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, UK
Introduction
Place is a problematic concept for psychologists
because it inevitably raises the question of the
connection between place and person, which, of
course, is not fixed. An exploration of the
significance of (any) place must consider issues
raised by interpretation and mobility. Although
the study of place has conventionally been the
concern of environmental and cognitive psychology, critical psychologists are likely to work
within a different paradigm to consider the complex, unstable, reflexive, and unfolding nature of
relationships to place which are shaped but never
wholly determined by collective understandings
and identifications.
Definition
Place most commonly refers to the physical
environment in which the psychological subject
is located. However, any specification of
“place” is complicated by the multiple terms
in which it may be defined. Even in supposedly
external or objective terms, a location is open to
description in terms of different scales and
component features (e.g., room, building, street;
the décor, furniture, condition of the room, people
present). Then there are the different possible
statuses of any place, including those given by
its naming, official designation (e.g., as the territory of a particular nation-state), and uses. It is
therefore necessary to consider the salience of
various aspects of place which tends to shift the
focus from “place” to the connection between
place and person, and hence to people’s relationships to place.
Place
Keywords
Place; place-identity; mobility; born and bred
narrative
Traditional Debates
Place may be reduced to elements or dimensions
which supposedly impact on the psychological
subject, for example, as part of a process of
attachment and the formation of an identity.
This kind of modeling is strongly associated
with environmental psychology, for example, in
the work of Canter (1977), Breakwell (e.g.,
Breakwell, 1986), and Twigger-Ross and Uzzell
(e.g., Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). It must still
take account of the problem that the perception or
experience of place is selective and almost
inevitably subjective, in the sense of being
shaped by personal experience and associations.
Relationships to place are often discussed in
terms of identity (see entry). The concept of
place-identity (sometimes but not always hyphenated) was originally proposed by Proshansky,
Fabian, and Kaminoff (1983/1995). Working in
a cognitive tradition, they suggested that the self is
“a stable, unified and integrated system” (p. 88)
and that place-identity is a “substructure” of this
system. They define place-identity as made up of
a person’s “cognitions” of her or his current and
former, and possible future, physical environments. In their words, “These cognitions represent
memories, ideas, feelings, attitudes, values, preferences, meanings, and conceptions of behaviour
and experience” (p. 89). The essential features of
this theory, then, are its emphasis on mental phenomena (the cognitions) which function to maintain a stable system, adjusting, for example, to
accommodate changes in the physical world or
in other parts of the system.
The narrative psychologist Theodore R.
Sarbin (2005) proposed a reformulation of the
concept of place-identity, arguing that there
needed to be some “organizing principle” for
how the cognitions were brought together. He
suggested that “narrative emplotment” could
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provide such a principle. The “functional and
symbolic features of particular place,” (p. 2)
including their “historical and symbolic qualities,” could contribute to life stories and identities
linked to place.
These two conceptions of place-identity are
similar in that they assume the possibility of
a stable and integrated whole, that is, the system
of the self or the structured narrative emplotment.
Change and disruption may occur but the tendency
is for the integrity of the self or emplotment
to be restored. There is also an assumption that
this functioning is largely outside awareness.
The two conceptions can be criticized for the
assumptions of stability and closure (associated
with a structural rather than a poststructuralist
ontology) and for their failure to accommodate
sufficiently people’s reflexive awareness of
place, linked, for example, to decisions about
mobility. They have also been criticized for giving
insufficient attention to collective meanings.
Critical Debates
Any attempt to define place as if objectively
viewed, for example, in terms of the physical
features of an environment, raises some of the
issues which the concept presents for critical
psychologists. Can the influence of a place be
separated from an individual’s selective perceptions, unique life practices, and the associations
the place carries for her or him, and can these in
turn be considered separately to collective understandings, including the political meanings
attached to places? An exploration of associations, meanings, and practices shifts the focus
of study from the place itself to relationships
to place. These inevitably differ because of the
variety of functions, and economic and legal
statuses, which the “same” place can have for
different people.
Durrheim and Dixon (2005) challenge the
concept of place-identity, outlined above, for its
claims to universality, a paradigmatic feature of
cognitive psychology. Their interest is in
post-apartheid South African society, and they
suggest that an understanding of dislocation in
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relation to place in South Africa must take
account of specificities of the sociohistoric context and its politics, including collective,
intergroup identifications with place which, they
suggest, place-identity cannot adequately
account for. They also criticize the mechanistic
aspect of cognitive explanations (another
paradigmatic feature), suggesting that the discontinuity involved in dislocation is “achieved rather
than simply aroused” (p. 204). These criticisms
point to the need for an account of place identification as reflexive and active.
The relevance of identities of place, including
national or regional identities, is further complicated by mobility. For example, Taylor (2010)
discusses the issue that the importance of a place
of residence derives from a narrative of “successive
generations living in the same place, sharing
a common “born and bred” identity derived from
blood and tradition” (pp. 11–12). The importance
of the narrative is not as a description, since many
or most people’s lives do not conform to it, but as
a discursive or cultural resource for the construction of relationships to place. Taylor employs
a narrative-discursive approach, based in critical
discursive psychology, which explores active identity work in relation to place, involving choice and
negotiation. She emphasizes the selective and personal but also constrained relationships which
women construct to their places of residence.
Collective identifications are resources for
such identity work but do not ultimately determine it: people’s relationships to the same place
vary within the limits given by such identifications. Indeed, one further issue around the definition of place is that it is necessarily fluid and
variable. As already noted, both named and
unnamed places admit of multiple descriptions
which incorporate different features, including
even their extent and boundaries. In addition,
places can be modified and people can change
their relationships to place by moving, in the
moment and longer-term, for example, through
changes of residence and migration.
The processes through which dominant versions
and definitions are established and reinforced have
been discussed, for example, by Michael Billig
(1995) in relation to national places. Contests
Pluralism
around them relate to the claims of belonging associated with nationality, ethnicity, and also home
and to conflicting and disputed uses of the same
places. Contests are linked to the racialized, gendered, and classed meanings attached to places,
whether specific (like named places) or generic
(the nation; home). For critical psychologists,
place is therefore a pertinent aspect of many larger
topics and issues rather than a topic in itself.
References
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
Breakwell, G. M. (1986). Coping with threatened identity.
London: Methuen.
Canter, D. (1977). The psychology of place. London: The
Architectural Press.
Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2005). Racial encounter: The
social psychology of contact and desegregation. Hove,
UK: Routledge.
Proshansky, H., Fabian, A., & Kaminoff, R. (1995).
Place-identity: Physical world socialization of the
self. In L. Groat (Ed.), Giving places meaning.
London: Academic Press.
Sarbin, T. (2005). If these walls could talk: Places as
stages for human drama. Journal of Constructivist
Psychology, 18, 203–214.
Taylor, S. (2010). Narratives of identity and place. Hove,
UK: Routledge.
Twigger-Ross, C., & Uzzell, D. (1996). Place and identity
processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology,
16, 205–220.
Pluralism
Jason Goertzen
Department of Social Sciences, University
of Alberta, Augustana Campus, Camrose, AB,
Canada
Introduction
At least since its establishment as an independent
discipline in the nineteenth century, psychology
has been characterized by persistent and pervasive pluralism. Furthermore, this pluralism has
generally penetrated to the fundamental level
of philosophical underpinnings, specifically in
Pluralism
terms of the discipline’s ontological scope, theoretical and methodological perspectives, and
axiological commitments. As a result, psychology has never had a common identity adhered to
by the majority of its members; instead, recognizing its diverse “core,” the discipline has
been more aptly described by Koch (1981) as
“the psychological studies.” Indeed, historically, pluralism has been a constant, from
Wilhelm Wundt’s (1832–1920) distinction
between
experimental
psychology
and
V€olkerpsychologie, through the early twentieth
century era of “schools” of psychological thought
(e.g., structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism,
psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology), and to the
contemporary proliferation of psychological perspectives. However, throughout this same time
period, psychology’s pluralistic status has also
been repeatedly contested (e.g., Staats, 1983;
Willy, 1899). As a result, pluralism has generally
existed in tension with an opposing quest for
greater disciplinary coherence. Often intertwined
with debates surrounding psychology’s ambivalent status as a “full” or “true” science, this
“unity-disunity” debate has attracted compelling
arguments for enhancing both disciplinary cohesion and diversity, as well as for combating
both disciplinary uniformity and fragmentation
(for an overview, see Goertzen, 2008).
Definition
Providing a singular definition of pluralism would
be contrary to its very nature. However, for
simplicity, pluralism might be reasonably and
broadly defined as a standpoint – relevant for
multiple levels of analysis (e.g., ontological,
theoretical,
methodological,
axiological,
practical) – that recognizes the coexistence of
incommensurably distinct, legitimate perspectives. Furthermore, this coexistence may take various forms, including, for example, distinctive
independence, collaborative exchange, and competitive struggle. Finally, pluralistic systems
(e.g., of knowledge) are generally dynamic,
involving movement in either centripetal or centrifugal directions – or both (cf., Bakhtin, 1982).
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Keywords
Coherence; disunity; diversity; pluralism; unity
Traditional Debates
In “mainstream” psychology, traditional debates
regarding pluralism revolve around a central
unity-disunity debate. In short, should psychology aim to overcome its “fragmentation” and
achieve a singular, unifying “paradigm,” which
might, in turn, solidify psychology’s status as
a full or true science? Or, should psychology
aim to embrace, and even enhance, its “diversity,” which, in turn, might better account for an
inherent multiplicity amongst psychological subject matter? For example, Staats (1983) argues
that psychology is a “modern disunified science”
in that, relative to sciences such as physics, psychology emerged as an independent discipline
only recently; and, furthermore, it has done so
during a historical period where a multitude of
psychologists proliferate knowledge at a rapid
rate. As a result, psychology faces an annually
increasing challenge of how to establish coherence amongst its expansive knowledge base.
Furthermore, in part due to having an ontological
scope that includes a broad array of often
unobservable, as well as seemingly schismatic
(e.g., subject-object, mind-body, nature-nurture),
subject matter, psychology may be characterized
by “separatism,” which involves a general sense
of alienation and isolation amongst divergently
specialized psychologists. To overcome this
overall problematic, Staats argues a framework
for pursuing greater unity is necessary.
However, in contrast, Koch (1981), for example, argues that psychology cannot be a full or
true science – primarily because its ontological
scope includes both objective subject matter that
may be studied experimentally and (inter-) subjective subject matter that must be approached
using interpretive (i.e., qualitative) methods. In
other words, Koch argues that some aspects of
psychology are scientific, while others are more
similar to the humanities. Thus, recognizing the
“two cultures” within psychology (i.e., scientific
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vs. humanistic; cf., Kimble, 1984) as incommensurably distinct, legitimate perspectives – each of
which are themselves also pluralistic – Koch
champions pluralism by reframing psychology
as the psychological studies. As a result, unity is
neither possible (at least without illegitimately
altering, reducing, or excluding perspectives
from one or the other culture) nor desirable.
Critical Debates
Rather than being up for debate, pluralism is
generally embraced by critical psychologists as
a desirable defining characteristic of their work.
For example, Frosh (2000) defines critical psychology as “an attack on purity. . .Much of the
history of the twentieth century has revolved
around a battle between ‘pure things’ and ‘dappled things’, between those who believe they
possess the ‘truth’ (and would like to impose it
on others) and those who wish to celebrate otherness, multiplicity and diversity” (p. 56). Indeed,
when one surveys major works in the field of
critical psychology, such as Fox, Prilleltensky,
and Austin (2009), one finds represented within
a firm commitment to celebrating otherness, multiplicity, and diversity – i.e., pluralism. Furthermore, as articulated in Fox et al., critical
psychology goes beyond mere celebration to pursue a social justice mandate of challenging
inequality and oppression within society more
generally. As a result, for critical psychologists,
pluralism also extends to combating marginality
and discrimination based on, for example, race,
class, gender, disability, and mental health. In
sum, recognizing the coexistence of incommensurably distinct, legitimate perspectives is
a defining feature of critical psychology that, in
turn, also supports the field’s commitment to
social justice.
Policy, Overview
Frosh, S. (2000). In praise of unclean things: Critical
psychology, diversity and disruption. In T. Sloan
(Ed.), Critical psychology: Voices for change
(pp. 55–66). New York: St. Martin’s.
Goertzen, J. R. (2008). On the possibility of unification:
The reality and nature of the crisis in psychology.
Theory & Psychology, 18(6), 829–852.
Kimble, G. A. (1984). Psychology’s two cultures. American Psychologist, 39(8), 833–839.
Koch, S. (1981). The nature and limits of psychological
knowledge: Lessons of a century qua “science”. American Psychologist, 36(3), 257–269.
Staats, A. W. (1983). Psychology’s crisis of disunity:
Philosophy and method for a unified science. New
York: Praeger.
Willy, R. (1899). Die krisis in der psychologie. Leipzig,
Germany: O. R. Reisland.
Online Resources
Gregg Henriques’ blog on his approach to unifying
psychology. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/
theory-knowledge
Unity in psychology by Robert J. Sternberg. http://www.
apa.org/pubs/books/4316065.aspx
Psychology in human context by Sigmund Koch. http://www.
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3625527.
html
Asia/Canada page on pluralism and democracy. http://
asia-canada.ca/new-attitudes/defining-citizenship/pluralism-and-democracy
The Global Centre for pluralism. http://www.pluralism.ca/
The Pluralism project at Harvard University. http://pluralism.org/pages/pluralism/what_is_pluralism
Policy, Overview
Stephanie Austin1 and Kristine Hirschkorn2
1
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa,
Ottawa, ON, Canada
2
Ontario Health Human Resources Research
Network, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Introduction
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1982). The dialogic imagination: Four
essays (C. Emerson & M. Hoquist, Trans.). Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press.
Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009).
Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Critical psychology has been defined in a variety of
ways. In this entry, it is conceptualized as the
subdiscipline of psychology which attempts to
find alternatives to the way psychology as
a whole has reduced human experience to the
level of the individual, thereby neglecting the
Policy, Overview
discipline’s consideration of the broader social and
political environments in which human beings live.
Through this entry, linkages between critical
psychology, critical social policy, and women’s
health policy are identified. The neglect of gender
and women’s health considerations is an instance
of social exclusion and social injustice, some of
the social problems that critical psychology
attempts to address. Because critical social policy
is a means of addressing social exclusion and
injustice through increased public engagement,
it is a mechanism that has tremendous potential
from a critical psychology perspective.
This entry will define the term “policy,”
describe its history, and discuss its application
in women’s health in Canada. It will then identify
actions that people working in community, academic, or government settings can undertake to
tap the critical potential held in policy work.
Definition
Although many authors have discussed and
proposed a range of definitions over the
years, the term policy is not easily defined
(e.g., refer to Dobuzinskis, Howlett, & Laycock,
2007; Dye, 1978, quoted in Miljan, 2008;
Fischer, Miller, & Sidney, 2007; Gerston, 2010;
Goodin, Rein, & Moran, 2006; Guba, 1984,
referenced in O’Connor & Netting, 2011
referenced in Fischer et al., 2007; Pal, 2010). In
its most general sense, policy is the art and science of identifying a course of action to solve
a recognized problem. As such, policy encompasses evidence-based analysis, as well as
normative considerations and value judgments.
As a course of action (and in some cases, deliberate inaction), policy involves intention. Policy
is developed in response to, and often in reaction
to, a problem that has been recognized by those in
a position to take action.
Of particular interest to this entry is public policy, defined as “a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a given problem
or interrelated set of problems” by Pal (2010, p. 2).
Public policy takes place at the local/municipal,
state/provincial, federal, and international levels.
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Social policy, in turn, can be defined as “chosen
courses of action within unique contexts with goals
of preventing and addressing social problems”
(O’Connor & Netting, 2011, p. 13).
Some social problems of particular concern in
critical psychology are social injustice, inequity,
and exclusion (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009).
As such, a critical psychology perspective on policy would seek to address social problems of this
nature and to engage marginalized communities in
the identification of the problems, as well as the
formulation and implementation of policy aimed at
addressing these problems. Very little work in
psychology to date has focused on policy. Action
research in community psychology has sometimes
targeted policy change to address social injustice,
inequity, and exclusion. For example, the problems
of child and family poverty (e.g., Bouchard Québec Ministère de la santé et des services sociaux &
Québec Groupe de travail pour les jeunes, 1991),
institutionalized racism in healthcare settings
(e.g., Griffith et al., 2007), and homelessness
(e.g., Fuller, Browne, Beaulac, & Aubry, 2006;
Starnes, 2004) have been addressed by critically
minded community psychologists. A critical psychology perspective on policy has yet to be fully
developed.
Drawing on the policy and critical psychology
literatures, the following definition of a critical
psychology approach to policy is proposed:
coordinated action undertaken in an inclusive
manner to prevent or address the problems of
social injustice, inequity, and exclusion.
Keywords
Public policy; social policy
History
The conception of the social sciences as methods
of problem-solving (Torgerson, 2007) and the
establishment of policy as a social scientific
endeavor in the mid-twentieth century is
attributed largely to the American political scientist, Harold D. Lasswell (DeLeon, 2006; DeLeon
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& Martell, 2006; DeLeon & Vogenbeck, 2007;
Dunn, 2004; Fischer et al., 2007; Hupe & Hill,
2006). Despite Lasswell’s intention for a “policy
orientation” that embodied a multi-method,
multidisciplinary, and contextual approach to public policy, a hegemony of rational, (neo)positivist,
empirical, and quantitative visions of public policy
analysis emerged in the latter half of the century
(Fischer et al., 2007; Hupe & Hill, 2006;
Torgerson, 2007). The corresponding reliance on
technocratic expertise is linked to a belief in the
state’s capacity to exercise control in a top-down
manner (Goodin et al., 2006).
By the end of the twentieth century, limitations
to this rationalist orientation to policy emerged. In
particular, the approach was criticized for not ultimately delivering on the provision of practical
solutions and for ignoring the normative and
value-laden aspects that characterize the real
world of policy making (DeLeon & Vogenbeck,
2007; Fischer et al., 2007; Goodin et al., 2006;
Pal, 2010). The limits of instrumental rationality
and top-down attempts to exercise control in light
of complexity and interdependence were increasingly realized and contrasted with the reality of
imperfect evidence informing reactive decisionmaking (Goodin et al., 2006; O’Connor & Netting,
2011). In light of these limitations, the notion of
“governance” has increasingly emerged to characterize policy making (DeLeon & Martell, 2006;
Hupe & Hill, 2006; Pal, 2010; Paquet, 2005;
Prince, 2010). Paquet (2000), for example, defines
governance as the “effective coordination in the
steering of an organization where knowledge and
power are distributed” (f.2). A rationalist policy
analysis movement nonetheless still exists and,
according to some authors, has seen resurgence
in the 1990s, albeit with a greater recognition of
the limits of centralized state control and more
modest goals with respect to the role of systematic
analytical methods in improving policy outcomes
(Dobuzinskis et al., 2007; Pal, 2010).
Traditional Debates
At the same time, however, a greater diversity of
approaches to policy and policy analysis has
Policy, Overview
emerged that can broadly be characterized as
“post-positivist” (DeLeon & Vogenbeck, 2007)
or “critical” (Goodin et al., 2006). These
approaches incorporate normative and rhetorical
aspects in their understandings of the policy
process, advocate more participatory approaches
to policy development, and employ interdisciplinary and context-sensitive methodologies
(DeLeon & Martell, 2006; DeLeon &
Vogenbeck, 2007; Fischer, 2007; Fischer et al.,
2007; Gottweis, 2007). Network approaches that
seek to better understand horizontal processes
and interconnectivity among policy actors have
also increased in number (DeLeon & Martell,
2006; DeLeon & Vogenbeck, 2007).
In this diversity of approaches are elements
that could inform a critical psychology approach
to policy. For example, critical theories of
policy have the broad emancipatory goal of
empowering the marginalized and advocate
critique, reflexivity, as well as the clarification
of values, norms, and policy paradigms (Carson,
Burns, & Calvo, 2009; Dryzek, 2006; Goodin
et al., 2006; O’Connor & Netting, 2011; Surel,
2009). The role of participatory and discursive
democracy, as well as qualitative research
methods (including action research), in contributing to critical policy is also explored (Larason,
Schneider, & Ingram, 2007; Sadovnik, 2007).
Turning to the field of psychology, the hegemony of the rationalist, (neo) positivist, empirical, and quantitative paradigm has also operated
forcefully. The discipline has been concerned
with maintaining legitimacy as a science; as
such, it has invested substantial effort in demonstrating its objectivity and minimal effort in
reflecting on its relevance to understanding and
resolving human and social problems. This
neglect of social issues and exclusion of marginalized voices has contributed to significant limitations in the discipline’s capacity to offer
practical solutions to important social problems.
Exceptions to this include psychologists
Kenneth and Mamie Clark whose research on
the psychological effects of racial segregation
provided the evidence base for a historic change
of course in educational policy in the USA (Clark
& Clark, 1947). The Clarks’ work was cited by
Policy, Overview
the US Supreme Court in the ruling that racially
segregated schools were inherently unequal and
therefore unconstitutional in 1954. This decision
was a turning point in the civil rights movement
of the 1960s, allowing black citizens in the USA
rights and responsibilities equal to white citizens.
In Québec, Canada, Camil Bouchard’s
community-based research in the early 1990s
culminated in a report entitled Un Québec fou
de ses enfants which made 53 recommendations
over 10 years to reduce poverty, prevent neglect
and abuse, and promote parental support and
early childhood education (Bouchard Québec
Ministère de la santé et des services sociaux &
Québec Groupe de travail pour les jeunes, 1991).
This report was influential in leading the way to
a family- and child-friendly social policy agenda
in the province of Québec and served as a model
for other provinces across Canada.
While psychologists involved in social policy
have not represented the norm in North American
psychology (Torre & Fine, 2011; Torre, Fine,
Stoudt, & Fox, 2012), there is a small but vocal
contingent of psychologists who advocate for such
changes in the discipline. Seymour Sarason (1984)
may have been one of the first to explicitly call
for more engagement in applied social research
that can lead to policy change. Among critical
psychology thinkers, there have been softer
calls for more policy-relevant scholarship
(Fox et al., 2009). The Public Science Project
(www.publicscienceproject.org) is a current
example of psychologists collaborating with academics, community organizations, schools,
prisons, and public institutions to design, conduct,
and support research and practice aimed at
interrupting injustice.
Critical Debates
The 1990s saw substantial attention devoted to
women’s health and gender issues by Canada’s
federal government. Specifically, the former
Women’s Health Bureau was established in
1993, the Liberal Party’s Red Book (1993)
contained a series of women’s health commitments, the Federal Plan for Gender Equality was
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released in 1995, Health Canada’s Women’s
Health Contribution Program was established in
1996, and Health Canada’s Women’s Health
Strategy was launched in 1999.
Health Canada’s Women’s Health Contribution Program (WHCP) was a financial policy
instrument that provided a mechanism for allocating public funds to organizations addressing
women’s health issues. The WHCP, which forms
the basis of the case study elaborated in this entry,
was established to address gaps in women’s
health research. In addition to the Centres of
Excellence funded through the WHCP to produce
policy-relevant women’s health research, the
Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN)
was funded to facilitate national networking of
women’s health organizations in Canada, to communicate the research findings of the Centres of
Excellence and other initiatives, and to act as
a clearinghouse for women’s health information.
The terms and conditions of each contribution
agreement in the WHCP stipulated that community, academic, and professional partnerships
should guide each research project.
The policy-relevant research produced
through the WHCP focused on how the Canadian
health system could be more responsive to the
needs of women and the promotion of women’s
health (Majury, 1999). By engaging women
directly, often through qualitative and participatory research methods, the WHCP reinforced
participatory democracy and engaged citizenship. Policy advice produced through the
WHCP was reflective of a wide variety of
views, often purposefully inclusive of marginalized voices to promote social justice, equity, and
inclusion (Tudiver, 2009). The knowledgebrokering role, played by CWHN especially,
was essential in translating research findings
into policy-relevant evidence that could inform
the policy-making process. There was also
a strong commitment on the part of the former
Bureau of Women’s Health at Health Canada and
the Centres of Excellence to widely disseminate
research results to varied audiences, including
federal, provincial, and territorial governments;
community groups and organizations; as well as
to other academic researchers and students.
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In the history of the WHCP, there were challenges in the working relationships between governments, universities, and communities. Power
differentials existed between academics and
community groups. There were concerns
expressed about tokenism from community partners who felt they were only involved in projects
because it was a funding requirement. Tensions
between researchers and government policy
makers also existed. For example, universitybased researchers’ training, their scholarly writing
style, and the academic reward structure made
some of the research produced through the
WHCP difficult to integrate into the policymaking context of the federal government.
Research that was not easily understood by policy
makers, that was hard to locate and to decipher,
remained on the shelf. The value of critique, which
is an inherent part of academic freedom, was not
interpreted in the same way by federal government
officials as by university or nongovernment
colleagues. Critique from external sources may
be dismissed in the policy-making process as
“advocacy” rather than “expert” advice. These
culture clashes sometimes thwarted efforts to
facilitate uptake and integration of women’s health
research in policy development (Majury, 1999).
Nevertheless, there were some gains in
women’s health in Canada through the work of
the WHCP and its government counterpart, the
Bureau of Women’s Health. Reconciling the
research, community and policy divides allowed
such gains to be made. For example, some of the
reports produced by the Centres of Excellence for
Women’s Health that synthesized and analyzed
existing research, drew out the policy implications, and offered policy advice were very useful
to the policy development process (Majury,
1999). More concretely, reports that were produced by the Centres on tobacco use among
women (Greaves, Jategaonkar, & Sanchez,
2006), on the need for a sex- and gender-based
analysis of Canada’s Chemicals Management
Plan (Lewis, 2011), on the impact of wait times
for health services among women (Jackson,
Pederson, & Boscoe, 2009), and on the mental
health needs of women (Ad Hoc Working Group
on Women, Mental & Mental Illness and
Policy, Overview
Addictions, 2006) were influential in health policy
both in Canada and internationally. The Health
Portfolio (Health Canada, Public Health Agency
of Canada and Canadian Institutes of Health
Research) policy on sex- and gender-based analysis, developed jointly between the Bureau of
Women’s Health and the WHCP, has come into
force since 2009. The policy stipulates that every
Memorandum to Cabinet and Treasury Board
Submission must demonstrate how the proposed
policy has undertaken a gender-based analysis.
There is a mechanism of mandatory review and
compliance with the sex- and gender-based analysis policy in all proposed initiatives whether they
be new legislation, policy, or programs. This policy has sensitized federal government departments
to the value and utility of considering gender
upfront in order to develop federal health policy
that supports gender equality.
Perhaps because of a willingness to engage
with these tensions between the research and
policy contexts, as well as the community and
academic voices, women’s health policy in
Canada remained on the agenda for nearly two
decades – until the announcement in April 2012
from the government that its funding would be
discontinued as of March 31, 2013. Despite the
challenges involved in working across differences, these partnerships are essential to policy
work. The mediating role of the WHCP has
enabled governments to more effectively reach
the women’s health community. Furthermore, the
willingness of academic and government actors
to engage with marginalized communities, to
think critically about important social problems,
and to constantly question, challenge, and work
through diverse positions is an essential quality
that set the WHCP apart from other social policy
instruments. The actors’ commitment to social
justice, equity, and inclusion is an additional feature that unites disparate positions and helps
define policy options that are commensurate
with the goals of critical psychology.
International Relevance
The literature presented in the traditional debates
section of this entry draws on policy scholarship
Policy, Overview
from Canada, the USA, and Europe. It is applicable to contexts that have similar structures of government and decision-making. The case study of
the Women’s Health Contribution Program is specific to Canada but may be relevant to international contexts with similar policy mechanisms.
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Practice Relevance
The practical relevance of a critical psychological approach to policy is its capacity to address
social injustice, inequity, and exclusion, with the
WHCP representing a real-life example of this
potential. In particular, critically oriented policy
coordination can be accomplished by bridging
some of the divides that exist between the academic, government, and community spheres and
navigating the tension that is inevitable and
necessary to inclusive public engagement. Community members have the lived experience of the
social problems they are dealing with and therefore possess insider knowledge that a researcher or
a policy maker does not usually have, for example,
about what has worked or not worked to alleviate
the problem. Academic researchers are uniquely
positioned to systematically evaluate social issues
and place lived experience into a broader context
and history. They also have the legitimacy, the
resources, and the language to clearly articulate
the underlying social problem and policy directions that are grounded in the lived experiences of
research participants. Government actors know
the inner workings of decision-making and can
identify windows of opportunity as well as shape
key messaging to improve the uptake of critically
informed analysis and policy advice.
The manner in which policy, or policy advice,
is undertaken and communicated is essential to
improving policy coordination between these
three spheres. Actors in each of these spheres
can play a role by:
• Community, academic, and government
actors endeavoring to understand the decision-making process; identifying and building
relationships with key individuals across settings; appreciating one another’s respective
constraints and potentialities; recognizing
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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and respecting each other’s protocols, values,
and secrets; and learning to navigate the tensions and challenges of each setting.
All actors working together to build alliances
because “allies can provide inside information, assist in mapping a strategy, make
introductions and connections, and smooth
the way. Senior allies can become champions
of the advice and promote it themselves”
(Majury, 1999, p. 21).
Academics involving the policy audience in
defining their research topics.
Government actors refining their requests for
proposals (RFPs) with input from community
members and academic researchers.
Academics using action oriented and participatory methodologies in their research.
Government actors funding innovative
research projects with designs that are more
flexible, participatory, and action oriented
because these have a greater chance of revealing and actually meeting community needs.
Government actors coordinating action that is
grounded in the research findings and inclusive public engagement, even when it may
conflict with current policy or practice.
Academics considering the following qualities
of good policy advice: brevity, clarity, and
logical presentation, positive and constructive
tone, straightforward style, presentation and
assessment of options, and justification for the
recommended course of action (Majury, 1999).
Academics synthesizing and disseminating the
results of their research in a timely fashion for
a policy audience (i.e., using press releases,
one-page syntheses of main findings).
All actors developing media savvy because
political leaders are very responsive to public
opinion.
Future Directions
Policy, from a critical psychology perspective,
holds great promise for promoting social
change, but it requires engagement by government,
community, and academic actors committed to
addressing power differentials. To illustrate this
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potential, consider this example from one of the
directors of the WHCP’s National Network on
Environments and Women’s Health (Scott &
Sabzwari, 2012). A community group initiated
a call for action on environmental racism in their
First Nations community. In order to move their
issue forward, they called on academic researchers
to study the effects of the pollution on community
members’ health. The researchers and community
members built alliances with policy makers at all
levels of government by meeting with key analysts
and making presentations to senior managers and
elected officials. By working together across sectors, policy options are being explored to, for
example, perhaps fund additional monitoring and
surveillance of the health effects of specific toxins
or to consider legislation and regulations to alter
the manufacturing practices used by industry in the
local area. What a difference can be made by
engaging in this kind of work!
References
Ad Hoc Working Group on Women, Mental Health,
Mental Illness and Addictions. (2006). Women, mental
health, mental illness and addiction in Canada:
An overview. Canadian Women’s Health Network,
Winnipeg, Canada.
Bouchard, C. Québec Ministère de la santé et des services
sociaux & Québec Groupe de travail pour les jeunes.
(1991). Un Québec fou de ses enfants: Rapport du
Groupe de travail pour les jeunes. Québec: Direction
de Communications, Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux.
Carson, M., Burns, T. R., & Calvo, D. (2009). Introduction. In M. Carson, T. R. Burns, & D. Calvo (Eds.),
Paradigms in public policy: Theory and practice of
paradigm shifts in the EU (pp. 11–28). Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang.
Clark, K. B., & Clark, M. P. (1947). Racial identification
and preference among Negro children. In E. L. Hartley
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DeLeon, P. (2006). The historical roots of the field. In M.
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Political Psychology
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Boca Raton: CRC Press.
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women into Canada’s chemicals management plan.
Toronto: National Network on Environments and
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inroads into Canadian health policy: A policy advice
framework report to the Centres of Excellence for
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(5th ed.). Toronto: Oxford University Press.
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Online Resources
www.publicscienceproject.org
Political Psychology
Gilda Sensales1 and Alessandra Dal Secco2
1
Department of Psychology of Development and
Socialization Processes, Sapienza University of
Rome, Rome, Italy
2
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
London Metropolitan University, UK
Introduction
Political psychology is now considered an
expanding disciplinary field. The different psychological approaches to politics have led some
scholars (e.g., Sears, Huddy, & Jervis, 2003) to
understand the discipline as a plurality of articulations. These spring from a recent growing
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interest in diversifying the methodological, theoretical, and disciplinary levels. Indeed, looking
to its past, full adherence to one perspective
over others, while narrowing the focus of
attention, might have led to some forms of reductionism. As stated by Margaret Hermann (2002),
anthropologists, historians, and political and
communication scientists, on the one side, have
privileged the importance of the context in their
effort to understand political phenomena, while,
psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, on
the other, have been more interested in finding
generalizations independent of contextual factors. In recent years, this divide based on the
assumption of one single locus of influence,
meaning, and value in political matters, and
generally in human affairs, has been questioned.
However, the urge to trascend the various forms
of reductionism, thanks also to the stimuli coming from the critical field, is now growing in
favor of a theoretical orientation recognizing the
complex ways in which social life is structured.
This acknowledges that thoughts and feelings of
both individuals and groups are socially and discursively constituted and that all are incorporated
in the context of their membership.
Definition
With an overarching definition, the field of political psychology can be described as aimed at investigating “the ways in which political institutions
influence and are influenced by human behavior”
(Jost & Sidanius, 2004). While this definition
rests on bidirectional and interactive models,
their consolidation in the history of the discipline
has been slow and complex. Despite the current
recognition of the interplay of the political/institutional and the individual, studies concentrating
on how the political system influences individual
behavior remain a minority, while those considering and disentangling such interaction are still rare.
In fact, political psychology has been structured
over an imbalanced attention favoring a psychological individuocentric perspective, only recently
matched by greater attention to the societal
dimension (Catellani, 2004, p. 53).
Political Psychology
Keywords
Mainstream vs critical political psychology;
Political communication; Nonverbal communication; Automatic psychological process; Social
representation theory; Rhetorical-discursive
approach; Collective and social movements
History
The various attempts at systematization of political psychology have often ignored the European
roots, in accordance with a trend of mainstream
USA self-referential approaches. Looking at the
construction of the discipline from a historical
perspective may however contribute to shed light
on its evolutionary process and outline two distinct
phases. The first one refers to a development of
interest in psychological issues related to politics
in Europe, while the second refers to the institutionalization of the discipline in the USA, through
its establishment in the academic world. Following these two paths, we decidedly run into
different histories: the affirmation of the USA
institutional framework was paralleled by the
partial concealment of its European origins, later
claimed by a few scholars (cf. van Ginneken,
1988; Ward, 2002).
With regards to the first path, the psychological approach to politics in Europe arises at the end
of the nineteenth century, simultaneously to the
emergence of social psychology. In particular, it
included three different perspectives:(1) crowd
psychology, which was inaugurated by the
works of the Italian criminologist Scipio Sighele
and popularized by Gustave Le Bon, was centered on the analysis of psychological processes
and ended up criminalizing those crowds who
fought for both social change and their social
and political emancipation; (2) the psychology
of Gabriel Tarde centered on “parties-public”
that the author sees as the true element of novelty
in Western democracies, being related to the circulation of newspapers; and (3) the studies on the
national character and of race psychology that
had drawn inspiration from the non-Wundtian
Volkerpsychologie. These three forms of
Political Psychology
psychology were later exploited to sustain the
establishment of totalitarian regimes. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, during
the 1930s, those totalitarian regimes regarded
(1) the crowds as the passive mass to be manipulated in order to ensure and exhibit the stability
of these regimes, (2) the machinery of propaganda and journalistic censorship as the main
devices to manipulate human conscience;
(3) the concepts of nation and race as the scientific basis to legitimize aggressive policies of
racial persecution.
Paralleling this first path, the second course
developed in the USA and shared some elements
of the first. In particular, common elements
include its intertwining with social psychology
and some of the abovementioned assumptions
of European psychology, such as the extreme
manipulability of individuals-crowd which was
applied to studies on the impact of mass media
on individual-public, while other concepts were
recategorized as they were considered ethically
unacceptable and socially counterproductive. For
example, in the USA, the notion of race, which
had been widely employed in political psychology
until the mid-1930s, was then reinterpreted. Until
its modification, it had been particularly used, for
example, to provide “scientific” legitimization
for the 1924 Immigration Restriction Law. Conversely, from 1940 onwards, the concept of race
has become a source of “irrational prejudice”
(Samelson, 1978).
The second path starts from the early decades
of the twentieth century showing the developments of the institutional dimension in the USA,
primarily through its academic regulation.
It was inaugurated in 1924 by the first university course to teach political psychology, at the
Maxwell School of Syracuse University, upon
specific request of Floyd Allport, who suggested
calling the chair established in his honor, of
“social and political psychology.” As recalled in
his autobiography, Allport held the chair until his
retirement in 1957.
Then, over the time ranging from the
pioneering work of Lasswell in the 1930s to the
foundation of the International Society of Political
Psychology (ISPP), in 1978 under the initiative
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of Jeanne Knutson, the discipline was growing,
though highly fragmented studies were still
dominating and basic imbalances were embedded
in political psychology, privileging either political
or psychological sciences. Such difficult conditions were also reflected in the lack of career
opportunities, so that Ward (2002) recalls
how, in the early 1980s, the only American institution willing to take political psychologists was
the CIA.
Meanwhile, in 1973 the publication of the first
“Handbook of political psychology” edited by
Knutson provided real disciplinary legitimization. The handbook focused on (1) the basic
psychological constructs concerning personality,
attitudes, and beliefs; (2) the formation and maintenance of stable orientations in the case of
socialization, authoritarian personality, anomie,
and alienation; (3) the nexus of individual and
polity, related to leadership, aggression, violence,
revolution, war, and social and psychological
dynamics underpinning international relations;
and (4) the methods of inquiry covering
psychobiography,
surveys,
experimental
research, simulation, and projective techniques.
In 1986 a new handbook was published with
different contents, though some overlapping
issues concerning leadership, international relations, socialization, and beliefs remain. Among
the new topics, it is worth mentioning those
related to the biological correlates of political
behavior, the interplay between political ideology and public opinion, environmental beliefs
and values, and the appraisal process that connects presidents to their publics, conflicts, protest
movements, and terrorism.
Traditional Debates
In 1986, Margaret Hermann points out five principles that should guide research in political psychology. They relate to the ability to (1) establish
its own center of interest in the interaction
between psychology and political phenomena,
(2) produce research responding to major societal
problems, (3) be aware that the context makes the
difference, (4) develop an emphasis on both
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processes and results, and (5) be tolerant on
methodological pluralism, especially in data
collection.
In fact, research was guided for a long time by
reductionist assumptions preventing the actualization of the mentioned points. In particular, the
most significant assumption operating implicitly
was the negative impact of psychology on politics
(Ward, 2002). In this context, for example,
the authoritarian personality was theorized as
seeking control over others’ behavior as
a projection of their own problems on others;
similarly, the Machiavellian person would dehumanize the other in order to manipulate the
processes of self-prestige; finally, the individual
with low self-esteem would seek power as
a compensatory value.
Under the influence of cognitivism, a negative
conception of common sense was also developed.
In this case, people were seen as information
processors, highly imperfect, struggling to understand the complex world in which they live. People employ logic often in the wrong manner, draw
on impressionistic perceptions of others, and
when they decide how to act, they are often
unaware of the causes of their own behavior.
With the emergence of a critical perspective,
there has been a leap in the ability to interpret
these psychological processes, active also in
political reality. A renewed interpretation of
those processes arose through a consideration of
individuals as embedded in groups and social
dynamics and an understanding of the contradictory and dilemmatic nature of human thinking.
Under this perspective, social processes, such as
common sense, were no longer seen only as the
result of erroneous information processing.
On the other side, still antagonistic to
cognitivism, the discovery of the role of emotions
and motivations in understanding and explaining
political behavior has fostered greater attention on
diverse issues, such as how leaders can promote
people’s engagement in their own cause or political movement, why individuals choose to undertake nonviolent actions, what motivates people to
help others even at the risk of their lives, and the
motives that activate the turnout and political
engagement in the hope of bringing about change.
Political Psychology
Research discovered that people become more
politically involved when issues are salient for
them; that voters process information about candidates by recalling feelings and sentiments
towards them, rather than the information upon
which the sentiment is based; that elites under
stress may become more rigid and inflexible in
their points of view, focusing on the present only;
and that it is very easy to generate in-group biases.
From the applicative point of view, there have
been various consequences, including fruitful
grounds for new therapeutic approaches, such
as mediation techniques assisting individuals
involved in protracted social conflicts to
recategorize their enemies.
At the end of the last century, a new attention
on the increasing role of the media system in
political communication emerged. According to
this perspective, the political system would be
cannibalized by the media system successful in
imposing its own logic. This approach has led to
the personalization and spectacularization of politics. This was accompanied by psychological
processes at low rates of cognitive elaboration,
drawing on aspects such as the pleasantness of the
candidate to guide the electoral choice. With this
evolution of electoral communication, political
psychology has moved on to analyze nonverbal
communication, showing how political judgments can be formulated on the grounds of bodily
communication having to do with facial expressions, bodily posture, gestures, and tone of voice.
Psychology has shown that these channels are
increasingly employed in the heuristics used by
voters who must orient themselves in an information overcharged and complex environment.
In this context, psychological research provides
a useful framework to decipher the bases of political perception and subsequent voting choice.
In parallel, a new field of research has outlined
an area of investigation still linked to automatic
psychological processes, but in this case entirely
inside the cognitive tradition. This research
uncovers the automatic processes underpinning
the opinions of unaware citizens by detecting the
implicit components of political attitudes. For
example, the IAT (Implicit Association Test)
records political attitude as answers provided by
Political Psychology
respondents unconsciously in relation to their
own associative links, thus allowing to predict
actual voting behavior. These analyses have
proved more reliable than classic surveys, therefore opening new perspectives on the predictive
capacity of psychological studies.
Critical Debates
The critical perspective follows at least two
different pathways that are developed between
the 1970s and 1980s, the periods of crisis in
mainstream social psychology. The first sees the
growth of the tradition of social representations
promoting a reconceptualization of existing political psychological themes. The second, more
radical in its intention of refounding the whole
field, refers to the rhetorical-discursive approach.
Both perspectives share the following aspects:
the antireductionist and sociocentric approach,
the enhancement of common sense, the emphasis
on ideology and the role of mass media as
non-neutral places of meaning making, the attention on memory processes and the strategic use
of language, the focus on a theory of social
knowledge based on co-construction of sociocultural and individual phenomena in close
interdependence, and the centrality of situated
knowledge. Both theoretical approaches, social
representation and rhetorical-discursive, were
recently hosted in the journal “Political Psychology” as evidence of their contribution in this
disciplinary field.
In the first case, in a plurivocal debate,
Elcheroth, Doise, and Reicher (2011) emphasize
that the theory of social representations is able to
innovate ways to look at issues such as political
power, resistance, and conflict. They highlight the
importance (1) to center attention on relationships
rather than on isolated individuals; (2) to conduct
the analysis on the meta-representational levels,
i.e., on how individuals and groups imagine the
representations of in-group/out-group members,
combining both social representations and social
identity traditions; (3) to be open to the observation of collective practices through the use of
ethnographic descriptions and collective rituals;
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and (4) to practice a comparative perspective
between space-time systems of power and conflict.
In the second case, the more radically critical
perspective is analyzed in depth in the 2001
special issue of “Political Psychology.” It offers
interesting reflections in terms of applicative
outcomes. The field is delineated as “an activating resource, fostering a productive relationship
between psychological inquiry and social practice, between psychological processes and social
action becoming the interface that connects
psychology and society” (Garzón Pérez, 2001,
p. 347).
In the debate developed in these special issues,
scholars start from a critique of the basic assumptions of mainstream political psychology, along
with other institutionalized forms of psychology,
taken together as empirical science based on
positivism.
According to Gergen and Leach (2001), positivists would assume that “(1) the subject matter
of the field exists independent of the observing
scientist, (2) the scientist can (and should) remain
ideologically neutral with respect to theory and
research, (3) empirical research provides the
chief criterion for evaluating descriptions and
explanations of the observed world, (4) the discipline should strive to establish theoretical principles of increasingly broad generality (historically
and culturally), and (5) as the knowledge
established within the sciences is made available
to the society – including its policymakers –
increasingly effective steps can be taken to
improve human well-being” (p. 227).
The critical approach challenges these five
assumptions, undermining their legitimacy, by
questioning presumptions of neutrality that have
been of particular salience, leading scholars such
as Billig (1991, cf. also Weltman & Billig, 2001)
to assert that political psychology is “just politics.”
Overall, by engaging with new research
objects and data, this approach has promoted an
enrichment of the conceptual horizon. Without
abandoning empirical research, it has exploited
new sources of information, with a focus on the
local nature of subjectivity.
This has also led to a widening of the very
methodological sphere with the rediscovery of
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the value of qualitative techniques in the awareness that research methods not only build the
world – as in the case of recognizing causeeffect units – but also create specific forms of
relationship between researcher and participants, and the researcher and his/her object of
study. It has also stimulated some forms of
institutionalization of this criticism, as it contributed to the development of the self-reflexive
ability, thus making science itself even more
politically sophisticated.
The debate also stressed the potential of the
theory to creating diverse perspectives through
which political facts are examined, strengthening the dialogic relationship with culture, and
recognizing the moral tension researchers
should have towards the possible impact of
their work. From this point of view, those who
are concerned with political psychology are not
the bearer of “truth” but political actors able to
make reality intelligible and to promote
a dialogue among equals.
The vitality of the field has been more recently
emphasized with three contributions to the first
issue of 2012 of the journal “Political Psychology.” In one of the three articles, Nesbitt-Larking
and Kinnvall (2012), taking up some elements
of the 2001 debate, reaffirm the ability of the
constructionist and interpretivist perspectives to
promote awareness that research itself is
informed and guided by sociocultural elements
that are, in a circular relationship, in the subjectivity of the researcher.
International Relevance
In 1978, the ISPP was founded and included
psychologists and political scientists from around
the world. In subsequent years, the ISPP has
become an increasingly international organization, so that in 1986 the second handbook on
political psychology devoted an entire section to
the situation of the discipline worldwide covering
Latin America, Western Europe, and Asia. Soon
national societies of political psychology were
established, and the journal of ISPP, “Political
Political Psychology
Psychology,” reflected this tendency presenting
contributions from various national realities.
Finally, it may be recalled that in 1991 the ISPP
sponsored the first summer school, the Summer
Institute in Political Psychology, with a strong
international vocation, so that the website, currently tied to Stanford University, points out that
“the summer program has hosted students and
professionals from 32 countries on five different
continents, representing 187 universities and
organizations from all over the world.”
Future Directions
The first issue of the 2012 journal of “Political
Psychology” is devoted to future developments in
the field. In the introduction, Helen Haste
(2012) seems echoing the principles earlier
outlined by Margaret Hermann (1986). Thus,
Haste gives top priority to the need to integrate
different perspectives: focusing on processes and
contents, considering methodologies and epistemologies, drawing on diverse disciplines, and
finally centering on the salience of the context.
This integration enhances eclectic viewpoints
that address the need to preserve the complexity
of the object under investigation. An example is
provided by the emergence of new disciplinary
perspectives such as that of neuroscience
theory which offers a vision that would
integrate physiological and genetic research,
with political psychological processes, of which
the biological concomitants are under scrutiny
(see Theodoridis & Nelson, 2012).
This instance of an eclectic background could
be traced back to the triangulation model, of
clear critical derivation, developed by Denzin
(1978) – triangulation of theories, research,
data, and methodologies – and enriched in the
early 1990s by Janesick with the disciplinary
triangulation. In the mainstream, the eclecticism
has been articulated as the perspectivist approach
outlined by William McGuire (1999).
Overall, integrating different approaches can
be understood under the concept of hybridization
and is likely to involve both perspectives of
Political Psychology
critical and mainstream political psychology. So
far, these have had an almost exclusively conflictive relationship, whereas they could move
towards a reconciliation, as claimed by some
scholars (Jost & Kruglanski, 2002). Indeed, they
could use the mutual acquisitions for advancing
knowledge/transformation of reality, in the common awareness that we are dealing with an
increasingly fluid and evolving reality for the
contribution of those who, as social scientists,
try to make it more intelligible without explanatory definitive claims.
Finally, in terms of content emerging in the
contemporary landscape of political psychology, we can cite three examples, all concerned
with an antagonistic relationship with power.
They hold interesting and promising developments, especially from an hybridized point of
view: the theme of the role of women in politics
and their representations in media, in ordinary
citizens and in politicians; the theme of dialogical deliberative democracy, enhancing the
agentive role of citizens; and the theme of
social and collective movements, that can combine participation with action, the local with
global dimension (for a global perspective),
using new media communication. This latter
theme, closely related to that of dialogical
deliberative democracy, is studied from the perspective of psychological theories on active
minorities and on social change (e.g., MucchiFaina, 2009), bringing to the forefront
those crowds that had marked the beginnings
of political psychology.
References
Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions. London: Sage.
Catellani, P. (2004). Political psychology, overview. In
C. D. Spielberger (Ed.), Encyclopedia of applied
psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 51–65). Oxford, MA: Elsevier
Academic Press.
Denzin, N. K. (1978). The research act (2nd ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Elcheroth, G., Doise, W., & Reicher, S. (2011). On the
knowledge of politics and the politics of knowledge:
How a social representations approach helps us rethink
the subject of political psychology. Political Psychology, 33(1), 729–758.
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Garzón Pérez, A. (2001). Political psychology as
discipline and resource. Political Psychology, 22(2),
347–356.
Gergen, K. J., & Leach, C. W. (2001). Introduction: The
challenge of reconstruction. Political Psychology,
22(2), 227–232.
Haste, H. (2012). Where do we go from here in political
psychology? An introduction by special issue editor.
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Hermann, M. (1986). What is political psychology? In M.
Hermann (Ed.), Political psychology: Contemporary
issues and problems (pp. 1–10). San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Hermann, M. (2002). Political psychology as
a perspective in the study of politics. In K. Monroe
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Jost, J. T., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2002). Estrangement of
social constructionism and experimental social psychology: A tale of a rift and prospects for reconciliation.
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Jost, J. T., & Sidanius, J. (2004). Political psychology:
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Creative and critical aspects. New York: Cambridge
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Mucchi-Faina, A. (2009). Minorities, ambivalence and
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Minority influence and innovation: Antecedents,
processes and consequences (pp. 135–151). Hove,
UK: Psychology Press.
Nesbitt-Larking, P., & Kinnvall, C. (2012). The discursive
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Samelson, F. (1978). From “race psychology” to “studies
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Sears, D. O., Huddy, L., & Jervis, R. (2003). The psychologies underlying political psychology. In D. O. Sears, L.
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Polyamory
Meg Barker
Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University,
Milton Keynes, UK
Introduction
Polyamory, often shortened to poly, is a style of
consensual, nonmonogamous relating whereby
everyone is aware of the relationships involved
(in contrast with infidelity) and the emphasis is on
having multiple romantic or love relationships
(rather than being in a couple which is sexually –
but not emotionally – open, as with swinging or
many gay male open relationships).
Unlike other forms of nonmonogamy, polyamory is often claimed as an identity, in
a similar way to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans
(LGBT) identities, and there are active polyamorous communities. These aspects, along with the
challenge that polyamory poses to conventional
forms of monogamy, help to explain why it has
become a topic of extensive study in recent years.
Definition
The word polyamory is a combination of the
Greek “poly” (meaning many) and the Latin
“amor” (meaning love). Polyamory entered the
Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, defined as
“the fact of having simultaneous close emotional
relationships with two or more other individuals,
viewed as an alternative to monogamy, especially
in regard to matters of sexual fidelity; the custom
or practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all
partners concerned.” However, the definition of
Haritaworn, Lin, and Klesse (2006) better
captures the way in which polyamory is used
in polyamorous communities: “Polyamory
describes a form of relationship where it is possible, valid and worthwhile to maintain (usually
long-term) intimate and sexual relationships with
multiple partners simultaneously” (p. 515).
Polyamory
Some communities now use polyamory as
a broader umbrella term for all styles of negotiated nonmonogamy. However, the term polyamory generally implies some degree of goodwill
between all of those involved, while “open
relationship” does not carry this connotation
(particularly if it is a relationship with a “don’t
ask don’t tell” agreement). The degree of
perceived interrelationship in polyamory can be
anything from a tightly bonded group marriage to
a loose network of friends and acquaintances.
Keywords
Compersion;
metamour;
mononormativity; polyamory;
polynormativity
monogamy;
polyfidelity;
History
The term polyamory became established in the
early 1990s, notably with the creation of the
usenet newsgroup alt.polyamory for discussion
of open multiple relationships (see Cardoso,
2011, for a history of the use of the term prior to
this). The burgeoning of the internet then enabled
larger polyamorous communities to develop to
the point that there are now over two million
google hits for the term and regular polyamory
events in the US, Canada, and many European
countries.
New language has emerged within polyamorous communities to describe identities, relationships, and experiences. Along with the word
“polyamory” itself, a further identity term is the
reclaiming of the word “slut” as in Dossie Easton
and Janet Hardy’s (1997, 2009) classic polyamory “bible” The Ethical Slut. In terms of relationships, the term “polyfidelity” is a word for
exclusiveness within a multiple relationship.
The word “metamour” refers to one’s partner’s
partner. There are a number of words for different
possible polyamorous structures. For example,
a “V” has one person in two relationships. In
a “triad,” “quad,” or “poly family,” all the people
are in relationships with each other. Regarding
Polyamory
experience, a number of new emotion terms have
developed including “compersion” (USA)/
“frubble” (UK) for a positive feeling on seeing
your partner with another person and “wibble”
for a small jealousy. New words are often
proposed in a lighthearted manner, for example,
“polysaturated” meaning having as many
partners as can be managed (see Ritchie &
Barker, in Haritaworn, Lin, & Klesse, 2006).
Critical psychological and sociological research
has developed the word “mononormativity” to
refer to the social norm of monogamy which
polyamory is positioned in opposition to.
Much research in this area to date has focused
on the commitments put in place by polyamorous
people to manage their relationships (e.g.,
Wosick-Correa, 2010). There are notable divisions between those who prefer clear agreements
and boundaries (around aspects such as time
together and living arrangements) and those
who focus on freedom from arrangements and
mutual trust, as well as between those who
emphasize communication between partners
about their other relationships and those who
prefer to keep a degree of separation between
different relationships. Common themes in
such negotiations are ensuring a sense of security
in, and specialness of, each relationship
(Finn & Malson, 2008), although some people
in polyamorous relationships place more emphasis on individual autonomy or explicitly political
motivations for polyamory (Klesse, 2007).
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ideas, with much work emerging from within the
communities themselves. The first academic conference on polyamory (in Hamburg in 2005) had
a distinctly queer flavor and included activist
speakers; the first special issue of a journal focusing on polyamory (Haritaworn et al., 2006)
focused on critical issues of intersectionality,
power, and exclusion.
Traditional psychology has generally not
considered alternatives to monogamy. Undergraduate psychology textbooks tend to be
mononormative, presenting monogamy as the
only way of structuring relationships, or as
the normative relationship structure in the
west – contrasted with polygamy in “other” cultures. There may be evolutionary psychological
discussion about whether monogamy is “natural”
(for men and for women), and social
psychological research on infidelities as a threat
to relationships.
However, in recent years, polyamory has
become a topic of interest for more traditional
psychologists, particularly in Canada and the
United States, who have begun to compare
polyamorous and monogamous populations on
quantifiable measures (such as attachment style,
personality, and jealousy), some with the affirmative aim of demonstrating that polyamorous people are not more pathological or worse parents
than monogamous people (echoing similar
LGBT psychological research).
Critical Debates
Traditional Debates
Alongside asexuality and a number of other sexual identities, polyamory occupies an interesting
place as a sexual story which burgeoned after the
emergence of poststructuralism, queer theory,
and critical psychology. Therefore, unlike
LGBT and sadomasochistic identities, there was
no wave of traditional psychological, or
sexological, study on polyamory prior to critical
theoretical engagement. Rather, scholarly work
in this area has been critically informed from the
start, and there has also been significant crossfertilization of academic and activist/community
A key division in the critical academic literature
to date has been whether polyamory should be
presented in a celebratory or critical light.
Celebratory work tends to focus on the radical
potential of polyamory to occupy a place outside
mononormativity and to challenge heteronormativity, patriarchy, and capitalism. Critical
work points to ways in which normativities, privileges, and exclusions are reinscribed within
polyamory, and the apolitical stance of (some)
polyamorous individuals, communities, and writings. For example, people have criticized lack of
awareness of potentially problematic gender
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dynamics and the individualistic western context
in which much polyamory literature is written.
LGB, and particularly T, people have frequently been expected, by academics, to shoulder
the burden of dismantling heteronormativity (and
criticized when they do not). In a similar way,
polyamorous people are often expected to shoulder the burden of dismantling mononormativity
and the wider social structures within which that
operates (Barker & Langdridge, 2010b). There is
an argument that critical attention should focus
on the mainstream reproduction of such norms
rather than upon those who are struggling to resist
them and who occupy a legally and personally
precarious position by doing so. For example, due
to marriage being restricted to two people, additional partners often fail to be recognized as
parents or in property ownership, and polyamorous people with children are often treated with
suspicion by neighbors and schools.
At the same time, polyamory can be seen as
a largely neoliberal movement, with a focus on
individual self-determination rather than on any
sustained critique of the sociopolitical status quo.
Writers such as Finn and Malsen (2008), and
Willey, Wilkinson, and Heckert (in Barker &
Langdridge, 2010a), have pointed out the ways
in which a kind of polynormativity operates to
maintain a privileging of the private romantic
couple over other relationship forms, and authors
in Haritaworn et al. (2006) edited collection drew
attention to the ways in which (gendered, raced,
and classed) power dynamics are erased by ideals
of equality and openness within polyamory.
Some authors (Barker & Langdridge, 2010b;
Klesse, 2007) have attempted to move beyond the
critical/celebratory dichotomy, by emphasizing
the multiplicity of meanings within polyamory,
the diversity of ways of conducting and
experiencing such relationships, and the ways in
which both normative and radical discourses may
be drawn on by polyamorous people. Other
authors have questioned distinctions between
monogamy and polyamory, pointing to ways in
which all romantic relationships are increasingly
open to negotiation. Finally, explicitly political
and anarchistic forms of polyamory are currently
emerging which are worthy of further study.
Positioning
References
Barker, M., & Langdridge, D. (Eds.). (2010a). Understanding non-monogamies. New York: Routledge.
Barker, M., & Langdridge, D. (2010b). Whatever happened
to non-monogamies? Critical reflections on recent
research and theory. Sexualities, 13(6), 748–772.
Cardoso, D. (2011). Polyamory, or the harshness of
spawning a substantive meme (D. Cardoso, Trans.).
Interact, no. 17 (March 1, 2011). Accessed February
14, 2012, from http://interact.com.pt/17/poliamor
Easton, D., & Hardy, J. (1997, 2009). The ethical slut: A
practical guide to polyamory, open relationships and
other adventures. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
Finn, M., & Malson, H. (2008). Speaking of home truth:
(Re) productions of dyadic commitment in nonmonogamous relationships. The British Journal of
Social Psychology, 47(3), 519–533.
Haritaworn, J., Lin, C., & Klesse, C. (2006). Special issue
on polyamory. Sexualities, 9(5), 515–650.
Klesse, C. (2007). The spectre of promiscuity. Gay male
and bisexual non-monogamies and polyamories.
Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Wosick-Correa, K. (2010). Agreements, rules, and agentic
fidelity in polyamorous relationships. Psychology &
Sexuality, 1(1), 44–61.
Online Resources
Poly friendly professionals. http://www.polychromatic.
com/pfp/main.php.
Polyamory bibliography: The Kinsey Institute for
Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. http://
www.iub.edu/kinsey/library/Pdf/Polyamory%20Bibliography.pdf
PolyResearchers mailing list. http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/PolyResearchers
Polytical, UK polyamorous community website. http://
polytical.org
Positioning
Jill Reynolds1 and Mandy Morgan2
1
Faculty of Health & Social Care, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, UK
2
School of Psychology, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Introduction
“Positioning” offers a dynamic way of understanding how people take up different social and interpersonal rights, duties, and obligations in
Positioning
conversation, in contrast to the more static concept
of role (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & van
Langenhove, 1991). The notion of positioning suggests that identity can be understood as dynamic
and changing even within single encounters.
Each speaker’s identity is constructed by the
different kinds of person, or “subject positions”
(Davies & Harré, 1990), that particular ways of
talking imply. Rather than identity being a fixed
and immutable property of an individual, different identities are made available to the person
through discursive practices and conjured up in
their conversational interactions. Speakers position themselves, and they position other participants in their conversations, whether explicitly or
implicitly, by addressing them as inhabiting
a particular subject position. In different conversations or within one encounter, different
positions may be taken up, as speakers avoid or
“ward off” less attractive identities in talk
(Forbat, 2005).
Davies and Harré (1990) give a worked example of positioning in an exchange between “Sano”
and “Enfermada” who are in a strange city
looking for medicine for Enfermada. After several hopeless attempts to find a chemist, they
decide to give up and Sano apologizes to
Enfermada for having dragged her all this way
when she is not well. She responds by protesting
his claim of responsibility for her well-being
positions her as though she were incapable of
making decisions for her own welfare. As
a feminist, she rejects such positioning of herself
as a mere accessory to her actions, finding it
sexist. Sano then reacts to her positioning of
him as sexist, remarking that this is offensive,
and the debate goes through several further cycles
of reciprocal offence. This example suggests that
positioning, as well as being a way of performing
identity, can also be an act with wider political
implications.
Definition
Positioning is an active social process that Harré
and van Langenhove (1991) define as “the discursive construction of personal stories that make
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a person’s actions intelligible and relatively
determinate as social acts and within which the
members of the conversation have specific
locations”(p. 395). The term is closely aligned
with the notion of a “subject position” that is
available in discourse so that speaking subjects
can locate themselves and others according to
particular discursive constructions or culturally
available story lines. They are socially active
and flexible, and they implicate speakers and
listeners in moral orders as well as constituting
their personal characteristics.
Keywords
Speech act; discursive practice; subject position;
identity; self; role; narrative
Traditional Debates
Debates in this area mainly originate from different understandings of how identity is formed:
there is some common ground as well as
contrasting perspectives. Identity theory and
social identity theory, for instance, both deal
with components of a structured society. In identity theory, people recognize themselves and one
another as occupants of roles or positions,
whereas social identity theory deals with how
people see themselves as members of one group
or category in comparison with another group or
category (Stets & Burke, 2000). A discursive
analysis sees identities as derived from the accumulated ideas, images, and associations that
make up the wider cultural and social contexts
of people’s lives. Talk is where identities are
constituted, using the resources from these larger
contexts. So according to Davies & Harré (1990),
identities are conferred through the positioning
that people take up for themselves in instances of
their talk and that they offer to others, including
those taking part in the conversation. The analysis of subject positions as used in people’s talk
provides a useful tool that has increasingly been
adopted as one element in a package of three,
together with “interpretative repertoires” and
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“ideological dilemmas” to link everyday social
processes, like conversations, with broader sociopolitical phenomena (Edley, 2001; Reynolds,
Wetherell, & Taylor, 2007).
A key distinction between traditional understandings of the formation of identity, and the
more critical, discursive approach of positioning
theory, is the instability and flexibility of
positions relative to more fixed and stable notions
of identity or role. In particular, positioning theory assumes that speaking subjects are contradictory, and shift their understandings of themselves
within particular contexts, so that the social
acts of positioning are not determinable from
one conversation to another, or even within
a specific conversation.
Derived from Reynolds (2008) research, we
provide an example of the contradictions of
positioning from her analysis of interviews with
single women, where one participant shifts her
position in relation to marriage at different
moments within the same interview. In relation
to conventions of dating, the participant initially
positions herself as an active modern young
woman, able to take the initiative in relationships
and comfortable with asking someone on a date.
She takes a more conventional position in
relation to proposals of marriage, where she
positions herself as more hesitant to take the
initiative because she would want to “feel
chosen.” In this situation, the contradiction
between presenting herself as able to initiate
a date but not able to initiate a marriage proposal
relies on the different social contexts of dating
and marriage, rather than a consistent agentic or
passive identity that the participant has formed
which would determine more stable action across
both contexts. Later in the same interview, the
participant again shifts her position, this time also
in relation to a discussion of marriage. On this
occasion, she also positions herself as an agentic
modern woman who could have chosen to marry
but hasn’t really “been bothered” to do so.
No longer presenting herself as “waiting” for
a more traditional proposal of marriage, the
participant now accounts for her single status
through reference to her own choices. In the last
example from this interview, the participant
Positioning
“confesses” that she is actively “looking for
a husband.” We note that the participants shift
between more active and passive constructions of
femininity in relation to heterosexual partnering
that are linked to repertoires of independence and
achievement for single women and repertoires
of monogamy, partnership, and family life. The
movement in the participants’ positioning is also
contextualized by the interview itself. It is not an
unreasonable assumption to expect a person who
is doing research on single women to be
interested in a positive image for singleness, so
the participants’ use of repertoires of independence and achievement for single women is
also connected with her interpretation of the
interviewer’s purpose. In the process of positioning herself, the participant also positions the
researcher as she moves through available repertoires to enable an intelligible account of her
complex engagement with contemporary story
lines of women and heterosexual partnership.
Critical Debates
Positioning theory challenges the conventional
concept of a stable inner self. Instead, the theory
emphasizes the contextual, fluid, and unstable
nature of identity, privileging the social over the
individual as the source of identity, yet avoiding
a wholly deterministic account of a social subject.
The theory is relevant to critical psychology for
its emphasis on situation and power. Nonetheless,
positioning and subject positions have formed an
illustrative example of theoretical differences
among discursive psychologists, critical discourse analysts, and those who advocate for the
centrality of conversation analysis in connecting
social processes with talk and text.
Harré and van Langenhove (1991) attribute the
first use of the terms subject position and positioning in the social sciences to Wendy Hollway’s
(1984) contribution to Changing the Subject: an
early introduction of poststructuralist theories to
the discipline of Psychology. The poststructuralist
analyses connected with the terms have been critiqued for eliding the kind of technical analysis of
conversations that are more obviously associated
Positive Psychology
with empirical enquiry. Consequently, they miss
the opportunity to engage in analyses that are more
immanent and particular and which potentially
challenge their assumptions. Conversation analysis has been proposed as a more fitting approach
for an empirical discipline interested in how people actually live their lives through the social process of talk-in-interaction. There are also critical
discursive social psychologists, such as Margaret
Wetherell (1998), who eschew the “either/or” of
choosing between poststructuralism and conversation analysis for researching subject positioning,
and advocate for an eclectic approach enabling the
emergence of “a discipline concerned with the
practices that produce persons, notably discursive
practices, [and] seeks to put these in a genealogical
context” (p. 405). The critical debates concerning
theories and research methodologies related to the
concept of positioning may not have a definitive
resolution, though they have proved to be generative tensions that have produced multiple arguments, directions, approaches, and analyses that
enrich our repertoires of conceptualizing persons
and their production through social power
relations.
References
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour, 20(1), 43–63.
Edley, N. (2001). Analysing masculinity: Interpretative
repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. J. Yates
(Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analysis
(pp. 189–229). London, England: Sage.
Forbat, L. (2005). Talking about care: Two sides of the
story. Bristol, England: Policy Press.
Harré, R., & van Langenhove, L. (1991). Varieties of
positioning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 21, 393–407.
Hollway, W. (1984). Gender difference and the production of subjectivity. In J. Henriques, W. Hollway, C.
Urwin, L. Venn, & V. Walkerdine (Eds.), Changing
the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity (pp. 227–263). London: Methuen.
Reynolds, J. (2008). The single woman: A discursive
investigation. Hove, England: Routledge.
Reynolds, J., Wetherell, M., & Taylor, S. (2007). Choice
and chance: Negotiating agency in narratives of singleness. The Sociological Review, 55(2), 331–351.
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Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2000). Identity theory and
social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly,
63(3), 224–237.
Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism
in dialogue. Discourse & Society, 9(3), 387–412.
Online Resources
Reynolds, J. (2006). Patterns in the telling: Single
women’s intimate relationships with men. Sociological Research Online, 11(3). http://www.socresonline.
org.uk/11/3/reynolds.html
Positive Psychology
Jeffery Yen
Department of Psychology, University of
Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
Introduction
Positive psychology refers to a broad subset of
disciplinary interests, research programs, and
areas of application, all of which share
a common focus on the “positive” aspects of
psychology. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi
(2000) – who are the field’s founders and main
proponents – have argued as grounds for its
inception that it is an important and necessary
foil to what they characterize as the disproportionate focus on mental illness, dysfunction, and
pathology in the history of the discipline of psychology. As remedy to this “negative” bias in the
discipline, positive psychologists maintain that
what is needed is a shift in research efforts
towards understanding what kinds of factors contribute to well-being, happiness, and success.
Some of its proponents go as far as claiming
that this shift in focus – and the resulting success
of positive psychology – will ultimately redefine
the coordinates of the entire discipline of psychology (Seligman & Fowler, 2011). Critiques
of the movement have been voiced by both traditional and critical psychologists who have
expressed concern about its overemphasis of the
positive, disavowal of its prescriptive
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implications, and its recent association with the
United States military, in addition to its instrumentalist and liberal individualist underpinnings.
Definitions
The research interests of positive psychologists
are organized around three central concerns
or “nodes”: (i) positive emotions/experiences,
(ii) positive character/individuals, and (iii) positive communities/organizations (Seligman,
1999).
The experiences or states of “happiness” or
“subjective well-being,” the conditions under
which these occur, and the kinds of positive outcomes predicted by the presence of such experiences are the focus of the first node. Seligman
(1999) distinguishes between past-oriented experiences such as contentment and satisfaction,
future-oriented ones like hope and optimism,
and finally, present-oriented experiences such as
joy, pleasure, or “flow.” The central assertion is
that positive subjective experiences constitute
a crucial aspect of quality of life. Indicative of
the dominant social-cognitive paradigm that
underpins positive psychology, such experiences
are thought to reflect “an individual’s evaluation
of his or her own life, whether the appraisal is
in terms of a cognitive judgment, pleasant
emotions, physical pleasure, or pleasant interest”
(Seligman). Of the three “nodes”, this first was
already supported by a substantial body of
work in social psychology prior to the formation
of positive psychology. In addition, it has contributed to, and benefited substantially from, the
growing interest in “happiness” and well-being in
the field of economics over the last 30 years.
In what has become known as “Happiness Economics,” it is argued that a population’s wellbeing is not well approximated by measures of
absolute income, such as the Gross Domestic
Product, and that development efforts should
focus on promoting psychological or subjective
well-being instead. These assertions, first made in
a seminal publication by the economist Richard
Easterlin, have stirred considerable controversy
in economic theory. Since the publication of
Positive Psychology
Easterlin’s (1974) paper, a number of economic
analyses, first by Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003)
and then by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008),
directly contradict Easterlin’s findings. More
recently Easterlin, himself, and British economists Richard Layard and Andrew Oswald have
responded with new analyses in support of his
original arguments.
The second node, positive individuals, focuses
on the study of personal or characterological
qualities or traits that are regarded as either adaptive and healthful, or intrinsically virtuous and
predictive of happiness. In order to complement
and counterbalance what they regard as the negative bias represented by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – the
taxonomy of mental illnesses around which much
of North American mental health practice and
research is organized – Peterson and Seligman
(2004) have developed a handbook of “character
strengths,” which they have dubbed a “Manual of
the Sanities.” In it, they identify 24 virtues
grouped under the following categories: wisdom
and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. The work on developing and refining this taxonomy continues under
the moniker “Values in Action” or VIA.
Thirdly, positive psychology focuses on communities/institutions that promote human
“flourishing.” It studies the kinds of environments in which the personal qualities outlined in
the second node above would be encouraged and
facilitated, such as democracy or free speech.
Although it is presented quite explicitly as “the
most interdisciplinary” node of the three, the
kinds of research questions subsumed under it
still appear to be posed within the traditional
frameworks of social psychology (e.g., “What
motivates people to participate in voluntary
organizations?” or “What prompts willingness
to sacrifice private benefits for greater goods?”
(Seligman, 1999)). These types of questions
implicitly maintain an analytic focus on individual psychology (e.g., motivation, cognition)
rather than institutional or community dynamics.
Of the three nodes, it has received the least attention, to date, in terms of research, publication
activity, and funding (Kristjánsson, 2010).
Positive Psychology
Keywords
Happiness, subjective well-being mental hygiene,
positive psychology, character strengths
History
The positive psychology movement came into
being in the wake of two pivotal events. First, at
the time of Martin Seligman’s term of presidency
of the American Psychological Association
(APA) in 1998, he and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
devised a strategy to establish a positive psychology network of scholars. Reaching out to prominent psychologists and academics around the
United States, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi
identified three “nodes” of psychological
researchers that would constitute the field of positive psychology, each of which would be headed
by a “senior” chair, and be made up of ten or more
promising junior scholars (Csikszentmihalyi &
Nakamura, 2011). The network would be tasked
with the aggressive establishment and expansion
of the field. These academics were then invited to
a series of meetings at which positive
psychology’s overall conceptual and programmatic features were deliberated and decided
upon. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s intentions were unabashedly and strategically ambitious: the field’s success was to be measured by
“explicitly quantifying increased conventional
funding, major conspicuous publications, new
and tenured faculty, citation rate, and graduate
and undergraduate course offerings” (Seligman,
1999).
The second important event was the publication of a special issue of the American Psychologist in 2000, in which Seligman and
Csikszentmihalyi – serving as guest editors –
announced the triumphal arrival of the field of
positive psychology. In the editorial introduction
to the special issue, Seligman and
Csikszentmihalyi (2000) proclaimed the now
ubiquitously retold story of the rise of positive
psychology, its surpassing and supplanting of
previous disciplinary efforts such as humanistic
psychology, and the absolute necessity for the
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field and its positive focus in redefining a new
psychology of human excellence at the turn of the
millennium. Although this historical narrative
has been roundly criticized for ignoring prior
contributions to work on human growth and
potential, as well as that on resilience, in other
fields such as humanistic, counselling, and community psychology, it continues to be promulgated by positive psychologists. Others
have criticized the founding “declaration[s] of
independence” by positive psychologists (e.g.,
Snyder & Lopez, 2005) as exclusionary and
counterproductive. Positive psychologists have
since taken pains to tone down some of these
earlier statements.
In the decade following these developments,
positive psychology has expanded rapidly and
grown into a fully fledged field of study.
A recent study (Hart & Sasso, 2011) found more
than 20,000 citations published on or about positive psychology since 1998, which represents an
extraordinary number. Though the authors
included publications whose authors may not
necessarily self-identify as positive psychologists, this citation count is indicative of sustained
and growing research activity in the field. The
subject is now taught in many undergraduate and
graduate departments, there are annual conferences
and meetings, a dedicated academic journal (the
Journal of Positive Psychology), and a plethora of
new societies and international interest groups.
Notably, the field has also enjoyed unprecedented
financial support in its short history. Within 5 years
of Seligman’s APA presidential address, the field
had raised more than $30 million in research
funding, including the Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, which at the time constituted the
largest single monetary award in psychology.
Organizations such as the Templeton Foundation
have provided considerable monetary and institutional support to the movement.
The research goals, concepts, and theories of
positive psychology have since extended into
numerous other parts of the discipline, resulting
in relatively recent declarations of alignment
with positive psychology within applied areas
such as clinical and counselling psychology,
industrial psychology, health psychology, sport
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psychology, and educational psychology. Additionally, its influence has reached into related
fields such as criminology, and even tourism.
Most recently, Seligman and Fowler (2011),
together with other positive psychologists, were
contracted to develop and conduct a research and
training program to improve the combat resilience of soldiers in the United States Armed
Forces. Dubbed “Comprehensive Soldier
Fitness” or CSF, the program will receive
approximately $125 million in funding from the
US government and will focus on lowering
the incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,
increase soldier resilience, and increase the incidence of posttraumatic “growth.” Seligman and
Fowler frame positive psychology’s involvement
in the military as a patriotic and moral obligation,
offering as a central rationale the notion that
America will be involved in “persistent warfare”
for the foreseeable future, and will thus require its
knowledge and services. In addition, proponents
of the initiative hope that the successful execution of such a “fitness” training program in the
military will provide research insights for preventative medicine, as well as a model for promoting
well-being, in the civilian population.
Traditional Debates
Although positive psychology has been welcomed with open arms in much of the discipline,
dissent has been expressed in some traditional
quarters. The most direct of these is documented
in a 2003 issue of the journal Psychological
Inquiry, in which the social-cognitive theorist of
emotion Richard Lazarus articulated four concerns: positive psychology’s dichotomous
schema, its lack of conceptual clarity, its methodological shortcomings, and its distortion of
history. Lazarus argued firstly that positive
psychology’s opposition of positive and negative
was psychologically unrealistic, as “most people
seek to integrate [these] extremes” (2003b,
p. 173). Secondly, he pointed out that terms
such as “positive,” “negative,” and the “good
life” were not clearly defined in positive psychology. Third, he argued, the neglect of longitudinal
Positive Psychology
studies and individual differences could lead only
to overgeneralizations in the field. Finally, he
took issue with its characterization of past psychological research as entirely negative. While
Lazarus’ critique sparked a great deal of debate
among more traditional psychologists, it did not
attend to positive psychology’s central ideological assumptions, a focus that is emphasized in
more critical debates (see below).
Critical Debates
Positive psychology has been challenged from
numerous positions and perspectives. These
have included critiques of its underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions (Christopher, Richardson, & Slife, 2008), its
methodologies (e.g., Lazarus, 2003), concern
over the social and political implications of
these assumptions, the central and unresolved
tension between description and prescription in
the field, its separatist rhetoric, and its piecemeal
appropriation of ancient philosophical traditions.
Positive psychology’s central concepts and
constructs – such as well-being, in particular –
have been criticized as individualistic and ethnocentric and as having embedded within them both
distinctly Western and North American cultural
values, as well as a liberal individualist ideology
(Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008). Critics
have argued that such cultural-political frameworks can be seen to underlie the field’s concept
of the good life, as well as the means by which it
is to be achieved. On the whole, the field is guided
by and reproduces an instrumentalist rationality
in its basic concepts and theory. Maximizing
happiness, well-being or flourishing in individuals may inadvertently also divert attention away
from circumstances and contexts in which social
justice and moral right would involve courses of
action which are less than pleasurable or do not
contribute to subjective well-being.
These criticisms have been mounted despite
(and also because of) the field’s expressed commitment to the epistemological and methodological conventions of natural science, in which
it is assumed that things like morals and virtues
Positive Psychology
can be studied objectively and value-neutrally
such that positive psychology would constitute
a universally applicable body of knowledge.
Though these challenges are directed at positive
psychology and its methods, these critiques
are not specific to it, and apply to some of the
central assumptions of psychological science as
a whole.
In a directly related sense, positive psychology
has been criticized for its “moral gap”
(Kristjánsson, 2010). Here, critics point out that
positive qualities are evaluated on merely instrumental rather than moral grounds, thus rendering
indistinguishable, for example, the “flourishing”
of a dishonest Wall Street banker and that of
a caring social worker. Furthermore, in its commitment to a particular vision of objective
science, its proponents consistently affirm that
the field and the knowledge it produces is to be
regarded as merely descriptive of the human qualities, activities, and experiences that lead to happiness and the good life, rather than being
prescriptive of these. Claims of disingenuousness
aside, some writers have commented that this can
lead to implicit pressures to focus on happiness
and to disavow the negative, leading to a kind of
“tyranny of the positive attitude” (Held, 2004,
p. 12), while others, particularly in health psychology, warn of the dangers posed by positive
psychology’s one-sided emphasis on optimism in
patients recovering from cancer (Coyne, Tennen,
& Ranchor, 2010).
Throughout its short history, leading positive
psychologists have claimed that the field is an
empirical discipline rooted in ancient moralphilosophical traditions, most notably that of
Aristotle. However, a number of philosophers
have criticized the field’s appropriation of
Aristotle’s moral-ethical philosophy as inaccurate, focusing as it does on subjective experiences
such as “flow,” “awe,” and “elevation.” In contrast, Aristotelian philosophers argue the concept
of eudaimonia is concerned more with one’s life
as a whole – its end or telos – rather than with
subjective experiences (Woolfolk & Wasserman,
2005). Conceptually, clarifying what is meant by
the key aim and notion of “happiness” in positive
psychology has been beset by difficulties. Some
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critics (e.g., Kristjánsson, 2010) of positive
psychology’s attempts to unify its study of
happiness distinguish between three kinds of
definition: (a) hedonistic accounts, which emphasize happiness as a subjective experience of
pleasure; (b) life-satisfaction accounts, which
give importance to people’s perceptions of their
lives as a whole; and (c) eudaimonistic accounts,
which regard happiness as being amenable
to objective measurement. Again, the field’s
inability to provide clarity on this issue is argued
to be a direct result of its proponents’ unwillingness to acknowledge the normative nature of its
inquiry.
Methodologically, questions have been raised
about the extent to which positive psychologists
can make the claims that they do from crosssectional research designs (e.g., Lazarus, 2003),
and Cromby (2011) has mounted a critique of the
validity of self-report measures of subjective
well-being used in large-scale happiness
research, based on phenomenological and critical
theoretical understandings of emotion.
As mentioned above, at the time of its inception, the self-conscious portrayal of positive psychology as new, revolutionary, and essentially
opposed to much of the rest of psychology-asusual drew criticism from many psychologists
who felt that their work on human growth and
actualization or prevention and resilience had not
been properly acknowledged. In addition, as the
field has matured, many researchers, both explicitly positioned within and outside of positive
psychology, have begun to rethink the separatist
rhetoric that has characterized much of the writing emerging from positive psychologists (Yen,
2010). Some positive psychologists acknowledge
that it may be in the best interests of the field to
legitimize particular topics studied within subfields as “positive” rather than emphasize the
separate identity of positive psychology as
a bounded subfield in itself. However, the field’s
glossing over of its historical roots has other
implications too: despite its claims of revolutionary novelty, the field bears striking and yet
unacknowledged resemblances to Victorian era
and twentieth-century “mental hygiene” movements which emphasized good adjustment to
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“reality,” a reality that served the interests of the
ruling classes (Becker & Marecek, 2008).
For these and other reasons detailed above,
positive psychology is regarded by critical
psychologists as largely politically conservative.
Most recently, even psychologists traditionally
sympathetic towards the field have raised impassioned objections to its close involvement with
the US military. These writers have censured the
field’s uncritical stance towards assumptions of
“persistent warfare,” as well as the notion that it
should further dehumanize soldiers by mitigating
and reducing their posttraumatic distress in the
face of the horrors of warfare.
International Relevance
Positive psychology has established itself in
psychological research programs and higher
educational curricula around the world. Furthermore, it has become closely affiliated with
broader recent trends in the social sciences in
which the notion of “national well-being” and
happiness has become increasingly visible and
invested with economic and political import. In
an increasing number of cases, the field and its
research are being consulted in large-scale policy decision making at national and international
levels.
Practice Relevance
The field has numerous practice implications,
both as a general orientation towards positive
psychological phenomena and as a set of techniques that can be applied to traditional forms of
practice. For example, recent publications focusing on positive psychology in higher education
present principles and techniques for applying
positive psychology to the classroom setting,
the campus social milieu, the faculty and administration relationships, and the surrounding community (Parks, 2011). Other domains for
application found in the literature include those
devoted to utilizing positive psychology to
Positive Psychology
improve productivity in the workplace, as well
as coaching technique and practice. It has also
been influential in the clinical, counselling, community, and health psychology domains.
Future Directions
Positive psychology seems set to continue its
recent record of rapid development and expansion. Its adherents have been relatively responsive to some forms of critique and questioning
that have been directed at it, and this has resulted
in the fruitful elaboration and clarification of its
concepts and methods. However, there is little
indication that the core – and to some critics,
most insidious – conceptual assumptions of the
field will change. In addition, its recent affiliation
with the US military and the resultant influx of
resources, personnel and powerful interests, can
be expected to further bolster its standing and
growth, despite continued critical objections and
opposition from those within and outside of the
discipline of psychology.
References
Becker, D., & Marecek, J. (2008). Positive psychology:
History in the remaking? Theory & Psychology, 18(5),
591–604.
Christopher, C., & Hickinbottom, S. (2008). Positive psychology, ethnocentrism, and the disguised ideology of
individualism. Theory & Psychology, 18(5), 563–589.
Christopher, C., Richardson, C., & Slife, D. (2008).
Thinking through positive psychology. Theory & Psychology, 18(5), 555–561.
Coyne, J. C., Tennen, H., & Ranchor, A. V. (2010). Positive psychology in cancer care: A story line resistant
to evidence. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 39(1),
35–42.
Cromby, J. (2011). The greatest gift? Happiness, governance and psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(11), 840–852.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Nakamura, J. (2011). Positive
psychology. In K. M. Sheldon, T. B. Kashdan, &
M. F. Steger (Eds.), Designing positive psychology:
Taking stock and moving forward (pp. 3–8).
New York: Oxford.
Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve
the human lot? In P. A. David & M. W. Reder (Eds.),
Positivism
Nations and households in economic growth
(pp. 89–125). New York: Academic.
Hagerty, M. R., & Veenhoven, R. (2003). Wealth and
happiness revisited – growing national income does
go with greater happiness. Social Indicators Research,
64(1), 1–27.
Hart, K. E., & Sasso, T. (2011). Mapping the contours of
contemporary positive psychology. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 52(2), 82–92.
Held, B. S. (2004). The negative side of positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 44(1), 9–46.
Kristjánsson, K. (2010). Positive psychology, happiness,
and virtue: The troublesome conceptual issues. Review
of General Psychology, 14(4), 296–310.
Lazarus, R. S. (2003a). Target article: Does the positive
psychology movement have legs? Psychological
Inquiry, 14(2), 93–109.
Lazarus, R. S. (2003b). Author’s response: The Lazarus manifesto for positive psychology and psychology in general. Psychological Inquiry, 14(2),
173–189.
Parks, A. C. (2011). The state of positive psychology in
higher education: Introduction to the special issue. The
Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(6), 429–431.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character
strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification.
USA: Oxford University Press.
Seligman, M. E. P. (1999). Positive psychology network
concept paper. Retrieved April 3, 2012, from http://
www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppgrant.htm
Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.
Seligman, M. E. P., & Fowler, R. D. (2011). Comprehensive soldier fitness and the future of psychology. American Psychologist, 66(1), 82–86.
Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J. (2005). The future of positive
psychology: A declaration of independence. In C. R.
Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive
psychology. Oxford University Press.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2008). Economic growth
and subjective well-being: Reassessing the easterlin
paradox (NBER working paper 14282). Cambridge,
MA: NBER.
Woolfolk, R. L., & Wasserman, R. H. (2005). Count no
one happy: Eudaimonia and positive psychology.
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology,
25(1), 81–90.
Yen, J. (2010). Authorizing happiness: Rhetorical demarcation of science and society in historical narratives of
positive psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 30(2), 67–78.
Online Resources
Jeffries, S. (2008, June 24). Will this man make you
happy? The guardian. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/24/
healthandwellbeing.schools
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Senior, J. (2006, July 9). Some dark thoughts on happiness. New York magazine. Retrieved March 1, 2012,
from http://nymag.com/news/features/17573/
University of Pennsylvania (2007). Positive psychology
center. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from http://www.
ppc.sas.upenn.edu/
Positivism
Jim Nelson
Department of Psychology, Valparaiso
University, Valparaiso, IN, USA
Introduction
Positivism is a philosophical position that
emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries at a time of great optimism
about the role of science in Anglo-American
and continental European thought. It began as
a movement designed to marginalize religion
and strengthen the role of science in society.
While ultimately rejected by later philosophers
as a coherent point of view (e.g., Passmore,
1967), it was the reigning philosophy of science
during the development of psychology as
a scientific discipline, and positivist ideas remain
highly influential in contemporary psychology.
Definition
There are two general types of positivism:
1. Classical positivism (CP) is a nineteenthcentury theory of knowledge developed by
the French philosopher Auguste Comte
(1798–1857) that included the following
views:
(a) Positivistic empiricism: The only true or
positive knowledge is positive knowledge
based on observed facts gained through
scientific investigation.
(b) Antimetaphysicalism: Philosophical and
theological approaches to gaining knowledge are useless and should be abandoned.
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(c) Law of Three Stages (LTS): Humanity is
progressing from primitive theological
ways of thinking to transient metaphysical
views, which will eventually be replaced
by a final positive state with a superior
scientific way of looking at the world and
organizing society.
(d) Skepticism: Absolute truth and true causes
cannot be known.
(e) Mechanistic naturalism: Everything is
subject to natural laws that are a temporal
and invariable (Faulconer & Williams,
1985);
methods
concerned
with
nonmaterial mental and psychological
phenomena (e.g., Introspection) should
be rejected.
(f) Reductionism: We should aim to explain
things using the fewest possible concepts.
(g) Hierarchical Unity of Science (HUS):
Sciences could be described in a unified
hierarchy, with mathematics at the base
followed by astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and physiology (including
psychology), with social physics (sociology) at the top; higher sciences depend on
the lower ones and in theory can be
explained by them.
(h) Instrumentality of Science. Application of
positive principles would provide a kind
of social technology, resulting in more
prediction.
2. Logical positivism (LP) is a twentiethcentury theory of knowledge developed by
a group of Continental and Anglo-American
thinkers. While each theorist had their own
particular version of LP, they generally agreed
with the tenants of CP, particularly its emphasis on empiricism, naturalism, antimetaphysicalism, the LTS (e.g., Feigl, 1980), and
HUS (e.g., Hempel, 2001a). In addition, LP
described science as a process of verification
with the following characteristics:
(a) Empiricism: The truth of propositions that
represents the world should be verified by
reference to simple empirical facts using
strict criteria.
(b) Rationality: Science and philosophy
should be limited to the analysis of
Positivism
empirical propositions, since only these
kinds of statements are rational; since traditional ethical propositions generally
cannot meet scientific standards for verification, they should be excluded as problematic or of little interest; rational inquiry
can and should proceed without any
reference to values, so science should be
value-free (cf. Feigl, 1949a).
(c) Operationalism: Terms in statements
needed to be defined in a manner that is
consistent, definite (if possible quantitative), empirically rooted, repeatable, and
aimed at increasing predictiveness (Feigl,
1949b).
(d) Quantification: Quantitative methods
should be preferred in verification as they
are inherently superior (Carnap, 1995).
Keywords
Logical empiricism; philosophy of science
History
Positivism was a product of the French Enlightenment. Its basic ideas were shaped by
a background of two centuries of state-church
domination, repression, and religious conflict.
Negative views of religion developed among
scientists and intellectuals as a result, and freedom from secular and religious restraint becomes
a primary agenda (Goodell, 1994). At the core
of the French Enlightenment was a group known
as the philosophes, including A. R. J. Turgot
(1727–1781) and Nicolas de Condorcet
(1742–1794). Turgot is known for articulating
a new progressive view of history, where science
and reason would replace the passions and imagination and lead the human race on toward
perfection (Manuel, 1962). This idea was further
developed by Condorcet, who became interested
in applying natural science methods to the
improvement of society. In his works he painted
a glowing picture of the possibilities of human
progress through science and education and
Positivism
argued that progress in the social sciences would
only occur if they broke free of religious authority and were placed on a scientific footing.
Condorcet developed a stage theory of human
progress that traced the progress of the human
mind through nine stages and into a tenth future
stage. The application of mathematics and the
perfection of scientific language would help
science assist society in this advancement
(Condorcet, 1994; Waldinger, 1984). A third figure who influenced the birth of positivism was the
early socialist Claude Saint-Simon (1760–1825;
Standley, 1982). He had a goal of using the natural sciences to promote social change, and to
remove obstacles, especially Christianity, that
were seen as standing in the way of that goal.
In 1807, Saint-Simon was the first to use the term
“positive” as a philosophical term (Manuel, 1956,
p. 132). For him, positivism was a type of knowledge or inquiry that eliminated talk of mysterious
origins, final causes, or essences as unknowable.
He saw the basic sciences as providing the
foundation for study of more complex phenomena. For instance, physiological principles could
provide the underlying unity for a positive Science of Man (Saint-Simon, 1952c). He also
developed a progressive theory of history that
involved the steady advance of positive inquiry
in the human sciences and other fields (e.g.,
Saint-Simon, 1952a, b). Eventually he drew up
a three epoch structure, with history progressing
toward a goal of increasing social progress and
human happiness. Thus, the implications and
agenda of the Enlightenment thought were sociopolitical (Olafson, 2001, p. 3) and not just
concerned with methods of human inquiry.
Positivism proper began with Auguste Comte,
a philosopher who worked with Saint-Simon and
conducted a series of lectures that was attended
by many leading French intellectual figures.
Interrupted by occasional personal turmoil and
nervous breakdowns, Comte eventually
published two main works about positivism: the
Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) and
The System of Positive Polity (1851–1854). The
Course was a statement of Comte’s ideas about
the nature of science and the historical progress
of humanity, while the System developed the
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social, political, and religious implications of
those ideas (1998a, b). Comte was able to synthesize the political and historical thinking of
writers like Condorcet and Saint-Simon with
a philosophy of science that was attractive to his
contemporaries. Thus, French Enlightenment
attitudes became part of a proposed standard of
scientific goals, attitudes, and values that was
explicitly or implicitly adopted by the nineteenth-century scientific community, including
the “new” science of psychology.
The impact of Comte was mixed. His credibility with scientists was undercut by the fact that
his summaries of scientific knowledge were not
current. Wundt, who was an opponent of extreme
naturalism, rejected him totally. However, many
of Comte’s ideas fell on fertile ground and were
well received, particularly the LTS and HUS.
John Stewart Mill (1806–1873) recommended
his books and referenced him in A System of
Logic (1865), which became the standard manual
of scientific reasoning and inquiry during the
nineteenth century. Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
was also familiar with Comte and followed him
in embracing empiricism and rejecting any kind
of speculation that might be metaphysical,
a position that influenced later LP (Pickering,
1993; Simon, 1963). These issues were fought
out within the new field of psychology, where
experimental psychologists like John Watson
were trying to establish the scientific credentials
of the field and beat back attempts from writers
like William James who thought that continued
discussions of metaphysical issues were vital
(e.g., James, 1912; Watson, 1913, pp. 132–133).
By the end of the nineteenth century, it
becomes a goal of philosophers like Bertrand
Russell (1872–1970) and scientists like Mach to
analyze and reform language so that it could be
a vehicle for logical analysis and statements of
empirical, scientific knowledge (e.g., Mach,
1960). A group of philosophers and scientists
known as the Vienna Circle (1922–1938) picked
up these trends in logic and language, combining
them with positivist ideas to form LP. They
wished to renew the battle against metaphysics
and promote a scientific world view (Puchner,
2005). Members of the Circle of special
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Positivism
relevance to psychology included Rudolf Carnap
and Carl Hempel, who wrote about the implications of logical positivism for psychological
method (Carnap, 1932/1933; Hempel, 1949),
and Herbert Feigl, a colleague Paul Meehl and
B. F. Skinner who wrote on a variety of topics
relevant to psychology (Moore, 2010; Feigl,
1958).
LP became the core of the de facto official
epistemology of psychology (Koch, 1992). Modern behaviorism developed directly from the
work of the Vienna Circle (Koch), and Skinner
was also influenced by the early twentiethcentury positivist figures like Russell and
Mach (Skinner, 1998; Day, 1998). The cognitive
revolution did not substantially change the positivist picture, for mechanistic information
processing models or reductive neuroscience
theories of cognition contain the same methodological and metaphysical assumptions as positivism (Smythe, 1991). Only certain methods and
objects of inquiry were allowed, leading to a “cult
of empiricism” (Toulmin & Leary, 1992) as
opposed to a method that fit the material of study.
(Joergensen, 1951; Carnap, 1949). Other authors
(e.g., Bridgman, 1959, 1993) argued that LP
applications of natural science principles like
operationalization were not appropriate in the
field of psychology, which needs to deal with
private mental states that are inherently unique
and unrepeatable. An inability to use methods
appropriate to the object of study would render
the results of psychological investigation irrelevant (Gorsuch, 2002; Taylor, 1998).
The second challenge to positivism came from
a group who challenged the fundamental
approach of the positivists toward philosophy of
science. This group includes some well-known
figures like Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and
Michael Polanyi. They all took the broad position
that the best way to construct a philosophy of
science is not through logic, but by studying
what scientists actually do in their work. They
all agreed that social and group forces as well as
the individual personalities of the scientists
involved all played a factor in the scientific
process, a conclusion completely contrary to the
logic of the positivists.
Traditional Debates
Critical Debates
In philosophy and many fields of science, by the
1950s both CP and LP were no longer considered
viable philosophies of science. The first challenge came from philosophers of science who
disputed some of the key tenants of positivism.
Important figures in this group were Karl Popper
and several other philosophers who at one time
had associations with the logical positivists, such
as Ludwig Wittgenstein. They challenged simplistic LP views for verification (Popper, 2002),
the separation of theory and fact (Quine, 1953)
and representational view of language (Wittgenstein, 1958). It became clear through this critique
that no single theory or reduction scheme is really
verifiable because there are numerous competing
alternatives that may also be true (Hempel,
2001b). Logical positivists struggled to find strict
criteria for verification, but were unable to find
one that could be adequately defended
After the mid-twentieth century, prominent psychologists like Sigmund Koch were criticizing its
use in psychology (Day, 1998). They argued that
positivism forms an “unspoken grammar” for
psychology. It is “unspoken” because positivists
deny that they have any kind of metaphysical,
religious, or sociocultural presuppositions underlying their work (e.g., Feigl, 1956), even though
it is abundantly clear from history that this is
not the case. It is a “grammar” because it has
influenced the development of the basic experimental methods and statistical techniques in the
discipline, as well as providing the underlying
metaphysics for whole areas of psychology like
behaviorism (Stam, p. 18; Costa & Shimp, 2011).
For instance, positivist views of empiricism, scientism, the instrumentality of science, and
operationalism provided a basis for Skinner’s
understanding of psychology as an experimental
Positivism
science aimed at prediction and control
(Kitchener, 1996).
The “unspoken grammar” of positivism has
two effects. First, its grammar ensures that the
paradigms with the widest acceptance and most
staying power in psychology are those with positivistic and mechanistic orientations, such as
behaviorism. This in not to say that other
competing viewpoints have not emerged
(Yanchar & Hill, 2003), but simply that they
are just that – competing voices that operate
from the margins. For instance, postmodern
and cultural theories of psychology exist that
reject the value and culture-free stance of positivism (e.g., Gergen, 2001), but these have been
strongly attacked and found relatively of little
acceptance (e.g., Locke, 2002).
Second, because positivism is an “unspoken”
grammar, most researchers and practitioners are
unaware of the positivist influence and how it
affects their work and thus cannot see its limitations and move beyond it. The result has been an
outmoded philosophy of science in psychology
(Nelson & Slife, 2012) so that “historically
much of normative experimental laboratory psychology as it is practiced in the universities
today has not evolved past late nineteenthcentury Newtonian mechanics in its theories,
whereas in its methods it continues to follow an
outmoded 1930s definition of the physical sciences” (Taylor, 1998). While psychologists might
often deny that they hold positivist views, in fact
they speak as if:
• The laws of human behavior operate outside
of temporal or cultural context.
• Prediction and control of behavior is more
important than understanding its meaning for
the people involved (cf. Feigl, 1956).
• Research can be conducted without
understanding or discussing the metaphysical,
philosophical, sociocultural, and ethical
implications of psychological theory and
method.
• Quantitative inquiry is inherently superior to
qualitative study.
• Psychology should be defined by its method
rather than its object of study.
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Practice Relevance
Along with its effect on research practices, several authors have argued that positivism provides an unhelpful metaphysic for early
psychoanalytic thought that limited what he
could have done operating from an interpretive
paradigm (Grotstein, 1992). Freud came into
contact with positivism through his mentor
Br€ucke, who attempted to explain human life
reductionistically as solely a feature of chemical
and physical processes (Domenjo, 2000; Gay,
1998). The idea of reducing human behavior to
physics formed the basis of Freud’s early manuscript Project for a Scientific Psychology
(1953) and continued to be a principle the
persisted throughout his later work (Mackay,
1989, p. 222). Positivist influence in Freud can
also be seen in his view of history as following
a progressive pattern of three phases: “animistic
(or mythological), religious and scientific”
(1950, p. 97).
Positivist views of history have had
a distorting view on how psychologists write
about the history of their discipline. For instance
Leahey (1987) notes the tendency of psychologists to write “Whig” histories that paint the
discipline as marching progressively onward to
ever higher levels of enlightenment, with current
knowledge replacing past ignorance. This ignores
the actual historical nature of science (cf. e.g.,
Kuhn, 1996), as well as the critique that past
knowledge (such as theological and metaphysical) might just constitute different types of
knowledge rather than primitive, irrational, or
unenlightened points of view (Scheler, 1970). It
can lead to suspicion on the part of psychologists
toward colleagues with religious interests
or commitments and toward non-Western
systems of thought with religious orientations
(Paranjpe, 1998).
Future Directions
Positivist influence in psychology will depend
upon the success of changes in several areas.
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Appropriate Interdisciplinary Discourse
Running through all brands of positivism is
scientism that ultimately the only real knowledge
comes to us through science. Thus, a rejection
of positivism must ultimately involve an acceptance of nonscientific ways of knowing or
acknowledging some fundamental differences
between the natural and human sciences (Koch,
1992; Preston, 2004).
Theoretical Reform
One way to reduce the dominance of positivism
in psychology would be to adopt a constructionist
framework and move toward theoretical and
methodological pluralism (Breen & DarlastonJones, 2010). However, constructionism has its
own well-documented set of theoretical problems
and is unlikely to see wide adoption. A more
promising approach would be to consider
resources in the philosophy of science and redefine psychology as the study of mental life rather
than a science of behavior, offering a broader
approach to the object of study and less focus
on method. (Yanchar & Hill, 2003). A key to
this thoughtful review is understanding how the
theory and presuppositions of the investigator
affect their interpretation of the data (cf. Nelson &
Slife, 2012; Ye, 2007).
Methodological Reform
Advances in methodological pluralism, especially the expanded use of qualitative methods,
would be helpful. However, this must be thoughtfully done. While there are important advantages
to qualitative methods, quantitative research can
rise above positivist limitations, and unfortunately qualitative research can be conducted in
ways that chain it to a positivist framework
(Burman, 1997; Martin, 2003; Westerman,
2006). Dismissing operational definitions
altogether because of their problems could lead
to a lack of agreement among investigators about
the basic question under study, a serious problem
for scholarly work.
The best way forward will only be produced
by careful understanding and debate about the
philosophical and methodological problems
introduced by positivism.
Positivism
References
Breen, L., & Darlaston-Jones, D. (2010). Moving beyond
the enduring dominance of positivism in psychological
research: Implications for psychology in Australia.
Australian Psychologist, 45, 67–76.
Bridgman, P. (1959). The way things are. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University.
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Postcolonial Psychology
Postcolonial Psychology
Geraldine Moane1 and Christopher Sonn2
1
School of Psychology, University College
Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
2
College of Arts, Victoria University,
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Introduction
Postcolonial psychology engages with contexts
and concepts related to historical processes of colonization, postcolonial development, and decolonization and aims to elucidate their psychological,
political, and cultural manifestations. It draws on
early writings on the psychology of colonization,
notably those of Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi,
on several works by indigenous writers, and on
a range of contemporary writings in critical social
theory, literary theory, and cultural studies. Early
writings tended to focus on structures of power and
psychological dynamics, while a lot of contempray
work adopts a discursive or postmodernist
approach, attending to cultural representation,
identity, and location, with particular reference to
migration, gender, race, and ethnicity.
Definition
The word postcolonial was initially defined historically to refer to nations, countries, or states
where a colonial regime had ended through warfare or negotiation. Postcolonial studies emerged
as an interdisciplinary approach to the study of
knowledge and culture in a postcolonial context,
examining the legacies of colonization through
culture, literature, identity, and consciousness.
Postcolonial psychology draws on these interdisciplinary strands to analyze, deconstruct, or transform dynamics related to colonialism.
Online Resources
Articles on August Comte, Logical Empiricism and other
individuals in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu
Inventory of the Herbert Feigl papers. www.library.pitt.
edu/libraries/special/asp/Feiglinventory.htm
Keywords
Colonization; alterity; decolonization; indigenous;
postcolonial; subaltern; subjugated discourse;
Postcolonial Psychology
other; identity; representation; location; migration; diaspora; memory
History
Historically, colonization was used to refer to
a process whereby a country implants settlers in
another country with the aim of economically
exploiting and/or politically dominating that country. In the context of Europe, colonization refers to
the conquest and settlement of territories by
European countries. England, France, Spain,
Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and
the Netherlands were involved in colonization
over centuries. By 1914 over three quarters of
the globe, including most of Africa, Asia, South
America, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean and Pacific islands, were economically
and/or politically dominated by these European
powers. There are many other examples of colonization, notably involving Japan, the USA, and
Russia.
Colonial domination was supported by military force, by economic ties, and by cultural
domination and was justified by an ideology that
emphasized native inferiority and the benefits of
colonization. Decolonization historically refers
to the process whereby formerly colonized countries gained political self-determination, often
through wars of liberation, many that occurred
during the twentieth century. The word
postcolonial is then used to refer to conditions
following the attainment of political selfdetermination. Given the disputed nature of political self-determination, the continuing global
domination by formerly colonizing countries,
ongoing processes such as cultural imperialism,
and the oppression of indigenous people, there is
considerable
debate
about
the
term
“postcolonial.” The term is used here as a label
for theory and research written during or after the
second half of the twentieth century that explicitly engages with colonization and related terms.
The writings of Frantz Fanon (Martinique/
Algeria) and Albert Memmi (Tunisia) are key
historical influences in the development of
postcolonial psychology. Both wrote of the
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dynamic relationship and even interdependency
between colonizers and colonized and of psychological patterns that developed in both groups as
a result of colonization. One of Fanon’s key arguments is that violence is central to the colonial
dynamic and to decolonization. Violence and
colonization create a dualistic or Manichean psychology where the world is divided into “us” and
“them,” “superior” and “inferior,” and so forth.
This Manichean mentality will reproduce patterns of domination in a postcolonial situation,
and Fanon argued that only a violent break with
colonizers could end this cycle. This has been
a point of criticism, and critical approaches (see
below) have argued for the creation of fluid and
in-between spaces where binaries can be challenged and for other strategies where subjugated
voices could be heard. Another theme of Fanon’s
work that has been taken up in critical approaches
is the positioning of the colonized as Other and,
with that, an examination of forms of
representation.
Fanon (1967) and Memmi (1967) describe
a variety of characteristics that could be attributed to the colonizer and the colonized. Colonizer
attributes include a sense of superiority and dehumanization, while patterns attributed to the colonized include dependency and ambivalence,
restriction of identity, self-hatred, and alienation.
The Indian psychologist Nandy (1983) echoes
some of these themes and also explores the gendered dynamic of colonization, whereby the
superior attributes of the colonizer are judged to
be masculine in contrast with the inferior attributes of the colonized, judged as feminine. Colonization is thus associated with the valuing of
hypermasculinity. The South African activist
Biko (2004) was influenced particularly by
Fanon, again viewing colonization as a political
and economic force and also as a psychological
process. Biko placed racism at the center of colonization and called for the development of
a black consciousness that would create pride
and solidarity as a means to move towards
liberation.
Many of these ideas were developed further in
different contexts globally. For example, Bulhan
(1985) developed Fanon’s work to call for
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a psychology of liberation (see liberation psychology) for African Americans, but with relevance to those in other contexts with colonial
histories. Duran and Duran (1985) set out to
develop a postcolonial Native American psychology that would draw on the cultural resources and
practices that had been erased or suppressed by
colonization (see indigenous psychology). Other
contexts include Ireland (Moane, 2011), Puerto
Rico (Varas-Dı́az & Serrano-Garcı́a, 2003),
Australia and New Zealand (Dudgeon & Fielder,
2006; Huygens, 2011; Sonn & Green, 2006), the
Philippines (David, 2011; Enriquez, 1995), and
Hawaii (Kaholokula, 2007).
Further development in postcolonial psychology
applied a critical perspective to challenge the
binaries of colonizer-colonized and to develop
discursive analysis, drawing on cultural studies
(Bhabha, 1994; Said, 1978), literary theory (Spivak,
1988), and feminist methodology (Mohanty, 2003).
Traditional Debates
Traditional debates centered around the systematic (or unsystematic) nature of colonization
itself, the extent of oppression and exploitation,
and the role of colonized people in seeking or
colluding with colonization. Other debates mirrored debates in feminism and postmodernism
about the unitary and polarized categories of
“colonizer” and “colonized” and about diversity
within these groups. Several writers criticized
traditional psychology as inherently oppressive
and queried whether it could be reconstructed.
For example, Bulhan (1985) argued that traditional psychology has been Eurocentric and can
reproduce oppression through its individualistic
and acontexual biases. Later critiques argued that
the discourses of psychology were rooted in colonialism and would thus reproduce colonial relations of power (see Teo, 2005)
Critical Debates
There are several authors who have argued for the
relevance of postcolonial scholarship to a critical
Postcolonial Psychology
psychology and a postcolonial psychology.
Central to these arguments of the incorporation
of postcolonial critique into critical psychology
are questions such as the following: how can
postcolonial perspectives (and speaking
positions) be used to enhance understandings of
everyday life; how can postcolonial perspectives
challenge colonial practices, or coloniality,
embedded in knowledge production; how can
postcolonial studies enable deconstruction; and
how can postcolonial studies enable developing
the decolonizing and liberatory potential of
psychology? These are questions that are
central to research and practice seeking to
disrupt coloniality, secondary colonization, or
neocolonialism that can be embedded in research
practices but that also seeks to construct and
contribute to social transformation.
Key then for engaging postcolonial critique
relates to the need to go beyond the dualisms
that have hampered psychological inquiry
in favor of a psychopolitical orientation. Furthermore, there is emphasis on the need to recognize
the longer histories of colonization, newer and
more articulations of colonial relations through
globalization and neoliberal capitalism, and ways
psychology is tied in with these processes. How is
the center challenged by the stories and memories
of those in the periphery and what new spaces are
opened up for alliances across dimensions of
oppression and borders? Transversal alliances
involve crossing borders in creative ways and
redrawing boundaries by challenging signifying
practices that problematize diversity.
International Relevance
Colonialism is not a thing of the past. It is clear
that there are different forms of violence and
appropriation that make the resources of
postcolonial scholarship pertinent to critical and
transformative psychological research and practice. The term post also does not mean that colonization has stopped. Rather it continues, for
example, in the era of globalization, ongoing
exclusion of indigenous and first nations’ peoples, mass migration, dispossession and
Postcolonial Psychology
displacement, new forms of cultural domination,
and economic crises.
Some authors have sought to extend critical
psychology and discursive psychology by incorporating postcolonial critique. Those scholars
typically emphasize that postcolonial studies
have used the language of psychology as well as
the political to highlight the interrelatedness of
the political and the psychological. For example,
in examining Apartheid colonialism and the persistence of racism in post-Apartheid South
Africa, scholars (e.g., Hook, 2012) have used
Fanon and Biko’s work to develop
psychopolitical perspectives to examine and
challenge the ways in which racism persists and
continues to structure the lives of South Africans,
including those living in the diaspora. Significantly, the challenges faced by those in South
Africa resonate with those in different contexts
and countries who also have histories of colonization, for example, nations such as India, TimorLeste, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka.
David (2011) and colleagues have sought to
understand the ongoing effects of histories of
colonialism and oppression among Filipino
Americans. A focus is on understanding
internalized oppression or what he refers to as
“colonial mentality,” which is reflected in selfdenigration and negative attitudes and behavior,
including skin whitening and derogating in
group members.
Postcolonial scholarship has also been applied
to critically engage with a rapidly growing area of
the psychology of acculturation that seeks to
understand issues related to transnationalism, displacement, immigration, intercultural contact,
and identity construction (e.g., Bhatia, 2007). In
this area concerns have been raised about the
ways in which research on migration and adaptation relies on essentialist and static conceptions
of key notions such as culture and identity. Those
conceptions assume a universality of experience,
which is a problematic underpinning for psychological inquiry. Here the focus is typically on
re-centering approaches that value narrative
understandings of identity and culture at one
level, while at another level emphasis is placed
on geopolitics, histories of colonization and
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power relations, and memory and the complex
ways these shape the microexperiences of identity construction and acculturation.
Practical Relevance
Theory and insights from postcolonial theory
have been applied in many of the contexts
discussed above. For example in Australia, Sonn
and colleagues have used postcolonial theory in
research, education, and community settings with
migrant, settler, and indigenous people to examine the diverse and complex responses to adversity and oppressive intergroup relations (Sonn &
Green, 2006). In Ireland Moane (2011) has used
postcolonial theory in community-based education programs for disadvantaged women and
LGBT people. Duran and Duran (1985) and
David (2011) have applied postcolonial concepts
in therapeutic and mental health settings working
with Native American and Filipino clients,
respectively. Thus postcolonial psychology both
challenges knowledge production and methodologies and also offers a paradigm for practical
applications.
Future Directions
Postcolonial scholarship is relevant today
because of histories of colonialism and the ongoing and newer oppressions based on race, gender,
class, and sexuality and where these intersect.
Psychology has been complicit in producing colonizing knowledges. Postcolonial scholarship
offers critical resources aimed at disrupting colonizing practices in favor of decolonizing methodologies and epistemologies that can produce
knowledge and practices that will foster liberation agendas (David, 2011; Smith, 1999; Reyes
Cruz & Sonn, 2011).
Issues of reflexivity and subjectivity, social
positioning, politics of representation, privilege,
and voice are key concerns and notions for
postcolonial scholars, who share these concerns
with feminist and liberation psychologies. These
concepts relate to speaking and listening
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positions, that is, ethical and political considerations that are deeply implicated in research and
practice. Can the subaltern speak (Spivak, 1988)
and under what conditions? What is the role and
risk of strategic essentialism in reproducing what
postcolonial critique seeks to undo?
References
Bhabha, H. (1994). On the location of culture. London:
Routledge.
Bhatia, S. (2007). American karma: Race, culture, and
identity in the Indian Diaspora. New York: New York
University Press.
Biko, S. (2004). I write what I like. Johannesburg:
Pan Macmillan.
Bulhan, H. A. (1985). Frantz Fanon and the psychology of
oppression. New York: Plenum.
David, E. J. R. (2011). Filipino -/American postcolonial
psychology: Oppression, colonial mentality, and
decolonization. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse.
Dudgeon, P., & Fielder, J. (2006). Third spaces within
tertiary places: Indigenous Australian studies. Journal
of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16,
396–409.
Duran, E., & Duran, B. (1985). Native American
postcolonial psychology. New York: New York
University Press.
Enriquez, V. (1995). From colonial to liberation psychology. Manila, Philippines: De La Salle University Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). The wretched of the earth. Ringwood,
Australia: Penguin.
Hook, D. (2012). A critical psychology of the post
colonial. London: Routledge.
Huygens, I. (2011). Developing a decolonisation practice
for settler colonisers: A case study from aotearoa
New Zealand. Settler Colonial Studies, 2(1), 53–81.
Kaholokula, J. K. (2007). Colonialism, acculturation, and
depression among Kanaka Maoli of Hawai‘i.
In P. Culbertson, M. N. Agee, & C. O. Makasiale
(Eds.), Penina Uliuli: Contemporary challenges in
mental health for pacific peoples (pp. 180–195). Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
Memmi, A. (1967). The colonizer and the colonized.
Boston: Beacon.
Moane, G. (2011). Gender and colonialism:
A psychological analysis of oppression and liberation.
Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders:
Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery
of self under colonialism. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Reyes Cruz, M., & Sonn, C. C. (2011). Decolonizing
culture in community psychology: Reflections from
Postmodern Marxism
critical social science. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47(1/2), 203–214.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies:
Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed
Books.
Sonn, C. C., & Green, M. J. (2006). Disrupting the dynamics of oppression in intercultural research and practice.
Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology,
16, 337–346.
Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson
& L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation
of culture. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to
postcolonial theory. New York: Springer.
Varas-Dı́az, N., & Serrano-Garcı́a, I. (2003). The challenge of a positives self-image in a colonial context:
A psychology of liberation for the Puerto Rican experience. American Journal of Community Psychology,
31(1/2), 103–115.
Postmodern Marxism
Lois Holzman
East Side Institute, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Introduction
If you pair “Postmodern” and “Marxism” (in, say,
a Google, Google scholar, library, or Amazon
search), you will find almost nothing on
“Postmodern marxism.” You will be rewarded,
however, with books, articles, chapters, and blogs
on the differences and “the debate” between the
two. Furthermore, those few scholars who theorize a synthesis of postmodernism and Marxism
focus almost exclusively on economics, the new
cyber phenomena, or both, leaving psychological
issues unexplored. This literature will not be
reviewed here, but a few suggested readings on
both the debate and the syntheses are given in the
reference list.
Definition
As it is relevant to critical psychology, Postmodern marxism refers to Newman and Holzman’s
Postmodern Marxism
methodology of social therapeutics. It is
a practice that synthesizes elements of Marx’s
understanding of “man as social” and his dialectical method with elements of postmodern
psychology, in particular its understanding of
relationality, language, and meaning making
and its skepticism toward truth.
At its beginning in the 1970s, this methodology drew heavily on the Marxist conceptions of
alienation and class struggle. At the same time,
descriptions of social therapy as “the practice of
method” highlighted Marx as revolutionary
methodologist more than Marx as political economist and revolutionary. The Soviet psychologist
Lev Vygotsky continued Marx’s revolutionary
methodology by identifying, in different realms
of social life, human beings as revolutionary,
practical-critical, activists (or activity-ists).
From the 1990s to the present day, postmodern
critiques of modernist philosophy and psychology have influenced social therapeutics.
Keywords
Commodification; alienation; performance;
Vygotsky; Marx; revolutionary activity; class
struggle; sociality; social therapeutics
Critical Debates
Two Strains of Thought in Marx
There are two lines of thought in Marx’s writings: (1) class struggle (as in the opening line of
The Communist Manifesto – “The history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles”) and (2) revolutionary activity (as in
Marx’s Third Thesis on Feuerbach – “The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and
of human activity or self-changing can be
conceived and rationally understood only as
revolutionary practice”). In Marx’s worldview,
class struggle forefronts the anticapitalist and
deconstructive, while revolutionary activity
forefronts the communistic and reconstructive.
Together, they could transform “all existing
conditions.”
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Postmodern marxism takes to heart the
Marxian thesis that the transformation of the
world and the transformation of ourselves as
human beings are one and the same task. Further,
since revolutionary activity is a fundamental
human characteristic and carrying out revolutionary activity is necessary for ongoing individual
and species development, Postmodern marxism
relates to all people as revolutionaries – which
means relating to people as world historic in
everyday, mundane matters, that is, as social
beings engaged in the life/history-making process of always becoming.
Method as Tool and Result
Following Marx, Vygotsky posited a new conception of method, one that prefigured postmodernism in capturing the always emergent, or
“becomingness,” of human beings: “The search
for method becomes one of the most important
problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological
activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and
the result of the study” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65).
As monistically dialectical, tool and result
points the way out of the objective-subjective
and theory-practice dichotomies that have
plagued Marxism, psychology, and Marxist psychology. To the extent that contemporary human
beings can become world historic or revolutionary, they must exercise their power as methodologists, that is, not merely users of the tools that
are currently available but as collective creators
of new tool and results.
Postmodern De-commodifying and
De-alienating
In the current economic, political, and cultural
climate, human beings have been socialized as
commodified and alienated individuals. Mainstream psychology relates to them as such, that
is, as who we are, not as simultaneously who we
are and who we are becoming. Transforming the
current economic, political, and cultural climate
involves de-commodifying and de-alienating its
human “products.” Neither negative nor destructive, it is the positive and constructive process of
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producing sociality by the continuous transformation of mundane specific life practices
into new forms of life. Newman and Holzman’s
Postmodern marxist social therapeutic methodology is a process ontology in which human beings
create new kinds of tools as the becoming activity
of expressing – in how people live their lives –
their sociality, adaptation to history, and
“species-life.”
This postmodern understanding of Marx dissolves the dualist gap between self and world,
between thought and language, between who we
are and who we are becoming, between theory
and practice, in such a way that we can approach
human beings as activists and activity-ists, as
makers of meaning, rather than as knowers and
perceivers. Further, it actualizes the postmodern
critique of modernist psychology’s isolated individual through a new ontology – group activity.
As a process ontology, a social-relational ontology, group activity raises a new set of questions
and challenges for Marxists and postmodernists
alike. For the unit of study becomes the social
unit creating itself.
This shift in focus from the individual to the
relationship or group exposes a problematic
assumption of psychology: if it is individuals
that perceive, read, problem solve, experience
emotional distress or disorder, and so on, then
the instruction, learning, teaching, treatment, or
therapy must be individuated. While group work
in general and group therapy in particular might
at first appear to be challenges and counterexamples, typically the group is understood to be
a context for individuals to learn and/or get
help. In contrast, the process ontology of group
activity suggests that individuals need to be organized as social units in order to carry out the tasks
of learning and developing, not unlike countless
other human endeavors in which people become
organized as social units to get a specific
job done.
The alienation that Marx describes – relating
to the products of production severed from their
producers and from the process of their production, that is, as commodities – is not limited to
cars, loaves of bread, and computers. It is the
normal way of seeing and relating in
Postmodern Marxism
contemporary Western culture. People relate to
their lives, relationships, beliefs, feelings, culture, and so on, as things torn away from the
process of their creation and from their creators.
Social therapy’s process ontology, in which
human beings are both who we are and who we
are becoming, is a deconstruction-reconstruction
of the ontology of modernist psychology in which
human beings are commodified. And who we are
becoming are creators of tools that can continuously transform mundane specific life practices
(including those that produce alienation) into new
forms of life. Creating these new kinds of tools is
the becoming activity of creating/giving expression to our sociality.
Postmodern marxism identifies language
as both a source and site of contemporary alienation. Most languages (perhaps all extant
languages) are constructed around and perpetuate the illusion of a world filled with commodities in competitive, comparative, causal, and
quantitative
relationships.
Accordingly,
a Postmodern marxist practice involves carefully deconstructing language and helping people see the individuated, competitive, selforiented commodified language with which
they talk to and about themselves and each
other. In participating in this process, people
come to see the extent to which language leaves
them separate from each other. This collective
activity of glimpsing the actual production of
alienation is de-alienating to the extent that this
is possible in the current times.
Performing
The human capacity to perform, to pretend,
and to play has been undervalued and
understudied by psychology, but it has
a central role in Postmodern marxism. Within
traditional psychology performance is best
known as a tool for result (play as a way children practice social roles and performance in
therapy as an instrument for interpretation or
insight). The general idea behind psychodrama
and drama therapy, for example, is that by
“acting out” instead of “talking about” their
lives, people will reveal things that they otherwise cannot or will not. Others use drama
Postmodern Psychology
techniques to encourage interpersonal relationships and group values as a way for people to
learn how to express their problems with the
group or a group member.
Postmodern psychology and psychotherapy,
however, relate to performance in a more
tool-and-result fashion. Social constructionists
highlight the performatory aspects of subjectivity, agency, activity, and human relations,
narrativists work to expose the “storiness” of
our lives and help people create their own (and,
most often, better) stories, and collaborative
therapists emphasize the dynamic and coconstructed nature of meaning. Psychologists
within the cultural-historical tradition are also
paying attention to performance and play. What
is important in all this work is the collaborative
activity of performance; the focus is on the
ensemble activity of creating the performance
rather than on interpreting what it “means.”
References
Carver, T. (1999). The Postmodern marx. State College,
PA: Penn State University Press.
Gibson-Graham, J. K., Resnick, S., Wolff, R., Graham, J.,
& Gibson, K. (Eds.). (2001). Re/presenting class:
essays in Postmodern marxism. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Hartley, G. (2003). The abyss of representation: Marxism
and the postmodern sublime. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Holzman, L. (Ed.). (1999). Performing psychology:
A postmodern culture of the mind. London: Routledge.
Holzman, L. (2009). Vygotsky at work and play. London:
Routledge.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S.
Vygotsky.Vol. 1. New York: Plenum.
Wood, E. M., & Foster, J. B. (Eds.). (1997). In defense of
history: Marxism and the postmodern agenda.
New York: Monthly Review Press.
Online Resources
Eastsideinstitute.org
Frednewmanphd.com
Loisholzman.org
Marxists.org
Postmodernpsychology.com
Postmoderntherapies.com
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Postmodern Psychology
Marissa Barnes1, Fengqing Gao2 and
Yunpeng Wu3
1
Department of Psychology, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
2
Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal
University, Jinan, Shandong, China
3
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal
University, Jinan, China
Introduction
The notion of an epoch named postmodernity or
an intellectual current labeled postmodernism has
been debated among scholars; an extensive literature concerning postmodernism extends from
the visual and fine arts, to humanities, and to the
sciences. Postmodern perspectives can be found
in writing concerning architecture, literature,
visual arts, music, dance, film, theater, politics,
anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology – there are few areas of academic and cultural study that have not been
brought into the debate around this concept. The
challenge for scholars attempting to provide
a survey of the term postmodern (and its variations, e.g., postmodernity, postmodernism) is that
it is used in a number of different ways across and
within disciplines (Hutcheon, 1993).
Thus as it concerns a postmodern psychology,
it must be from the outset recognized that
the descriptive term postmodern is itself
problematic. Nonetheless, in contemporary discourse and on the broadest level postmodernism
can be understood as a response, a reflection, and
a critique of all aspects of cultural life viewed as
oppressively modern. Postmodern psychology,
broadly construed, refers to a collection of perspectives critical of modern psychology’s epistemology, ontology, and relevance.
Definition
A number of scholars have attempted to remedy
some of the confusion which surface in a review
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of the diverse literature on postmodernity and
modernity. For example, Kvale (1992) distinguishes postmodernity as an era (temporal), postmodernism as its cultural expression (i.e., in
concrete manifestations, e.g., art or architecture),
and postmodern thought as the intellectual
current undergirding or reflect on these states
of affair. Yet these distinctions do not help in
reconciling the plurality of the postmodern
approach. Even if one were to ascribe to a basic
unit of organization – temporality (i.e., postmodernity as a period “coming after” a modern era),
in order for this “foothold” to be of service, there
would need to be some agreement that (a) the
modern era has ended, (b) we are in
a postmodern one (there are conflicting views,
e.g., Bauman, 2000, re: liquid modernity;
Giddens, 1991, re: high modernity; see also,
Berman, 1983; Osborne, 1992), and (c) that
postmodernity is in fact the next stage in our
development (i.e., a question of historical epistemology or questions of historical development
as continuous or discontinuous).
Postmodern perspectives are often in conflict
with one another on substantive issues regarding
the nature of reality and knowledge. It has not
gone noticed that the polyphony of postmodernism seldom rings in harmony and the most
common conclusion is that discourses are
neither coherent nor unified, which renders postmodernism itself in defiance of definition (see
Harvey, 1989; Rosenau, 1992; Southgate, 2003
for reviews). Due to its breadth of use and the
conflicting notions embedded in the various
postmodern discourses, providing a coherent
and descriptive definition is problematic. As
articulated by Beverly Southgate (2003),
Postmodernism is a notoriously elusive concept;
trying to define it resembles bare-handed fishing. . .
there is a sense in which postmodernism seems to
deconstruct itself. By which I mean, in
postmodernism’s own terms, there can be no one
given place from which we can finally describe or
define it, and – to compound our difficultly – there
can be no necessary external referent for any linguistic description or definition that we may try to
impose (pp. 5–8).
And as further supported by Parker (1998,
p. 603), “postmodern stories are about
Postmodern Psychology
deconstruction and dispersion. Postmodernism
is difficult to define because it performs this
deconstruction in relation to other stories and its
internal shape is uncertain and unstable.”
Despite the difficulty of defining postmodernism, there are some enduring characteristics
which commonly undergird most (yet not all)
postmodern discourses, and these include the
following: a critique of concepts such as truth,
objectivity, rationality, certainty, and authority;
a challenge to the centrism, foundationalism,
essentialism, determinism, and universalism
undergirding modernist worldviews; and a skepticism towards the metanarrative of human progress. So with certainty postmodernism can be
characterized as a critique of the “modern,”
the traditional, the conventional, or the status
quo – construed as the hegemony of modernity
or our unquestioned and culturally prescribed
“ways of being” and “doing things.” It can be
characterized as a decentering and a questioning
of “all things given.” As it pertains to the culturespecific narrative of the psychological sciences,
postmodern psychology rejects the dominant
traditions of modern psychology (e.g., the
valorization of objectivity and the impartial
observer; a methodological imperative as the
route to truth; a belief in ahistorical, decontextualized, and universal psychological objects;
empiricism and positivism as the basis for
knowledge creation; individual rationality as the
epistemic authority on the objective world).
Keywords
Postmodernism; postmodern psychology; social
constructionism; epistemology; methodology;
discourse analysis
History
Questions regarding the epistemological origins of
postmodernism are, like its characterization, specific to perspective. However, there a number of
logical proposals that could be made regarding, for
example, locating an origin in Nietzsche’s writings or in the social movements of the 1960s and
Postmodern Psychology
1970s (Best & Kellner, 1991). One of the most
common “hooks” regarding when postmodernity
was inaugurated into the intellectual discourse as it
pertains to the social and human sciences is
Lyotard’s (1979/1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In this work Lyotard
defines the postmodern as “incredulity towards
meta-narratives” (xxiv) and describes the postmodern condition as signaling an end to grand
narratives (by this he means grand narratives of
progress or liberation, e.g., the metanarrative
of science as progressive and liberating).
Certainly, one could characterize psychology’s
methodologism as a metanarrative (see Danziger,
1985; re: psychology’s methodological imperative), but tracing this line of thought to the
postmodern discourse that unfolded in the late
1980s is less than straightforward.
Postmodern thought must be understood within
the context of particular social, economic, and
cultural transformations in Euro-American societies and within particular language communities
(i.e., academic or scientific). As it relates to postmodern psychology, there are a number of points
to bear in mind as it pertains to the different precursors, trajectories, and thinkers described as
postmodernist. First, there are different histories
and trajectories that can be described in relation to
Continental European traditions and North American traditions: if postmodernism(s) emerged in
relation to an intellectual climate, then the intellectual climate of France in the late 1960s and
1970s must be recognized as distinct from the
intellectual climate in North America in
the1960s and 1970s; and although social movements of the 1960s onward spanned continents,
the meaning of these movements must be placed
in their respective social, economic, and political
contexts. Second, the discipline of psychology has
tended to borrow from outside of the discipline in
regard to its metatheory. For example, North
American natural scientific-oriented psychologists
adopted philosophies of science that were put forward as it applied to physics (e.g., axioms),
whereas humanistic-oriented psychologists tended
to incorporate approaches and ideas from more
humanities-based philosophies (e.g., narrative) or
sociopolitical theories (e.g., Marxism), wherein
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the latter has been construed as modernist and, in
some postmodernist discourse, a target of attack.
Third, the postmodern critique of positivist methodology has been characterized as having
a different tone in European and North American
traditions (e.g., Rosenau, 1992 characterizes
North American postmodernism as affirmative,
whereas European Continental is viewed as more
skeptical). And finally, many of the scholars
that are called into the discourse as sources of
postmodernist thought have been indexed as
postmodern but should not be described as such
(e.g., Habermas was a staunch critic), could be
characterized by more nuanced terms (e.g.,
Lacan as a poststructuralist), express modernist
theories as a source of some of their postmodernist
concepts (Derrida and deconstruction), or have
been labeled postmodernist because of the impact
their work has had as a contribution to particular
postmodernist critiques (e.g., Foucault) (see Teo,
2005 for a more comprehensive discussion of
these issues). The term postmodern has come to
be associated with a variety of approaches that
are also known by other names “poststructuralist
theory,” “critical theory,” and “feminist epistemology”; yet most of these approaches have
come to their critical positioning via particular
critiques (e.g., of social categories, social systems)
that may (or may not) have been produced through
or by modernity. In many cases it appears that any
position critical of or proposing alternatives to
traditional psychology has been slotted under the
postmodern umbrella.
Although postmodernist discourse (or critical
discourse) began to flourish in the late 1960s and
1970s within the humanities (and in some philosophical contexts) and some marginalized voices
had begun making inroads in the literature
(second wave feminism, postcolonial theory), it
was not until the mid-1980s that the emergence of
a postmodern psychology appeared within mainstream psychological discourse.
Traditional Debates
Kenneth Gergen’s (1985) “Social Constructionist
Movement in Modern Psychology” is noted as
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the inaugural piece that brought a postmodern
critique to the center of mainstream psychological discourse (published in the American
Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association).
Gergen (1985, 1990, 2001) notes that modernist worldviews are embedded and represented
through Western culture (the arts, sciences, social
institutions, etc.). According to Gergen the psychological sciences are a product of cultural modernism; thus psychology is performative in the
reproduction and maintenance of Western modernist hegemony. At the root of Gergen’s critique
of modernist psychology are questions
concerning the nature of reality (ontology) and
our knowledge of it (epistemology) – does
a reality exist independent of our knowledge of
it and is our knowledge of it a true representation
of the real? In particular, Gergen focuses on
aspects related to the processes and products of
knowledge making and knowledge claims – what
is considered knowledge, is knowledge
a reflection of reality, and how are subjective
meanings transformed into facts?
In various publications Gergen summarizes
a number of the features of modernism that
undergird the psychological sciences. According
to Gergen (1990) the assumptions of modernist
psychology that postmodern psychologies seek to
address are as follows: (1) the belief in
a knowable world, that there is a psychological
subject matter out there to be discovered; (2) the
belief in universal properties, that there are general principles (or psychological processes) that
can be derived through systematic study which
transcend context (time, situation, and persons);
(3) the belief that truth can be derived through
method, that through the use of empirical
methods, the objective facts regarding
psychology’s subject matter are revealed; and
(4) a belief in the progressive nature of research,
that research and knowledge are cumulative
(a continuous view of historical progress). In
Gergen (2001), the three modernist assumptions
that are posed as mainstays of mainstream psychology are referred to as the “emphasis on the
individual mind, an objectively knowable world,
and language as the carrier of truth” (p. 805) and
Postmodern Psychology
are also referred to as “rational agency, empirical
knowledge, and language as representation”
(Gergen & Thatchenkery, 2004, p. 228).
It is not always easy to disentangle epistemological from ontological concerns, but it is evident (although with a modest amount of
blending) that the central issues up for debate
from the postmodern perspective proposed by
Gergen are those concerning objectivity and the
notion of the detached observer; the notion of
universal, ahistorical, and decontextualized psychological processes and objects; the nature of
knowledge and representations of reality; the
centrality of the individual and a focus on rationality; and the notion of language as the medium
of bringing truth (derived through method) or the
facts to light.
Critical Debates
Many of the aforementioned modernist assumptions, which are the focus of the postmodern
critique, are resolved in overlap through
Gergen’s proposals. In summary, however,
Gergen proposes the following: (1) the subject
matter of psychology is not reflection of an objective reality, out there to be discovered; reality is
an artifact of social processes. Scientists encounter objects that are historically, linguistically, and
socio-contextually constituted through participation in relational encounters; (2) focus should be
shifted from universal truths to local truths.
Rather than seeking to discover universals that
transcend context and time, truths (culturally
accepted ways of being and engaging) are particular and must be explored in the communities and
locales in which they are created; (3) communal
rhetoric rather than individual reason forms the
basis for understanding and action. Meaning,
knowledge, and courses of action are created
through social interaction and participation in
a community; rational agency is dictated by
involvement in these relationships; (4) reality is
socially constructed and transmitted through linguistic resources; (5) language is a relational phenomena. Instead of looking to language as the
disseminator of truth or as the outward expression
Postmodern Psychology
of the inner workings of our mind, it should be
viewed as guide to participatory action. Language helps us develop, transform, and transmit
social conventions within a given community.
According to Gergen knowledge is an artifact
of human interaction and knowledge is fundamentally a social phenomenon. Psychological
objects are not out there to be discovered rather
they are constructed by and through sociolinguistic conventions and rules. Reality is a byproduct of social exchanges. Reality is always
particular, contextual, and historical; thus understanding must be situated as such. Therefore,
between reality and experience is language, and
within social context any given number of perspectives are at play in the creation of a given
community’s language games.
Gergen cites, in addition to French-speaking
scholars (Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida), Anglo and
German-speaking scholars (Wittgenstein, Rorty,
Kuhn, Feyerabend, Gadamer) as intellectual
predecessors to the postmodern turn in psychology. How each informs Gergen’s work, as well as
other postmodern scholars, is beyond the scope of
this entry, but it is worth noting that the focus on
language and in particular on Wittgenstein’s
(1953/2001) notion of language games, remains
highly influential in both Gergen’s and Lyotard’s
conception of how knowledge is created (see also
Harré & Gillett, 1994; Sarbin, 1986 re: discursive
and narrative psychology).
The literature that unfolded from the late
1980s onward in response to Gergen’s postmodern constructionism is vast. In addition to
a variety of books with a collection of papers
devoted to the topic of postmodernism and psychology (e.g., Fee, 2000; Kvale, 1992), there
were a number of journal issues (e.g., Theory &
Psychology, 2001) and a number of target articles
and commentaries that appeared in the American
Psychologist (1994, 1995, 2001, 2002) following
from the proposals put forward by Gergen.
Although there were scholars in support on
a number of Gergen’s proposals, there were also
a number of points of critique. One of the primary
critiques is in regard to the issue of agency and
human striving – the notion of a self-determining
and agentic being with personal endeavors.
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Critique concerning the status of the human
agency and striving came from both “opponents”
and “supporters” of Gergen’s project. Steinar
Kvale, the editor of Psychology and Postmodernism, noted the tension between “postmodern
thought” and “the self-actualizing humanistic
individual” in the introduction of this collected
volume and in his chapter (Kvale, 1992), wherein
he explored in detail the incompatibilities
between postmodernism and psychology. In the
article entitled “Selfhood at Risk: Postmodern
Perils and the Perils of Postmodernism,” Smith
(1994, p. 405) characterizes Gergen’s (1991)
treatment of the “saturated self” as
a “paralyzing” threat to conceptions of the
“self.” In addition to charging Gergen of
antiscientific and nihilistic relativism, Smith
urges for “the possibility to retain some toehold
to sustain the old human struggle toward truth,
goodness, and beauty as meaningful ideals”
(p. 409); and in this pursuit Smith certainly thinks
science plays a role: “we abdicate any distinctive
or useful role as science and profession if
we give up either the aims or the strategies of
science toward approximating an ideal of truth or
the aspirations of ethics.” (p. 411). Clearly, Smith
views Gergen’s postmodernism as an attack not
just on selfhood but also on truth, tradition, and
belief in progress. Gergen (1994) responded to
Smith, and in 1995 a series of commentaries
around this exchange was published (see American Psychologist, volume 50); both Gergen and
Smith made comments also. Collected responses
to this debate were the first of two that appeared
in the American Psychologist and the second, in
2002, where another commentary section was
devoted to commentaries on Gergen (2001).
The impact of Gergen’s work and the postmodern current in psychology has been
questioned, debated, and conceptualized. Parker
(1998) lauded the challenges that the postmodern
critique had posed for psychology, yet warned of
the danger of reactionary extremes that may
result. For example, if we have, on the one
hand, postmodernists defining their position in
opposition to the defining features of modern
psychology and, on the other hand, modernists
moving closer to those very characteristics in
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order to defend against the attack on their traditions, the critique itself creates a dialectic and the
extremes are pushed further through the dynamics of this process. Parker suggests that the
critique may result in traditional psychologists’
rapprochement into modernist traditions of
a more extreme form. Parker (1998) is critical
of the rhetoric of “new vistas” employed in
Gergen’s work (e.g., the suggestion that participation in dialogue, between modernist and postmodern psychologists, will open up new
possibilities and opportunities for the discipline
to innovate and reconstruct itself a new); Parker
warns that this rings of the very progressivist
metanarrative that postmodernists are purported
to reject. Noteworthy, the aforementioned commentaries in 2002 also drew attention to similar
concerns regarding the future of postmodern
psychology.
Within the discipline of psychology, the
debate has continued apace. Within philosophical psychology a number of routes for
reconstruing the varieties of postmodernism
have been proposed. For example, Fishman
(1999) outlined four different types of postmodernism, skeptical, critical, ontological, and
pragmatic, and offered six different themes that
may be addressed by these different types of
postmodern theory. More recently the language
of the “middle ground,” first suggested by
Martin and Sugarman (2000), has been more
comprehensively developed into a conceptualization of middle-ground theorists (MGT; Held,
2007). The philosophical positioning of MGTs
is construed as located somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes of modernist
and postmodernist. Held (p. 6) proposes that
MGTs share a common commitment to the
“interpretive turn” in the social and human sciences (as distinguished from the “linguistic
turn” or the “discursive turn”). Held proposes
that MGTs are united in this middle ground by
a two-pronged mission: “(a) gives a truthtracking or realist (but not objectivist) account
of human psychological existence and yet (b)
does not deprive humans of their agentic (interpretive) capacities” (p. 13). Noteworthy, the
aforementioned critique regarding agency is
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included, with the addition of realist ontology
and truth seeking, in this characterization of
MGTs mutual features.
Conclusions
Held (2007) highlighted that MGTs are
philosophically diverse (neo-hermeneutic, neopragmatic, moderate social constructionism, or
discursive constructionism) and this brings this
reconstruction of postmodern psychology full
circle. The varieties of the postmodern movement
within psychology are broad and cover many
disparate factions under its huge umbrella, thus
bringing us full circle to the problematic of the
postmodernist label itself. As noted by Parker
(1998), those using discourse analysis, writing
critical theory, and essentially most practices
that are viewed as “different” from the more
traditional forms of practice in conventional psychology are now construed as representatives of
postmodernism. Applying this label is problematic, as highlighted from the outset – the concept
of postmodernity, the postmodern, the postmodernist, and postmodernism is itself questionable.
Despite the inability to elucidate a consistent
postmodern metanarrative (i.e., what constitutes
postmodernism) and reconcile the wide range of
approaches, the impact of these diverse perspectives on the intellectual climate of our culture has
been dramatic and far-reaching, particularly in
the applied areas of education and psychotherapy. Over the last 20 years, postmodern psychology has made important breakthroughs in the
field of psychological counseling (Bott, 2002;
D’Andrea, 2000; Ramey & Grubb, 2009), psychiatry (Leffert, 2007), and educational practices
(Schulz, 2007). As noted by Slife and Williams
(1997),
although
many
psychologists
have attempted to ignore the perspectives of postmodernism, they exist and thrive in the broader
intellectual discourses of feminism, social
constructionism, structuralism, phenomenology,
existentialism, and hermeneutics, among others.
Postmodernism has opened up spaces for
a plurality and heterogeneity of voices; importantly, it has allowed for marginalized
Postmodern Psychology
perspectives to enter into mainstream psychological discourse. Yet questions remain regarding
how decisions are made when all voices are
sounding – issues of rational decision-making
processes, authority, and power loom heavy.
Questions regarding ethical and practical concerns become a salient point of critique regarding
postmodernism as it exists in the realm of the
intelligentsia. Postmodernism has found representation in liberation movements and writings
that draw political critique into the critique of
psychology (e.g., Ibáñez & Íñiguez, 1997).
Yet work still needs to be done as much of the
discourse still remains at the level of scholasticism rather than at the level of application and
action. To disregard the contributions made by
postmodern psychology based on problems in its
conceptualization and challenges with its epistemological and ontological coherence (e.g., its
treatment of self and agency, its rejection of reason, its incompatibility with a realist ontology)
would be a pity. Rather critiques of mainstream
or modernist psychology needs to continue. This
critical work needs to attend to specific sociopolitical and historical events (i.e., be contextualized) and deconstruct how these situations play
out at the level of the psychological and the “real”
world (e.g., the interconnection between events
and ideology, how social categories impact the
creation and the arrangement of our social institutions). Whether modernism, as a broad entity, is
responsible for all our systemic problems remains
a moot point as long as critical, reflexive, ethical,
and humane work continues to have voice within
contexts where the otherwise silenced are
oppressed.
References
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press.
Berman, M. (1983). All that is solid melts into air: The
experience of modernity. London: Verso.
Best, S., & Kellner, D. (1991). Postmodern theory:
Critical interrogations. New York: Guilford Press.
Bott, D. (2002). Comment – Carl Rogers and postmodernism: Continuing the conversation. Journal of Family
Therapy, 24, 326–329.
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D’Andrea, M. (2000). Postmodernism, constructivism,
and multiculturalism: Three forces reshaping and
expanding our thoughts about counseling. Journal of
Mental Health Counseling, 22, 1–16.
Danziger, K. (1985). The methodological imperative in
psychology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 15, 1–13.
Fee, D. (Ed.). (2000). Pathology and the postmodern:
Mental illness as discourse and experience. London:
Sage.
Fishman, D. (1999). The case for pragmatic psychology.
New York: New York University Press.
Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement
in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40,
266–275.
Gergen, K. J. (1990). Toward a postmodern psychology.
Humanistic Psychologist, 18, 23–34.
Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic
Books.
Gergen, K. J. (1994). Exploring the postmodern: Perils or
potentials? American Psychologist, 49, 412–416.
Gergen, K. J. (2001). Psychological science in
a postmodern context. American Psychologist, 56,
403–813.
Gergen, K. J., & Thatchenkery, T. J. (2004). Organization
science as social construction: Postmodern potentials.
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 40,
228–249.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and
society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Harré, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind.
London: Sage.
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An
enquiry into the origins of cultural change.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Held, B. S. (2007). Psychology’s interpretive turn: The
search for truth and agency in theoretical and philosophical psychology. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Hutcheon, L. (1993). Postmodernism. In I. Makaryk (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory:
Approaches, scholars, terms (pp. 612–613). Toronto,
Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Ibáñez, T., & Íñiguez, L. (Eds.). (1997). Critical social
psychology. London: Sage.
Kvale, S. (1992). A postmodern psychology:
A contradiction in terms? In S. Kvale (Ed.), Psychology and postmodernism (pp. 31–57). London: Sage.
Leffert, M. (2007). Postmodernism and its impact on
psychoanalysis. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 71,
22–41.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The post-modern condition:
A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi,
Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
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Martin, J., & Sugarman, J. (2000). Between the modern
and the postmodern: The possibility of self and
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Parker, I. (1998). Against postmodernism: Psychology in
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117–129.
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1953).
Postpartum Depression
the social and political context in which mothering occurs. They critique the mainstream
view as upholding the idealized myth of motherhood, pathologizing women’s distress, and
depoliticizing the work of childcare.
Definition
“Postpartum” or “postnatal” depression refers to
the experience of being depressed following
childbirth. Although a common term in popular
discourse, “postpartum depression” is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. A distinction is often
made in the literature between “postpartum
blues” (or “baby blues”), “postpartum depression,” and “postpartum psychosis.” “Postpartum
blues” is used to refer to the common experience
of emotional lability and tearfulness occurring
within a week to 10 days after delivery. “Postpartum depression” is used to identify more severe
and ongoing distress, while “postpartum psychosis” refers to the extremely rare but often highly
publicized experience of delusions or hallucinations in the postpartum period.
Keywords
Depression; women; childbirth; motherhood;
discourses of femininity
Postpartum Depression
Michelle N. Lafrance
Department of Psychology, St. Thomas
University, Fredericton, Canada
Introduction
The term “postpartum depression” is rooted in
a biomedical understanding of women’s distress
after childbirth. Within this mainstream approach,
postpartum depression is regarded as an
illness: a problem with women’s bodies – in
particular, a product of hormonal dysregulation.
In contrast, feminist scholars approach depression
in the postpartum period as a problem with
Traditional Debates
Ongoing debate exists as to whether or not
depression during the postpartum period should
be considered a discrete diagnosis. In contrast to
popular understanding, it is not clear that there is
an increased risk of depression following childbirth or that depression during this time differs in
fundamental ways from other experiences of
depression in terms of risk factors, causes, or
phenomenology.
Accordingly,
postpartum
depression does not appear as a diagnostic
category in either the American Psychiatric
Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(DSM) or the World Health Organization’s
Postpartum Depression
International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Instead, various diagnoses, including major
depressive disorder and bipolar disorder can be
qualified as having postpartum or peripartum
onset. Further debate surrounds the time frame
that should be employed. While it is stipulated in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric
Association, 2013) that onset must occur during
pregnancy or within four weeks of delivery, time
frames of up to one year are typically adopted in
both the literature and clinical practice.
Significant debate also exists regarding the
practice of screening for postpartum depression.
Arguments for universal screening center on care
for the child, citing the adverse effects of maternal depression on attachment and development.
Arguments against screening point to a variety of
issues, including concerns about mothers’
reactions to being screened; questions regarding
the psychometric properties of screening tools;
the adverse consequences of false positives and
negatives; inadequate evidence regarding the
efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the practice;
concerns over increasing the load on health care
systems; the lack of services, in some contexts, to
which to refer identified women; and the inappropriateness of employing standardized measures
across cultural contexts.
Although less prominent in the literature,
some debate also exists in regard to the appropriateness of pharmacological treatment of depression in the postpartum period. Traditionally,
pregnant women have been excluded from drug
trials, and few studies have assessed the effectiveness of antidepressants for postpartum
depression. Moreover, while antidepressants are
known to secrete into breast milk, effects on the
nursing child are only beginning to be evaluated.
Despite insufficient research in the area, the use
of antidepressant medication with women who
are depressed after childbirth is widespread.
Critical Debates
In keeping with their work on depression in
general, feminist scholars have deeply critiqued
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the conceptualization of women’s depression
following childbirth as individual pathology
(Lafrance, 2009; Stoppard, 2000; Ussher, 2006).
While they acknowledge the reality and severity of
women’s distress, they problematize the medicalization of this experience (Chrisler & JohnstonRobledo, 2002; Mauthner, 2002; Nicolson, 1998;
Ussher, 2006). They point to the long history in
which medical experts have subjugated the female
body to surveillance and regulation, constructing it
as the source of women’s madness, badness, and
weakness (Chrisler & Johnston-Robledo, 2002;
Ussher, 2006). Despite a lack of scientific evidence, the notion that women are victims of their
unruly bodies (in particular their hormones)
remains dominant in both popular and medical
discourse. In contrast, critical scholars have
described the concept of “postpartum depression”
as an artifact of patriarchy, which blames women’s
bodies for their misery while glorifying the motherhood ideal and eclipsing from view the ways in
which the everyday realities of motherhood may
be depressing (Lafrance, 2009; Nicolson 2001;
Stoppard, 2000).
The concept of “postpartum depression” signifies that depression in the postpartum period is
aberrant and indicative of illness. Accordingly, it
rests squarely on the fantasy of the motherhood
ideal whereby all women are assumed to want
children, be fulfilled in having them, and
know instinctively how to care for them
(Mauthner, 2002; Nicolson, 1998, 2001). Within
this frame, the experience of motherhood is taken
for granted as a universally happy one, and “good
mothers” are identified as unfailingly serene,
content, loving, and self-sacrificing. This idealized construction of motherhood has been
deconstructed as a patriarchal form of social
control that leads women to strive for an impossible ideal in a social arrangement that largely
benefits others and pathologizes their distress
when they fail (Chrisler & Johnston-Robledo,
2002; Lafrance, 2009; Stoppard, 2000; Ussher,
2006).
In contrast to the romantic vision of motherhood that pervades Western culture, research
on women’s experiences of mothering is punctuated by accounts of exhaustion, ambivalence,
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frustration, and loss (Mauthner, 2002; Nicolson,
1998, 2001; Oakley, 1980). This research reveals
that although mothering can be a joyous and
rewarding experience, it also involves hard and
relentless work as well as significant changes to
women’s lives and identities. For example, the
experience of depression following childbirth has
been described as a form of bereavement in
response to a series of losses: loss of self, occupational status, autonomy, physical integrity,
time, sleep, sexuality, and male company
(Nicolson, 1998, 2001; Oakley, 1980). However,
the hegemony of the motherhood ideal serves to
silence women’s grief, struggles, and sadness and
ultimately compounds their distress and isolation
(Mauthner, 2002; Nicolson, 1998, 2001). Further,
the discrepancy between women’s expectations
and experiences of motherhood has been found to
be a source of women’s depression (Mauthner,
2002). Striving to be a “perfect” mother inevitably
results in exhaustion, disappointment, and guilt
and shame, and these effects are in turn readily
constructed as personal inadequacy (Mauthner,
2002). At the same time, not striving to be
a “perfect” mother also invokes moral judgments
(Lafrance, 2009). Consequently, motherhood has
been described as a precarious identity position for
women, which is both taken for granted and rigidly
surveilled (Ussher, 2006), and is physically taxing
in its production (Stoppard, 2000). Rather than
relying on medication to help depressed mothers,
feminist scholars have advocated for radical shifts
toward valuing and supporting the role and work
of caregivers, including gender equity in childcare
and extended structural supports (Lafrance, 2009;
Mauthner, 2002).
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic
and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).
Arlington, VA: Author.
Chrisler, J. C., & Johnston-Robledo, I. (2002). Raging
hormones? Feminist perspectives on premenstrual
syndrome and postpartum depression. In M. Ballou
& L. S. Brown (Eds.), Rethinking mental health and
disorder: Feminist perspectives (pp. 174–197).
New York: Guilford.
Post-structuralism
Lafrance, M. N. (2009). Women and depression: Recovery
and resistance. New York: Routledge.
Mauthner, N. S. (2002). The darkest days of my life:
Stories of postpartum depression. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Nicolson, P. (1998). Post-natal depression: Psychology,
science and the transition to motherhood. New York:
Routledge.
Nicolson, P. (2001). Postnatal depression: Facing the
paradox of loss, happiness and motherhood. Chichester: Wiley.
Oakley, A. (1980). Women confined: Towards a sociology
of childbirth. New York: Schocken.
Stoppard, J. M. (2000). Understanding depression: Feminist social constructionist approaches. New York:
Routledge.
Ussher, J. M. (2006). Managing the monstrous feminine:
Regulating the reproductive body. New York:
Routledge.
Post-structuralism
Timothy Macleod and Matthew Palmer
Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier
University, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Introduction
Post-structuralism is a general term that refers
to a heterogeneous collection of theories
which emerged in twentieth century France. It is
among the lesser utilized strands of critical theory
in the field of critical psychology. The development of post-structural work in the discipline has
largely been confined to European scholarship
(see, for instance, Henriques, Hollway, Urwin,
Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Parker & Shotter,
1990), although there have been important
contributions from South Africa (see, for
instance, Hook, 2007) and limited attempts to
incorporate it into the North American critical
psychology literature as well (Prilleltensky,
2008). Post-structural inquiry is largely
concerned with the interrogation of both discourse and its supporting social institutions; it
seeks to “unmask” the manifestations of power
associated with knowledge-generating practices
(Angelique, 2008).
Post-structuralism
Definition
At its broadest level, post-structuralism can be
defined as an approach that seeks to push the
focus of inquiry beyond knowable structures in
the study of social behavior. It brings to the fore
the importance of knowledge systems and their
power in limiting the breadth of human thought
and action. Rather than drawing causal links
between structures (be they economic, social,
linguistic, or otherwise) and human behavior,
post-structuralism seeks to interrogate the forms
of knowledge, the logics, and the assumptions
that underlie our actions and – for the purposes
of critical psychology – our interventions on
the social.
Keywords
Subject/subjectivity; discourse; deconstruction;
genealogy; power/knowledge
History
Post-structural scholarship in critical psychology
emerged in England in the 1980s. Willig (2008)
contends that the first post-structural text to
emerge within critical psychology was Henriques
et al.’s (1984) work Changing the Subject. These
authors used the ideas of Foucault and Derrida to
critique psychology. This critique claimed that
psychology fortifies the dualism between the
individual and society and serves as a new
technical knowledge that reinforces processes of
social regulation. Here we see that in highlighting
the effects that the knowledge created by psychology has, the authors effectively undermined
the emancipatory narrative of the discipline.
Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) development of
discourse analysis marked a prominent and
important “turn to language” that coincided with
the emergence of post-structuralist critiques of
psychology. It should be noted that this framework has sharp disjunctures with poststructuralist theory and draws quite heavily on
John Searle’s speech act theory. This qualitative
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method was developed as a critique of
cognitivism and directly challenged the idea that
it was possible to gain access to subjective experience through language. Central to this critique
is the notion that language helps to construct our
understanding of reality and thus cannot objectively represent the world around us. The work of
Potter and Wetherell was important insofar as it
represented a well-articulated critique of the role
of language in psychology and marked the rise in
popularity of “the turn to text” within critical
psychology. This laid the foundations for further
post-structuralist works within the discipline.
English critical psychologist Ian Parker has
made among the most significant contributions
to the inclusion of post-structuralist modes of
inquiry in critical psychology to date. Parker has
published several important works that have
made productive use of Derrida, Foucault, and
Lacan to interrogate the epistemology of mainstream psychology. Parker has developed specific
techniques of both discourse analysis and deconstruction that draw on the injunctions of both
Foucault and Derrida. These techniques have
been influential insofar as they have introduced
post-structural ideas to critical psychology and
have attempted to link knowledge production
with power.
More recently, an important literature has
emerged outside of critical psychology that utilizes the tools of post-structuralism in its attempt
to interrogate the epistemology and social practices of the psy- disciplines. Drawing extensively
on the work of Michel Foucault, Nikolas Rose
(1990, 1998) has published two important works
that chronicle the rise of the psy- disciplines and
show how they have reshaped the terrain on
which we understand human experience.
A literature adjacent to critical psychology –
largely stemming from critical sociology and
anthropology – has likewise made use of
Foucault to interrogate psychological constructs
such as memory (Hacking, 1998) and posttraumatic stress disorder (Fassin & Rechtman,
2009; Leys, 2000; Young, 1997). Another recent
author who has made a valuable contribution to
the development of post-structuralist methodologies in critical psychology is Derek Hook (2007).
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Hook’s work marks a bridge between the more
sociological work of Rose and the more accessible work of Parker. Hook is concerned with
drawing more concretely from Foucault’s methodological injunctions and employing these techniques towards a critique of psychology. We will
discuss Hook’s methodology in more detail
below.
Traditional Debates
Post-structuralist critiques of mainstream psychology, whether internal to the discipline
(Hook, 2007; Parker & Shotter, 1990) or external
(Hacking, 1998; Rose, 1998), have largely been
ignored by mainstream psychology. Parker, arguably the most well known and influential of critical psychologist to utilize post-structuralist
modes of enquiry, has only fielded critical
responses from other critical psychologists
concerned with discourse analysis. There has
not been any prominent rebuttal by mainstream
psychology to post-structural critique. Debate
surrounding post-structuralist modes of enquiry
is limited to a niche group of academics and tends
to center on methodology. We will present these
debates in some detail in the following sections.
Background Debates
Post-structuralism emerged in critical psychology as a tool to respond to three interrelated
points of tension: (a) the use of language and
discourse in psychology; (b) the ways in which
this language, which is underpinned by the
knowledge-generating practices of psychology,
creates a terrain for social intervention, and;
(c) the production of particular forms of subjectivity which are contingent upon (a) and (b). In
this section we will briefly show the way in which
post-structuralist critique differs from other
modes of critical psychology and highlight the
contribution that it has made to the discipline.
Post-structuralist critique diverges sharply
from the modes of inquiry traditionally favored
by critical psychology, particularly the scholarship that emanates from North America. This
scholarship, drawing on structuralist social
Post-structuralism
theory, tends to view the social as being made
up of knowable and inequitable systems of production and consumption and positions psychology either as a facilitator of these systems or as an
emancipatory force (see, for instance, Fox,
Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009). While these
modes of inquiry have been quite important to
critical psychology, they do not give us tools to
reflexively understand how psychological knowledge itself shapes, in a very fundamental way,
how we understand the world around us. Stated
plainly, traditional critical psychology has
a simplistic understanding of power that does
not deviate from the commonplace oppressor/
oppressed dualism. Post-structuralism, on the
other hand, seeks to show how the knowledge
created by psychology is powerful insofar as it
shapes the logic on which our supposedly “emancipatory” interventions are based.
Within the field of critical psychology, we can
see two main departures from the traditional structuralist critical psychology described above.
Firstly, there is a literature that stems largely from
the work of Foucault, which seeks to link psychological knowledge to power. Secondly, there is
a literature that builds off of the work of Derrida
and is concerned with interrogating the role of
language in psychology. It should be noted that
there is substantial overlap between these two
poles (as is evident in the work of Parker).
Post-structuralist inquiry that draws on
Foucault’s knowledge/power thesis seeks to
show how psychology has been important in creating new ways of understanding human experience and behavior. Psychology, in this reading,
opens up and makes intelligible new surfaces of
intervention commensurate with new ways of
understanding human behavior and experience.
The “discovery” of disorders, for example, facilitates the creation of new expertise, new areas of
inquiry, and new terrains of intervention that
make logical things which would have previously
been seen as absurd. Inherent in this approach is
the assumption that to study a given area – be it
trauma, psychotherapy, or otherwise – one must
have knowledge of not only the “truths” surrounding the topic but also the systems of
knowledge that made these truths rational.
Post-structuralism
Central to the project of Foucauldian analytics
is an interrogation of the epistemological foundations of psychological knowledge. Foucault and
the scholars that have followed him have developed a set of tools that serve to undermine
discourses such as “madness” (Foucault, 1988),
“the individual” (Rose, 1998), “trauma” (Leys,
2000), and pedophilia (Hook, 2007). Central to
these projects of epistemological destabilization
are an account of the contingency of these
categories, the material conditions that made
them possible, and the history exterior to text
that has rendered the specific modes of knowing
intelligible at a given moment in time (Hook).
Post-structuralist inquiry deriving from
Derrida’s critical reading techniques departs
from structuralist critical psychology in its focus
on language and discourse. This framework is
largely concerned with epistemology, pointing
out that psychological knowledge is communicated through language that is itself loaded with
values and contradictions (Parker & Shotter,
1990). Language makes certain things both
knowable and possible while simultaneously
silencing other modes of knowing. The aim of
this project is to point out binary oppositions and
uncover the knowledge that might be silenced or
hidden as a result of them. A well-executed
example of this analysis is the work of Parker,
Georgaca, Harper, McLaughlin, and StowellSmith (1995) who employ a technique called
“practical deconstruction.” This framework calls
into question the validity of psychopathology and
the various forms of social oppression that result.
This work is explicitly social constructionist and
maintains that language constructs psychopathology. The authors show how the discourse and
knowledge practices of the psy- disciplines
produce truth claims that create notions of “normality” and “abnormality” – often pathologizing
along gendered and racialized lines – which are at
odds with the ethos of tolerance in liberal democratic society. The authors contend that the professional discourses of these “sciences” conceal
this social oppression and that the discourses of
psychopathology are contingent upon their own
linguistic description for validity; one cannot
speak intelligibly about the experience of anxiety
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or depression unless they are culturally accessible
through discourse. The authors contend that since
oppression and domination are enacted through
language, we might productively use language to
disrupt the truth claims of the psy- disciplines.
While post-structuralist critique has proven an
effective tool for de-masking the power inherent
in truth-creating disciplines such as psychology,
it has been called into question for its failure
to create a new, more progressive framework
by which we can analyze and intervene upon
society. If one accepts that the supposedly progressive truths that we base emancipatory interventions upon are merely the result of historical
coincidence and non-intentional discursive constellations, then the famous question of “what is
to be done” becomes very difficult to answer.
Foucault himself even suggested that the main
reason people criticized his work was because
he wasn’t interested in “constructing a new
schema, or in validating one that already exists”
(Foucault, Burchell, & Gordon, 1991).
Perhaps the most fruitful way of dealing with
this critique is to suggest that post-structuralism
makes us reconsider what is meant by resistance.
If power is not simply held by some and longed
for by others, but rather emanates from the way
we imagine and make sense of our world, then
resistance can very easily be seen as any attempt
to destabilize the truth systems that make
possible oppressive interventions. Critique, in
this understanding, can serve to shake up the
current configuration of power and push disciplines, researchers, and practitioners into radical
reflexivity. This can serve to broaden the conditions of possibility within which these systems of
truth develop and arm critics with tools necessary
to make change happen.
Critical Debates
The prominent debates within critical psychology
about post-structuralist methodologies center
around the work of Parker. There are at least
two critiques of this work that specifically discuss
his use of post-structural tools. The first emanates
from Potter, Wetherell, Gill, and Edwards (1990)
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and concerns discourse analysis. The second
comes from Hook (2007) and deals with his
development of Foucauldian analytics.
The heated critique of Parker by Potter et al.
(1990) relates to the theoretical foundations
underpinning discourse analysis. Potter and colleagues draw on speech act theory and are
concerned to read text as social action. As such,
they levy three charges against Parker’s injunctions: (a) Parker treats ideas as objects which
tends towards overgeneralization and systematization of discourse, (b) his analytics tend to
abstract text from the context of social practice,
and (c) he assumes that discourse is homogenous
and laden with “common sense” understanding.
Put another way, Potter and colleagues allege that
Parker’s variant of discourse analysis reifies discourse and is dismissive of social practice.
Underpinning these charges is a refutation of
Parkers reading of Derrida and Foucault.
Hook’s (2007) critique is not dissimilar to that
of Potter et al. (1990), although it should be noted
that he critiques Potter and Wetherell’s (1987)
variant of discourse analysis as well. Where
Hook is concerned with the abstraction of discourse from broader structures of history, materiality, and knowledge practices, he contends that
both Parker (1992) and Potter and Wetherell have
developed techniques of critical reading that are
not well positioned to incorporate the importance
of extratextual dimensions of discourse. Hook
suggests, specifically in reference to Parker, that
if we are to understand the operation of knowledge/power, we should subsume discourse analysis within a larger genealogical project capable
of showing the broader structures that make
a given discourse comprehensible.
International Relevance
Outside of Western Europe and North America,
post-structuralist modes of enquiry with regard
to critical psychology have not been well
developed. This should be unsurprising given
the relatively limited proliferation of
post-structuralism within critical psychology
even within North America and Western Europe.
Post-structuralism
An important caveat to this trend is the work of
Hook (2007), a South African psychologist who
now teaches in the UK. Hook’s own background
growing up during the end of apartheid has
influenced his work, which has sought – to some
degree – to explain the proliferation of racism in
the absence of the apartheid state and has made
valuable contributions to both post-structuralist
inquiry and critical psychology particularly in his
concern to connect constellations of discourse to
subjectivity in regard to racism.
Practical Relevance
Post-structuralism offers analytic tool sets that
can be put to productive use as means of linking
power, modes of knowing, and resistance. These
tools are powerful because they help us to
destabilize the status quo and shed light on the
power-laden intellectual terrain that disciplines
like psychology create. Within critical psychology, examples of how post-structuralism
has been concretely taken up include Parker
et al.’s (1995) “practical deconstruction” and, as
discussed above, Hook’s (2007) genealogical
injunctions.
Parker et al. (1995) present an analytical
framework termed “practical deconstruction”
which draws heavily on Derrida and, to a lesser
extent, Foucault. It is worth noting that
this framework is primarily a technique of “critical reading” and can be classified within the
semiotic or linguistic stream of post-structuralist
inquiry. Derrida’s conception of deconstruction,
according to this reading, actively identifies
binary oppositions and seeks to recover the exclusions of these binaries while drawing attention to
the exclusionary nature of discourse. To this end,
its strength is primarily in the interrogation of
text. “Attending to politics and power when you
do a critical reading, and thinking through the
effects of your critique on institutions and forms
of knowledge is what we term practical deconstruction” (Parker et al., p. 3). The authors
develop this framework on the basis of three
propositions: (a) a critical account of the psydisciplines must account for the disciplines use
Post-structuralism
of language or discourse, (b) discourse must be
connected to its broader institutional context, and
(c) we need to account for the modes of knowing
that are excluded by a given constellation of
discourse. While the authors highlight the importance of the political and institutional configurations that render text meaningful – deploying the
more political-economic post-structuralism of
Foucault – the authors fall short of fully developing a proper tool set for this sort of inquiry.
The injunctions of Hook (2007) are overtly
Foucauldian and diverge from the linguistic
post-structuralist tools of Derrida. Hook is explicitly concerned with the larger arrangements of
knowledge, history, and materiality that render
discourse intelligible in a given context. His work
attempts to flesh out how we might think of
performing discourse analysis while at the same
time including tools that incorporate and interrogate extratextual dimensions of discourse such as
broader political-economic shifts or changes in
the needs of governance. To this end, Hook takes
up and develops Foucault’s genealogy as
a technique for understanding knowledge/power
while at the same time displacing the subject as
the focal point of analysis.
Hook contends that discourses are like
symptoms and are best understood within the
dynamic matrices of the histories of systems of
thought that make them possible. Genealogy is
a specific and concrete technique for unpacking
the arrangements of history, knowledges, and
material circumstance that render a given
discourse intelligible within a specific context. To
this end, genealogy subsumes discourse analysis as
part of a larger theoretical project that makes sense
of discourse through the broader institutional context that renders it intelligible. It is important to
note that genealogy is not concerned with veracity
of truth claims, but rather is concerned with
unmasking the assumptions implicit in the logics
that make these claims possible.
Future Directions
The future of post-structuralist analytics in critical psychology may very well lie in the
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development of concrete tools that make critique
productive and actionable while maintaining its
rigor and intelligibility. Hook’s (2007) work represents an important contribution in this direction
insofar as he pushes discourse analysis towards
a theoretically rigorous alternative to current
practices and at the same time concretely grounds
his framework within the work of Foucault.
In addition, there are definitely opportunities
within the discipline to elaborate the ways in
which this type of inquiry may be helpful as
a tool of resistance.
References
Angelique, H. (2008). On power, psycho political validity
and play. Journal of Community Psychology, 36,
246–253.
Fassin, D., & Rechtman, R. (2009). The empire of trauma:
An inquiry into the condition of victimhood. Princeton
University Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power knowledge. New York:
Vintage Press.
Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history
of insanity in the age of reason. New York: Vintage
Press.
Foucault, M., Burchell, G., & Gordon, C. (1991). The
Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. University
of Chicago Press.
Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (2009). Critical
psychology for social justice: Concerns and dilemmas.
In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical
psychology: An introduction (pp. 3–19). London,
England: Sage.
Hacking, I. (1998). Rewriting the soul. New York, NY:
Princeton University Press.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Couze, V., &
Walkerdine, V. (1984). Changing the subject:
Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity.
London, England: Routledge.
Hook, D. (2007). Foucault, power and the analytics of
power. London, England: Palgrave–Macmillan.
Leys, R. (2000). Trauma: A genealogy. University of
Chicago Press.
Parker, I. (1992). Discourse dynamics: Critical analysis
for social and individual psychology. London,
England: Routledge.
Parker, I., & Shotter, J. (1990). Deconstructing social
psychology. London, England: Routledge.
Parker, I., Georgaca, E., Harper, D., McLaughlin, T., &
Stowell-Smith, M. (1995). Deconstructing psychopathology. New York, NY: Sage.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social
psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London,
England: Sage.
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Potter, J., Wetherell, M., Gill, R., & Edwards, D. (1990).
Discourse: Noun verb or social practice. Philosophical
Psychology, 3, 205–217.
Prilleltensky, I. (2008). The role of power in wellness,
oppression, and liberation: The promise of psycho
political validity. Journal of Community Psychology,
36, 116–136.
Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the
private self. London, England: Routledge.
Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power
and personhood. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Willig, C. (2008). Introducing qualitative research in
psychology. Cambridge: Open University Press.
Young, A. (1997). The harmony of illusions: Inventing
post-traumatic stress disorder. Princeton University
Press.
Online Resources
Discourse Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University.
http://www.discourseunit.com
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD)
Laura K. Kerr
Mental Health Scholar and Psychotherapist, San
Francisco, CA, USA
Introduction
As far back as 490 BC, the Greek historian
Herodotus described the psychological impact
of exposure to traumatic events in his accounts
of soldiers’ reactions to the horrors of war. However, not until the nineteenth century would the
sequelae associated with what today is called
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) gain scientific attention. Beginning with British doctor
John Eric Erichsen (1818–1896), “trauma syndrome” was identified in survivors of train
accidents and attributed to organic causes. The
German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim
(1858–1919) renamed the syndrome “traumatic
neurosis” and similarly identified organic
changes in the brain as the origin of
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
unexplainable reactions to horrifying and
life-threatening events (Van Der Kolk,
McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996).
Not until the research and clinical work of
psychiatrist Pierre Janet (1859–1947) would traumatic stress responses be rigorously described as
symptoms of a psychological disorder. Janet
viewed post-traumatic reactions as evidence of
the failure to psychologically and physiologically
integrate memories from a traumatic event with
otherwise normal mental and physical functioning. He identified the primary symptoms of psychological trauma as the uncontrollable sense
of reexperiencing a traumatic event, combined
with defense reactions against such repeated recall
(Ogden, Minton, & Pain, 2006). Along with Janet,
Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), Alfred Binet
(1857–1911), Morton Price (1854–1929), Josef
Breuer
(1842–1925),
Sigmund
Freud
(1856–1939), and Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933)
were some of the first to theorize the psychological
impact of traumatic events (Leys, 2000).
Almost a hundred years passed before PTSD
became an official psychiatric diagnosis. Mimicking the oscillation between absorption in
memories of past trauma and their avoidance,
recognition of the psychological impact of traumatic events has also fluctuated. Interest in the
impact of traumatic events typically gained more
attention during wartime when large numbers of
veterans became overwhelmed by traumatic
stress. During World War I, English physician
Charles Samuel Myers (1873–1946) coined the
term “shell-shock” to identify the psychological
impact of battlefield experiences. However, when
Myers discovered soldiers lacking combat produced the same symptoms, he asserted war-related
neuroses were primarily emotional disturbances.
Myers also observed similarities between war neuroses and hysteria, a diagnosis primarily given at
the time to women with suppressed histories of
sexual abuse. Both war neurosis and hysteria were
typically seen as character flaws rather than as
responses to life-threatening or horrifying experiences (Van Der Kolk et al., 1996).
Interest in traumatic stress waned only to
reemerge as a topic of interest following the
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Vietnam War. Initially, the connection between
witnessing atrocities and the later development
of a mental disorder was resisted and preference
was given for organic explanations of the
symptoms. After much struggle and petitioning,
in 1980 Post-traumatic Stress Disorder became
a formal mental disorder in the Third Edition of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-III). Initially, PTSD applied
primarily to responses to natural and man-made
disasters. During the Second Wave of feminism
in the 1970s, the symptoms of PTSD were
extended to women with histories of sexual
assault. Over time, PTSD has been expanded to
include the effects of domestic violence, childhood abuse, medical illnesses, torture, and
captivity (Herman, 1997).
Definition
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders characterizes PTSD as an anxiety disorder. The decisive factors determining if
a person has PTSD are (1) exposure to a lifethreatening event or serious injury (regardless if
the threat was to oneself or others) and (2) feelings
of horror or profound fear at the time of the event.
The symptoms associated with PTSD fall into
three clusters: (1) the persistent recall of the
traumatic event, which can involve intrusive
imagery, nightmares, a felt sense that the trauma
is recurring, and states of extreme distress in
response to external or internal reminders of the
trauma; (2) the persistent avoidance of reminders
of the traumatic event, which occurs through
psychological defenses such as dissociation,
a limited affective range, and a foreshortened
sense of future, as well as purposeful isolation;
and (3) the symptoms of increased arousal that
impact the ability to sleep and concentrate, contribute to an exaggerated startle response, and are
noted by the presence of irritability, angry outbursts, and rage. In children, recall of the trauma
is witnessed through nightmares and in repetitive
play around themes associated with the traumatic
event.
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Keywords
Anxiety; Dissociation; Hysteria; Nightmares;
Post-traumatic stress; Shell-shock; Trauma; War
neurosis
Traditional Debates
One of the traditional debates surrounding PTSD
concerns the origins of the traumatic stress
response and whether it is more an organic or
psychological disorder. This debate has continued since the nineteenth century when the impact
of trauma first received scientific attention. When
psychoanalysis was the dominant paradigm
during the first half of the twentieth century,
traumatic responses were often viewed as defense
mechanisms against repressed unconscious
wishes and impulses based more in fantasy than
as reaction to events – a view made popular by
Sigmund Freud (Van Der Kolk et al., 1996).
Today, the biological aspects of trauma are
thought to be universal and part of the body’s
natural response to threat. When threat is
detected, the body’s survival responses are activated (i.e., attachment cry, fight, flight, submit, or
freeze), and the suppression of these defense
responses are thought to lead to PTSD.
Thus, PTSD is seen as an inhibition of an otherwise normal reaction to extreme threat (Ogden
et al., 2006).
Despite the tendency to perceive PTSD as
largely a biological response, the debate continues about how best to treat PTSD, with
most of the argument addressing whether traditional talk therapy is preferred or whether
somatic-based psychotherapies and exposure
therapies are better suited for traumatized
persons. Psychopharmacology has shown to
provide limited support, and some argue it
impedes the body’s natural capacity to
work through the traumatic stress (Van Der
Kolk et al., 1996).
Another traditional debate surrounding PTSD
concerns its classification in the DSM as
a response to a single, traumatic event. Given
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the often chronic nature of traumatic exposure,
including childhood abuse, domestic violence,
torture, and other traumas for which the trauma
is continual and often unrelenting, Judith
Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and other trauma
specialists have argued for a separate diagnosis of
Complex PTSD to acknowledge the different
sequelae and treatment needs of individuals who
have endured chronic traumatization and were
the victims of violence and oppression (Herman,
1997; Van Der Kolk et al., 1996).
Critical Debates
Whereas the biological response to trauma is
seen as universal, the meanings attributed to
traumatic events and how individuals cope
with traumatic stress have been the subject of
critical debates. Many arguments focus on how
traumatic stress responses differ between individuals, as well as between genders, ethnicities, cultures, and societies. Studies have
shown how reactions to trauma are affected
by expectations about exposure to traumatic
events, the treatments available, and sociocultural resources and norms for responding to
traumatic events. These differences are also
related to what types of events are perceived
as traumatic (Marsella, Johnson, Watson, &
Gryczynski, 2008).
Critical debates also focus on powerlessness,
rather than overwhelming feelings of fear, as the
most damaging aspect of trauma, which the current definition of PTSD in the DSM ignores (Herman, 1997). Shifting the focus of PTSD to the
experience of powerlessness has led to attributions of traumatic stress to victims of homophobia, sexism, racism, and other forms of
oppression, including economic oppression. Conversely, the attribution of PTSD to non-Western
populations has led to accusations of colonization
in which PTSD is viewed as pathologizing normal responses to an oppressive, violent, and dangerous world. Diagnosing PTSD to non-Western
populations has also been described as
a justification for appropriating Western norms
to both the psychologies of other groups as well
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
as reconstruction efforts that open areas to
Western markets and globalization, particularly
when responses to large-scale disasters incite
relief efforts that lead to rebuilding societies and
infrastructures according to Western models
(Summerfield, 1999).
Some have argued for the removal of PTSD
from the DSM on the grounds that exposure to
the mental health system, especially psychiatry,
perpetuates feelings of powerlessness when victims of violence and oppression are treated as if
they suffer from a disorder that ignores the
central role of power for their symptoms
(Burstow, 2003). Others believe that all mental
disorders are associated with some traumatic
experience, particularly histories of childhood
abuse and other adverse childhood experiences,
and the mental health system, including the
DSM, should reorganize to address the central
role of traumatic stress for all mental disorders
(Ross, 2000).
References
Burstow, B. (2003). Toward a radical understanding of
trauma and trauma work. Violence Against Women,
9(11), 1293–1317.
Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath
of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror.
New York: Basic Books.
Leys, R. (2000). Trauma: A genealogy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Marsella, A. J., Johnson, J. L., Watson, P., & Gryczynski,
J. (Eds.). (2008). Ethnocultural perspectives on disaster and trauma. New York: Springer.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the
body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy.
New York: Norton.
Ross, C. A. (2000). The trauma model. Richardson, TX:
Manitou Communications.
Summerfield, D. (1999). A critique of seven assumptions
behind psychological trauma programmes in waraffected areas. Social Science & Medicine, 48,
1449–1462.
Van Der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L.
(Eds.). (1996). Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society.
New York: The Guilford Press.
Online Resources
The Trauma Center. http://www.traumacenter.org/
Poverty
Poverty
Heather E. Bullock, Harmony A. Reppond and
Shirley V. Truong
Department of Psychology, University of
California – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Introduction
Poverty is a socially constructed problem that
results from restricted access to valued resources.
Poverty could be reduced, if not eliminated,
through the redistribution of resources and
yet poverty remains a core source of
suffering and diminished health and human
welfare. Poverty intersects with gender, race, ethnicity, disability, age, sexuality, and other characteristics to disproportionately disadvantage
people of color, women, people with disabilities,
gays and lesbians, children, and senior citizens.
Psychologists study poverty from multiple
angles, examining the detrimental consequences
of poverty across the lifespan; characteristics,
experiences, and environmental conditions that
enhance or reduce resilience to poverty; the
pathways through which poverty shapes life
chances; and the attitudes and beliefs that
legitimize economic inequality.
Definition
There is no universally shared definition of
poverty; however, economic resources are
central to most conceptualizations. The United
States government relies on an absolute definition
of poverty by which an individual or a family is
considered “poor” if their annual income falls
below federally determined poverty thresholds.
In 2011, the poverty threshold for a family of four
was $23,021 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Based
on the data from the 1950s that indicated that
families spent one-third of their income on food,
poverty thresholds are calculated for families of
different sizes by multiplying the cost of an economy food plan by three (Willis, 2000). Although
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updated annually to account for inflation, this
same formula has been used since the 1960s. In
2011, 15 % of the US population, or 46.2 million
people, lived below official poverty thresholds
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Disproportionately
high rates of poverty are found among single
female-headed households, people of color, people with disabilities, senior citizens, and children.
Unlike the USA, other industrialized countries
rely on relative measures of poverty. While absolute measures “are fixed over time in real terms
(that is, they are entirely nonresponsive to economic growth or changes in living standards),”
relative measures are associated with economic
and societal living conditions (Blank, 2008,
p. 234). The European Union, for instance, sets
risk of poverty at 60 % of median income (Blank,
2008). Relative approaches are considered more
progressive than absolute measures because
poverty is connected to the well-being of the
larger population.
Multidimensional indices, which include
a combination of material and less tangible factors (e.g., health, education, income, respect,
political power), are gaining in popularity. The
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) assesses
acute poverty via deprivations in three areas:
health (i.e., child mortality, nutrition), education
(i.e., years of schooling, attendance), and living
standards (e.g., household electricity, clean
drinking water, assets such as owning a refrigerator, telephone, or bicycle; Alkire, Roche, Santos, & Seth, 2011). Poverty is defined by
deprivations in one-third or more of these
dimensions.
Economic measures of poverty are widely
employed in psychological research but broader
conceptualizations of poverty as a form of social
exclusion are also prevalent. From this vantage
point, poverty is a function of interlocking systems of social (e.g., stigmatization, discrimination), economic (e.g., low wages, limited work
skills, unemployment), and political (e.g., lack of
political power, limited representation) marginalization. Theories of social and cultural capital
are also widely used by psychologists. These
conceptualizations focus on how restricted social
networks and limited familiarity with dominant
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cultural practices (re)produce poverty. For example, unfamiliarity with the college application
process or funding opportunities may limit educational attainment among low-income groups.
History
Societies have long debated the causes of
poverty and the most effective strategies for
alleviating deprivation. For historical analyses
of US poverty and antipoverty policies, we
refer readers to Katz (1990) and Piven and
Cloward (1993). O’Connor (2001) provides an
insightful critique of the role of social science
in shaping perceptions of the poor and the development of antipoverty initiatives.
Traditional Debates
Numerous
controversies
surround
the
measurement and conceptualization of poverty.
One set of concerns involves the merits of various
measurement approaches (e.g., absolute versus
relative, single versus multifaceted). There is
growing consensus that multifaceted measures
provide greater insight into causes of and solutions to poverty, but disagreement about the most
appropriate indicators persist. The US Census
Bureau now reports poverty rates based on
a multifaceted measure that considers income as
well as common household expenses (e.g., utilities, work-related transportation), receipt of
benefits (e.g., subsidized housing, food assistance, tax credits), and geographic differences in
housing costs, but this approach has yet to replace
the traditional formula.
The strengths and weaknesses of absolute
versus relative measures are also contested.
Critics contend that by tying poverty to societal
indicators (e.g., 60 % of the median income),
relative measures obscure potential improvements or reductions, making poverty an
intractable problem. Advocates defend this
approach even if it means that a consistent percentage of the population is considered poor.
Absolute measures spark debate about the
Poverty
“correct” level at which to set poverty thresholds.
Many social scientists believe that US poverty
thresholds are based on an outdated formula and
are consequently set too low. Others contend that
US thresholds are appropriate or set too high
because receipt of benefits such as the worth
of food assistance is not taken into account.
These debates have meaningful practical
implications – choice of poverty measure can
influence the extent to which poverty is seen as
a limited or widespread problem and, ultimately,
the distribution of resources.
Controversy also surrounds the causes of
poverty. Widely accepted explanations for
poverty include structural or societal causes
(e.g., low wages, discrimination, inadequate
schools), dispositional or individual characteristics (e.g., motivation, poor money management
skills, inability to defer gratification), and cultural explanations (e.g., socialization, learned
values, community and family influences).
Cultural and individual explanations for poverty
pervade much of the psychological literature.
These perspectives are evident in clinical assessments and interventions that focus on insufficient
coping and life skills and emphasize personal
change as an effective strategy to combat
poverty’s negative effects. Critics charge that
these individualistic attributions pathologize the
consequences of poverty and incorrectly put
responsibility for change on poor individuals,
families, and communities rather than social
institutions (Lott & Bullock, 2007; Smith,
2005). It is further claimed that interventions
and therapies that do not recognize the material
realities of poverty (e.g., lack of transportation,
limited time for treatment) are unlikely to be
successful. See Goodman, Smyth, Borges, and
Singer (2009) for a discussion of internal and
external factors related to low-income women’s
experiences of violence.
Critical Debates
Critical scholars call for psychology to
attend more closely to poverty and economic
inequality, more generally (Carr & Sloan, 2003;
Poverty
Lott & Bullock, 2007; Smith, 2005, 2010).
Psychological theories are largely based on
research that involves white, middle-class, college educated samples. Critical psychologists
raise awareness of the exclusion of low-income
groups in mainstream psychological investigations and question the assumed normativity of
middle-class status in theories of human behavior. Overt and covert devaluation of the life trajectories and behaviors of poor individuals and
families is evident throughout the psychological
literature. The literature on late adolescence
offers one example. This period of time is often
constructed as a time of personal growth, characterized by increasing independence from one’s
family of origin, entry into college, and ultimately the “choice” of a career. However, for
poor and working-class youth, financial need
and family responsibilities may result in immediate rather than delayed immersion into the labor
force and other “adult” responsibilities. Equating
“normal” development with middle-class status
marginalizes the experiences of low-income
groups. Critical scholars work to bring these
unspoken assumptions to the forefront and call
for the adoption of strength- rather than deficitfocused approaches to poverty.
The largely individual-level focus of psychological research and practice is of great concern
to critical psychologists (Smith, 2005, 2010). By
neglecting structural causes, poverty is stripped
of the social, economic, and political contexts
that foster economic inequality. In doing so, poverty is treated as an individual problem to be
“solved” through personal rather than institutional change. Critical psychologists argue that
individual-level solutions are insufficient at best
and at worst blame poor people, themselves, for
their poverty. Critical perspectives also draw
attention to the economic function of poverty
and the fact that elites and other privileged groups
profit from the poverty of others. From this vantage point, it is not simply poverty that is problematic but also the skewed power dynamics
embodied by economic inequality.
Poverty research is highly politicized and the
questions researchers ask, methods chosen, types
of alliances formed by researchers and
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participants, and the interpretation of findings
all carry political consequences (O’Connor,
2001). Sensitive to complex political dynamics,
critical psychologists question the ideal of
researchers as neutral “bystanders” who communicate “objective facts.” These points are especially salient when evaluating programs that
assist people who are poor. Steinitz and Mishler’s
(2001) critique of US welfare reform evaluation
research illustrates the pitfalls associated with
researchers’ endorsement of dominant problem
frames (e.g., poor women are over-reliant on
welfare) and solutions (e.g., the welfare rolls
should be reduced via work requirements and
time limits), rather than questioning whether
the goals of welfare reform are, in fact, socially
beneficial, just objectives.
Critical scholars see the overrepresentation of
people of color, people with (dis)abilities, and
female-headed households among the poor as
part of a pattern of systematic discrimination
(Limbert & Bullock, 2005). Racism, ableism,
sexism, and classism intersect to contribute to
the extraordinarily high rates of poverty among
people of color with disabilities, particularly
women. Intersectional analyses highlight relationships among race, class, gender, sexuality,
age, and ability that are essential to understanding
poverty and its disproportionate impact on less
powerful groups. Critical and feminist
scholars call for greater attention to classism
and the intersection of low-income status with
other characteristics.
International Relevance
Causes of poverty and its detrimental effects on
human welfare are amply documented worldwide
(Carr & Sloan, 2003). Despite considerable
variation in economic and living conditions in
wealthy and poor nations around the world, common core causes of poverty emerge: low wages;
limited ownership and property rights; economic
exploitation of labor; restricted access to education, health care, and other valued resources; and
discrimination. Cross-country comparisons provide much needed insight into similarities and
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differences in the prevalence of poverty and the
effectiveness of diverse antipoverty programs
and policies.
Practice Relevance
Understanding the causes, correlates, and
consequences of poverty is essential to poverty
alleviation. Research investigating pathways into
poverty (e.g., divorce, job loss, single motherhood) and out of poverty (e.g., participation in
subsidized housing programs, earning higher
wages, earning a postsecondary degree) is crucial
to designing and evaluating antipoverty
programs. The effectiveness of US early
childhood education programs (e.g., Head Start)
and welfare programs (e.g., Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families) has received
considerable attention by psychologists. Interventions tend to be geared toward mitigating
poverty’s detrimental consequences rather than
poverty reduction. For example, school breakfast
programs seek to improve academic performance
by reducing hunger and improving children’s
concentration in the classroom.
Future Directions
In 2000, the American Psychological Association
(APA, 2000) adopted a resolution calling for
greater attention to poverty and socioeconomic
status in research, teaching, training, and advocacy. Building on this call to action, APA’s Task
Force on Socioeconomic Status (2007) issued
a comprehensive report documenting the need
for sustained commitment by psychologists to
all dimensions of social class and the reduction
of poverty and socioeconomic disparities.
The Task Force’s (2007) recommendations for
improving psychology’s “class consciousness”
range from recognizing classism as a central
form of discrimination to reporting information
about participant social class and/or SES in our
research to increasing the socioeconomic diversity of the next generation of psychologists.
Nevertheless, poverty remains largely at the
Poverty
periphery of psychological theory and practice,
and class status is often neglected as
a core dimension of multiculturalism. Rectifying
exclusionary practices will require deliberate
efforts to infuse analyses of poverty into all
aspects of psychological research, training, and
advocacy. It will also require critical selfreflection on our field and individual
research and practice (Carr & Sloan, 2003; Lott
& Bullock, 2007; Smith, 2010).
The negative consequences of poverty for
children and adults are indisputable. Poverty is
associated with an extensive network of negative
outcomes ranging from reduced educational
attainment to poor health to decreased political
participation to heightened rates of depression,
yet much remains to be known about the complex
intersecting pathways through which poverty
works to influence health, well-being, and civic
engagement. Obtaining a contextualized understanding of these relationships is crucial. The
“poor” are not a homogenous group and should
not be treated as such, nor is “poverty” a unitary
experience. Intersectional analyses that account
for variability across geographic location
(e.g., rural, urban), age (e.g., adolescence, late
adulthood), group membership (e.g., gender,
race/ethnicity, sexuality, disability status), history of poverty (e.g., chronic, intermittent), and
assets and supports warrant closer inspection.
The volatility of the worldwide economy
highlights the need to examine the short- and
long-term consequences of economic “shocks”
such as job loss, health crises, and other
catastrophic events.
People who are poor are discriminated against
in a wide range of settings (Lott & Bullock,
2007). For example, Reed, Collinsworth, and
Fitzgerald (2005) draw attention to sexual harassment in rental housing units and how the shortage
of affordable housing heightens women’s vulnerability to abusive landlords. Identifying situational- and individual-level factors associated
with class-based discrimination, particularly in
contexts in which low-income groups rely on
others for vital assistance (e.g., social services,
health care, mental health assessment), is of crucial importance. Investigating intersections of
Poverty
classism with racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination
should be prioritized.
Greater insight into political mobilization on
behalf of antipoverty initiatives is of upmost
importance. There is much to be learned from the
Civil Rights, Women’s, Poor People’s, and
Occupy movements and other large-scale change
efforts. The Occupy movement’s protests have
done much to raise awareness of the concentration
of income, wealth, and power held by the top 1 %
and the stagnant wages, crushing debt, and devastating foreclosures shared by 99 % of us. Poverty
alleviation requires a collective commitment to
structural change from across the economic spectrum, including those with limited experience with
or empathy for economic hardship. Building such
a movement will require the reduction of classist
prejudice and stereotypes and testing of strategies
that are capable not only of fostering positive
attitudes and beliefs but also actions. Research
examining prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, attributions for poverty and wealth, and
collective action should inform such efforts.
An active commitment to social and economic
justice is a central facet of critical psychology.
This means working not only to eradicate poverty
but also economic inequality. Poverty is widely
viewed as problematic but wealth rarely is, yet
a growing body of research documents that
economic inequality, not just poverty, harms
societies. Compared with more egalitarian societies, unequal societies experience higher rates of
violence, imprisonment, and poor health and
reduced trust and educational performance;
these negative consequences affect the majority
of the population not only low-income groups
(Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Reducing economic
inequality demands critical interrogation of class
privilege and a willingness to examine the benefits gained personally, professionally, and politically through systems of inequality. Research
that positions poverty within broader frameworks
of inequality allows for important connections to
be made between “being poor” and “being rich”
and the social and political functions of socioeconomic disparities. Exposing these connections is
pivotal to dismantling them.
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References
Alkire, S., Roche, J. M., Santos, M. E., & Seth, S. (2011,
December). Multidimensional poverty index.
Retrieved September 2, 2011, from Oxford Poverty
and Human Development Initiative website.
http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/OPHI-MPIBrief-2011.pdf
American Psychological Association, Public Interest
Directorate. (2000, August). Resolution on poverty
and socioeconomic status. Retrieved August 1, 2013,
from http://www.apa.org/about/policy/poverty-resolution.aspx
American Psychological Association Task Force on
Socioeconomic Status. (2007). Report of the APA
Task Force on Socioeconomic Status. Retrieved
August 1, 2013, from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/
resources/index.aspx
Blank, R. M. (2008). Presidential address: How to improve
poverty measurement in the United States. Journal of
Policy Analysis and Management, 27, 233–254.
Carr, S. C., & Sloan, T. S. (Eds.). (2003). Poverty and
psychology: From global perspective to local practice.
New York, NY: Kluwer.
Goodman, L. A., Smyth, K. F., Borges, A. M., & Singer, R.
(2009). When crises collide: How intimate partner violence and poverty intersect to shape women’s mental
health and coping. [Special Issue: Mental Health Implications of Violence Against Women] Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 10, 306–329. doi:10.1177/
1524838009339754.
Katz, M. B. (1990). The undeserving poor: From the war
on poverty to the war on welfare. New York, NY:
Pantheon.
Limbert, W. M., & Bullock, H. E. (2005). “Playing the
fool:” U.S. welfare policy from a critical race perspective. Feminism & Psychology, 15, 253–274. doi:
doi:10.1177/0959-353505054715.
Lott, B., & Bullock, H. E. (2007). Psychology and economic injustice: Personal, professional, and political
intersections. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
O’Connor, A. (2001). Poverty knowledge: Social science,
social policy, and the poor in twentieth-century U.S.
history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1993). Regulating the
poor: The functions of public welfare (2nd ed.).
New York, NY: Random House.
Reed, M. E., Collinsworth, L. L., & Fitzgerald, L. F.
(2005). There’s no place like home: Sexual harassment
of low income women in housing. Psychology, Public
Policy, and Law, 11, 439–462. doi:10.1037/10768971.11.3.439.
Smith, L. (2005). Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor:
Conspicuous by their absence. American Psychologist,
60, 687–696. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.60.7.687.
Smith, L. (2010). Psychology, poverty, and the end of
social exclusion. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
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Steinitz, V., & Mishler, E. G. (2001). Reclaiming SPSSI’s
radical promise: A critical look at JSI’s “impact of welfare
reform” issue. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 1, 163–175. doi:10.1111/j.1530-2415.2001.t01-1-.x.
U. S. Census Bureau. (2012). Income, poverty, and health
insurance coverage in the United States: 2011
(P60–243). Retrieved July 20, 2013, from http://
www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf
Wilkinson, R. G., & Pickett, K. E. (2009). Income inequality and social dysfunction. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 493–511.
Willis, J. (2000, February). How we measure poverty.
Retrieved July 21, 2013, from Oregon Center for Public Policy website. http://www.ocpp.org/poverty/how/
Online Resources
Office and Committee on Socioeconomic Status. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/pi/
ses/index.aspx.
National Poverty Center, University of Michigan: http://
www.npc.umich.edu/
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign: http://
economichumanrights.org/
The World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/
Institute for Research on Poverty. University of Wisconsin: http://www.irp.wisc.edu/index.htm.
Power, Overview
Rose Grose, Anjali Dutt and Shelly Grabe
Department of Psychology, University of
California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Introduction
Power defines the very nature of human relationships, shaping activities and attitudes within and
between social groups (Apfelbaum, 1979;
Foucault, 1990, 1995; Martı́n-Baró, 1994). The
relative power afforded to individuals based on
their social positions influences how they are
perceived and treated, as well as the expectations
they hold of themselves and others. Despite the
critical role of power in shaping human behavior,
the topic has been under studied in traditional
psychological research (Griscom, 1992).
However, influenced by theorists outside the
field like Michel Foucault, critical psychologists
have
substantially
contributed
to
the
Power, Overview
investigation of power dynamics globally and
have paved the way toward using research to
eradicate inequality and injustice. In particular,
critical approaches to psychological research
have highlighted the connection between the
psychological and the political and have drawn
attention to the ways that structural inequalities
influence individual psychology.
Definition
Power involves having both the capacity and the
opportunity to fulfill or impede personal,
relational, or collective needs (Prilleltensky,
2008). Researchers have identified various
forms of power including individual, interpersonal, and structural power, all of which are
interrelated yet remain distinct. Individual
power has been conceptualized as “power to”
and refers to the power to strive for wellness,
resist oppression, and, more specifically, to
pursue liberation (Prilleltensky). An individual’s
“power to” may involve pushing the boundaries
of what is achievable for oneself without
necessarily affecting others’ abilities to do the
same (Hayward, 1998).
Interpersonal power involves a relationship in
which one person has the ability to influence
another’s behavior, potentially override their decisions, provide rewards or punishment, or prevent
them from recognizing conflicts of interest through
coercion, threat, or violence (Kabeer, 1999; Miller
& Cummins, 1992; Prilleltensky, 2008; Yoder &
Kahn, 1992). Some have called interpersonal
power “power over” or even “the power to
oppress.” As Ignacio Martı́n-Baró (1994, p. 64),
father of liberation psychology, asserted, “power is
the disparity of resources that occurs in human
relationships and that allows one of the actors to
make his or her objectives and interests prevail
over those of others.” Thus, access to and control
over resources like education, income, social connections, and media representation is a key factor
in determining which person has more interpersonal power in an interaction.
Structural power is collective and occurs
between groups. A particular group or social
Power, Overview
class has structural power when it possesses the
ability and opportunity to ensure that a society’s
organization and functioning responds to its
social interests (Martı́n-Baró, 1994). Often, the
group at the top of a structural power hierarchy
controls discourse, defining and setting limits
on the rights, privileges, and appropriate behaviors for all groups through the influence of
social institutions like science (including psychology), religion, education, government, and
the media (Apfelbaum, 1979; Foucault, 1990,
1995). Social institutions can perpetuate the
status quo of structural hierarchies between
groups through multiple mechanisms such as discourses and policies that portray inequalities
as natural and inevitable, surveillance of individuals and groups, and mechanisms of social
control that involve subjugating people’s bodies
(i.e., “bio-power”; Foucault).
Furthermore, structural power makes it possible for the dominant group to use messages and
policies to ascribe to those without power
characteristics that differentiate them as inferior
(i.e., laziness, lack of intelligence, irrational emotions), therefore setting them apart as outside or
“other” than the dominant group. This othering
then helps to bolster and justify the superiority
and dominance of the powerful. These ubiquitous
messages may also result in members of
a subordinate group internalizing a sense of inferiority and hopelessness. As a result, power and
resistance displayed by the subordinate group
may come to be seen as illegitimate and
destructive to the status quo by both the powerless and powerful, allowing structural power to
operate covertly through consent and complicity
(Apfelbaum, 1979; Kabeer, 1999; Moane, 2011).
This aspect of power, whereby people learn to
discipline themselves and control their own
behavior, has been called “disciplinary power”
(Foucault, 1990, 1995).
Importantly, all three types of power are
involved in a dynamic process whereby the social
context influences individual behavior, which at
times may involve taking action to shift social
and
political
realities
(Moane,
2011;
Prilleltensky, 2008). In other words, although
individuals are the products of the power
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dynamics within their environment, they also
challenge, resist, and change power dynamics at
the individual, interpersonal, and structural level
and transform expectations and entitlements
regarding power. In this reciprocal process,
a person’s individual power is often dependent
on interpersonal power dynamics, which, in turn,
influence and are influenced by the structural
power of the group(s) to which she or he belongs
(Malik & Lindahl, 1998; Martı́n-Baró, 1994;
Prilleltensky).
Keywords
Power; Liberation psychology; Intersectionality
History
Individual, interpersonal, and structural power
have not always received equal attention in the
field of psychology. Indeed, the trajectory of psychological research on power has been somewhat
inconsistent (see Griscom, 1992, for a more
extensive chronological review). Theory development began in the 1920s with Alfred Adler,
who focused on individuals’ need for power
through the lens of psychopathology. From that
point power was mostly neglected until the late
1950s when field theorists began researching the
topic. Although this research maintained an
individual focus by exploring power motivations
and power relationships between individuals, it
was progressive in acknowledging the relational
aspects of power and in defining power more
broadly than simply coercion and control.
Despite the predominant attention given to the
individual level of analysis historically, more
complex analyses of power have developed.
During the 1960s, for example, the study of
power shifted from a focus on static individual
traits toward a conceptualization of power as
a dynamic process that occurs over time and
changes with context. This focus further
broadened in the 1970s to include attention to
intimate relationships and intergroup interactions. During the same time period, Michel
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Foucault (1990, 1995) emerged as one of the
foremost theorists of power in the second half of
the twentieth century. He suggested that power is
not a thing residing in individuals or the State, but
is a relation exercised via technologies and
mechanisms throughout all aspects of society.
Although his influence yielded significantly
more depth and complexity in understanding
power, a structural focus on power remained
rare in psychology (Griscom, 1992).
Indeed many have critiqued psychology as
a field for neglecting structural analyses of
power. Critical psychologists suggest that
psychology has served and strengthened oppressive structures and also helped maintain the status
quo of power due to its focus on people who
possess privilege and power (Martı́n-Baró,
1994; Prilleltensky, 2008). Some have also
argued that, because research on power has
historically excluded diverse populations, it is
impossible to assess if disparate definitions and
theories of power apply to anyone but heterosexual, middle-class, white, American individuals
(Malik & Lindahl, 1998). In response, many
psychologists are increasingly taking an
intersectional approach to understanding how
power interacts with multiple aspects of one’s
social position and identity. For example, critical
feminist psychologists acknowledge that social
boundaries like gender, race, ethnicity, ability,
or sexuality are not simply group “differences,”
rather, they are patterns of unequal power relations that have multiple and simultaneous effects
on one’s capacity and opportunity to meet
personal, relational, or collective needs
(Crenshaw, 1995; Griscom, 1992; Hurtado,
2009; Moane, 2011). More recently, some
psychologists have adopted the framework of
transnational intersectionality, which expands
intersectionality to include the impact of global
power relations of economic exploitation (Grabe
& Else-Quest, 2012).
Traditional Debates
One debate in research on power within the
social sciences involves measurement. Because
Power, Overview
definitions of power consist of several different
but related concepts, often linked to individual,
interpersonal, or structural dimensions, there is
no agreed-upon assessment of power. The discussion of measurement has followed a trajectory
linked to a shifting focus from the individual to
structural level of analysis in psychology.
A key aspect within this debate is the relationship between power and resources. For example,
in empirical investigations, researchers have
argued for measuring individual power by
assessing a person’s social, material, or human
resources (Kabeer, 1999; Martı́n-Baró, 1994).
Others suggest that disparities in access to and
control over resources between two people are
a more accurate measure of power, shifting the
focus to the interconnection between individual
and interpersonal power. Still others contend that
relative resource contribution should only be analyzed in relation to structural power because
control of resources by members of groups
typically denied access is challenging to the
status quo, with implications for backlash, violence, and resistance. In addition to resources,
researchers have commonly used decisionmaking dominance as a way to measure power.
However, this method has been met with similar
scrutiny because many studies fail to ask about
the contextual importance and meaning of
decision-making domains (Kabeer, 1999).
More recent contributors to this debate argue
for the development and use of valid and reliable
measures that capture the dynamic, contextual
nature of power. For example, a psychosocial
measure was designed to take into account
a combination of structural power, decision
making, and relationship dynamics to assess sexual relationship power (Pulerwitz, Gortmaker, &
DeJong, 2000). Taking this a step further,
feminist social psychologists have called for
the incorporation of nation-level indicators of
gender equity (i.e., the United Nations’
Gender Inequality Index; see online resources)
into research on women’s well-being.
They argue that, combined with context-sensitive
measures of power, macro-level measures of
power offer a new frontier for international
feminist research (Else-Quest & Grabe, 2012;
Power, Overview
Grabe & Else-Quest, 2012). Additionally, they
propose the use of domain-specific indicators of
structural power such as political representation,
education, employment and income, land and
water rights, health, and violence, all of which
are applicable and essential to research with other
disempowered groups. As there is no consensus
on how to measure power, this area is ripe for
additional discussion and research.
Critical Debates
Critical psychologists have contributed to
three additional debates about power. The first
takes the conversation about levels of analysis
beyond measurement issues. The second
assesses top-down versus bottom-up research
and highlights the need for reflexivity about
power in the process of psychological research
itself. The third revolves around the ethics of
Western academics conducting research in
international contexts.
Levels of Analysis
The first key debate to which critical perspectives
contribute is about choosing a level of analytical
focus in psychological research on power. Some
psychologists conceptualize power as solely an
individual psychological process, whereas others
acknowledge power as always both political and
psychological (Else-Quest & Grabe, 2012;
Moane, 2011; Prilleltensky, 2008). On one side
are psychologists who focus on the individual,
purposefully limiting variations in context within
a laboratory setting in order to draw conclusions
about human cognition, behaviors, and emotions
in controlled isolation. They typically discuss the
individual person and society as separate
phenomena, with society often portrayed as
homogenous or simply ignored altogether
(Griscom, 1992). On the other side of the debate
are critical psychologists who challenge the historical individualistic bias of psychology by
highlighting the effects of oppression and structural inequality on the individual and on interpersonal relationships. Psychologists supporting this
perspective are interested in the interdependence
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of the individual and society, as well as the diversity between and within social groups.
The importance of this analysis relates to
finding effective strategies and solutions for
working toward social change and challenging
social inequities. For example, if power is seen
as residing in the individual, the solution is to
change the individual through counseling or
empowerment training, leaving hierarchical divisions at a societal level unexamined. In contrast,
if individual pathology and wellness cannot be
separated from the social and historical context,
efforts to promote liberation and well-being must
incorporate solutions at multiple levels in order to
create long-lasting structural change. Indeed,
critical psychologists argue that the satisfaction
of collective needs via increased structural power
is central to achieving personal well-being
(Else-Quest & Grabe, 2012; Prilleltensky, 2008).
Top-down Versus Bottom-up Research
The second debate is about whose perspective
psychologists should take when conducting
empirical investigations. Critical psychologists
argue that experiences of the disadvantaged and
oppressed must be attended to in order to harness
psychology for social justice and social change
(Apfelbaum, 1979; Martı́n-Baró, 1994; Moane,
2011). In fact, the area of liberation psychology
arose directly out of the observation that
the majority of scholarship in psychology is
articulated from a position of dominance and
takes the perspective of those with political
power (Martı́n-Baró, 1994). Psychologists using
this framework argue for a shift toward research
that originates from a desire to address the contextual needs of groups and acknowledges local
meanings, conditions, and ideologies about
power dynamics (Grabe & Else-Quest, 2012).
At the very least, researchers must be reflexive
about their own power when designing studies,
operationalizing variables, collecting data, and
disseminating results. Ideally, critical psychologists argue, research would be designed using
a bottom-up approach in collaboration with
people to whom the work is centrally relevant,
as exemplified by Participatory Action Research.
This bottom-up approach is in contrast to the
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Power, Overview
more conventional top-down perspective in
which empirical investigations arise from academic theory and psychological constructs and
concepts are developed in isolation of
a community’s needs. Many psychologists argue
for research carried out in the laboratory because
they desire objectivity and scientific control.
It is important to note the ramifications of
maintaining a top-down approach. When psychological research is conducted solely at universities,
a full understanding of phenomena such as power
may be lost because of the privileged position of
the researchers and the participants, even when
these psychologists do not consciously exclude
certain voices. This may happen because the powerful and the powerless can have very different
psychological experiences (Apfelbaum, 1979;
Martı́n-Baró, 1994). Thus, psychologists should
consider the implications of choosing a top-down
or bottom-up approach for their research questions
and the communities they wish to understand
and support.
psychologists argue it is unethical to judge other
cultures’ well-being based on Western-centered
assessments and evaluations designed without
attention to global hierarchies of power (Grabe
& Else-Quest, 2012). Specifically, structural
power and, in turn, interpersonal and individual
power are influenced by a historical legacy of
global colonial power relations and by contemporary neoliberal economic policies that favor
particular kinds of knowledge and discourses.
One example of this is psychological knowledge
itself, which, through the “psychologization” of
aspects of society not traditionally under the
realm of psychology, has become a hegemonic
discourse (e.g., Gordo & De Vos, 2010). Critical
psychologists shifting attention to systemic and
structural inequalities in power around the globe
are highlighting how the academic dialogue
about power and well-being is not being
conducted on an equal playing field and are
trying to avoid perpetuating inequalities through
psychological research.
International Relevance
Practice Relevance
The third critical debate is about the ethics of
conducting research in international contexts
and is a key aspect of the international relevance
of psychological research on power. Conventionally, psychologists have used concepts and measures developed in one context (often with
US undergraduates) to conduct research in
another context. They make an assumption that
these assessments tap into universal constructs.
Reminiscent of the top-down approaches
discussed above, much of this research neglects
cultural relevance and local knowledge expertise.
However, proponents might argue it is unethical
not to use existing psychological knowledge to do
research if it might benefit others.
On the other side of this debate, critical
psychologists increasingly interrogate these
mainstream and taken-for-granted approaches
because they reinforce knowledge hierarchies
between “the West” and “the rest” or between
“developed” and “developing” countries. These
Psychological research on power from
a critical perspective has much practical relevance for understanding human behavior and
relationships around the globe. Importantly, it
can contribute to efforts to understand discrimination and dehumanization, religious intolerance, ethnocentrism, biases within criminal
justice systems, stigma around aging and mental illness, the impact of globalization and
neoliberal economic policies on indigenous
peoples, genocide and torture, and the social
movements that aim to challenge and resist
these forces. Research explicitly about the connections between the political and the psychological holds the potential to provide insights
into solutions for changing hierarchies and
inequalities that impede personal and collective
well-being. In turn, policy makers and activists
could use this research in efforts aimed at altering structural inequalities and promoting social
justice.
Power, Overview
Future Directions
Critical psychologists are leading the way in
terms of innovative research on power and in
doing so are providing invaluable contributions
to harnessing a psychology for social justice and
social change. Some are exploring how different
social groups actually define and experience
power in relation to dominant rhetoric about
the meaning of power. Others are examining
the consequences of shifts in structural power,
for example, through the facilitation of landownership among women traditionally barred from
holding property. In addition, power is being
investigated in relation to masculinity, femininity, pleasure, and sexual aggression; to the
effects of sociocultural contexts on criminal
behavior; and to the ways in which the structure
of the welfare system disadvantages particular
women who seek services. Importantly, the
many contributions of these critical psychologists and the history of research on power highlight the practical and international relevance of
exploring individual, interpersonal, and structural power. In order to push the field in the
direction of more ethical and equitable research
aimed at eradicating social injustices, more psychologists should explore the connection
between the political and psychological through
the study of power.
References
Apfelbaum, E. (1979). Relations of domination and movements for liberation: An analysis of power between
groups. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The
social
psychology
of
intergroup
relations
(pp. 188–204). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1995). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women
of color. In K. W. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, &
K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 359–383). New
York, NY: The New Press.
Else-Quest, N. M., & Grabe, S. (2012). The political is
personal: Measurement and application of nation-level
indicators of gender equity in psychological research.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36, 131–144.
doi:10.1177/0361684312441592.
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Foucault, M. (1990). The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1. An
introduction. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth
of the prison (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Vintage
Books.
Gordo, A., & De Vos, J. (2010). Psychologism,
psychologising and de-psychologisation. Annual
Review of Critical Psychology, 8, 3–7. Retrieved
from http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-1141779
Grabe, S., & Else-Quest, N. M. (2012). The role of transnational feminism in psychology: Complementary
visions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36,
158–161. doi:10.1177/0361684312442164.
Griscom, J. L. (1992). Women and power. Definition,
dualism, and difference. Psychology of Women
Quarterly,
16,
389–414.
doi:10.1111/
j.1471–6402.1992.tb00264.x.
Hayward, C. R. (1998). De-facing power. Polity, 31, 1–22.
doi:10.2307/3235365.
Hurtado, A. (2009). Multiple lenses: Multicultural
feminist theory. In H. Landrine & N. Russo (Eds.),
Handbook of diversity in feminist psychology
(pp. 29–55). New York, NY: Springer.
Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements:
Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30, 435–464.
doi:10.1111/1467-7660.00125.
Malik, N. M., & Lindahl, K. M. (1998). Aggression and
dominance: The roles of power and culture in domestic
violence. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice,
5t, 409–423. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2850.1998.tb00164.x.
Martı́n-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation
psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miller, C. L., & Cummins, A. G. (1992). An examination
of women’s perspectives on power. Psychology
of Women Quarterly. Special Issue: Women and
Power, 16, 415–428. doi:10.1111/j.1471-6402.1992.
tb00265.x.
Moane, G. (2011). Gender and colonialism.
A psychological analysis of oppression and liberation.
New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Prilleltensky, I. (2008). The role of power in wellness,
oppression, and liberation: The promise of
psychopolitical validity. Journal of Community
Psychology, 36, 116–136. doi:10.1002/jcop.20225.
Pulerwitz, J., Gortmaker, S. L., & DeJong, W. (2000).
Measuring sexual relationship power in HIV/STD
research. Sex Roles, 42, 637–660. doi:10.1023/
a:1007051506972.
Yoder, J. D., & Kahn, A. S. (1992). Toward a feminist
understanding of women and power. Psychology
of Women Quarterly, 16, 381–388. doi:10.1111/
j.1471-6402.1992.tb00263.x.
Online Resources
Explanation of the United Nations’ gender inequality
index. http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii/
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Power-Knowledge
Scott Yates
Faculty of Health and Life Science, De Montfort
University Leicester, Leicester, UK
Introduction
The power/knowledge couplet emerges from
the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault
and reflects his radical notion that systems of
knowledge and operations of power are mutually
co-constitutive and “directly imply one another”
(Foucault, 1979, p. 27). This contention involves
a fundamental redefinition of traditional conceptions of both power and knowledge.
Definition
Through a series of historical analyses, Foucault
proposed a radical reworking of traditional
conceptions of both power and knowledge (see
Traditional Debates below) and argued that
power must be conceptualized as having
a productive function, that it in fact constitutes
an entire productive network running through
society, and that mechanisms of power cannot
be dissociated from the production of knowledge.
This reconceptualization of both power and
knowledge and the examination of their mutual
effects led Foucault to use power/knowledge as
a new term – a couplet signifying their fundamental co-constitution. It highlights that systems of knowledge make themselves available
to, and become implicit in, power relations.
This power/knowledge nexus determines and
constitutes what is attended to, what is desirable
to be done, and how people and fields of objects
are to be understood, related to, organized, and
controlled.
Power/knowledge both produces and limits the
range of legitimate ways in which individuals can
act upon one another’s conduct and the contexts
and the institutional forms within which this action
takes place. It is linked with specific forms of
Power-Knowledge
apparatus (dispositifs) with which its articulation
is bound up. Such apparatuses comprise
a “heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures,
scientific statements, philosophical, moral and
philanthropic propositions” (Foucault, 1980,
p. 194). It also includes the systems of relations
that can be established between these elements
and their objectives. This range of elements, applications, and effects of power/knowledge constitutes the context in which human relations take
place. All societies both produce and limit the
ways in which interactions and relationships operate and by which they strive to act upon the conduct of others, and these are intricately tied up
with systems of knowledge which define and
give properties to objects, practices, individuals,
forms of behavior, and so on. There is a constant
and reciprocal articulation “of power on knowledge and of knowledge on power” (Foucault,
1989, p. 51).
For Foucault, power/knowledge is also productive of subjects. He contended that power does not
“obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic” (1980, p.
56): there is not a vital and original will belonging
to a “sovereign, founding subject” (Foucault,
1988) standing opposite its antithesis of a power
which only constrains and limits. Rather, power
produces the form of the subject. It is
a fundamental effect of power that certain gestures, discourses, desires, and so on come to be
identified and constituted as aspects of individuals’ subjectivity. This gives form to their knowledge of themselves and designates the positions
from which they act as subjects act with respect to
themselves and others (Foucault, 1982).
In terms of subject positions which define
people, systems of social apparatus to which
they relate, and the production and limitation of
the ways in which people act upon one another’s
conduct, power/knowledge reaches “right down
into the depths of society” (Foucault, 1979) and
defines “numerous points of confrontation and
struggle” (ibid). All relations take place in the
context of these forms of power-knowledge:
“every human relation is to some degree
a power relation” (Foucault, 1988, p. 168).
Power-Knowledge
Keywords
Power; knowledge; freedom; resistance; discourse;
subjectivity; subjectification
History
Relevant to understanding the historical context
of the concept of power/knowledge are questions
regarding the development of Foucault’s thought
over time. Retrospectively, Foucault situated his
body of work against the context of a dominant
position in French thought that he called “the
philosophy of the subject” or “the philosophy of
experience” (e.g., Foucault, 1989). This thought,
specifically the existential project of grounding
knowledge of the human subject in terms of its
existence in the world, stems from a particular
reading of Husserl among French philosophers.
Foucault argued that such philosophy erroneously starts with a theory of the subject as originating creator of meaning and uses this as the
basis for asking how specific forms of knowledge
are possible.
Foucault stated that, in contrast, he began by
trying “to get out from the philosophy of the
subject,” being more interested in “the constitution of the subject across history which has led us
up to the modern conception of the self” (1993,
p. 202). Approaches grounded in the “philosophy
of experience” could not account for the structuring effects of signifying practices that would
make such a study possible. Foucault aligned
his project instead with another tradition, which
he called “the philosophy of concept” and which
was significant in French philosophy of science.
Foucault’s early “archaeological” project
aimed to search for the processes by which systems of knowledge are demarcated and the ways
in which disciplines, objects, concepts, and enunciations which can be made in relation to them
undergo transformations and appear and
disappear from the discursive field at particular
times. He specified that discourse is not “a mere
intersection of things and words” (1972, p. 45);
rather, discourses “systematically form the
objects of which they speak” (ibid, p. 49). Thus,
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the existence of human subjects as possible
objects of knowledge cannot be taken for granted
as the a priori basis of a possible science. Instead,
the process by which they are constituted as such
is a contingent and historically situated production of knowledge.
However, Foucault later looked back on this
period and comments that he realized that he
could no longer speak from the disinterested
archaeological space he earlier claimed. He
asked himself “what else it was that I was talking
about. . . but power” (Foucault, 1980, p. 115). He
came to see his earlier archaeological works as
insufficient and would connect his future analyses to social concerns and power. His next
major work (Discipline and Punish) undertook
a detailed examination of the practices (discipline) and institutions (prisons) which emerged
in industrial societies as part of an economy of
power which took as its aim the correction of
deviant behavior in the social body.
This study opens by juxtaposing descriptions
of two very different styles of punishment: a
gruesomely portrayed public torture and
a timetable of activities for prisoners. Less than
a century separates the two accounts. Foucault
notes that the differences are not just in the
accepted mode or method of punishment, but
that the move from one to the other took place
in the context of a redistribution of the “entire
economy of punishment” (Foucault, 1979). The
penality which had addressed itself to the body
and its pains was replaced by a punishment that
acts in depth on “the thoughts, the will, the inclinations” (ibid). Passions, maladjustments, and
effects of environment or heredity all entered
into consideration. Aggressivity became punishable and not just aggression; perversions and not
just sexual crimes; drives and desires and not just
murders; and so on. What emerges is “knowledge
of the criminal, one’s estimation of him [sic],
what is known about the relations between him,
his past and his crime, and what might be
expected of him in the future” (ibid, p. 18:
emphasis added).
A sentence then carries with it “an assessment
of normality and a technical prescription for
a possible normalization” (Foucault, 1979,
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p. 21). Through changes in punishment, one can
map a new “system of truth” (ibid, p. 23), a new
corpus of knowledge based around the normality
or deviance which resides within the psyche.
This work serves not only as an analysis of the
emergence of a new economy of punishment but
also as an illustration of the principles of
Foucault’s analytics of power/knowledge. It
demonstrates that systems of knowledge existing
around human beings are dynamically linked to
forms of power. It shows how institutions and
forms of social apparatus arise in the application
of this power, how they produce means through
which it is exercised. It shows how, through the
operation of this power/knowledge nexus, subjects are created and knowledge about them is
called forth and marshaled. These forms of
power/knowledge make individuals specifically
knowable by ranking them against the totality,
and operate punishments for deviance. Individuals can be examined and made into subjects of
a normalizing power through the production of
classifications, categories, and averages against
which they can be known.
Traditional Debates
Central to Foucault’s reconfiguring of notions
of power and knowledge is the assertion that
traditional conceptions of these are limited.
These traditional conceptions tend to see power
as actually or potentially owned by particular
individuals or groups, such that they can wield
it over others. Such conceptions are evident, for
instance, in Machiavellian and Hobbesian discussions of power – Machiavelli being concerned
with sovereign power and the ability of a ruler
to maintain the state, and Hobbes focusing on
how people use power in relation to others in
the pursuit of achieving their own will.
Hobbes presented a detailed analysis of power
that shaped subsequent conceptions into the
twentieth century. In this theory, one is unfree
to the extent to which one is restrained by other
individuals or forces from doing what one has
both will and capacity to do. Freedom, contrariwise, is defined as the absence of external
Power-Knowledge
constraint on the way in which one can act.
Power is that which can be used by individuals
to move or alter physical aspects of the world or
to act on or alter the will of others so that one’s
own will is carried out (this includes the use of
fear and intimidation). In this and similar conceptions, power is essentially a zero-sum game: it is
always relative to the power held by others; as
one person gains power, others must necessarily
lose it.
The influence of Hobbesian analyses of power
persisted into the twentieth century – for instance,
in Weber, who studied power defined as the ability of an individual to realize his or her will in
communal situation even when such an outcome
is not desired by others. Weber’s analyses were
concerned with how power can be understood as
legitimate (authority) or illegitimate (coercion).
He contended that as people became increasingly
ordered in a rationalizing bureaucracy, power
becomes dominatory, connected to the suppression of freedom and embodied in centralized
forms of social organization.
Foucault found conceptions such as these
unsatisfactory, and argued that power would be
very fragile if it only repressed or constrained.
His alternative formulation was based on an
analytics of power that would no longer take
exclusion, proscription, and repression as its axiomatically held exemplars or base itself on the
concept of a sovereign or dominant group atop
a pyramid of power. This reconceptualization of
power also required abandoning traditional ways
of thinking about knowledge which imagine that
it can exist only where power is suspended, “that
knowledge can only develop outside its injunctions. . . and its interests” (Foucault, 1979, p 27).
Instead, Foucault began to see that “there is no
power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge
which does not presuppose and constitute at the
same time power relations” (Foucault, p. 27).
For some, this is particularly suggestive of
parallels with Bacon, who famously linked
power and knowledge in his own thought –
“human knowledge and human power meet in
one” (cited in Han, 2002). Indeed, Foucault himself commended the study of Bacon to his
Power-Knowledge
audiences at the College de France (e.g., Foucault, 2009). Bacon set out a “doubly instrumental” (Han, 2002) relationship between knowledge
and power: both heralding a central concern for
the uses to which knowledge can be put in producing “inventions useful to the state and the
people” (p. 112) and also highlighting the pursuit
of these useful inventions and the associated
power to shape the world as a primary driver for
the pursuit of knowledge.
However, Bacon’s analyses also entail
a conceptual distinction between the realms of
knowledge and power, holding the accumulation
of greater knowledge and rationality as a good in
its own right. A Baconian account of power reading thus does not anticipate Foucauldian insights
that the forms of power, the modalities of its
operations, could be fundamentally shaped by
systems of knowledge and that operations of
power have a reciprocal effect on the scope, contents, and characteristics of systems of
knowledge.
Critical Debates
There are two main points on which Foucault’s
analytics of power/knowledge have been criticized: (i) the claim that they lack any normative
basis for evaluating social structures and
practices and (ii) the claim that they entail
a fatally inconsistency regarding questions of
whether the individual is determined by power
or has the potential to resist and escape such
determination.
Habermas, for instance, criticizes Foucault on
the grounds that his analyses abstain “from the
question of whether some discourse and power
formations could be more legitimate than others”
(Habermas, 1986, p. 282). He claims Foucault
lacks any reason for resisting “this all-pervasive
power” (ibid, p. 284), and Taylor (1986) similarly
argues that Foucault seems to bring particular
“evils” of power to light, but always distances
himself from the proposal of anything which
could – or should – be done to overcome them.
The charge from such critics is that Foucault’s
work on power/knowledge cannot be
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incorporated into an oppositional program
which could promote effective change of social
structures or practices nor can it be a catalyst for
resistance.
Foucault did refuse to propose a program of
action or to state explicitly what must be resisted
because he believed that there are inherent dangers in intellectuals presuming to undertake such
a task. His project did not fail to propose programs of action because of a flaw in his thinking;
its conscious aim was to bring it about that certain
people, particularly people whose task is to
administer or manage institutions “no longer
know what to do. . . This effect is intentional”
(Foucault, 1989, p. 285; emphasis added). He
intended for his works to make it more difficult
to speak for people in proposing what must be
done on their behalf.
The second main strand of criticism emerges
from Foucault’s treatment of resistance to specific articulations of power/knowledge. He
argued on the one hand that there was no position
of pure autonomy or freedom at the margins of
power, nor any potential society free of power
relations, but on the other hand, he contended that
one is nevertheless never completely trapped by
such systems. He explicitly distinguished power
from forms of domination such as slavery in
which there are no grounds for “reciprocal incitation and struggle” (Foucault, 1982). Power is
conceived as acting upon the actions of others, of
aiming to guide and structure their “possible field
of actions” (ibid, p. 221). It is “exercised over free
subjects. . . only insofar as they are free” (ibid,
p. 221), and power relations always contain the
possibility of resistance.
However, Foucault’s analyses tended to
emphasize ways that people are constituted as
subjects by forces beyond their control, and this
often seems to leave little (if any) room for conceptualizing the potential for agency or resistance
(McNay, 1994). This leads to possible readings
that see Foucault as a “prophet of entrapment”
(Simons, 1995) promoting a negative conceptualization of power and the rigid determination of
the subject. Critics thus argue that Foucault’s
power/knowledge nexus is a model of thought
which cannot, in fact, “analyse the conditions
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under which resistance to power becomes possible, why some people resist and others do not”
(Fox, 1997, p. 41).
While it is certainly possible to find inconsistencies in Foucault’s work, it is worth noting that
his own orientation to his work as an ongoing
work-in-progress aimed at understanding how
we relate to ourselves in different ways through
“games of truth” rather than as a final or fixed
position to be accepted or rejected as is. While
many critics do not accept this defense, preferring
to highlight and challenge inconsistencies,
a potentially more productive reading might be
achieved by taking seriously Foucault’s insistence that his works be seen not as “dogmatic
assertions. . . to be taken or left en bloc” (Foucault, 1989, p. 275) but as “propositions” or
“game openings” “where those who may be interested are invited to join in” (ibid, p. 275), using
and adapting the “tools” in his work as necessary.
Foucault was less concerned that commentators
on his work were “faithful” to the “real Foucault”
than that his works would prove useful to those
coming after him in opening up new perspectives.
International Relevance
The historical studies comprising Foucault’s analytics of power were grounded in Western Europe
and focused on diagnosing a “history of the
present” based on identifiably Western problems –
the emergence of administrative, legal, and organizational forms (prisons, police, schools) within
and around which modern subjectivities took
shape and in which individual conduct was surveilled and operated upon by others. However, as
is evident in the work of many of those influenced
by Foucault (e.g., Hook, 2007), the fundamental
insights and critical ethos found in these analyses
have potential relevance to analyses of power in
other parts of the world.
Practice Relevance
Foucault is among the most cited theorists in
the social sciences. His analytics of
Power-Knowledge
power/knowledge have been hugely influential
for contemporary critiques of psychological theory and practice. Notable examples where his
influence is evident include Ian Hacking’s analyses of how the DSM brings into being specific
ways in which people can be positioned as (and
experience themselves as) having specific psychopathologies (e.g., Hacking, 1991); Nikolas
Rose’s genealogies of the “psy” disciplines and
their links with rationalities of governmentality
and the operations of power in modern societies;
and Epston and White’s form of narrative therapy, which helps clients to challenge the systems
of power/knowledge (including psychiatry and
psychopathology) that act upon them and frame
the ways they understand themselves as subjects.
It has also been a key influence in the development of critical discourse analysis.
Future Directions
Although interest has cooled in the broad postmodern and anti-Enlightenment movements with
which Foucault is often (perhaps often inappropriately) associated, Foucault’s work remains well
cited, the work of those directly and indirectly
influenced by him remains relevant, and new avenues of exploration of specifically modern problems (such as the spread of neoliberalism) are still
emerging that explicitly and implicitly draw upon
Foucault’s works on power/knowledge.
References
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge.
London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish. London:
Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980). Body/power. In C. Gordon (Ed.),
Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus
& P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. London: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Foucault, M. (1988). Politics, philosophy, culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977–1984. London:
Routledge.
Practice Research
Foucault, M. (1989). Foucault live: Interviews
1966–1984. New York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, M. (1993). About the beginnings of the hermeneutics of the self. Political Theory, 21(2), 198–227.
Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–78. New York:
Picador.
Fox, N. (1997). Is there life after Foucault? In A. Petersen
& R. Bunton (Eds.), Foucault, health and medicine.
London: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1986). Taking aim at the heart of the present. In D. C. Hoy (Ed.), Foucault: A critical reader.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hacking, I. (1991). Two souls in one body. Critical
Inquiry, 17(4), 838–867.
Han, B. (2002). Foucault’s critical project: Between the
transcendental and the historical. Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Hook, D. (2007). Foucault, psychology and the analytics
of power. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
McNay, L. (1994). Foucault: A critical introduction.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Simons, J. (1995). Foucault and the political. London:
Routledge.
Taylor, C. (1986). Foucault on freedom and truth. In D. C.
Hoy (Ed.), Foucault: A critical reader. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
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Charlotte Hojholt1 and Dorte Kousholt2
1
Department of Psychology and Educational
Studies, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
2
Department of Education, Aarhus University,
Copenhagen, Denmark
and practice that isolate research from social
practice and regard the results of research as
standards for improving practice. Similarly from
this perspective, science has been criticized for
producing abstract, irrelevant, and decontextualized knowledge.
Practice research must be seen in the light of
these scientific as well as organizational societal
problems (Bernstein, 1971; Jensen, 1999). It
refers to a methodological understanding of
development of research, knowledge, and
practice as interconnected. It is both a scientific
perspective that works analytically, pointing to
knowledge and theory as aspects of social practice, and a practical organizational perspective on
research as participation in social practice and
collaboration with different parties.
This dialectical approach puts forward the
notion that the social character of knowledge is
expressed in the form of action as well as theory
(Axel, 2002). Theory and research activities may
be seen as dealing with general connections and
understandings through the variations of actions
and perspectives in social practice. Research is
therefore conceptualized as a social practice
itself, one already connected to other practices
(often in problematic ways – for instance,
research results are used by some persons in
the management of others – often termed the
“science of control”). In this context, practice
research constitutes a break with understandings
of scientific knowledge as created from
“nowhere.” It aims to generate theoretical
developments that can be used to analyze the
complexity of the concrete lives persons conduct
together.
Introduction
Definition
The relationship between research and practice
has been widely discussed and is often formulated as a “gap” between research and practice,
although it would be more precise to argue that
the relation is frequently unsystematic and
problematic. The background of practice
research is a critique of the inequality, distance,
and hierarchical connections between research
The concept of practice research is used in many
different ways. In a broad sense the term points to
research methodologies where the ambition is
to conduct research as cooperation between
researchers and professionals in practice.
Practice research takes as its point of departure
a critique of positivist standards for universal
scientific knowledge. It can be seen as a part of
Online Resources
The Foucault Habermas debate. http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.
dk/CIVSOC5%200PRINTBJS.pdf
Practice Research
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scientific traditions that address the complex and
heterogenic subjective dimensions of human
social life.
Practice research shares its critique of the
hierarchical relations and split between research
and practice in the positivist research paradigm
with other research traditions and participatory
methodologies. It shares common roots with
action research and participatory action research
(PAR) which can be traced back to Kurt Lewin
and the critical pedagogy put forward by
Paulo Freire. Lewin was occupied with group
processes for addressing conflicts, crises, and
transformation within different forms of organizations. Freire developed an alternative model
to the traditional formal, hierarchical models of
education where the aim was to give voice or
empower the people involved. Another source of
inspiration is the Marxist philosopher Antonio
Gramsci, who argued that all people are reflective human beings and researchers must be considered co-learners with the people they meet
in the research process. These critical
approaches to research have laid the ground for
a growing body of practice-oriented research
across a number of disciplines, emphasizing
researchers’ participation in practice and involving professionals in the question and design of
the research process. Consequently, there is no
simple definition of the differences between
these methodologies, which vary in terms of
theoretical and scientific background as well as
in the way in which research processes are
organized.
Practice research is characterized by
a theoretical approach that emphasizes the inner
relation between practice and knowledge and
between persons and their different life contexts.
The problems that researchers address must be
understood as aspects of social practices and
analyzed from the perspectives of the different
parties involved. This calls for situated analyses
of conflicts and dilemmas in social practices and
of how people deal with and overcome these
(Lave, 2011).
Practice research does not refer to a specific
set of research methods or standards. It is
a theoretical approach to knowledge and the
Practice Research
production of knowledge in research. The concept of practice research presented here is closely
linked to the tradition of German Critical Psychology or Science of the Subject (Dreier, 2008;
Holzkamp, 1983; Nissen, 2000; Schraube &
Osterkamp, 2013), where researchers and professionals organize research processes together,
aiming to develop theory on the basis of empirical research in concrete social practices. Practice
research is characterized by participation and
cooperation between different parties in research
and professional practice. The persons that
researchers interact with in research processes
are regarded as coresearchers. The concept of
coresearchers is based on the notion that subjects
are already exploring their conditions in
conducting their daily lives: therefore, research
should not overlook or dismiss the intersubjective
interplay in research situations but learn from
it (Holzkamp, 1983). Practice research investigates a plurality of different perspectives in social
practice and in this way is an effort to democratize research (Dreier, 2008).
Practice research can be carried out in many
different ways and involves different methods.
The methods employed can be one of or
a combination of, e.g., participatory observation,
interviews with several different parties in practice and research communities, where different
positions in professional and scientific practice
are represented (e.g., leaders and workers,
professors and PhD students). Such communities
can meet regularly to manage and develop the
design of research projects and engage in analyses and discussions of the produced empirical
material. Practice research can also be carried out
by individual researchers; here the methodological basis becomes meaningful in relation to the
way, e.g., interviews are conducted as a common
exploration of explicit research questions of relevance to the development of practice and theory.
Keywords
Practice philosophy; practice relevance; research
cooperation; participation; organization of
research; dialectics between theory and practice
Practice Research
Traditional Debates: The Relation
Between Science and Practice
The rupture with the positivist paradigm and the
refusal of universality and objectivity as hegemonic standards for research bring forward discussions of how one can conceptualize scientific
knowledge and the relation between theory and
practice.
Practice research builds on a concept of
practice that emphasizes human beings as acting
subjects in a social world and connects
knowledge and knowledge production to social
activity. This philosophy of practical activity
(Bernstein, 1971) has consequences for the role
science should play in relation to the practices it
deals with. Instead of a detached position,
science must be engaged in changing the world
(cf. Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach). This points
to the need to organize the relation between
researchers and the people who are involved in
the study in a different way than the forms
that have dominated modern society (Jensen,
1999) – and it places the researcher in the role
of participant among other participants in social
practice and in the research process.
A central question in relation to research that
aims to participate in practice is how it can
contribute to the development of practice.
Discussions seem to oscillate between research
being the primary agent of change and research
having no influence at all. The ambition of
contributing to changing practices may be
misinterpreted as research creating change in
practice. The intention of practice research is to
break with the hierarchical scientific model in
which changes in social practice are assumed to
be brought about by transmitting abstract
knowledge from the “outside” to the given
practice. Change is part of social practice, and
research may join, reflect, and possibly contribute
to and qualify these processes, thereby also
improving research and theory. In this way,
research contributes with more fundamental
questions to the content of general categories
than the daily search for courses of action –
although these aspects may still be seen as
connected. Questions of understanding, curiosity,
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and analysis of connections in practice may
contribute to the ongoing development of
practices.
Critical Debates: Critical Thinking and
a Situated Approach
Practice research has been criticized from other
standpoints for not being able to be critical
enough, due to its close cooperation and involvement with coresearchers. The issue here is what is
to be criticized? Practice research aims to explore
common problems in the social life people live
together in structures of interconnected practices.
In this light, the aim of the analyses is not to
criticize isolated actions, but structural
conditions and contradictions. The concept of
“structure” points to the active “structuring” that
people create when they interact and the historical structures of societal contexts that make up
the conditions for their actions. Thereby, the
concept of structure is concretized as related to
human participation in concrete social practice.
Analyzing the way participants make up the
conditions for each other’s actions is to insist on
the inner connectedness between different
actions. When subjects relate to each other, they
do not just relate to accidental “others,” but to
structured social arrangements, and through this
situated interplay, they take part in the reproduction and change of the broader arrangements.
Researchers’ possibilities to develop knowledge
about these structural arrangements therefore
derive from analyses of the coresearchers’ reasons for acting. Thus, exploring the meaning of
social structures to the persons acting within them
is an argument for closely collaborating with
these persons.
These debates move practice research from
a psychological focus upon individuals to social
life. In relation to this, it has been argued that
persons disappear in this social and situated
research. Conversely, however, it could be
argued that individuals only become real persons
when they are studied in the contexts they relate
to (Lave, 2011). Learning about the social world
through the perspectives of persons is central to
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this methodology. For instance, we get knowledge about the unintended consequences of the
structure of a social support system when we
observe and interview the children who live
with this special help – following them in their
daily lives across different life contexts (Højholt,
2006). Such explorations illuminate the children’s living conditions, as well as the conditions
of professionals. In professional practice, this
seems to lead to a focus on the content of professional tasks (in contrast to a focus on methods and
documentation) and to greater awareness of the
concrete meanings of the overall structure that
professionals are a part of.
References
Axel, E. (2002). Regulation as productive tool use.
Participatory observation in the control room
of a district heating system. Roskilde: Roskilde
University Press.
Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and action. Contemporary
philosophies of human activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Dreier, O. (2008). Psychotherapy in everyday life.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Højholt, C. (2006). Knowledge and professionalism –
From the perspectives of children? Journal of Critical
Psychology, Wales, UK: Cardiff University,
pp. 81–106.
Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der psychologie.
Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.
Jensen, U. J. (1999). Categories in activity theory: Marx’
Philosophy just-in-time. In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard,
& U. J. Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social
practice: Cultural-historical approaches (pp. 79–99).
Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press.
Lave, J. (2011). Apprenticeship in critical ethnographic practice. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Nissen, M. (2000). Practice research. Critical psychology
in and through practices. Annual Review of Critical
Psychology, 2, 145–179.
Schraube, E., & Osterkamp, U. (2013). Psychology from
the standpoint of the subject. Selected writings of
Klaus Holzkamp (pp. 363–499). London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Online resources
http://www.ruc.dk/en/departments/department-of-psychologyand-educational-studies/research/projekter/practiceresearch-on-development/
Precarity
Precarity
Barbara Biglia1 and Jordi Bonet Martı́2
1
Department of Pedagogy, Universitat Rovira
i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
2
Escuela de Psicologı́a, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Valparaı́so, Viña del Mar, Chile
Introduction
The word precarity is the English translation of
the Italian word precarietá, the Spanish word
precariedad, and the French word précarité.
Other English-language forms of this word
include precarious (an adjective) and precariousness (a noun). These terms stem from the Latin
word precarius, which refers to something
obtained through prex (prayer) or petition
(Online Etymological Dictionary). The derivations from the Latin word precarius were commonly used in the romance languages to describe
something which could be granted by grace or
obtained through prayers; more in general they
were used in reference to circumstances that
could be characterized as uncertain, insecure,
and unstable. It was during the late 1980s
and early 1990s that, through its use by social
movement activists and critical theory academics, this concept acquired the “new” meaning
that will be discussed in this entry. This new use
of the term precarity encountered initial resistance in Anglo-Saxon contexts; nevertheless, its
popularity grew rapidly, and it is currently
accepted internationally, including in Englishlanguage contexts.
Definition
Precarity can be defined differently depending
on whether it narrowly refers to labor conditions
or more broadly to life experiences. Accordingly, we will provide two different definitions,
keeping in mind the partial overlap between
them.
Precarity
Labor Precarity
Refers to a situation in which subjects are faced
with flexible working conditions. These circumstances include temporary employment, nonstandard work contracts or schedules, and/or
employment without social security or benefits
(Italian Core Group, 2007). This situation is
considered extraordinary in stark contrast to
the employment experience of the previous
generation of post-World War II Western societies. Nonetheless, it constitute a common
experience in a post-Fordist epoch in which
immaterial labor and mature capitalism lead to
the feminization of working conditions and
requirements (flexibility, relational capacities,
blurring of personal-private time and space).
Following from the dismantling of the welfare
state and the government’s response to the current socioeconomic crisis, more people have
been forced to accept these types of labor conditions. In this context, Italian post-operaists
considered precarity to be a node around
which social mobilization could be articulated
(Hardt & Negri, 2004). In this analysis (and its
subsequent practices), it is implicitly suggested
that the experience of working in precarious
conditions may drive subjects to identify themselves as precarious. Therefore, it seemed
possible to build a precarious collective identity, despite individual differences.
Life Precarity
Refers to a situation in which persons do not have
stable life conditions. This is characterized as
being flexibly involved in a network of social
groups and (im)material, continuously moving,
contingent realities. This implies a lack of life
security and a feeling of permanently living in a
“state of flux” – an unstable environment with no
options for making plans for the future, even the
very near one. Many feminists (e.g., Precariasala
Deriva, 2005) prefer to adopt this wider definition,
as it is more reflective of the realities experienced
by people of minoritized social groups, among
them women. The rationales for this preference
are as follows: first, precarious labor conditions
are not always the main reason for the instabilities
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and insecurities experienced by minoritized subjects, and, second, “precarious labor conditions”
have been the norm for many women and other
marginalized sectors of society long before the
system of neoliberal imperialism appeared. From
this position, it is indeed argued that if we want to
recognize the specificity of the current precarity,
we cannot limit ourselves to consider labor market
conditions; a more complex analysis that takes into
account, for example, the state of social-emotional
relations needs to be initiated. Similarly it is also
suggested that a precarious life is definitively tied
to our feelings of vulnerability (Butler, 2006). Yet,
by adopting this vision, it becomes unclear,
whether conceptualizing precarious as a collective
subject for social transformation could really be
useful or whether it would lead to the reproduction
of social discrimination.
Traditional Debates
Despite being a relatively recently adopted term,
precarity has aroused many debates. Therefore, it
is useful to present a brief history of its initial uses
and, in the next section, some of the ongoing
debates.
The term started being used in Italy in the late
1980s to describe the conditions of those who
were employed in temporary jobs without social
security. With the debilitation of collective
bargaining agreements and the welfare state,
the number of well-educated young Europeans
facing labor precarity increased quickly.
A commonly touted tale attributes the situation
to a late-capitalist subversion of the 1970s,
claiming the need for more work flexibility and
a rejection of the “job for life” paradigm (Neilson
& Rossier, 2008). Flexibility for workers has
been transformed (subverted) by capital into the
flexibility of workers and has resulted in more
freedom for employers.
It was in that context that sociologists
(Bauman, 1998; Bourdieu, 2003; Sennet, 1998)
started to talk about the new system of precarity
that, besides having personal consequences,
undermined the possibility of fighting from
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a common identitarian perspective. In response
to that situation, a sector of social movement
attempted to subvert the derogatory connotation
associated with precarity, by promoting, instead,
a “precarious pride” (Italian Core Group, 2007).
This change in perspective was particularly
pronounced in the twenty-first century, when, on
the occasion termed “May Day,” people were
called to participate in mobilization, as precarious.
Therefore, “San Precario” was invented as icon,
representing a new “multiple” “reconstituted”
collectivity in movement (see Chainworkers.
orgCreW, no date). With irony and a nod to the
etymology of the word precarious, the holy image
was created to represent the last hope of many
people: to obtain the grace of work. Others Latin
European countries adopted quite immediately the
new terminology, whereas, in Anglo-Saxon
societies, there was an initial resistance to it. Nonetheless, both the terms precarity and precarious
became popular rather quickly and they have
become especially widespread through antiglobalization, alter-globalization, and the movement of movement (MoMo).
Critical Debates
As mentioned in the definition(s) section, the
most important theoretical tension around the
meaning of precarity is related to the extent of
its use: it can narrowly describe labor conditions,
or it can broadly represent the conjunction of
multiple life experiences. As described above,
the first option may be reductive and exclusory,
yet the second option may bring about ambiguities and difficulties in use (Fantone, 2007).
Another tension is related to the definition of
the precarious subject, as a key element of
a social fight. Some authors (e.g., Tsianos &
Papadopoulos, 2006) believe that a precarious
subject is needed to avoid falling into the trap
of analyzing apolitically analyzing immaterial
labor. Other authors (e.g., McRobbie, 2010)
argue that this subject is often constructed, in
political discourses, in relation to workers identities, denying political investment to the other
parts of people’s life experiences.
Precarity
Finally, we detect a decrease in the use of the
word precarity in the political discourses of both
activist and academics in the context of the current “global” crises. It may be too early to say, but
it seems that, although the word has entered into
common discourses, it appears to have lost part of
its importance in political analysis.
References
Bauman, Z. (1998). Work, consumerism and the new poor.
Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2003). Firing back: Against the tyranny of
the market. New York: New Press.
Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life. The power of mourning
and violence. London: Verso.
Deriva, P. (2005). A drift through the circuits of feminized
precarious work. Feminist Review, 77, 157–161.
Fantone, L. (2007). Precarious changes: Gender and generational politics in contemporary Italy [special issue].
Feminist Review, 87, 5–20.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and
democracy in the age of empire. New York: Penguin
Press.
Italian Core Group. (2007). Introduction. Feminist
Review, 87, 5–20. Special issue.
McRobbie, A. (2010). Feminism and immaterial labour.
New Formations, 70(4), 60–76.
Neilson, B., & Rossier, N. (2008). Precarity as a political
concept, or fordism as exception. Theory, Culture and
Society, 25(7–8), 51–72.
Sennet, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism.
London: Routledge.
Tsianos,V., & Papadopoulos, D. (2006). Precarity:
A savage journey to the heart of embodied capitalism.
Transversal Journal, 11. Retrieved from (http://eipcp.
net/transversal/1106/tsianospapadopoulos/en)
Online Resources
Chainworkers.org CreW. (no date). San Precario. Inspired
by the work of the artist Chris Woods. Licensed under
a Creative Commons License. Download from http://
kit.sanprecario.info/
http://www.precaria.org/ Italian web page dedicated to
precarity.
http://www.precarios.org/ Page of young Spanish precarious researchers.
http://www.scioperoprecario.org/ IT
http://kit.sanprecario.info/
Precarity: A reader’s guide by Trevor Owen Jones March
24, 2011. http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/03/24/
precarity-readers-guide
Neilson, B. & Rossiter N. (2005). Special issue on multitudes, creative organisation and the precarious
Prejudice
condition of new media labour. The Fiber culture
Journal, 5. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/
Video: Professor Judith Butler delivering the annual Neale
Wheeler Watson lecture entitled precarious life: The
Obligations of proximity at the Swedish Nobel
Museum, Svenska Akademiens B€
orssalon May 24,
2011, from http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/
videos/precarious-life-the-obligations-of-proximity/
Video: Precarias a la Deriva: A la Deriva por los Circuitos
de la Precariedad (ES). http://www.hamacaonline.net/
obra.php?id¼237
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It will take a still greater investment to gain the
secrets of man’s irrational nature” (1954, p. xv).
At this stage in the history of prejudice research,
however, an uncomfortable question looms:
Has the already considerable investment in
time, passion, and talent been worthwhile?
We return to this question after outlining the
trajectory of the so-called prejudice problematic
(Wetherell & Potter, 1992).
Keywords
Prejudice
John Dixon
Department of Psychology, Open University,
Milton Keynes, UK
Prejudice;
stereotyping;
discrimination;
prejudice reduction; social change
History
Introduction and Definition
The modern concept of prejudice derived from
the enlightenment liberalism of the eighteenth
century, which differentiated thought based on
reasoned reflection from thought based on blind
faith, dogma, and other forms of unreason. In the
early years of the twentieth century, the concept
acquired a more restricted set of meanings that
caught the scientific and popular imagination.
Prejudice came to signify the irrational dislike
of members of other social groups for little reason
other than that they belonged to such groups. This
definition rapidly took hold in the social sciences
and has endured. As Quillian (2006, p. 300)
observes, “despite the changing nature of
prejudice in modern society, most contemporary
social science use of the term is highly consistent
with Allport’s (1954) early definition of prejudice
as ‘antipathy based on a faulty or inflexible
generalization’.”
Prejudice is nowadays a foundational concept
that underpins how many psychologists investigate and explain relations of social inequality,
conflict, and discrimination. Indeed, over the
course of the past century, the sheer volume of
research on prejudice has vindicated Allport’s
prediction that “. . .it required years of labor and
billions of dollars to gain the secret of the atom.
Research on prejudice emerged around the
beginning of the last century but mainly gathered
impetus in the period following the end of the
Second World War. Prior to then, psychologists
were generally concerned more with investigating the nature and origins of intergroup
differences than with problems of intergroup
prejudice. Between the 1920s and 1940s, however, their attention began to shift; and by the
1950s, Allport could comment that prejudice
research had “flooded” social psychology and
the wider social sciences. Whether or not this
theoretical shift amounted to an “abrupt reversal”
(Samelson, 1978) is a moot point. However,
undoubtedly the war years had a profound
influence on the discipline’s values and priorities,
impelling the task of understanding the origins of
ethnic and racial discrimination. “How could it
be,” Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and
Sanford (1950) wrote in their famous preface to
the authoritarian personality, “. . . that in a culture
of law, order and reason there could have survived the irrational remnants of ancient racial and
religious hatreds? How to explain the willingness
of great masses of people to tolerate the mass
extermination of their fellow citizens?”
The rise of prejudice research also heralded
a moral and political shift in psychology. It
effectively inverted the attribution of blame for
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problems of intergroup conflict and discrimination. Earlier research on group differences tended
to lay responsibility for such problems at the
feet of the historically disadvantaged, whose
alleged psychological and cultural deficiencies
made them a ready scapegoat. By contrast, prejudice research attributed intergroup problems to
the irrational negativity of the historically
advantaged.
Both Saenger (1953) and Allport (1954)
provided comprehensive reviews of early work
on this emerging problem of dominant group
bigotry. Much of it was descriptive in orientation.
Taking advantage of new techniques for scaling
social attitudes and stereotypes, it sought to
document the nature, prevalence, and intensity
of prejudiced reactions, particularly in the
United States, and it tended to focus on racial
and ethnic relations. Only later did discrimination
based on other axes of social division and exclusion – e.g., age, gender, body shape, and sexual
orientation – become a research priority. Early
theories of prejudice were thus devised mainly
to explain the psychological causes of racism,
anti-Semitism, and xenophobia.
Traditional Debates
Varying explanations of prejudice have been
proposed, drawing, inter alia, on models of
personality development, evolutionary psychology, aggression, socialization, social cognition,
psychodynamic processes, and instrumental
conflict. Dovidio (2001) traces three phases in
the development of the field, each characterized
by different theoretical emphases, methodological commitments, and core images of “the bigot.”
Early work rooted prejudice in the dynamics of
maladjusted personality development. The
writings of Adorno et al. (1950), Allport (1954),
and Rokeach (1960) represent different versions
of this perspective, which highlighted the importance of understanding why some individuals
have a greater inclination for bigotry than others.
In stark contrast, a second phase conceived
prejudice as the outcome of universal forms of
information processing, as illustrated by
Prejudice
cognitive biases as category accentuation effects,
stereotyping, illusory correlation, and errors of
attribution. This social cognitive approach
reigned in psychology for most of the past
30 years and its central motif of the “normality
of prejudgement” remains a powerful frame of
reference. In a third phase, prejudice research has
returned to a theme that interested early
psychoanalytic theorists, which concerns the
role of unconscious antipathy towards others.
Rather than drawing on psychoanalytic methods
and concepts, however, this research tradition has
borrowed from cognitive work on so-called
“implicit” processing. Using innovative techniques such as the Implicit Association Task, it
has explored the unconscious, spontaneous, and
uncontrolled dimensions of prejudice and shown
that they sometimes have only a tenuous relationship with its conscious, deliberative, and
controlled expressions. Aversive racism theory
represents one attempt to explain this disjunction
between implicit and explicit prejudice.
To conclude this section, we anticipate
a potential fourth stage in the development of
mainstream research on the psychology of
prejudice, which highlights its neurological
foundations. Over the past decade or so, the
concepts and methods of social neuroscience
have gradually penetrated the field, and there
now exists a critical mass of research that is
gathering momentum. The work of Susan Fiske
and colleagues illustrates some of its basic principles and challenges the orthodoxy that focusing
on neurological processes inevitably naturalizes
prejudice or misattributes its origins to decontextualized mechanisms in the brain. Indeed, the
central theme of this work is that even so-called
“hard-wired” tendencies towards prejudice are
extraordinarily malleable to contextual influences and thus amenable to intervention (e.g.,
Harris & Fiske, 2006).
Practice Relevance
Prejudice research aims not simply to understand
problems of intergroup violence, discrimination,
and inequality but also to combat them by
Prejudice
implementing interventions of prejudice reduction. A spirit of political advocacy was present
from the outset and continues to enliven the field.
As a model of social change, the reduction of
prejudice is based upon a number of underlying
assumptions. To begin with, as noted already, it
assumes that problems of intergroup discrimination arise primarily from the bigotry of the
historically advantaged. By implication, it
assumes that such problems can be mitigated by
encouraging members of such groups to think
more positive thoughts about, and feel more positive emotions towards, others. Finally, it
assumes that the effects of this kind of psychological transformation ripple outwards to alter
wider forms of interpersonal, collective, and
institutional relations. After all, prejudice reduction would have little societal impact if its effects
were confined to the private recesses of the
individual’s mind.
Applying these general assumptions, numerous interventions have been devised to reduce
prejudice, including empathy arousal, reeducation, common identification, perspective taking,
cooperative learning, and intergroup contact.
Pauluck and Green (2009) have recently disputed
the strength of their supporting evidence.
Nevertheless, such interventions are widely
regarded in the discipline’s mainstream as
a compelling demonstration of how psychological knowledge can improve society. Critical
psychologists, however, have questioned the utility both of the mainstream concept of prejudice
and of the model of social change it informs.
Critical Debates
Psychological research on prejudice has attracted
a range of criticisms. Early sociological critiques
warned that such research tended to individualize
the nature and causes of intergroup discrimination, neglecting its historical, structural, and
political causes and its role in maintaining wider
hierarchies of power. In their landmark text
“Changing the Subject,” Henriques, Hollway,
Urwin, Venn, and Walkerdine (1984) similarly
argued that psychological explanations of
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prejudice typically traduce the origins of discrimination. Specifically, they argued that both
“rotten apple” theories (which root prejudice in
psychological maladjustment) and sociocognitive theories (which root prejudice in universal errors and biases of social perception)
obscure the historically specific, institutional
practices through which racialized divisions and
associated power relations are produced and normalized. Hopkins, Reicher, and Levine (1997)
went so far as to liken socio-cognitive research
on race prejudice to the ideology of so-called new
racism.
The idea that prejudice entails a misperception
of social reality has been challenged on other
grounds. Reicher (2007), for example, observed
that this conception disregards the main function
of representations of self and other in historically
unequal societies, which is to promote a vision of
“us” and “them” that legitimates practices of
discrimination. From this perspective, the key
question is not “are our perceptions of others
true or false?” Rather, it is “how do particular
versions of social reality become effective
ideologically as a means of sustaining
inequality?”
Of course, the assumption that social perceptions can be appraised in terms of their accuracy
presupposes a correspondence model of truth that
has been challenged by psychologists working
within a social constructionist framework. Such
a model, they have argued, overlooks the inherent
multiplicity and relativity of social perception.
It also overlooks the role of everyday discursive
practices in actively creating – and not simply
reflecting – the “reality” of social categories
and relationships. Wetherell and Potter’s (1992)
book “Mapping the Language of Racism” provided a searching analysis of the limits of this
perspective as well as an early example of an
alternative approach. Work on the “discursive
construction” of categories such as race, gender,
nation, and sexual orientation has subsequently
become well established as a way of investigating
what psychologists have traditionally labelled
“prejudice.”
It is perhaps in the arena of sociopolitical
change that the concept of prejudice has been
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most intensely scrutinized (e.g., see Dixon,
Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim,, 2012; Reicher,
2007). First, whether or not the reduction of
negative feelings towards the disadvantaged
necessarily leads the advantaged to support
broader forms of institutional change is an
unresolved question (Wright & Lubensky,
2009). In paternalistic systems of discrimination
(e.g., gender hierarchies), for example, ostensibly
“positive” intergroup feelings may not only
coexist with inequality but also, paradoxically,
serve as a mechanism through which it is
reproduced (Jackman, 1994).
Second and more important, a wealth of historical and sociological evidence suggests that
political change is rarely achieved through the
gradual expansion of the goodwill of the
advantaged. To the contrary, it generally occurs
through the collective resistance of the disadvantaged. According to Wright and Lubensky (2009)
moreover, the psychological processes that generate such resistance may run contrary to the
imperatives of prejudice reduction. Rather than
diminishing awareness of group differences,
increasing acceptance of others, and reducing
intergroup conflict, collective action requires the
disadvantaged to recognize their common identity as an oppressed group, to become angry and
dissatisfied with this state of affairs, and to act
unison to achieve social change. In this model of
change, then, intergroup conflict is conceived not
simply as a problem to be eradicated in order to
restore social harmony: it is also the engine that
drives political change.
For these reasons, among others, many critical
psychologists have looked beyond the social psychology of prejudice reduction when considering
the problem of change (e.g., see Howarth & Hook,
2005). As other entries in this volume testify, they
have looked for inspiration to developments in
areas such as postcolonial theory, Marxism, feminism, liberation psychology, and antiracism.
Prejudice
interested in the concept of prejudice. To return
to an earlier remark, has our discipline not
already invested too much time, energy, and
resources to the study of “irrational negativity?”
And has this investment not eclipsed more pressing issues, for example, of core distributive
justice, poverty, and human rights? There are
two kinds of answers to such questions. The first
might note that psychological research on
prejudice continues to consume “many minds
and many research budgets” (Reynolds, Haslam,
& Turner, 2012). Therefore, anyone who is
interested in how our discipline frames problems
of intergroup violence, discrimination, and
inequality cannot afford to ignore developments
in this field. They will find many of those
developments intriguing in their own terms,
such as emerging methods for studying our
unconscious biases towards others, for revealing
the contextual plasticity of neurological functioning, and for highlighting the “benevolent” as well
as the “hostile” expressions of prejudice.
The second answer might highlight the importance of recognizing that prejudice is not merely
an academic abstraction: it is also a living
concern for ordinary people in their everyday
lives. The concept has become deeply embedded
within the culture, politics, and institutional
practices of many societies, forming part of an
ideological tradition (Billig, 1991) that has
wide-ranging implications. The challenge for
critical psychologists is to develop a framework
for studying prejudice that can trace its historically and contextually shifting meanings for
ordinary people while elucidating its sociopolitical consequences within particular settings.
Emerging work on the so-called “collaborative
accomplishment” of prejudice is a promising
example of one such framework (Condor, 2005;
Durrheim, 2012).
References
Future Directions
Given its inherent limitations, critical psychologists might wonder why they should remain
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., &
Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality.
New York: Harper.
Allport, G. W. (1950). Prejudice: A problem in social
causation. Journal of Social Issues, 6, 4–23.
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. New York:
Doubleday.
Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions. London:
Sage.
Condor, S. (2006). Public prejudice as collaborative
accomplishment: Towards a dialogic social psychology of racism. Journal of Community and Applied
Social Psychology, 6, 1–18.
Dixon, J., Levine, M., Reicher, S., & Durrheim, K. (2012).
Beyond prejudice: Are negative evaluations the problem? Is getting us to like one another more the
solution? Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Dovidio, J. F. (2001). On the nature of contemporary
prejudice: The third wave. Journal of Social Issues,
57, 829–849.
Durrheim, K. (2012). Implicit prejudice in mind and interaction. In J. Dixon & M. Levine (Eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict,
inequality and social change (pp. 179–199). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., &
Walkerdine, V. (1984). Changing the subject. London:
Methuen.
Hopkins, N., Reicher, S., & Levine, M. (1997). On the
parallels between social cognition theory and the new
racism. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36,
305–329.
Howarth, C., & Hook, D. (2005). Towards a critical social
psychology of racism: Points of disruption. Journal of
Community and Applied Social Psychology, 15,
425–431.
Jackman, M. R. (1994). The velvet glove: Paternalism and
conflict in gender, class, and race relations. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Pauluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Prejudice
reduction: What works? A review and assessment of
research and practice. Annual Review of Psychology,
60, 339–367.
Quillian, L. (2006). New approaches to understanding
prejudice and discrimination. Annual Review of
Sociology, 32, 299–338.
Reicher, S. (2007). Rethinking the paradigm of prejudice. South African Journal of Psychology, 37,
820–834.
Saenger, G. (1953). The social psychology of prejudice.
New York: Harper.
Samelson, F. (1978). From “race psychology” to “studies
in prejudice”: Some observations on the thematic
reversal in social psychology. Journal of the History
of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 265–278.
Wetherell, M., & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of
racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation.
Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Wright, S. C., & Lubensky, M. (2009). The struggle for
social equality: Collective action vs. prejudice reduction. In S. Demoulin, J. P. Leyens, & J. F. Dovidio
(Eds.), Intergroup misunderstandings: Impact of
divergent social realities (pp. 291–310). New York:
Psychology Press.
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Online Resources
http://www.socialpsychology.org/social.htm#prejudice
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
Jane Ussher
University of Western Sydney, Centre for Health
Research, Penrith, NSW, Australia
Introduction and Definition
Premenstrual change was first categorized as
a “disorder” in 1931, described as “premenstrual
tension” (PMT). It was renamed “premenstrual
syndrome” (PMS) in 1956 and included in the
DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association,
2000) as PMDD, officially categorizing premenstrual mood or behavior change as a psychiatric
disorder (see Cosgrove & Caplan, 2004; Ussher,
2006). At the time of writing, a “mood disorders
work group” is “accumulating evidence” as to
whether PMDD should be included in DSM-5.
Women who report a range of psychological and
physical symptoms premenstrually, including
anxiety, tearfulness, irritability, anger, depression, aches and pains, or bloating, can be
diagnosed as having PMDD. It is estimated that
around 8–13 % of women meet a PMDD diagnosis each month, with around 75 % meeting the
lesser diagnosis of premenstrual syndrome
(PMS) – the same conglomeration of symptoms,
just experienced to a lesser degree.
Keywords
PMDD; social construction; regulating heterofemininity; subjectification
Traditional Debates
Within the biomedical model which dominates
research and treatment on PMS and PMDD,
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the explanation for premenstrual symptomatology is located within the reproductive body,
which is positioned as outside of the woman’s
control – her difference and deficiency inevitable.
When “premenstrual tension” first appeared in
the medical literature, it was attributed to the
“female sex hormone” estrogen. In the intervening years, many different biomedical theories of
premenstrual symptomatology have been put
forward, each competing with the other as offering the “true” explanation. These include gonadal
steroids and gonadoptrophins, neurovegetative
signs (e.g., sleep, appetite changes), neuroendocrine factors, serotonin and other neurotransmitters, b-endorphin, and other potential substrates
(including prostaglandins, vitamins, electrolytes,
and CO2). This proliferation of causal
theories has led to a range of competing medical
treatments, the most recent medical literature
advocating serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs), to correct serotonin imbalance; estrogen
patches, to correct estrogen deficiency; or progesterone suppositories, to correct progesterone
imbalance.
One explanation for the contradictory nature
of these biomedical theories is that expert
knowledge is socially and historically situated,
and thus, the aspects of biology and the body we
are allowed to “know” are those which meet the
criteria of the theoretical models and measurement tools currently in use. The “discovery” of
sex hormones in 1905 precipitated hormonal theories of PMS; developments in neuroendocrine
research led to serotonin imbalance being put
forward as cause, SSRIs as cure; genome explanations cannot be far away. However, biomedical
theories have not remained unchallenged in the
field of scientific research, as a gamut of
psychological theories have also been proffered
to explain PMS and PMDD. These include
theories that examined personality traits,
relationship factors, beliefs associated with
femininity and menstruation, the influence of
stress and life events, and propensity for psychological illness, leading to the suggestion that
cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), social
support, couples therapy, and “lifestyle management” are the most appropriate solutions.
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
Critical Debates
Biomedical and psychological accounts of
PMDD position the woman as a rational unitary
subject and premenstrual change as sign of
pathology, explained within an essentialist
framework – be it biological or psychological.
However, PMDD was included in the DSM-IV
in the face of widespread feminist opposition,
on the basis that there is no validity to PMDD
as a distinct “mental illness” (Cosgrove &
Caplan, 2004). Feminist critics have dismissed
this process of pathologization, arguing that
premenstrual change is a normal part of women’s
experience, which is only positioned as “PMDD”
or “PMS” because of Western cultural constructions of the premenstrual phase of the cycle
as a time of psychological disturbance and
debilitation. In Eastern societies, such as China,
women report premenstrual water retention, pain,
fatigue, and increased sensitivity to cold
but rarely report negative premenstrual moods.
This has led to the conclusion that PMS is
a culture bound syndrome that follows unprecedented changes in the status and roles of women
in the West, with the belief that women are erratic
and unreliable premenstrually serving to restrict
women’s access to equal opportunities (Chrisler
& Caplan, 2002).
These critiques draw on broader postmodern
debates in critical psychology and psychiatry
where all forms of mental illness or madness
are positioned as social constructions that
regulate subjectivity, disciplinary practices that
police the population through pathologization
(Fee, 2000, Ussher, 2011). The “psy-professions”
are seen to define what is normal and what is
pathological, providing the means by which people can inspect, regulate, and improve the self,
invariably finding themselves wanting. We are all
subjected to this regulation, with psychiatric
diagnosis operating as a primary site of disciplinary control, and thus, we all have the potential to
be positioned as pathological if we stray from
socially constructed norms.
The process by which women take up the
position of abjection personified, where premenstrual change is pathologized and the fecund body
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
is positioned as cause of distress, can be
described as a process of subjectification.
Drawing on Foucault, Nikolas Rose describes
subjectification as “regimes of knowledge
through which human beings have come to recognise themselves as certain kinds of creatures,
the strategies of regulation and tactics of action to
which these regimes of knowledge have been
connected, and the correlative relations that
human beings have established within themselves, in taking themselves as subjects”
(Rose, 1996, p. 11). The regimes of knowledge
circulating within medicine, science, and the law,
which are reproduced in self-help texts and the
media, provide the discursive framework within
which women come to recognize themselves as
“PMS sufferers,” positioning premenstrual
change, in particular “symptoms” which signify
deviations from ideals of femininity, such as
anger and irritation, as manifestations of pathology (Ussher, 2006). These regimes of knowledge
are internalized, reproduced, and lived by
women, thus serving to construct our experience
of the reproductive body and, at the same time,
reify the regimes of knowledge as truth. This is
a vicious cycle, as it serves to close off alternative
explanations for women’s premenstrual distress.
This emphasis on the constructed nature of
PMS and within PMDD within feminist social
constructionism could, however, be read as
negating agency, the existence of premenstrual
distress, and other material aspects of women’s
lives that may be associated with self diagnosis as
a PMS sufferer. This is problematic, as premenstrual change is not simply a discursive construction. There is convincing evidence that many
women experience embodied and psychological
change, accompanied by an increased sensitivity
to emotions, or to external stress, during the
premenstrual phase of the cycle. However, this
change is not simply caused by the reproductive
body, by a syndrome called “PMDD” (Ussher,
2006), and is not inevitably experienced as
distressing or problematic.
There is a growing body of research reporting
an association between relationship strain and
premenstrual symptomatology, suggesting that
problems in relationships may be associated
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with many women’s premenstrual distress and
that relationship satisfaction can deteriorate
premenstrually. Direct expression of emotion
has been found to be lower in relationships
where women report PMS, which increases
the likelihood of premenstrual change being experienced or viewed as problematic. Many women
also report that “PMS” has an impact on
their partners and their children and that the
responsibilities of childrearing and domestic
responsibilities are associated with premenstrual
distress, which is then diagnosed as PMDD, rather
than conceptualized as a response to being
overburdened. Absence of support can also make
it difficult for women to absolve themselves of
responsibilities and can increase anger and irritation at inequalities in the relationship that comes to
be positioned as PMDD because of negative cultural constructions of the reproductive body.
Conversely, effective communication between
couples has been associated with lower levels of
premenstrual distress. However, these findings are
not at odds with a constructivist analysis if we
acknowledge that PMS is both a constructed
and a lived experience, with the materiality of
premenstrual change discursively constructed
and experienced as PMS or PMDD, in particular
sociocultural contexts, and premenstrual distress
developing in the context of women’s lives, in
particular the context of their intimate relationships. Rather than being a pathology that occurs
within the woman, meriting psychiatric diagnosis
and biomedical management, PMDD can thus be
conceptualized as a gendered experience located
in medical and cultural discourse about premenstrual change and (hetero-) femininity, the context
of women’s lives, and women’s negotiation of
somatic and psychological change as “symptoms”
of a disorder: a material-discursive-intrapsychic
phenomenon (Ussher, 2011).
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic
and statistical manual of mental disorders (ivth ed.).
Washington, DC: Author.
Chrisler, J. C., & Caplan, P. (2002). The strange case of dr.
Jekyll and ms. Hyde: How pms became a cultural
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phenomenon and a psychiatric disorder. Annual
Review of Sex Research, 13, 274–306.
Cosgrove, L., & Caplan, P. J. (2004). Medicalizing
menstrual distress. In P. J. Caplan & L. Cosgrove
(Eds.), Bias in psychiatric diagnosis (pp. 221–232).
Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Fee, D. (2000). Pathology and the postmodern: Mental
illness as discourse and experience. London: Sage.
Rose, N. (1996). Inventing ourselves: Psychology,
power and personhood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Ussher, J. M. (2006). Managing the monstrous feminine:
Regulating the reproductive body. London: Routledge.
Ussher, J. M. (2011). The madness of women: Myth and
experience. London: Routledge.
Prevention
S. Mark Pancer
Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier
University, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Introduction
The modern origins of the concept of prevention
come from the field of public health. Indeed, the
main goal of public health is to prevent the
development of disease and to promote health.
One of the first notable preventive interventions
was undertaken in the Soho area of London in
1854. August 31st of that year marked the beginning of a terrible outbreak of cholera in the
Broad Street area of Soho. Within 2 weeks,
over 500 residents living on or near Broad Street
had died. At the time of the outbreak, most
people believed that individuals became ill by
breathing “bad air.” John Snow, an English physician, thought otherwise. By interviewing residents of the area, and mapping the instances of
cholera in the neighborhood, he determined that
the source of the disease was the drinking water
that residents had drawn from the well on Broad
Street. Snow’s intervention was simple; he
merely had the handle of the pump used to
draw water from the well removed, and the
epidemic stopped.
Prevention
While the source of some diseases and disorders are easily identified, the causes of many
health, mental health, and social problems are
not so readily ascertained. However, even with
only partial knowledge of the factors that influence the development of health and social
problems, successful efforts can be mobilized
to prevent such problems from occurring.
Durlak and Wells (1997) meta-analytic review
of 177 programs designed to prevent the development of problems in children indicated that
preventive interventions produced substantial
reductions in problems such as aggressive
behavior, depression, and school failure, as
well as increases in competencies such as
social skills.
One of the first commonly accepted definitions of prevention was developed by community
psychiatrist Gerald Caplan in his influential
book, “Principles of Preventive Psychiatry”
(Caplan, 1964). Caplan outlined three kinds of
prevention, which he termed primary, secondary,
and tertiary. Primary prevention refers to
programs and activities designed to reduce the
incidence of problems in a population by
“counteracting harmful circumstances before
they have a chance to reduce illness” (Caplan,
p. 26). The focus of this kind of prevention is on
individuals who have not yet shown any sign of
problems; the purpose of primary prevention is to
ensure that these individuals never do develop
problems or disorders. Secondary prevention
involves shortening the duration of problems
among individuals who have just begun to
manifest them. Tertiary prevention is aimed at
rehabilitating individuals who are already suffering from a problem or disorder.
A more current typology of prevention is that
promoted by the Institute of Medicine (1994).
According to this typology, preventive interventions can be classified as universal, selective, or
indicated. Universal interventions are those
designed for an entire population group (e.g., an
influenza vaccine administered to all those
living in an area). Selective interventions are
those which target individuals or subgroups of
a population who are at increased risk for
Prevention
developing a problem because of the presence of
factors such as poverty (e.g., a gang prevention
program offered to young people in an
economically disadvantaged neighborhood
where teenage gangs are prevalent). Indicated
interventions are those designed for individuals
who have early signs of problems, but not of
a sufficient magnitude to constitute a true disorder (e.g., a reading program for first-grade
children who are having difficulty learning how
to read).
Definition
Most present-day definitions of prevention
follow from Caplan’s notion of primary prevention. A general definition of prevention is as
follows: Prevention involves the administration
of programs and policies that are designed to
reduce the incidence of problems in a given
population.
This definition indicates that successful prevention efforts must show a reduction in the
number of new problems or “cases” of
a disorder in an entire population (Nelson,
Pancer, Hayward, & Peters, 2005). Durlak and
Wells (1997) suggest that preventive interventions can differ on two major dimensions. The
first is the “level” of the intervention. Preventive
programs and policies can be categorized as
either person centered or environment centered.
Person-centered prevention programs are
designed to change individuals’ behaviors and
competencies so as to reduce their likelihood of
developing problems (e.g., programs designed
to help young people learn how to refuse offers
of cigarettes so that they will not start smoking).
Environment-centered programs or policies
attempt to change individuals’ behavior indirectly by modifying their environment (e.g., policies that prohibit smoking in the workplace). The
second dimension described by Durlak and Wells
has to do with the way in which the target
population is selected; prevention programs can
be targeted at entire populations (e.g., all students
in a school), groups considered at risk for the
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development of problems (e.g., children from
low-income, single-parent families), or individuals experiencing stressful life events or
transitions (e.g., children of divorcing parents).
Traditional Debates
Gerald Caplan’s conceptualization of three types
of prevention (primary, secondary, and tertiary)
was widely accepted when he first developed his
ideas, but many soon began to take exception to
the idea that “secondary” and “tertiary” prevention were truly preventive in nature. Tertiary
prevention, in particular, was seen as indistinguishable from treatment. Individuals such as
Cowen (1977) claimed that Caplan’s notions
obfuscated the distinction between treatment
and true prevention and argued that the term
“prevention” should be used only with regard to
programs and activities targeted at individuals
who had not yet shown any sign of problems.
This would distinguish prevention from early
intervention and treatment programs that were
designed to help individuals who had already
shown signs of difficulty or disorder.
Critical Debates
The Balance Between Prevention and
Treatment
Treatment of health, mental health, and social
problems is often very expensive and not always
very effective. For example, one “treatment” for
criminal activity is incarceration. It can cost
$50,000 or more to incarcerate an individual for
one year in the United States. Several studies
have shown that incarceration is not effective
in reducing recidivism (Lipsey & Cullen, 2007).
If, somehow, programs were available that
were effective in preventing individuals from
committing crimes in the first place, this could
provide considerable savings in government
expenditures. Research shows that such programs
exist. The Perry Preschool Program, for example,
is an enriched preschool program for 3- and
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4-year-old African-American children from low
socioeconomic families, designed to improve
personal and economic opportunities for these
individuals. When assessed at age 40, men who
had participated in this program when they were
3 and 4 years of age had committed fewer crimes
than had men in a randomly assigned control
group that did not participate in the program.
Economic analyses of the program indicated
that, by age 40, for every dollar spent on the
program, there was $12.90 in savings in terms
of things such as court and incarceration costs
(Belfield, Nores, Barnett, & Schweinhart, 2006).
Results such as these suggest that a considerable
proportion of government expenditures in areas
such as health, mental health, and criminal justice
should be devoted to prevention. However,
relatively small proportions of government
budgets are designated for prevention, likely
because treatment of individuals who already
demonstrate problems is seen as more urgent,
even though prevention programs are often
more cost-effective. The question, then, is what
should the proper balance be in expenditures on
prevention and treatment?
Person- or Environment-Centered
Interventions
In Durlak and Wells (1997) meta-analysis of
177 different prevention programs, only 25 of
the programs (less than 15 %) were environment
centered; most were person centered. In
assessing the impact of the prevention programs
(even those designated as environment centered), researchers focused on how individuals
changed; little attention was given to how environments such as schools or neighborhoods
changed and whether these changes were
sustained over time. According to Trickett
(1997), these results demonstrate that “the
existing literature focuses almost exclusively
on the individual level of analysis in terms
of level of intervention” of prevention programs
(p. 200). This is consistent with psychology’s
obsessive concern with the individual and its
neglect in considering the impact of systems or
environments on the well-being of individuals
and communities.
Pride
References
Belfield, C. R., Nores, M., Barnett, W. S., & Schweinhart,
L. J. (2006). The high/scope Perry preschool program:
Cost-benefit analysis using data from the age-40
follow-up. The Journal of Human Resources,
41, 162–190.
Caplan, G. (1964). Principles of preventive psychiatry.
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Cowen, E. L. (1977). Baby-steps toward primary prevention. American Journal of Community Psychology,
8, 258–284.
Durlak, J., & Wells, A. (1997). Primary prevention mental
health programs for children and adolescents: A meta
analytic review. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 25, 115–52.
Lipsey, M. W., & Cullen, F. T. (2007). The effectiveness
of correctional rehabilitation: A review of systematic
reviews. Annual Review of Law and Social Science,
3, 297–320.
Nelson, G., Pancer, S. M., Hayward, K., & Peters, R.
(2005). Partnerships for prevention: The story of the
Highfield Community enrichment project. Toronto,
ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Trickett. (1997). Ecology and primary prevention:
Reflections on a meta-analysis. American Journal of
Community Psychology, 25, 197–205.
Online Resources
Health Nexus. http://www.healthnexus.ca/index_eng.php
Prevention Science Journal. http://www.preventionresearch.org/prevention-science-journal/
The Journal of Primary Prevention. http://www.springer.
com/medicine/journal/10935
The Society for Prevention Research. http://www.
preventionresearch.org/
Pride
Gavin Sullivan
School of Social, Psychological and
Communication Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan
University, Leeds, UK
Introduction
Pride is usually a positive emotion or affect that is
the result of an individual’s autonomous personal
evaluation of their own behavior, actions,
possessions, relationships, affiliations, self, or
Pride
identity which accords with shared societal and
cultural values. Sometimes equivocated with
high self-esteem or increased status in the
actual or imagined “eyes of others,” pride is
a complex emotion. Research on individual
pride has been limited to paradigmatic situations (e.g., achievement in competitive sporting
or academic situations) and has tended to ignore
the multiple contexts in which it is a personally,
socially, politically, and culturally significant
emotion. Contrary to a popular perspective of
pride as one emotion with both negative and
positive forms – designated authentic and
hubristic (Tracy & Robins, 2004) – it is
regarded in this entry as a positive experience
of agency, achievement, or identification
that may be inappropriately felt and expressed
(i.e., in boasts, claims to be fundamentally
better or more deserving than other individuals, etc.). Like many other emotions, pride
can also occur in group-based and collective
forms, and in such cases, inappropriate,
immoral, offensive, or dangerous forms may
be better treated as separate topics (e.g., of
individual narcissism and arrogance aggressive nationalism in which shame is implicated;
see the entry on Shame). This distinction
may hold even if proud feelings appear to be
reasonable because, for example, positive
forms of group-based pride (e.g., patriotism)
always have the potential to mutate into negative harmful forms (e.g., nationalism or
which is then linked with prejudice, violence
or racism against out-groups). It is also important to examine occasions when talk of groupbased or collective pride does not express
an emotion per se (e.g., “we have a proud
history of fighting injustice”) but is still of
great interest as a political statement and as
part of the analyzable discourse of an ideological stance.
Definition
Pride is defined in mainstream psychology as
self-conscious emotion which is the positive
product of a cognitive appraisal of an event
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which has made the person aware of him or
herself and the person has compared his or her
specific behavior in a given situation favorably
against internalized standards, rules, or goals
(Tracy & Robins, 2004). The phenomenology of
pride is of self-enhancement, of being physically
larger (e.g., feeling “puffed up”), and of wanting
or seeking the attention or the gaze of others.
One problem with cognitive appraisal theory is
that it perpetuates an individualism that ignores
important social-relational, political and, extradiscursive contextual features. For example, it is
not simply a matter of a person’s own internal
thoughts or representations that he or she can take
pride in a given achievement (e.g., expressing
pride in supporting a repressive regime) as
wider discourses, practices, and ideologies provide the normative background crucial to individual claims. Moreover, inappropriately expressed
or extreme individual pride often attracts normative judgement of the person which may lead to
censure or exclusion and recommendations for
a range of interventions (such as therapy for narcissism or prison for a psychopath who is proud
of antisocial acts). Moreover, pride is thought
to be absent, but possibly desired, in circumstances where individuals and groups have been
subjected to humiliation and shaming or when
there is restricted agency due to lack of approval,
recognition, or power.
Keywords
Pride; self-esteem; internalization; group-based
pride; collective pride; social control; collective
arrogance; collective hubris; shame
Traditional Debates
Traditional debates about pride have focused on
whether pride is a universal, potentially basic
emotion, akin to other basic emotions such as
anger and fear, rather than a late-occurring
emotion that requires considerable cognitive
development (specifically, development of
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self-representations) primarily through conversation and interaction with others. Recent
research suggests that pride might occur in
very young children who engage in “showing
off” to attract the attention of others (Reddy,
2005). Such findings challenge a neo-Darwinist
approach and imply that there are problems also
with the dominant cognitive appraisal theory
that young children must have a concept of self
before they can self-consciously evaluate themselves with regard to personal goals and, eventually, in terms of congruence with one or more
identities (Tracy & Robins, 2004). The cognitive appraisal theory of emotion applied to pride
focuses on specific appraisal dimensions as the
cause of the emotion. While the focus on
appraisal, evaluation, or judgement appears to
be consistent with features of emotion also
emphasized by some discursive psychologists
(e.g., Harré & Gillett, 1994), appraisal theory
has been criticized for its Cartesian assumptions
(Sullivan, 2007a), lack of focus on embodied
skill and normative dimensions of emotions
(e.g., performing actions with pride or proudly),
and for ignoring expressive, relational and
situational features of complex emotions
(e.g., mixtures of pride and grief; Sullivan &
Strongman, 2003).
Traditional debates also center on the extent
to which individuals internalize conversations
with others in the formation of relational dispositions to feel emotions. Following Vygotsky’s
developmental framework, development milestones include the capacity for people to feel
positive prosocial moral emotions about themselves when they engage in socially desirable
behavior (e.g., such as feeling pride as a result
of self-regulation when to act on one’s wishes
might be more desirable; Holodynski &
Friedlmeier, 2006). Such self-regulation in
action and in relation to actual or imagined
others suggests that pride plays an important
role in mediating much social behavior, even
though it is often not acknowledged or expressed
in conversation. However, emphasizing these
features of pride tends to favor a self-contained
view of personhood, a position that can be
Pride
challenged by examining the moral and political
lives of people in collectivist and non-Western
cultures.
Critical Debates
The lack of acknowledgement of positive selfassertive and self-evaluative features in private
moments and in relations between people may
be connected also to drives and desires which are
subconscious or unconscious. Updated psychosocial accounts may contribute to our understanding of everyday forms of narcissism and
the enjoyment of feelings of power or superiority
over others. Pride in everyday use can, of course,
refer to deficiencies of character such as vanity
or arrogance, which are usually explained
as pathologies requiring some form of societal
control or corrective (i.e., especially extreme
forms that indicate an individual’s disordered
personality).
Investment in group identities may also occur
relatively early in life and reproduce ethnic and
political divisions of the type that are generally
identified as in-group favoritism. Such favoritism is often thought to be accompanied by devaluation of other groups (i.e., prejudice). The
nature of the investment in a group or community identity (e.g., a national group) is complex
and appears to be more cognitive and strategic
than suggested by drive-oriented theories or
a form of biologically driven attachment
(although psychologists might be tempted for
reasons of theoretical parsimony to focus on the
binding rather than boundary features that are
important to in-group positive emotion). Thus,
a complex interplay of psychological processes
of identification and features in practice by
which an individual is identified as part of
a group (e.g., where features includes one’s language or accent, physical appearance, use or
display of group symbols) appears to be the
best way to explain the everyday experience of
group-related emotions. In other words, the specific form and intensity of group-based pride
appears to a product of a range of psychological
Pride
processes (e.g., the level of personal identification with a national group, personal considerations of relations between one’s group and
others) and different types of participation in
affective practices (e.g., sharing emotions with
others at public events, resisting ways of being
positioned as good citizens, etc.).
The discursive forms by which national identity is formed and maintained have been
described in Billig’s (1995) Banal Nationalism.
Such everyday forms in which allegiances and
commitments to what can be called national
interests come to be embodied by individuals
and expressed (sometimes) on behalf of one’s
group. Billig’s account of the construction and
reconstruction of national identity through everyday discursive practices has made an important
theoretical contribution to understanding groupbased pride (and prejudice). Abell, Condor,
Lowe, Gibson, and Stevenson’s (2007)
qualitative research on English football team support shows that the relationship to a more general
sense of national pride and celebratory emotion
is more complex than media representations
suggest. Skey (2006) also contrasts the discursive
and practice-based low-level flagging of national
identity, allegiances, and feelings in everyday life
with an interest in group-based and collective
emotions (specifically, what he refers to as
“ecstatic nationalism”).
With regard to group pride and identity, people are often ambivalent about experiencing
feelings of national pride and the recognition,
on occasions, that there are also shameful
features of one’s groups relations with others
that are difficult to acknowledge or accept
(Miller-Idriss & Rothenberg, 2012; Sullivan,
2007b). For this reason, pride has been adopted
in a broader sense by groups whose identities
have been marginalized or otherwise contest
stigmatized (e.g., gay pride, mad pride, fat
pride). Discursive practices which succeed
in converting a shameful identity into one
that is proudly and publicly celebrated depend
on the extent to which shame was resisted or not
internalized in the first place (i.e., rejection
of one’s identity as bad, disgusting, low;
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Britt & Heise, 2000). This also indicates the
importance of political action by groups to
change their feelings about themselves and the
actual or imagined feelings of specific or general others by challenging discriminatory and
humiliating practices.
Occasions in which widespread positive
emotions (e.g., of collective pride, joy, or happiness) appear to be experienced and expressed
by large groups such as communities and
nations include national sporting events, political competitions (e.g., winning an election), and
also even in situations of intractable group conflict (Bar-Tal, 2007). With regard to large scale
mega-sport events, there is often not explicit
acknowledgement that emotional capital is created that can be exploited for other political and
ideological purposes. Widespread feelings of
unity and solidarity can result in the implicit
or explicit creation of boundaries to inclusion
which includes a prior sense of belonging to the
relevant group. In cases such as election also
the enjoyment of victory occurs with the realization that the agendas and interests of other
groups are likely to be significantly affected.
Such occasions may also resemble conflicts
particularly when divisions are deep and
underpinned by a history of relations (and
collective mixed emotions) which includes
affiliation with the shaming (i.e., dominant,
controlling) group or the group that has been
shamed (e.g., see Pettigrove and Parsons (2012)
for an analysis of the relations between collective pride and shame in Palestinian-Israeli politics). In the latter case, it is questionable
whether positive emotions are indeed generated
(e.g., by commemorations of heroic sacrifice or
loss in a conflict) until the long-term goals of
the group or social movement have been
achieved. Accordingly, the nature and form of
the genuinely positive a emotions that occur in
groups will reflect the history of group relations, the nature of the struggle, and the particular form of cultural narratives, symbols, and
ritual practices (Sullivan, Forthcoming). As
a final point, mostly positive or assertive
forms of collective pride appear to be
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very different from predominantly negative
nationalism or collective narcissism which
appears to be closely linked to violence and
unacknowledged shame (Scheff, 2007).
Privilege
Sullivan, G. B., & Strongman, K. T. (2003). Vacillating
and mixed emotions: Exploration of a conceptualdiscursive perspective through examples of pride.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33(2),
201–224.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Putting the self into
self-conscious emotions: A theoretical model. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 103–125.
References
Abell, J., Condor, S., Lowe, R. D., Gibson, S., &
Stevenson, C. (2007). Who ate all the pride? Patriotic
sentiment and English national football support.
Nations and Nationalism, 13, 97–116.
Bar-Tal, D. (2007). Sociopsychological foundations of
intractable conflicts. American Behavioral Scientist,
50, 1430–1453.
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
Britt, L., & Heise, D. (2000). From shame to pride in
identity politics. In S. Stryker, T. J. Owens, & R. W.
White (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements
(pp. 252–268). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Harré, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind.
London: Sage.
Holodynski, M. & Friedlmeier, W. (2006). Development
of emotions and emotion regulation. New York:
Springer.
Miller-Idriss, C., & Rothenberg, B. (2012). Ambivalence, pride, and shame: Conceptualizations of German nationhood. Nations and Nationalism, 18,
132–155.
Pettigrove, G., & Parsons, N. (2012). Shame: A case study
of collective emotion. Social Theory and Practice,
38, 1–27.
Reddy, V. (2005). Feeling shy and showing-off: Selfconsciousness regulates intimacy. In J. Nadel & D.
Muir (Eds.), Emotional development (pp. 181–202).
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Scheff, T. (2007). Runaway nationalism. Alienation,
shame and anger. In J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, &
J. P. Tangney (Eds.), The self-conscious emotions.
Theory and research (pp. 426–493). New York:
Guilford Press.
Skey, M. (2006). ‘Carnivals of surplus emotion?’ Towards
an understanding of the significance of ecstatic
nationalism in a globalising world. Studies in Ethnicity
and Nationalism, 6, 143–161.
Sullivan, G. B. (2007a). Wittgenstein and the grammar of
pride: The relevance of philosophy to studies of selfevaluative emotions. New Ideas in Psychology, 25,
233–252.
Sullivan, G. B. (2007b). A critical psychology of pride.
International Journal of Critical Psychology, 21,
166–189.
Sullivan, G. B. (Forthcoming). Collective pride and positive group emotion. In M. Salmela & C. von Scheve
(Eds.), Handbook of collective emotions. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Privilege
Corrine Bertram
Department of Psychology, Shippensburg
University, Shippensburg, PA, USA
Introduction
The theoretical concept of privilege originated
with Peggy McIntosh, in her much-cited 1988
essay, “White Privilege and Male Privilege:
A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondence through Work in Women’s Studies.”
Although McIntosh modestly stated in that essay
that she did not write “a scholarly analysis”
(McIntosh, 2003, p. 148), her document provides
the foundational text for theoretical and empirical
work on privilege across disciplines. Over the
nearly 25 years since that paper was first
presented, it has been reprinted in numerous
undergraduate course anthologies and classroom
readers (e.g., Kimmel & Ferber, 2012;
Rothenberg, 2008) as well as inspired both theoretical and empirical work across the humanities,
social sciences, and professional fields such as
education, social work, and legal studies. Some
authors have extended her theorizing by outlining
privilege associated with particular dimensions
of identity other than gender and race. Others
have sought evidence for the underlying mechanism through which privilege is maintained and
the interventions and manipulations that may
lead to its examination and eventual undoing.
At its very foundation, privilege is
maintained by the framing of what is understood
as normal or natural (Cole, Avery, Dodson, &
Goodman, 2012; Ferber, 2012) within any given
Privilege
context. The psychological processes surrounding the categorization of peoples are key mechanisms that maintain privilege. Perception of
categories is maintained through media representations and discursive practices. Media create a world where consumers are likely to have
access to more information on dominant groups.
Marginalized groups, thus, are unlikely to
become exemplars for categories. These representations create cognitive expectations for
privileged individuals in that they engage in
social comparison with those like themselves
(Pratto & Stewart, 2012).
Definition
Structured inequalities have two simultaneous
outcomes: (1) oppression of the nonnormative
group through discrimination, prejudice, and
stereotyping, and (2) privilege of the normative
group. Privilege, then, is the counterpart of
oppression. It is the unearned advantages and
lack of disadvantages that accrue to members of
the normative group in a stratified society.
McIntosh (1988) divided privilege into two categories in her original essay – unearned assets and
conferred dominance. Carbado (2005) added
“disadvantages not experienced” in his essay
examining both male and heterosexual privilege
(p. 195). Epistemic privilege, also identified by
McIntosh, is the “luxury of obliviousness” (Johnson, 2006) or the lack of knowledge about one’s
own privileged identity category. Privilege often
goes unrecognized by the members of the
privileged groups. Rather than being “marginal
and mindful” of their status (Frable, Blackstone,
& Scherbaum, 1990) as oppressed groups often
are, privileged group members are central (normative) and often oblivious to their status.
Privilege should be understood as grounded
in group categories and stratification of those
groupings. Not merely an advantage given to
or accrued by an individual, privilege is
a systemically created benefit based on someone’s categorization. This group categorization
creates the historical context for oppression and
privilege.
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Keywords
Christian privilege; Class privilege; Dominance;
Heterosexual
privilege;
Male
privilege
oppression; Power; Resistance; White privilege
History
The concept has inspired empirical work
that documents privilege and explores the
relationships between privilege and related
psychological variables (i.e., stereotyping,
prejudice, and discrimination; e.g., Pratto &
Stewart, 2012); essays that continue McIntosh’s
work through theorizing and application to new
axes of identity including class, sexuality,
religion, gender expression, gender identity, and
(dis)ability (e.g., Wood, 2012); pedagogical
scholarship on the ways in which privilege
operates in educational settings and how best
to harness these locations to reduce prejudice
(e.g., Case, 2012); and essays on researcher/
participant subjectivities across differences
(Hurd & McIntyre, 1996).
Traditional Debates
Threads of the concept of privilege appear in
the area of psychology most amenable to its
discussion and development, social psychology,
but here the primary focus has been to examine
the marginalization of nondominant groups
through categorization, stereotyping, and
prejudice. Thus, the attitudes of the dominant
group toward those in marginalized groups are
measured, recorded, and interventions are
designed to reduce this prejudice. Although this
would seem to be a location where the concept of
privilege could be useful, social psychology has
more often looked at the effects of these
practices on the nondominant group. For example, in areas such as social identity theory (Tajfel
& Turner, 1986) and social dominance orientation (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), social psychology
has examined in-group favoritism and the
endorsement of a worldview that values
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hierarchy, but in-groups and out-groups are
treated as if they were interchangeable
(i.e., that everyone is part of an in-group and
that attitudes toward any out-group remain constant and universal regardless of the particulars
of a group) and inevitable. Many of the research
studies remove the privileged group from
accountability by operating under the assumption that privilege is an inevitable feature of
human psychology that persists regardless of
context, history, power, or critical consciousness. Clark and Clark’s classic work on African
American children’s racial identities (1950)
challenges this finding since some African
American children in their studies valued the
appearance of light-skinned dolls more than
their own cultural group. This may be, in part,
because power is often not addressed
within social psychological research or that
context is stripped within experimental methods
employed for traditional research questions.
Another place that we can see the influence of
the concept of privilege is in Helms’s work on
White racial identity (1992). Helms includes the
concept of White supremacy and privilege in her
framework for understanding how White identity
development occurs. Although Helms’s work has
been published in mainstream psychological
journals (e.g., Journal of Multicultural
Counseling and Development), her work might
be better included in a critical psychological
framework or considered a way that critical
race theory has had a role in the development of
Black psychology.
More recent work in traditional socialpersonality psychological journals (e.g., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)
approaches privilege as a framework
researchers can experimentally prime and
observe the effects of on other variables of
interest including White self-image, White
guilt, White racial group identification, racism,
and attitudes toward public policies such as
Affirmative Action or other programs that seek
to reduce economic inequality (Bruckm€uller &
Abele, 2010; Lowery, Chow, Knowles, &
Unzueta, 2012; Lowery, Knowles, & Unzueta,
Privilege
2007; Powell, Branscombe, & Schmitt, 2005;
Swim & Miller, 1999). This work comes closer
to critical psychological work.
Critical Debates
A critical psychological framework calls for both
the recognition of and resistance to privileged
identities. It would be insufficient for someone to
simply acknowledge that Whiteness, for example,
was a privileged identity. Scholars argue that one
must also resist the normativity and benefits
that accrue due to these identity categories.
For example, one should both come to terms with
the identity category (or categories) and attempt to
undermine the hegemonic construction of that
identity in everyday acts, such as a heterosexualidentified individual allying with gay, lesbian, and
bisexual same gender relationships as they argue
for civil marriage rights. Carbado (2005) refers to
these acts as “critical acquiescence: criticizing, if
not rejecting, aspects of our life that are linked to
privilege” (2005, p. 209).
Bailey (2004) has been critical of the lack of
agency in McIntosh’s original formulation of
privilege, believing that the power of individual
people to resist their roles in systems of domination has been downplayed to mollify people with
privileged identities and decrease their defensiveness toward the idea of privilege. These critiques
argue that domination, rather than privilege,
should be understood as the counterpart of
oppression since the concept of privilege seems
less answerable than practices of domination.
However, privilege as a concept does seem to
account for the unintentional and covert forms
of domination that often characterize prejudice,
discrimination, and stereotyping in neoliberal
contexts.
Scholarship on privilege has also been critiqued for not engaging with the intersectional
nature of identities, with authors exploring one
identity at a time rather than understanding that
individuals occupy multiple identities at once
and many times marginalized and privileged
identities simultaneously. The checklists of
privilege (e.g., the heterosexual questionnaire,
Privilege
Rochlin, 1977) often “control for” other social
positions as they analyze one axis of privilege
(Coston & Kimmel, 2012). This presumes that
heterosexuality and its privileges, for example,
are unaffected by race, gender, class, or disability. Some identities are also marginalized
through these intersectional relationships. For
example, some of the privilege that men with
disabilities lack is due to their not conforming
to the idealized social models of what is means
to be a man. They “fall short” because they do
not meet these social norms, and the construction of gender is one of the mechanisms through
which they are marginalized (Coston &
Kimmel).
A related debate is the degree to which privilege literature and scholarship represent the changing nature of identity constructions. Theorizing the
operation of power and privilege needs to capture
the fluidity of identities across history, culture, and
social contexts. Categorization is a slippery process whereby groupings themselves shift over time
along with the understandings of who is marginal
and who is central and privileged. Categorization
serves to both determine who will have power but
also a means of control through the very creation
of identities and subjects who are invested in their
own groupings. If persons can be influenced to
understand themselves as members of a group,
perhaps more critically as belonging to a group
or having an identity that is immutable, they can be
influenced through self-control.
International Relevance
Most of the work on privilege has focused on
a US context. Although this limits the generalizability of particular findings, the concept itself
seems robust enough to be portable to contexts
outside the United States. Pratto and Stewart
(2012) argue that collectivist cultures may not
engage in the same social comparison processes
as individualist cultures like the USA, and therefore, work that investigates the social psychological processes of privilege internationally
seems critical to assess the appropriateness of
the concept in other cultures and nation states.
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Practical Relevance
Much of the application of the privilege literature involves attempts to create changes in participant attitudes toward marginalized groups in
college classrooms and in community-based
programs. Through education about privileged
and marginalized statuses, it is hoped that participants will gain an awareness of privilege,
reduce their prejudice toward marginalized
groups, and engage in social change efforts
including increasing their support of public policies that redress social inequality. Empirical
work testing these goals has found that heightening one’s awareness of privilege reduces
prejudicial attitudes most effectively when it is
accompanied by an increase in participants’
self-efficacy, the feeling that they can have an
impact on social inequality, not that it is intractable (Stewart, Latu, Branscombe, Phillips, &
Denney, 2012). Without avenues in which to
direct their newfound awareness of privilege,
some empirical work has found that discussions
of White privilege, in particular, may increase
feelings of threat to the self (Lowery et al.,
2007). Priming White privilege awareness may
also increase levels of White guilt and modern
racism (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Schiffhauer,
2007). Therefore, it is important that scholars
and practitioners understand the various relationships between affective, cognitive, and behavioral
variables associated with privilege. Some of this
research then challenges the contact hypothesis
that meaningful long-term contact with outgroup members under certain conditions will
reduce prejudice (Allport, 1954). Rather, privilege and prejudice will be persistent even with
contact if it is not accompanied by opportunities
for effective social action and critical insight.
Theory and research on privilege can also be
applied in public policy debates. Survey research
has found that participants are unlikely to extend
the social contract via new social policies that
redress inequality when they identify with the
dominant groups and when they have little
knowledge of the experiences of others’ disadvantage (Pratto & Stewart, 2012). Discursive
analyses as well have documented how social
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issue rhetoric that draws upon “naturalizing”
discourses does not challenge underlying
assumptions that might reduce social inequalities
(Cole et al., 2012; Nenga, 2011). Privilege
research can aid advocates in creating the conditions under which the public is more likely to
be persuaded to support policies that decrease
social inequality as well as expose rhetoric that
relies on normative assumptions.
Future Directions
The future directions of research tend to reflect
the criticisms that have been leveled at the privilege literature. Much of the current research
(Case, Iuzzini, & Hopkins, 2012) has argued
that privilege must be studied in the context of
intersectionality where people occupy both
privileged and marginalized social positions
simultaneously (e.g., White lesbians). Future
research then needs to examine the nested nature
of systems of oppression/privilege and the
dynamic ways that privilege is shaped by local,
situational, and historical contexts. Expanding
research outside a US context is also critical for
the future of the study of privilege. This might
include US theorists, scholars, and practitioners
becoming more familiar with international work
on privilege, partnering with international
scholars outside the USA, and allowing the conceptualization of privilege to be revised,
revisioned, and reworked by new contexts.
Harding (2004) argues that some of our epistemological debates in Western contexts may not
be effective at undermining systems of oppression in other cultures. Ironically, this project of
internationalizing the concept of privilege is
also a demonstration of the privileged position
of US academics who have unearned advantages
that will remain invisible unless they embark on
the work of recognizing this privileged status and
actively resisting the ways the concept has
been shaped by normative thought in the States.
Notably, Third World feminist scholars (e.g.,
Narayan, 2004) have challenged the inevitability
of epistemic advantage arising from marginalization and by extension epistemic privilege.
Privilege
Narayan in particular suggests that scholars
must be careful not to romanticize the knowledge
gained through oppression since it has substantial
material and psychological costs. Academics,
more generally, may also need to expand
the methodologies that are most valued within
traditional formulations of psychology so that
the “unremarkable” aspects of privilege can be
documented. This may mean employing more
qualitative methodologies and introducing innovative quantitative methods, but it may also entail
challenging with whom and for what purposes
critical psychologists do research (Stoudt,
Fox, & Fine, 2012).
References
Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA:
Addison Wesley.
Bailey, A. (2004). Privilege: Expanding on Marilyn Frye’s
“oppression. In L. Heldke & P. O’Connor (Eds.),
Oppression, privilege, and resistance (pp. 301–316).
Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Schiffhauer, K.
(2007). Racial attitudes in response to thoughts of
white privilege. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 203–215.
Bruckm€
uller, S., & Abele, A. E. (2010). Comparison focus
in intergroup comparison: Who we compare to whom
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agentic. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
36(10), 1424–1435.
Carbado, D. W. (2005). Privilege. In E. P. Johnson &
M. G. Hendeson (Eds.), Black queer studies:
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Case, K.A. (2012). Discovering the privilege of whiteness:
White women’s reflections on anti-racist identity and
ally behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 68(1), 78–96.
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(2012). Transgender inclusion in university non-discrimination
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Cole, E. R., Avery, L. R., Dodson, C., & Goodman, K. D.
(2012). Against nature: How arguments about the naturalness of marriage privilege heterosexuality. Journal
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Professions and Professionalization
Coston, B.M., & Kimmel, M. (2012). Seeing privilege
where it isn’t: Marginalized masculinity and the
intersectionality of privilege. Journal of Social Issues,
68(1), 97–111.
Ferber, A.L. (2012). The culture of privilege: Color-blindness, post-feminism, and Christonormativity. Journal
of Social Issues, 68(1), 63–77.
Frable, D. E. S., Blackstone, T., & Scherbaum, C. (1990).
Marginal and mindful: Deviants in social interactions.
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140–149.
Frye, M. (2003). Oppression. In M. S. Kimmel & A. L.
Ferber (Eds.), Privilege: A reader (pp. 13–20). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Harding, S. (2004). Introduction: Standpoint theory as
a site of political, philosophic, and scientific debate.
In S. Harding (Ed.), The feminist standpoint theory
reader: Intellectual and political controversies
(pp. 1–15). New York: Routledge.
Helms, J. (1992). A race is a nice thing to have: A guide to
being a white person or understanding the white
persons in your life. Topeka, KS: Content
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Hurd, T. L., & McIntyre, A. (1996). The seduction of
sameness: Similarity and representing the other. In S.
Wilkinson & C. Kitzinger (Eds.), Representing the
other: A feminism & psychology reader (pp. 78–82).
London: Sage.
Johnson, A.G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference.
2nd Ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Kimmel, M. S., & Ferber, A. L. (Eds.). (2012). Privilege:
A reader. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Lowery, B. S., Chow, R. M., Knowles, E. D., & Unzueta,
M. M. (2012). Paying for positive group esteem:
How inequity frames affect Whites’ responses to redistribution policies. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 102(2), 323–336.
Lowery, B. S., Knowles, E. D., & Unzueta, M. M. (2007).
Framing inequality safely: Whites’ motivated perceptions of racial privilege. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(9), 1237–1250.
McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege:
A personal account of coming to see correspondence
through work in women’s studies. Working paper 189.
Wellesley, MA: Center for Research on Women.
McIntosh, P. (2003). White privilege and male privilege:
A personal account of coming to see correspondence
through work in women’s studies. In M. S. Kimmel &
A. L. Ferber (Eds.), Privilege: A reader (pp. 147–160).
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Narayan, U. (2004). The project of feminist epistemology:
Perspectives from a nonwestern feminist. In S. Harding (Ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader:
Intellectual
and
political
controversies
(pp. 213–224). New York: Routledge.
Nenga, S. K. (2011). Volunteering to give up privilege?
How affluent youth volunteers respond to class privilege. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40(3),
263–289.
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Powell, A. A., Branscombe, N. R., & Schmitt, M. T.
(2005). Inequality as ingroup privilege or outgroup
disadvantage: The impact of groups focus on collective guilt and interracial attitudes. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4), 508–521.
Pratto, F., & Stewart, A. L. (2012). Group dominance and
the half-blindness of privilege. Journal of Social
Issues, 68(1), 28–45.
Rochlin, M. (1977). The heterosexual questionnaire.
Rothenberg, P. (2008). White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism (3rd ed.). New York:
Worth.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An
intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression.
New York: Cambridge.
Stewart, T. L., Latu, I. M., Branscombe, N. R., Phillips,
N. L., & Denney, H. T. (2012). White privilege awareness and efficacy to reduce racial inequality improve
white Americans’ attitudes toward African Americans.
Journal of Social Issues, 68(1), 11–27.
Stoudt, B. G., Fox, M., & Fine, M. (2012). Contesting
privilege with critical participatory action research.
Journal of Social Issues, 68(1), 178–193.
Swim, J. K., & Miller, D. L. (1999). White guilt: Its
antecedents and consequences for attitudes toward
affirmative action. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 25(4), 500–514.
Wood, J. (2012). The black male privileges checklist. In
M. S. Kimmel & A. L. Ferber (Eds.), Privilege:
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Online Resources
Southern Poverty Law Center http://www.tolerance.org
The Knapsack Institute http://www.uccs.edu/knapsack/
The White Privilege Conference http://www.whiteprivilegeconference.com/
Professions and Professionalization
Jane Callaghan
Department of Psychology, University of
Northampton (Park Campus), Northampton, UK
Introduction
The notion of “The Professional” emerged in the
mid-nineteenth century, tied intimately to the rise
of the middle classes (Freidson, 1970). In this
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entry, I will consider briefly the history and
rise of the profession and discuss critical
perspectives on the constructs of professionalization, professionalism, and The Professional.
I will explore the analysis of professions
as social institutions and will also consider
critically the construction of professional identities and the production of the “Professional
Psychologist.”
Definition
Professions are a particular occupational category, involving a detailed and specialist education (Freidson, 1986), with a focus on providing
a service of some kind to the rest of society
(Russell, 1961; Vigilante, 1974; Grayling,
2004). The Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary defines a profession as “a calling requiring
specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation.” This definition highlights the epistemological and educational
elements of being a professional. However, in
defining “the professional,” particularly from
a psychological point of view, it is necessary to
look a little beyond the mere credentials of the
professional, to consider a further element – the
notion of the professional identity. For example,
Lewis and Maude (1953) suggested that “a moral
code is the basis of professionalism” (p. 64). Being
a “professional” is usually associated with a high
social status. This status depends on the perception
of their career as being for the greater social good,
as, to varying degrees necessary for the good
functioning of society. Ideologically, the notion
of “being professional” is defined by two elements:
professional competence (the capacity to wield the
knowledge and skills associated with the profession effectively) and professional care (working
with the best interests of the patient in mind)
(e.g., Sethuruman, 2006).
The term “professionalization” refers to the
process through which a particular occupational
category obtains the status of “profession” (rather
than “job” or “occupation”) (Freidson, 1970;
Vollmer & Mills, 1966). Wilensky (1964) and
Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933, 1944) both
Professions and Professionalization
suggested that professionalization occurs when
an occupation acquires the characteristics of
a profession – an ethical code, a set of established
educational practices, a defined set of specialist
skills, a professional body (or bodies), and
a process of self-regulation. However, Freidson
(1986) suggested that professionalization is not
a mere process of self-definition as a profession
but also requires that the occupation is recognized
as a profession. Public perception of the special
status of a particular form of work is what defines
it as professionalized. In this sense professionalizing processes must always be seen as occurring
within a broader social and political context.
For example, Brownlie (2011) notes that, for
the psyprofessions to become recognized as
legitimate professionals required a shift in
public perception that positioned talking to
a professional as an acceptable social practice.
Here, the status of the profession is clearly dependent on a cultural change that rendered its practices as worthwhile and socially acceptable.
Keywords
Professionalization; professionals; professionalism; psychologist
History
Before the nineteenth century, there were really
only three identifiable professions – all of which
were reserved for “gentlemen” of “good family”:
medicine, the law, and the church (Stuart, 1986;
Sparkes, 2002). With growing urbanization, and
the emergence of a clear middle class, the range
of professions began to proliferate (Butler & Savage, 1995).
The sociology of the professions locates the rise
of the idea of professionalism in protectionism and
“guild” concerns – concerns about protecting the
interest and practices of specific professional
groups (Murphy, 1984). Johnson (1972) suggested
that professional groups function by creating
a market, a perceived need for a particular kind
of skilled service, and then controlling and
Professions and Professionalization
regulating the provision of that service in a manner
that ensures that the particular profession gains
status, privilege, and legal protection.
Traditional Debates
Typically, professions are structured around a
particular form of esoteric knowledge
(MacDonald, 1995). The transmission of such
knowledge requires lengthy training and close
supervision (Eraut, 2000). Professions involve
a clear set of highly developed technical skills.
This knowledge base is conferred within a degree
structure but typically also involves a substantial
professional training, for example, in the form of
an internship. Without this education and training
background, entry to the profession is closed
(this is termed “occupational foreclosure”).
A key element in processes of professionalization
is the regulation of access to the professional
sphere, which includes both this lengthy training
process and close monitoring of training procedures themselves. This regulative element of
professionalism with regard to education and
training is sometimes termed “credentialism”
(Olsen, 1983; Freidson, 1986; Murphy, 1988).
In contemporary professionalism, this is also
achieved through systems of Continuing Professional Development, which involve the
professional in a lifelong process of training and
accreditation, which ensures that they are seen to
be “up to date” and “fit to practice.” In addition,
professions are “institutionally autonomous” –
self-regulating entities, responsible for developing and enforcing their own codes of practice and
standards of behavior. Self-regulation is achieved
through the oversight of professional bodies, entities responsible for establishing and enforcing
professional standards. These standards are
enshrined in professional codes of conduct and
regulations around ethical practice. The legitimacy of “professionals” as a social class is
established through their claim to both technical
and moral superiority. Licensing guarantees the
technical superiority, while codes of ethics and
the emphasis on a “service ethic” bolster claims
to moral superiority (Carr-Saunders, 1928;
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Parsons, 1949; Freidson, 1970; Eraut, 2000;
Gouldner, 1979).
Through educational and training practices,
individual trainee members are inducted into
professions, which are characterized by often
rigid hierarchical and patriarchal structures
(Witz, 1992). Conformity to the norms presumed
within this hierarchy is prevalent. In some
professions (e.g., medicine) this translates into
intense competitiveness and a strong awareness
of rank and its privileges. This can result in
professions functioning in a patriarchal manner,
with a vertical power structure that encourages
relational aggression. This issue is entrenched by
the tendency for professional organizations to
establish an identity as an elite (though “caring”)
group, set apart from the ordinary and every day,
specialist and therefore special.
As well as establishing their own educational
practices, professions are also in control of their
own knowledge base. Knowledges of how to be
a “good doctor,” a “good psychologist,” etc., are
built up within an internally regulated professional press of journals and peer reviewed
books. In this sense professions have epistemological autonomy (Marshall, 1997).
Professionalization is understood as the process whereby organizations or individuals lay
claim to a particular form of recognition (that of
expert knower) within a specific social and ideological context (Eraut, 2000). The status of
a profession is dependent upon its capacity to
sustain its position as “expert.” Variance in the
competencies and qualities of individual practitioners presents a challenge to the professional
claim of “expert status.” Licensing and other
structures of professional control stabilize this
interpersonal variation, bolstering the individual
claim to expert knowledge with institutional
authority (Freidson, 1983).
The practices of licensing and legislation of
a profession are typically determined by the profession itself, and regulation of the profession is
conducted internally, by its own members. Typically, professionals operate with a degree of
“legitimate” autonomy, and the quality of their
work is guaranteed by regulatory and disciplinary
processes of professional bodies. Professional
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bodies guard their capacity to self-regulate quite
jealously.
One clear outcome of the regulative and separatist nature of professions is the way that the
institutions function to stake out occupational
territories and to police the boundaries of professional activities. This can result in the kinds
of “border wars” that we see in, for example,
British disputes around the relative skill set, specialisms, and proper areas of practice for “counsellors,” “psychotherapists,” and “psychologists”
(e.g., Bondi, 2004). Professional organizations
do function as protectionist agencies, and in
addition to their inward-facing regulative processes, they also have outward-facing regulative
practices oriented to monopolozing and
defending the occupational territory of the
profession.
Critical Debates
The more “mainstream” debates outlined above
rely heavily on a structural analysis of power
relationships, which suggests that professions
operate to monopolize sectors of the labor market
through practices of occupational closure
(Freidson, 1970; Murphy, 1988). Witz (1992)
has pointed out that the “stitching up” of the
labor market is never an absolute process and
that a series of countervailing practices can be
identified amongst those who have been excluded
from the dominant professional narrative.
In South Africa, for instance, the notion of the
construction of a “relevant” and “politicized”
psychology has operated to deterritorialize professional expert claims, by disrupting the notion
that Western models of psychology are universal
and applicable in all social and political contexts
(e.g., Painter & Terre Blanche, 2004). However,
such shifts towards deterritorialization are in turn
susceptible to re-territorializing dynamics
(Deleuze & Guattari, 2004), as movements to
question the expert status of the psychological
knower have given way to the establishment of
alternative structures of professionalization and
regulation in the form of more identifiably
“African” professional bodies.
Professions and Professionalization
To engage appropriately with the notions of
professionals and professionalization requires
a critical reflection on the discursive construction
of the identity “the professional” and the induction into the web of practices that constitute
“professionalism.” To this end theorists have
explored professionalization through a lens of
governmentality, exploring professionalism as
a technology of self (Bondi & Laurie, 2005;
Miller & Rose, 1990; Osborne, 1993). Eraut
(2000) suggests there is a need to differentiate
the ideological practice of “professionalization”
from the process of “professionalism” (a set of
skills). The differentiation of professionalization
and professionalism hints at a key construct
within the discourses of professionalization: the
polarization of “the personal” and “the professional.” “The professional” is a neutral figure,
a reified, depoliticized individual, who has professional skills (and through such “ownership” is
implicitly individualized). Those who engage in
professional training must engage with this
disingenuous but productive polarization of
personal and professional. Their professional
identity is constituted as separate from the
personal/political, with the latter marginalized
most professions, and particularly in professional
psychology. To become a Professional
Psychologist requires that we navigate a series
of tensions between subject and object, professional and personal, and professional and
political. Psychologists are incorporated into the
profession as students through a process of
induction which constructs them both as neutral
professionals and as depoliticized and
depersonalized individuals (Callaghan, 2005,
2006). The process of professionalization is one
of becoming, of ongoing negotiation of the tension between professional and nonprofessional.
The identity of “the professional” is constructed
discursively in the dualistic notion of professional vs. nonprofessional. In adopting the identity of “professional,” it becomes necessary to
abandon a range of other subject positions (the
“nonprofessional”), which are regarded as
incompatible with the requirements of professionalism. In this process, personal and political
affiliations are relegated to the realm of the
Professions and Professionalization
“nonprofessional.” This produces The Professional as depoliticized and impersonal.
The status of “professional” offers certainty,
power, knowledge, and competence (Rose,
1989). Being a professional is set up as the
“end product” of a professional training,
guaranteeing students’ ascension to the elevated
rank of The Professional. Throughout their training, students are also expected to take on the
characteristics of the professional while
maintaining an awareness of their apprenticeship
to a “Master Professional” (Lave & Wenger,
1991). Professionalization is often understood
in the literature on professionalization as
a process of socialization. For example, Becker
et al. (1961) in their study of medical students
suggested that students’ behaviors did not reflect
long-term values (by which the authors appeared
to mean political views, religious beliefs, ethical
values, and a sense of affiliation), if they were
either unacceptable to or inappropriate for the
immediate medical setting. Students are seen as
“modelling” professional socialization (through
mentoring and supervision (Howe, 2002)). These
training practices produce a conceptual
uncoupling of the “person” (as a social and
political being) from the “professional.” In the
medical setting, much of this is seen as achieved
through a “hidden curriculum” the “processes,
pressures and constraints which fall outside . . .
the formal curriculum and which are often unarticulated or unexplored” (Cribb & Bignold,
1999, p. 196). For example, students must
acquire an understanding of power relationships
and hierarchies within the medical establishment, “appropriate” ways of relating to patients
and other professionals, and expected ways of
behaving both at work and in other social settings. In psychology, I suggest, the content of
this “hidden curriculum” involves a presumption
that psychologists should embody the qualities
of the idealized subject of psychology – the
independent, adult “individual” (Callaghan,
2005).
In his Foucauldian analysis of the practices of
a career in accountancy, Grey (1994) explores the
ways in which professionalism becomes a project
of self-management. Rose (1989) demonstrated
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that, through webs of knowledge and expertise,
the subject is identified and produced as autonomous, not only free to choose but required to
choose and to be responsible for those choices.
Thus, through the processes of professionalization and the practices of professionalism,
students construct themselves as individual
professionals, with the associated rights and
responsibilities as constructed by professional
codes of practice.
Becoming a “professional” is not “a professional thing,” but a personal one. It involves
conformity to an image of professionalism
that goes beyond mere adherence to a code of
professional ethics, to the entire range of selfpresentation. It is necessary not just to act professionally but to be a professional. In their analysis
of the process of professionalization of nurses
and teachers in the UK, Stronach et al. (2002)
describe the way in which surveillance and
governmentality serve to construct an image of
“the authentic” teacher or nurse. They suggest
that by universalizing the definition of the professional and inflating its importance, the practices
of the profession, a “collective individual”
emerges: no longer “a psychologist,” but “The
Psychologist” someone who does not just act
professionally but is a professional (Callaghan,
2005, 2006).
The case presentation setting is a context that
is set up to assist students in performing the
role of “The Professional.” It is in itself a piece
of theatre. Pomerantz, Ende, and Erikson
(1995) suggest that the case study is a discursive
exchange in which “educators get novices to
discover for themselves precisely what the professionals hold should be discovered” (p. 45). It is
not a straightforward exercise in socialization:
rather through the process of presentation and
question and answer, students are encouraged to
acquire for themselves the patterns of professional thought and behavior.
International Relevance
The character of professions shifts with the
changing configuration of political and
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institutional forces and within a framework of
professional dynamics (Abbott, 1988; Light,
2000). Patterns of globalization, and the shift to
viewing professionals as a commodity for
exchange on global markets, mean that national
forms of self-regulation are increasingly being
challenged, making way for greater standardization, external monitoring, and assessment. The
response by many professional bodies to this
pressure has been to introduce further layers of
internal monitoring and regulation to produce
standardized and internationally portable knowledge and skill sets (Evett, 1999). Global structures demand increased accountability and
standardization of professional training and
accreditation. This produces a clear pressure for
professions to develop standardized curricula and
highly regulated sets of professional competencies. This actively militates against a view that
professions should restructure their knowledge
base and practice to more appropriately reflect
local concerns. This produces paradoxical
demands between, on the one hand, a demand
for local, contextualized practices and, on the
other, a portability of professional identity rooted
in presumably universal knowledges and skills.
Practice Relevance
Challenges to professionalization and to the logic
of the profession take a range of forms in
contemporary society. The notion of “clients”
and “consumers” has functioned to shift the balance of power within relationships between professionals and those that they serve, in many
professional contexts (Calman & Gabe, 2001).
In addition, the contemporary emphasis on
interprofessional partnership working and
multiagency teams contributes to some challenges to the hierarchical structuring of relationships between professions and enables some
boundary crossing to take place (Hudson, 2002).
For example, as the expressed ideological
commitment in medicine has shifted from disease
management to client-centered care, the focus on
“empowering clients” with consumer choice has,
the dominant professional voice would suggest,
Professions and Professionalization
tipped the power balance towards the consumer.
Of course such a perspective relies on a notion
that choice is itself an unquestioned good – an
assumption that has attracted considerable critique in critical accounts of twenty-first-century
lives (e.g., McRobbie, 2008).
References
Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions. An essay on
the division of expert labor. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Becker, H. S., Geer, B., Hughes, E., & Strauss, A. (1961).
Boys in white: Student culture in medical school.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bondi, L. (2004). ‘A double edged sword’? The professionalization of counselling in the United Kingdom.
Health & Place, 10, 319–328.
Bondi, L., & Laurie, N. (2005). Working the spaces of
neoliberalism: activism, professionalization and incorporation papers: Introduction. Antipode, 37(3), 393–401.
Brownlie, J. (2011). Not ‘going there’: Limits to the
professionalisation of our emotional lives. Sociology
of Health & Illness, 33, 130–144.
Butler, T., & Savage, M. (1995). Social change and the
middle classes. London: UCL Press.
Callaghan, J. (2005). Professionalisation and depoliticisation: South Africa women student in professional
psychological training. International Journal of Critical Psychology, 8, 117–138. 1471–4167.
Callaghan, J. (2006). Becoming a psychologist: Feminism, activism, professionalism. In T. Shefer,
F. Boonzaier, & P. Kiguwa (Eds.), The gender of
psychology (pp. 293–300). Cape Town, South Africa:
Juta.
Calman, M., & Gabe, J. (2001). From consumerism to
partnership? Britain’s national health service at the
turn of the centurary. International Journal of Health
Services, 31, 119–131.
Carr-Saunders, A. M. (1928). Professions, their organization and place in society. Oxford: The Clarendon
Press.
Carr-Saunders, A. M., & Wilson, P. A. (1933). The professions. London: Frank Cass.
Carr-Saunders, A. M., & Wilson, P. A. (1944). Professions. Encyclopedia of the social sciences. New York:
MacMillan.
Cribb, A., & Bignold, S. (1999). Towards the reflexive
medical school: The hidden curriculum and medical
education research. Studies Higher Education, 36,
195–209.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2004). A thousand plateaus.
London/New York: Continuum.
Eraut, M. (2000). Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70, 113–136.
Project Camelot
Freidson, E. (1970). Profession of medicine, a study of the
sociology of applied knowledge. New York: Harper
and Row.
Freidson, E. (1986). Professional powers: A study of the
institutionalization of formal knowledge. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Grayling, A. C. (2004). What is good? The search for the
best way to live. London: Phoenix.
Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour
process discipline. Sociology, 28(2), 479–497.
Howe, A. C. (2002). Professional development in undergraduate medical curricula–the key to the door of
a new culture? Medical Education, 36(4), 353–359.
Hudson, B. (2002). Interprofessionality in health and
social care: The Achieles’ heel of partnership. Journal
of Interprofessional Care, 16(1), 7–17.
Johnson, T. J. (1972). Professions and power. London:
Macmillan.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, R., & Maude, A. (1953). Professional people
in England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Light, D. (2000). The medical profession and organizational change: From professional dominance to
countervailing power. In C. E. Bird, P. Conrad, &
A. M. Fremont (Eds.), Handbook of medical sociology
(pp. 201–216). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
MacDonald, K. M. (1995). The sociology of the professions. London: Sage.
Marshall, T. (1997). Scientific knowledge in medicine:
A new clinical epistemology? Journal of Evaluation
in Clinical Practice, 3, 133–138.
McRobbie, A. (2008). The aftermath of Feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: Sage.
Miller, P., & Rose, N. (1990). Governing economic life.
Economy and Society, 19, 1–31.
Murphy, R. (1984). The structures of closure: A critique
and development of the theories of Weber, Collins and
Parkin. The British Journal of Sociology, 35, 547–567.
Murphy, R. (1988). Social closure: The theory of monopolization and exclusion. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Olsen, J. (1983). Credentialism as monopoly, class war,
and socialization scheme: Some historical reflections
on modern ways of determining who can do a job. Law
and Human Behaviour, 7(2–3), 291–299.
Osborne, T. (1993). On liberalism, neo-liberalism and the
“liberal profession” of medicine. Economy and Society, 22, 345–356.
Painter, D., & Terre Blanche, M. (2004). Critical psychology
in South Africa: Looking back and looking forwards,
Accessed on 25 October 2012. http://www.
criticalmethods.org/collab/critpsy.htm.
Parsons, T. (1949). Professions and social structure. In
T. Parsons (Ed.). (1964). Essays in sociological
theory – Pure and applied. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Russell, B. (1961). History of western philosophy.
London: George Allen & Unwin.
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Sethuraman, K. R. (2006). Professionalism in medicine.
Regional Health Forum, 10(1), 1–10.
Sparkes, V. J. (2002). Profession and professionalisation.
Part 1: Role and identity of undergraduate physiotherapy educators. Part2: Professionalism within academia. Physiotherapy, 88(8), 92–481.
Stuart, G. W. (1986). How professionalized is nursing?
Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 13(1), 18–23.
Vigilante, J. (1974). Between values and science: Education
for the professional during a moral crisis or is proof truth?
Journal of Education for Social Work, 10(3), 107–115.
Vollmer, H. M., & Mills, D. L. (1966). Professionalization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 1966.
Wilensky, H. L. (1964). The professionalisation of
everyone? The American Journal of Sociology, 70(2),
137–158.
Witz, A. (1992). Professions and patriarchy. London/
New York: Routledge.
Project Camelot
Mark Solovey
Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology, University of Toronto,
Toronto, ON, Canada
Introduction
In April of 1965, Hugo Nutini, a Chilean-born
assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, went to Chile to recruit
scholars for a US-sponsored behavioral science
research project about the revolutionary process
and counterinsurgency measures called Project
Camelot. When asked about the specific sources
of funding for the study, Nutini said they included
the National Science Foundation, a civilian science agency. When Chilean scholars found out
that, in fact, the US Army provided the funding,
Nutini denied knowledge of this fact and said he
would severe his connections to it. Nevertheless,
subsequent criticism from leftist Chilean scholars
and politicians portrayed Nutini as a degraded
Chilean. And the Chilean government declared
that Nutini was banned from returning to his
homeland in the future (Navarro, 2011).
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Meanwhile, criticism of Project Camelot
spread far beyond Chilean borders. In the context
of the Cold War, countries that had hostile
relations with the USA, from Cuba to the Soviet
Union, denounced this project as a form of Yankee
imperialism, designed to undermine national wars
of liberation. The international uproar caused
problems for the American government as well,
partly because the US Ambassador to Chile had
not been told about the project before the controversy erupted. On July 8, 1965, the US Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara cancelled the project
in an attempt to limit the damage – in the following
years the military continued to fund such studies
under the auspices of classified research (the US
Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Subcommittee on International Organizations and
Movements, 1965). But rather than putting an end
to this episode, cancellation gave rise to mounting
controversy about the project among scholars, politicians, and journalists. Discussions focused on
the increasingly influential roles of behavioral scientists in American foreign policy programs and
military ventures (Lowe, 1966; Horowitz, 1967).
Commentators also examined the grand hope,
embodied so clearly in Camelot, of developing
behavioral science knowledge of revolutions that
would be useful for predicting and controlling
social change in Latin American nations and
other so-called underdeveloped or developing
countries around the world. Critical commentary
focused on a number of difficult questions. Did
participation in Camelot and related research projects mean that scholars were ipso facto engaged in
a form of political action rather than, or perhaps in
addition to, the pursuit of objective science? Did
the content of such research have a political
valence and ideological character, rather than
a value-neutral orientation? And did military
funding in this case, and perhaps in a much wider
array of cases, pose a threat to the independence
and integrity of the behavioral sciences?
Definition
Project Camelot: A mid-1960s US Armysponsored behavioral science research project
Project Camelot
about the revolutionary process and counterinsurgency measures.
Keywords
Behavioral science; cold war; counterinsurgency;
David McClelland; development studies; ideology;
interdisciplinary; objective science; military
funding; modernization theory; revolutionary
process; social systems analysis; US army special
operations research office (SORO); value neutrality
History
Planning for Camelot began in 1964 in response
to a report from the Defense Science Board
(DSB), a powerful military science advisory
group. The DSB report identified numerous
deficiencies in the Defense Department’s
behavioral science programs, especially when it
came to studying the many small-scale wars and
revolutionary movements around the world. Subsequently, the Army launched a major project
called “Methods for Predicting and Influencing
Social Change and Internal War Potential,” better
known as Project Camelot. Responsibility for
Camelot’s planning lay with the Special Operations Research Office (SORO), an Army-funded
federal contract research center founded in 1957
and located on the campus of the American
University in Washington, D.C. (Herman,
1995a, 1995b; Solovey, 2001; Rohde, 2009).
SORO’s plans for Camelot were nothing if not
ambitious. Had it not been cancelled, Camelot
may have been the most expensive single social
research project in American history up until that
time. It had an expected cost of $4 to $6 million
dollars, which in 2010 dollars would be the equivalent, depending on the particular conversion tool
used, of between $22 and $81 million dollars to
$33 and $121 million dollars. Moreover, SORO
personnel indicated Camelot was only a pilot project. Presumably, if all went well, more elaborate
and more expensive projects would follow. One
scholar suggested Camelot would have been the
social science’s Manhattan Project. Besides
Project Camelot
relying on SORO researchers and staff, the planning process also involved a large number of
scholarly consultants, 33 to be exact, including
many from elite universities such as Michigan,
MIT, Princeton, and Stanford. The project was
also noteworthy for its interdisciplinary character,
which SORO, along with many other militaryfunded social research centers, considered crucial
for the task of developing an integrated understanding of various social developments including
the revolutionary process of strategic concern.
As was typical of military-sponsored behavioral
science research, Camelot promised to produce
actionable knowledge. In this case, by using descriptions, analysis, and explanations of past and recent
revolutions, the research would produce
a generalizable and predictive model of the revolutionary process along with reliable indicators of
revolutionary tendencies. It was anticipated that
such knowledge would help military leaders to
anticipate the course of social change and enable
them to design effective interventions, in order to
channel or suppress social change in ways deemed
desirable from the standpoint of US Cold War policy
objectives and military needs. From this perspective,
Camelot represented a wonderful example of how
the behavioral sciences, or at least certain lines of
behavioral science research, had become a vital
weapon in the American military arsenal.
As for its interdisciplinary framework, Camelot
drew heavily on fields of inquiry that had widespread appeal. In order to analyze the revolutionary process, researchers would deploy social
systems analysis, whose development in recent
years received extensive support from the military
and from military-funded research institutes, such
as the RAND corporation, and whose proponents
included the enormously influential Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons. With its emphasis on identifying the key elements, subsystems, and
processes that contributed to the stability, maintenance, or disruption of social systems, this type of
analysis seemed like the perfect tool for
constructing a predictive model of revolutionary
potential and social change in societies of interest
to American military and foreign policy leaders.
Camelot also incorporated ideas from modernization theory, one major line of inquiry
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prominent in the larger and booming field of
development studies (Della Faille, 2010).
According to many modernization theorists
including Walt W. Rostow, a historical economist and national security advisor to Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, one could make powerful
generalizations about the ways in which a socalled traditional society became a modern society. For example, in The Achieving Society
(1961), the Harvard psychologist David
McClelland argued that the transition from one
type of society to the other depended on strengthening particular psychological characteristics
that would propel economic growth and thus set
a society on the modernizing path. More specifically, McClelland proposed that economic
growth would occur when families, especially
mothers, encouraged their sons to develop competitive- and achievement-oriented personalities.
At a time of intense struggle between the USA
and the Soviet Union for resources and influence
in the developing world, modernization theory
offered an alternative and widely influential
framework to Marxist-inspired plans for economic growth and national development. In the
context of Camelot and counterinsurgency
research more generally, such work indicated
that promoting modernization projects was
a key weapon in the effort to undermine communist penetration and prevent revolution inimical
to American interests.
Camelot, then, offered a large, interdisciplinary group of researchers and consultants an
opportunity to work on an unusually well-funded
research project. Before its cancellation, Camelot
promised to yield significant scholarly advances,
to further American foreign policy aims, to
satisfy the changing knowledge needs of the
military, and to advance the welfare of developing nations while simultaneously protecting
them from communist designs. Though noteworthy because of its impressive size and ambitious
goals, Camelot reflected a more general
confidence among many action-oriented
behavioral scientists who believed that by
working with the government and the military,
they were contributing to the cause of democracy
and freedom.
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Critical Debates
The discussion about Camelot among scholars,
politicians,
military
representatives,
and
commentators in the mass media began in 1965
and continued for a few years after its cancellation.
Critics of the project raised at least three questions
relevant to the development of critical psychology – and critical scholarship in the behavioral or
social sciences more generally (Solovey, 2001;
Robin, 2001; Rohde, 2009, 2012).
One issue concerns whether the scholar’s
social role requires a sharp separation between
scientific and political activities. According to
a popular view then and now, scientific work
demands that scholars remain objective and
value-neutral in their research and thus scientists
should not advocate value-laden positions associated with particular social agendas or political
positions. While scientific work might help to
determine effective means for achieving particular ends, the scientist qua scientist should strive to
maintain a detached position with respect to the
ends themselves. Though some figures in the
Camelot discussions adopted this position, others
proposed that by participating in this sort of
research project, scholars were engaged in
a form of political action, in this case, had the
project not been cancelled, by providing
knowledge, techniques of analysis, and eventually policy recommendations that they knew
would be used for particular political purposes.
Some went so far as to portray Camelot’s scholars
as agents of Yankee imperialism and accused
them of contributing to an antidemocratic
agenda, by contributing to American plans that
would undermine the right to self-determination
of various peoples and nations around the world.
Other detractors of the project added that through
such work, behavioral scientists functioned as
spies, by gathering and analyzing information
about target peoples, often without their full
understanding or consent and for the purposes
of manipulating and controlling them. From
these critical viewpoints, the effort to define the
role of the behavioral scientist in a manner that
excluded a political dimension seems naive at
best and willful obfuscation at worst.
Project Camelot
Second, scrutiny of Camelot raised the question of whether this sort of research had political
or ideological content. One could argue that
regardless of the reasons why a scholar might
choose to participate in this project and regardless of the political dimension of the research itself,
such matters did not or at least should not interfere
with the demand that the research itself remain
objective and value-neutral in orientation. However,
some critical voices pointed out that the language
and orientation of this study indicated an ideological
bias. For example, Camelot’s reliance on systems
analysis reflected a preference for stable social systems and an interest in undermining revolutionary
forces that threatened such stability. Project Camelot’s architects and supporters spoke of revolution as
a disease that threatened the health of the system.
They suggested that Camelot itself belonged to the
field of epidemiology. They referred to anti-system
activities and destabilizing processes that contribute
to social pathology. And they called for the development and administration of insurgency prophylaxis, in order to restore a social system under threat
to health and stability. In short, beneath the veneer of
an allegedly value-neutral, objective science, Camelot seemed to be imbued with an anti-revolutionary
and in this sense politically conservative, perhaps
even reactionary, mindset.
Modernization theory, which informed the
plans for Camelot and counterinsurgency studies
more generally, seemed ideologically loaded as
well. As critics noted, leading social and behavioral scientists in this area had written rather
favorably about America, presenting it as
a society that had undergone the process of modernization with fabulous results – including the
establishment of an admirably democratic political culture and stable political system, fabulous
economic growth, widespread literacy and public
education, and extensive investments in science
and technology. These writers then presented the
lessons they extracted from America’s particular
historical trajectory as the basis for policies
designed to launch the modernizing process in
the so-called backward or traditional societies,
which, due to various psychological, social,
economic, and political obstacles, seemed incapable of modernizing on their own and kept them
Project Camelot
in an arrested state of development. McClelland,
for example, proposed that traditional societies
suffered from unproductive attitudes and personality structures that prevented them from
pursuing the path to successful economic development. Such social and psychological research
hardly seems value-neutral or objective in the
sense of refraining from normative judgments
regarding human nature, social order, and historical change.
Third, the Camelot controversy raised difficult
questions about the ways in which funding from
powerful patrons such as the military could compromise the health of the academic enterprise. The
possibility that funding would undermine the independence and integrity of scholarship was certainly
not a new concern. But in the decades following
World War II, leading scholars and their patrons,
including the military, commonly suggested that
a reasonable measure of independence and integrity had been achieved through the establishment of
certain safeguards. For instance, by involving top
scholars, the military seemed to recognize the
importance of adhering to rigorous standards of
scientific inquiry. In addition, by supporting work
that aimed to advance knowledge in significant
ways rather than seeking to satisfy a narrowly
circumscribed military need, the military seemed
to give researchers adequate room to pursue serious
scholarship. And by funding some important studies without any classification requirements, the
military seemed to encourage open discussion and
critical evaluation of such research by the scholarly
community. However, scrutiny of Camelot
suggested that such measures were not sufficient.
The harshest attacks claimed that Camelot’s
scholars and military-supported researchers more
generally were obligated to adopt the military’s
outlook on things. For example, working on
Camelot seemed to require that one supported or
at least passively accepted the military’s interest in
finding the means to suppress revolutions in developing nations considered susceptible to communist
influence. In this way, scholars became servants of
power, rather than fully independent thinkers.
Moreover, these scholars were unlikely to speak
truth to power, thereby undermining their ability to
develop and act as critical intellectuals who acted
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responsibly in the name of humanistic goals.
Critics noted that defense-sponsored research
seemed to imbue scholarship with a troublesome
manipulative and technocratic mentality as well,
which followed naturally from the military’s strong
interest in using the behavioral sciences to improve
its ability to predict and to control human beings
and social change.
More recently, Project Camelot has become an
object of historical inquiry, providing scholars
with a case study that richly illuminates debates
about the scientific identity, ideological valence,
political uses, and military patronage of psychology and the behavioral sciences in Cold War
America, especially during the turbulent decade
of the 1960s. Recent discussions about Camelot
also appear in the literature and critical commentary on the involvement of scholars in military
and intelligence programs that undergird the War
on Terror (Price, 2011).
References
Della Faille, D. (2010). Dissection d’un discours a propos
des confits sociauz: Le cas du project Camelot. Revue
Canadienne D’études du Développement, 30(3–4),
399–423.
Herman, E. (1995a). The romance of American
psychology: Political culture in the age of expert,
esp. chapters 5 & 6. Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Herman, E. (1995b). The career of cold war psychology.
Radical History Review 63, 52–85. This essay was part
of a thematic issue of RHR on “The cold war and
expert knowledge,” and it was soon reprinted in
simpson, C. ed. (1998). Universities and Empire:
Money and politics in the social sciences during the
cold war. New York: The New Press.
Horowitz, I. L. (Ed.). (1967). The rise and fall of project
Camelot: Studies in the relationship between social science and practical politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lowe, G. E. (1966). The Camelot affair. The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, 43, 44–48.
Navarro, J. J. (2011). Cold war in Latin America: The
Camelot project (1964–1965) and the political and
academic reactions of the Chilean left. Comparative
Sociology, 10, 807–825.
Price, D. H. (2011). Weaponizing anthropology. Oakland,
CA: AK Press.
Robin, R. (2001). The making of the cold war enemy:
culture and politics in the military-intellectual
complex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
esp. chapter 10.
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Rohde, J. (2009). Gray matters: Social scientists, military
patronage, and democracy in the cold war. The Journal
of American History, 96, 99–122.
Rohde, J. (2012). From expert democracy to Beltway banditry: How the anti-war movement expanded the military-academic-industrial complex. In M. Solovey &
H. Cravens (Eds.), Cold war social science: Knowledge
production, liberal democracy and human nature
(pp. 137–153). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Solovey, M. (2001). Project Camelot and the 1960s
epistemological revolution: Rethinking the politicspatronage-social science nexus. Social Studies of
Science, 31, 171–206.
U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Subcommittee on International Organizations and
Movements. (1965). Behavioral sciences and the
national security, Report No. 4, together with pt. 9 of
winning the cold war: The U.S. ideological offensive,
hearings, 89th Cong., 1st session. Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office.
Projection, Overview
transferred or displaced from one location to
another. So, for example, in film, an image is
projected from the negative onto a screen. This
concept is similar to the definition of “projection”
as used in psychoanalytic theory. Something (usually feelings) is transferred or displaced from one
location (the internal psychic world of the individual) to another (the external social world). What is
displaced are feelings and thoughts which are
unacceptable to the ego. This is an unconscious
process and functions as a defense against things
which are threatening to the self (or ego).
Keywords
Projection; Psychoanalysis; Defense mechanism;
Disavowal; Anxiety; Freud
Projection, Overview
Traditional Debates
Poul Rohleder
Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin
University, Cambridge, UK
Sigmund Freud (1894) first wrote about projection
as a simple process of psychic protection, where
excessive excitation in the body and psyche of the
individual is transferred outwards, as a kind of
release of excessive energy. Later, Freud wrote
about projection as a defense mechanism in
a letter to his colleague Wilhelm Fliess dated
January 24, 1895, where he linked projection to
paranoia. Here, Freud described projection as
a process of evacuating not only excitation but
feelings and representations or thoughts which
are linked to that excitation. What is projected is
then located in the external world and may be
experienced by the individual as persecutory,
forming the basis of paranoia. However, Freud
also wrote about projection as being
a mechanism that is “normal.” For example, in
new situations, we project our internal emotional and thought perceptions outwards, as
a way of making sense of this new external
world. Freud wrote about projection in relation
to a variety of normal and pathological processes, but in all cases it is considered
a defense mechanism (Laplanche & Pontalis,
1988); it reduces anxiety in that what is intolerable to the self is disavowed and projected
Introduction
Projection refers to a type of defense mechanism
in psychoanalytic theory, whereby unacceptable
feelings and self-attributes within an individual
are disavowed and attributed to someone else.
So, for example, an individual may hold aggressive or murderous thoughts and feelings which are
unacceptable to their sense of self. In order to
defend against a threat to their self, they disavow
these feelings and project them onto others, who
are then perceived to be hostile and aggressive.
Projection is involved in the process of othering,
where the other comes to represent the opposite of
the self, often that which is disavowed in the self.
Definition
A commonly understood definition of the term
“projection” is its referral to something being
Projection, Overview
outwards. However, when the process results
in a distortion of reality (as in the case of paranoia), the external world is perceived as
threatening.
Projection was taken up as a fundamental
aspect of object relations theorists (Sandler,
1988). Freud used the term “object” to refer to
people and other things in the environment
that become the object of drive satisfaction.
Later theorists developed this further to concentrate more on the process of psychic development
in relation to objects (i.e., others) in one’s
environment.
Psychoanalytic theory describes an internal,
intrapsychic world and an external world. Projection involves the displacement of the internal to
the external. The opposite process, introjection,
involves the taking in from the external into the
internal. Klein (Hinshelwood, 1991) regarded the
earliest period of development (in infancy) as
being dominated by processes of projection.
Klein placed greater emphasis on the aggressive
drive (or death instinct) in the earliest period of
life. Excessive anxiety and aggression related to
the death instinct is projected outwards into
objects in the external world, which is then experienced as persecutory. For example, when the
infant is experiencing hunger pains, the absent of
mother/breast is experienced as the persecutory
“bad” object that is causing these pains. By crying and screaming, the aggressive energy is
projected outwards. Through the process of introjection, good loving experiences (although not
always good) are taken in by the infant and internalized as a “good” internal object. Thus, when
fed, the feeling of satisfaction from milk in the
belly is experienced by the infant as the internal
presence of the “good” mother. This process of
projection of “bad” internal experiences and the
introjection of “good” experiences functions to
defend and preserve the developing ego. Where
these processes go awry, pathology develops.
Klein saw projection and introjection as fundamental parts of ego-development and object
relations. This was extended further in her conceptualization of projective identification, which
involved both projection and introjection. With
the concept of projective identification, Klein
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introduced a more dialogical process between
the subject and his or her object, where feelings
and parts of the self are transferred between each
other.
Freud thus had a basic formulation of the
concept of projection as a defense mechanism.
This was a one-person account of projection. This
was later developed further to include a more
object-relational process, where projection
becomes a component part of a theory of mind
and also a model for understanding the psychotherapeutic process in particular.
Critical Debates
Projection has become a key concept in psychoanalytic theory and therapy. There are few real
significant debates about projection itself, with
more of the critical debate centering more broadly
on psychoanalysis as a body of theory and as
a therapeutic approach. Psychoanalysis is often
critiqued as being unscientific and as having concepts that are difficult to operationalize and investigate objectively (see Frosh, 2006). Attempts
have been made to investigate projection from
a social cognitive framework, but because of the
difficulty in operationalizing and measuring
unconscious processes experimentally, there is little empirical scientific evidence to support a full
psychoanalytic concept of projection (Baumeister,
Dale, & Sommer, 1998). However, there is some
support for projection as a defense mechanism
(Newman, Duff, & Baumeister, 1997).
Critical psychologists have often critiqued
psychoanalysis as essentializing human behavior,
focusing as it does on factors within the individual. However, critical theorists interested in
understanding broader social processes from a
psychoanalytic perspective have found the notion
of projection (and its opposite, introjection) to be
a useful framework for understanding intersubjective experiences, such as racism. For example,
Frantz Fanon (1967) writes how that which is
experienced as primitive and animalistic about
the self is projected by the white man and
woman on to the black man and woman. These
projections then are reexperienced by the white
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individual as persecutory, and so the black man
and woman come to be feared (see also Clarke,
2003).
References
Baumeister, R. K., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998).
Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings
in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation,
and denial. Journal of Personality, 66(6), 1081–1124.
Clarke, S. (2003). Social theory psychoanalysis and racism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white masks. New York:
Grove Press.
Freud, S. (1894). On the grounds for detaching a particular
syndrome from neurasthenia under the description
‘anxiety neurosis’. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The
standard edition of the complete psychological works
of Sigmund Freud (3rd ed., pp. 85–115). London:
Hogarth Press.
Frosh, S. (2006). For and against psychoanalysis
(2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Hinshelwood, R. D. (1991). A dictionary of Kleinian
thought. London: Free Association Books.
Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (1988). The language of
psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books.
Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997).
A new look at defensive projection: Thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(5), 980–1001.
Sandler, J. (Ed.). (1988). Projection, identification, projective identification. London: Karnac Books.
Online Resources
Melanie Klein Trust. http://www.melanie-klein-trust.org.
uk/theory
Projective Identification, Overview
Karl Figlio
Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of
Essex, Essex, UK
Introduction
Projective identification is a psychoanalytic
concept. As such, it is derived from clinical
work for use in clinical practice, as well as for
Projective Identification, Overview
developing a theory of mind. Like all psychoanalytic concepts, it aims to express subjective
experience as well as to articulate a psychic
mechanism. Like psychoanalytic language in
general, the language of projective identification
is experience near; that is, it is an attempt to
put experiences, often preverbal and primitive,
into words.
Projective identification combines two concepts, projection and identification, each of
which is central to psychoanalytic thinking and
practice. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept
of projection to explain the psychological differentiation between an inside and an outside, on the
basis of the management of stimuli. Stimuli from
the external world, impinging through the sense
organs, are intermittent and can be managed by
taking action, such as evasion. Stimuli from the
inside cannot be managed by taking an action in
relation to them, but by the psychic trick of
“projecting” them – treating them as if they
were external – an action can be taken to relieve
the burden of stimuli. Think, for example, of
resolving a vague feeling tension by experiencing
someone as persecutory, then taking action
against that person.
Such a process seems at odds with the idea of
identification, in which qualities of self and
others are assimilated to each other. If projection
aims to manage internal stimuli by externalizing
them into another person, so that they no longer
are perceived to be in oneself, how can it be
linked to establishing a commonality with
another person? Part of the answer lies in the
psychoanalytic theory, according to which the
psyche is not unitary, but can be split into parts.
Clinical evidence suggests that our sense of being
an “I” is structured around a relationship between
“I” parts (of the ego) and object parts (internal
objects). I say “parts,” because the ego and the
internal objects are not wholes, as in “I,” in
relation to, say, “mother,” but pieces whose
connection with external reality is a mixture of
perception and an unconscious imagination or
phantasy (with a ph). Unwanted parts of internal
objects or of ego are projected, as if into an
external other, so that they are experienced if
Projective Identification, Overview
they were these others, identified with them
inside the other. If internal objects are projected,
it simply leads to mistaking one person for
another, but if ego parts are projected, it leads to
confusion of oneself with an other. The following
vignette from the psychoanalysis of a 4-year-old
girl illustrates such a process:
When it became clear that her Friday analytic
session would soon end, the girl screamed:
‘Bastard! Take off your clothes and jump
outside’. . .[T]he analyst tried to interpret[her] feelings about being dropped and sent into the cold.
[She] replied: ‘Stop your talking, take off your
clothes. You are cold. I’m not cold’. . .Here the
words carry the concrete meaning, to the child, of
the separation of the weekend – the awful coldness.
This she tries to force into the analyst and it is felt
to have been concretely achieved. ‘You are cold,
I am not cold.’ (Joseph, 1987, p. 101)
In this vignette, the child imagines – unconsciously – that her own experience is now the
analyst’s. One might say that her unconscious
aim is to force the analyst to take over a part of
her ego as her own, in a “projective identification.” Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic work with
young children suggested that the forms of relationship between the self and object were based
on a range of primal phantasies, which were prototypes, templates, or scenarios, and that their
character followed from the bodily zones that
were most active at various stages of development. Thus, she spoke of an oral relationship to
the breast, characterized by phantasies of sucking
dry, scooping out, biting, and chewing and an
anal/urethral relationship of venting aggression
through expelling dangerous substances based
on feces and urine. In the vignette above, the
analyst-mother had become the object of
a projective attack for putting the child into the
cold. At an oral level, one might see in her
behavior an infant’s attack on the breast for
being taken from its warmth, in which the
analyst-mother-breast would be cold and not
the child-mouth.
In this vignette, projective identification
expels what cannot be borne in the psyche. The
British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion considered it
also to be a form of preverbal communication. He
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observed in psychotic patients the capacity to
evoke in the analyst-object an experience of
distress that linked with a distress that the patient
could not articulate. Clinical evidence suggested
that this evocative process was a form of projective identification, expressed in the phantasy
of pressing the distressed self into the
analyst-object, so that it now contained and managed the distress. The same process occurs in the
wholly normal way a mother attunes herself to
her baby by seeming to experience the distress of
her child and to translate its affective burdens
into ameliorative action, in a process he later
called containment (Bion, 1959, in Spillius &
O’Shaughnessy (Eds), pp. 61–75; also pp. 55,
123, 195, 242, 256, 318, 319, 356).
The idea that an identification could be
established by projection introduced a new vocabulary and conceptual framework into both clinical
psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic understanding of social structure. It has a special application in child analysis; in the analysis of primitive
processes, including psychosis, in which one can
feel snared inside a hostile object or invaded by
hostile objects; and in social phenomena with psychotic-like features, such as racism, in which
a “racialized” other can be experienced, by projection, as invading society or stealing its bloodkinship, which evokes a forceful, often violent
attack or expulsion (e.g., in Nazi anti-Semitism;
Clarke, 2003; Davids, 2011; Frosh, 2005).
The main field of clinical application of the
concept of projective identification is “countertransference.” Countertransference refers loosely
to the analyst’s reaction to the patient, but in light
of the concept of projective identification, it
refers to the evocation of reactions in the analyst
by the patient’s projective identifications.
In others words, the process of expelling parts
of the self and its relationships to its objects has
an impact on a “receiving” ego, and this impact
turns the analyst’s permeability to this
impact into a sensitive instrument for registering
the disowned states of mind of the patient
and guiding the analytic process (Spillius, 2012,
in Spillius & O’Shaughnessy (Eds), 2012,
pp. 50–53).
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Projective Identification, Overview
Definition
experience underlies the more formalized and
abstract definition offered by the Kleinian
psychoanalyst Hannah Segal (1973):
Although it had precursors, projective identification was defined by the British psychoanalyst
Melanie Klein in 1946 and more specifically in
1952. With the unconscious phantasies described
above in mind, Klein spoke of the:
phantasied onslaughts on the mother [following]
two main lines: one is the predominantly oral
impulse to suck dry, bite up, scoop out and rob the
mother’s body of its good contents. . .The other line
of attack derives from the anal and urethral impulses
and implies expelling dangerous substances (excrements) out of the self and into the mother. Together
with these harmful excrements. . .split-off parts of
the ego are also projected. . .into the mother. . .not
only to injure but also to control and take possession
of the object [with the consequence that] she is not
felt to be a separate individual but is felt to be the
bad self. (Klein, 1946, p. 8)
Klein called this possessive identification of
the bad self and the object, produced by projection, “projective identification.” Her original
formulation focused on aggression. But she and
other analysts had in mind other forms of projective identification, and the term has come to
refer to a cluster of processes, sharing the
common feature of a phantasy in which part, or
all, of the ego is lodged inside the object. For
example, the British psychoanalyst Herbert
Rosenfeld, (1949) reported patient’s dream, in
which he saw:
a famous surgeon operating on a patient, who
observed with great admiration the skill displayed
by the surgeon, who seemed intensely concentrated
on his work. Suddenly the surgeon lost his balance
and fell right into the inside of the patient, with
whom he got so entangled that he could scarcely
manage to free himself. He nearly choked, and only
by administering an oxygen apparatus could he
manage to revive himself. (p. 49)
It is important to understand Klein’s language,
bearing in mind that her clinical observations
were of children, whose phantasmagoric interior
world she captured through watching and listening to their play. A second observational field was
provided by psychotics, whose world seemed
similarly phantasmagoric. This sort of clinical
In projective identification, parts of the self and
internal objects are split off and projected into the
external object, which then becomes possessed by,
controlled and identified with the projected parts.
Projective identification has manifold aims: it
may be directed towards the ideal object to avoid
separation, or it may be directed towards the bad
object to gain control of the source of danger.
Various parts of the self may be projected in
order to get rid of them as well as to attack and
destroy the object, good parts may be projected to
avoid separation or to keep them safe from bad
things inside or to improve the external object
through a kind of primitive reparation. Projective
identification starts when the paranoid-schizoid
position is first established in relation to the breast,
but persists and very often becomes intensified
when the mother is perceived as a whole object
and the whole of her body is entered by projective
identification. (pp. 27–8)
Keywords
Projection; identification; paranoid-schizoid
position; phantasy; splitting; countertransference; containment
History
The concept of projective identification was
introduced by the Italian psychoanalyst Edoardo
Weiss in 1925. For Weiss, heterosexual
relationships developed through investing
a contra-sexual aspect in someone of the opposite
sex, so that the sexual object becomes the depositary of an unexpressed dimension of one’s sexuality. It had also been used by the British
psychoanalyst Marjorie Brierley in 1945 to
explain social integration through identification,
in which a subservient deference to fanaticism is
based on projecting an idealized part of oneself
into an object. Herbert Rosenfeld published an
account of projective identification in 1947,
though he clearly had been using it in clinical
work before then, to understand psychosis,
Projective Identification, Overview
which often included feeling trapped inside an
object or invaded by an object. It is, however,
usually attributed to Melanie Klein, writing in
1946. Certainly, later writers refer to Klein, and
it has spread into widespread usage through her
work (see Spillius and O’Shaughnessy (Eds),
2012, for historical overviews).
Klein based projective identification on her
concept of the “paranoid-schizoid position,”
which was both a developmental stage and
a defensive organization. As a developmental
stage, it referred to a very early psychic organization, characterized by the “splitting” of the object
world and parts of the ego attached to it into two
polarized forms: good (idealized) and bad. For
“good,” one might say idealized, loved and loving,
benign, and restorative; for “bad,” one might say
persecuting, dangerous, and destructive. Klein
built this concept on her pioneering work in
psychoanalyzing children as young as just over
2 years, in whom she found clear expressions of
such a divided, phantasmagoric world in their
imagination. Such a world of extremes, while
sometimes frighteningly filled with monsters, simplified the surfeit of experiences and facilitated the
organization of the child’s mental world. Although
this gain in psychic clarity might in the extreme be
bought at the cost of an unreality that could feed
paranoia, in a less intense form, it achieves
a measure of psychic stability.
The various ramifications of Klein’s formulation have been pursued by psychoanalysts
and theoretical writers. Projective identification
has become a concept fundamental to psychoanalytic theory and practice well beyond
the Kleinian tradition (Spillius & O’Shaughnessy
(Eds), 2012).
Critical Debates
As a clinical concept, projective identification
discerns and names an experience in the psychoanalytic process. Psychoanalytic clinicians
consider it an essential addition to their vocabulary, in order to single out particular qualities of
this experience, and document them with detailed
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clinical descriptions. It has, however, been difficult to achieve agreement on the theory or mechanism of projective identification or on whether it
is one process or a cluster of processes (for
an overview, see Sandler (Ed.), 1988). One can
imagine an internal state – a phantasy – in which
an other is forced to assume qualities of the projector or in which qualities of the projector could
be usurped from the projectee. In a vivid portrayal of such intrusions and usurpations, Melanie
Klein (1955) used the characters in a novel to
portray such intrusions and usurpations in
a psychoanalytic way. The main character of
If I Were You, by Julian Green, is a man dissatisfied with his life and envious of others. He is
granted the power to change places with them
by whispering a formula into their ears, but he
increasingly loses touch with himself, as he
moves from one identification to another, assuming their qualities and losing his own. But over
time, these identifications move him back to himself at another, more mature plane. So Klein saw
in the novel both a defense, for example, against
envy, and a developmental process, whereby the
torment of exaggerated – one might say
phantasized – perceptions of the superiority or
inferiority of others was assuaged. But although
Klein’s analysis of the novel powerfully illustrates the process of projective identification, it
does not settle the questions of how such
a process or processes could occur.
A second area of critical debate concerns
the theory of countertransference. Clinicians
commonly report their own mental states (confusion, tiredness, helplessness, triumphalism)
or forms of relationships (punitive, superior,
inferior, critical, envious) in analytic sessions.
These experiences seem to be unique to
a patient at a specific moment and, therefore,
to be produced by the patient and to be states of
mind that have, so to speak, been “put into” –
“projected into” – the clinician, who takes them
on as his/her own: hence “projective identification.” But not all clinicians regard countertransference as a well-defined and dependable
access to an other’s mind, as opposed to one’s
own (for overviews, see Hinshelwood, 1991;
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Spillius & O’Shaughnessy (Eds.), 2012;
Sandler (Ed.), 1988).
Such a “projection into” has also been applied
to social situations. Groups and society at large
have been conceptualized as containers, which
support individual psychic strength, even
when – or especially when – the group is acting
in a mad way. The group as a whole or sectors of
the group become repositories of projective identification and bear responsibility for the group
behavior. Projective identification also reinforces
the boundary between an in-group and an outgroup, which can grow to monstrous proportions.
The out-group might then be attacked as the
bearer of projective expulsions of unbearable
collective feeling or thoughts from the in-group.
Now, for example, the inferior, contaminating,
acquisitive, and blasphemous parts of the
projecting group are in the out-group and to be
destroyed in it. Examples of these extremes
include nationalism, racism, and religious sectarianism – fundamentalist thinking in general
(Clarke, 2003; Davids, 2011; Frosh, 2005). Psychoanalytic theory has added a powerful analytical tool to understanding such extreme
psychological and social states of virulent prejudice, in which violence is always imminent.
International Relevance
In its early development, projective identification
was largely a Kleinian concept, and it remains one
of the principal features of Kleinian theory and
practice. It has, however, diffused throughout the
psychoanalytic world (Spillius & O’Shaughnessy
(Eds), 2012, pp. 147–364). In the process, it has
been generalized as it has been absorbed into local
institutions and has lost the consensus it has inside
Kleinian thinking. Major areas of contention
include whether or not it is a theory of interpersonal
or of intrapsychic object relations and the validity
of the unconscious phantasies that are presumed
to underlie and drive it (Hinshelwood, 1991,
pp. 196–204; Sandler (Ed.), 1988, pp. 179–196).
But despite these theoretical differences, projective
identification has become a fundamental concept in
psychoanalytic clinical practice.
Projective Identification, Overview
Practice Relevance
Projective identification is primarily a practicerelevant concept. It has emerged from the attempt
to describe, generalize, and theoretically ground
detailed clinical descriptions, especially of
either extreme or infantile psychological states,
including:
• Psychotic processes, including depersonalization; thought disorders, such fragmentation;
splitting of the personality; megalomania;
paranoia; hallucination; and manic depression
• Borderline personality features, such as
extreme moods, idealization, and denigration
• Understanding and managing transference and
countertransference
• Understanding early object relations in normal
and abnormal infant developments, including
preverbal communication and symbol
formation
Future Directions
Spillius and O’Shaughnessy (2012) conclude
their extensive, multiauthored overview of the
field with the statement:
We think that the concept of projective identification gives a name to, and a clarification of, the
dynamics of direct communication and the phenomena of transference and countertransference
that are universal among humankind. (p. 366)
The fertility of this concept across
a psychoanalytic world that embraces divergent
theoretical and clinical orientations informs the
growth of recent clinical approaches, such as
relational analysis, and the refinement of old
concepts, such as empathy and countertransference. Despite its wide acceptance, the variety of
psychoanalytic schools will provoke debate that
will reveal further epistemological dimensions,
for example, in understanding nonverbal communication and enactment. It will also clarify specific clinical implementations in a practice that is
based on the spoken word, such as the impact of
the act of interpreting. But possibly one of the
more fruitful areas of development will be
nonclinical, in the deeper understanding of
Psy Disciplines
leadership, the formation and stability of groups,
sectarianism, ethnic and religious conflict, and
violent extremism.
References
Bion, W. (1959). Attacks on linking. In E. Spillius &
E. O’Shaughnessy (Eds.), Projective identification:
The fate of a concept (pp. 61–75). London: Routledge.
Brierley, M. (1945). Further notes on the implications of
psycho-analysis: Metapsychology and personology.
The International Journal of psycho analysis,
26, 89–114.
Clarke, S. (2003). Social theory, psychoanalysis and
racism. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Davids, M. F. (2011). Internal racism: A psychoanalytic
approach to racial difference. Basingstoke, England:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Frosh, S. (2005). Hate and the ‘Jewish science’: Antisemitism, Nazism and psychoanalysis. Basingstoke,
England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hinshelwood, R. (1991). A dictionary of Kleinian thought
(2nd ed.). London, England: Free Association Books.
Joseph, B. (1987). Projective identification: Some clinical
aspects. In E. Spillius & E. O’Shaughnessy (Eds.),
Projective identification: The fate of a concept
(pp. 98–111). London, England: Routledge.
Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In
R. Money-Kyrle (Ed.), The writings of Melanie Klein
(Vol. 3, pp. 1–24). London: The Hogarth Press.
Klein, M. (1955). On identification. In R. Money-Kyrle
(Ed.), The writings of Melanie Klein (Vol. 3,
pp. 141–175). London, England: The Hogarth Press.
Rosenfeld, H. (1947). Analysis of a schizophrenic state
with depersonalization. In Psychotic states: A psychoanalytical approach (pp. 13–33). London: The
Hogarth Press.
Rosenfeld, H. (1949). Remarks on the relation of male
homosexuality to paranoia, paranoid anxiety, and
narcissism. In Psychotic states: A psychoanalytical
approach (pp. 34–51). London, England: Hogarth Press.
Sandler, J. (Ed.). (1988). Projection, identification,
projective identification. London: Karnac Books.
Segal, H. (1973). Introduction to the work of Melanie
Klein. London: Hogarth Press.
Spillius, E., & O’Shaughnessy, E. (Eds). (2012).
Projective identification: The fate of a concept.
London, England: Routledge.
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Weiss, E. (1925). Uber
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phase
der
entwicklung
zur
heterosexuella
Liebe. Internationelle Zeitschrift f€
ur Psycho analyze,
11, 429–443.
Online Resources
Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEPWeb): http://
www.p-e-p.org
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Psy Disciplines
Jean McAvoy
Department of Psychology, The Open
University, Buckinghamshire, UK
Introduction
The knowledges and practices of the psy
disciplines have become a central focus of
attention within critical psychology because of
a recognition of the power, the disciplines
exercise in constructing and constituting people
in particular ways; in labeling and shaping
people; and in effecting the resources, opportunities, and restrictions accorded people. The psy
disciplines are the professional, expert arenas
where consequential judgements are made about
people’s mental health, behavior, cognitive
capacities, personalities, and social functionality.
Judgements extend to the restriction of bodily
freedoms and restrictions on capacities for
self-determination and the right to take part in
social life. Critical approaches to the psy disciplines interrogate what knowledge/powers are
exercised via those disciplines, including critical
psychology, how that knowledge/power occurs,
and, crucially, on what grounds knowledge/
power is exercised.
Definition
The psy disciplines are those fields of knowledge
associated with mind, mental life, and behavior.
Most typically, the psy disciplines include
psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and
psychotherapies, but extend more broadly to
a wide range of applied areas such as developmental, educational, and occupational psychologies, and encompass academic and practitioner
spheres (Burman, 1994; Parker, 1994; Rose,
1985). The term psy disciplines is closely associated with the concept of the psy complex, and
they are frequently used interchangeably. However, a useful distinction is that the concept of the
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psy disciplines foregrounds the particular
regimes of knowledge and expert practices;
whereas the psy complex invokes a stronger recognition of interaction between the disciplinary
expert knowledge regimes, and those subjected
to, interpellated into and interacting with those
disciplinary knowledges.
Keywords
Psy disciplines; psy complex; knowledge
regimes; subjectivity; regulation; self-regulation
Psy Disciplines
disciplines bring into existence the thing they
purport to measure. They generate particular
kinds of expert knowledge and have the capacity
to produce politically expedient measures of
normativity which can be harnessed to shape
particular kinds of socially desirable individual.
Moreover, these fields within the psy disciplines
provide the means of sociopolitical control
precisely because of their claim to being
underpinned by an apolitical scientific paradigm
capable of establishing truths about human nature
and behavior (Burman, 1994).
Critical Debates
Traditional Debates
Modern psychology, that is, from the late nineteenth century onwards, was a project of the
period of Enlightenment. It had roots in seventeenth century natural philosophy (Billig, 2008)
but grew rapidly throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth century, driven partly as a response to
massive social upheaval and change (Osborne,
1998; Rose, 1985; Teo, 2005). Borrowing from
the natural sciences model, psychology and its
related disciplines set out to establish scientific
universal truths, to identify and apply normative
measures to human behavior and experience,
and to create order. The production and organization of psy knowledge promised a means to
categorize, measure, and thus exert social control
on individuals.
The influence of the natural sciences model on
psychology goes to the heart of the critical psychology project. The natural science model is
premised on the understanding that disciplinary
truths about human behavior, mind, and mental
life preexist the discipline and the task is to
uncover those truths and organize knowledge.
However, following Foucault (1961; 1973;
1975) and the subsequent elaboration of psy discipline knowledge regimes and practices by Rose
(1985; 1999), the postmodern critique has argued
that the psy disciplines do not represent that
which preexists them; rather they create the
expertise which they then employ to measure
and categorize. Premised in this way, the psy
Crucially, in this Foucauldian framework, the
shaping of the subject is not simply a process of
psy expert knowledges being imposed on people;
rather, this is a bewildering set of practices people
also take on for themselves. The discourses,
metanarratives, and other apparatus of psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, etc., – in Foucauldian terms the dispositif of these regimes of
knowledge – provide people with the ways and
means of knowing and doing subjectivity. These
technologies create identities “out there,” but
they are also the means of thinking about and
experiencing oneself internally. They provide
the means of regulation and self-regulation. The
language and other practices of the disciplines
travel out of the disciplinary spheres into everyday life. They become resources for making
oneself into a particular “psychologized” subject,
understanding oneself to have particular
attributes of personality or intelligence, for example, to experience particular emotions and so on.
The argument is that subjectivity itself then does
not preexist historically located institutional
practices. Instead, the discourses and practices
of institutions such as the clinic, the prison, and
the school create the space, structure, content,
and meaning of being a subject and doing
subjectivity.
Historically, then, different institutional
practices create ways of being particular kinds
of subjects. Rose (1999) argues that in the
production of modern subjects, subjectivity and
Psyche
self-understanding, the psy disciplines are core
contributors. Knowledges constructed in the psy
disciplines, practiced in and through institutions,
train people into thinking of and experiencing
themselves in a particular set of ways as individuals responsible for the moral and practical
production of their own lives and behaviors,
responsible for their own personhood, and responsible for their own self-regulation. For Rose, this
operation of the psy disciplines is inextricably
bound with the neoliberal politics associated with
contemporary western democracies. Individuals
are required to understand themselves as responsible, autonomous, and choice-making subjects.
The psy disciplines train people in particular
configurations of “self” and “other,” to have
expectations, capacities, and understandings of
normativities and to be equipped to fit with
requirements of society. Notably, for Rose,
a critique of the psy disciplines is not necessarily
a critique of inappropriate technologies and practices but an explication of a set of means which
enable people to live with the burden of “liberty,”
“autonomy,” and “self-realization” which have
become the valued forms of living in contemporary western neoliberal politics (Rose). For others,
the politically expedient disciplinary power of
the psy knowledges also creates exclusions,
marginalizations, and capacities and means for
oppressions.
References
Billig, M. (2008). The hidden roots of critical psychology.
London: Sage.
Burman, E. (1994). Deconstructing developmental psychology. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1961). Madness and civilisation (R. Howard, Trans.). London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1973). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception (A. Sheridan, Trans., 1977).
London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The birth of
the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans., 1977). London:
Penguin Books.
Osborne, T. (1998). Aspects of enlightenment: Social theory and the ethics of truth. London: UCL Press
Limited.
Parker, I. (1994). Reflexive research and the grounding of
analysis: Social psychology and the psy-complex.
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Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology,
4, 239–252.
Rose, N. (1985). The psychological complex: Psychology,
politics and society 1869–1939. London: Routledge
and Kegan-Paul.
Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the
private self (2nd ed.). London: Free Association Press.
Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to
postcolonial theory. New York: Springer.
Psyche
Manolis Dafermos
Psychology Department, School of Social
Sciences, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece
Introduction
The question of the nature of the psyche and its
relation to the body is one of the most important
problems of philosophy and psychology. This
question has excited the attention of philosophers
and scientists that investigate it from radically
different points of view.
The word “psyche” has a long history and its
meaning has been transformed in different sociocultural settings. The psyche, as all psychological
concepts, is not a natural kind, but historically
constituted. Initially, the term “psyche” referred
to breathing, vital force, etc. Later, this term was
used to represent spiritual, immaterial substance.
The term “psyche” was used as the controlling
concept of psychology as a discipline (the logos
of the psyche or the study of the psyche).
The Greek term “psyche” has been translated
into Latin as “anima,” in English as “soul,” in
German as “Seele,” in French as “âme,” and in
Russian as “dusha.”
Definition
The psyche can be defined as a property of the
most highly organized forms of matter that
emerged and was transformed in a long natural
and cultural history. The psyche constitutes
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a specific kind of active reflection and orientation
of the subjects in the world. It is formed in the
context of practical interaction of subjects with
the world (Leontiev, 1981).
The psyche emerged within an evolutionary
process as an orientational and meaning function.
It constitutes the orienting activity of subjects
involved in situations with unique and nonstandardized tasks. The psyche serves to overcome the system of fixed responses of subjects
and their orientation in complex environments.
From this perspective, the psyche is connected
with the ability of the subjects to learn and
develop (Tolman, 1994).
The emergence of social relations and
human communication marks a new stage of
the development of the psyche. Consciousness
as a specific form of human psyche is socially
mediated and is transformed in the cultural
history. The development of the human psyche
is associated with two major mutually
connected processes: human labor engaged in
the transformation of the material world and
the linguistically and symbolically mediated
activity which promotes the communication
between people and control of psychological
processes.
Keywords
Psyche; soul; phylogenetics; consciousness;
activity theory; history; ontogeny
Traditional Debates
The Greek word “psyche” (or “psychein”) means
breathe or blow. In the Homeric Poems composed in the second half of the eighth century
BC, the psyche was identified with the vital
force linked to the individual body. Psyche was
closely connected with bodily locations (diaphragm or lungs, heart) and processes (breath)
(Rohde, 1987). In the context of Homeric
Poems, the psyche as purely spiritual, immaterial
substance was impossible.
Psyche
A mythical image of the psyche could also be
found in the myth of Eros and Psyche (or Cupid
and Psyche) created by Lucius Apuleius in the
second century AD in which the psyche was
a beautiful princess who fell in love with Cupid.
In ancient Greek philosophy, the appearance of
materialistic and idealistic approaches to the psyche and its connection with the body coexisted
with the idea of spontaneous, dialectical interconnection of body and psyche and psyche and
nature. In Aristotle’s (384–322 BC) essay
“Concerning the Psyche” (Greek: “Peri psyches,”
Latin: De Anima), the psyche is presented as the
form of a material living body. The psyche is not
an independent, immaterial substance and
could not exist separated from the living body
(MacDonald, 2003).
In the context of Christian discourse, the
meaning of the term “psyche” has been
transformed from a vital force into the “soul” as
immaterial, immortal, spiritual substance as part
of a person (Graumann, 1996).
The radical shift in understanding of psyche
came with R. Descartes (1596–1650). He used
not only the term “soul” (“âme”) but also the
term “mens” or mind. In contrast to Aristotle’s
examination of the soul as organically connected
to the natural body, R. Descartes regarded the
mind as a thinking thing (res cogitans),
a rational, incorporeal, immortal existence
(MacDonald, 2003). All mental processes of
humans (sensations, thoughts, feelings, imagination, will, etc.) were presented as individual
expressions of thought. However, Descartes’s
concept of cogito is much broader than just thinking as a psychological concept.
In accordance with materialistic, mechanistic
theories [T. Hobbes (1588–1679), J.O. La Mettrie
(1709–1751), etc.], the psyche is a function of the
brain and nervous system. The psyche can be
explained in the terms of psychical states of
body (brain, nervous system, etc.). La Mettrie
considered all psychological processes as products of the underlying bodily machine.
In contrast with materialistic, mechanistic
theories, idealistic approaches [G.W. Leibnitz
(1646–1716), C.Wolff (1679–1754), etc.]
Psyche
focused on the active character of the psyche
(soul) and its independence from the body state.
The soul and its activities became the object of
Wolff’s empirical and rational psychology.
Empirical psychology focused on the study of
the soul and its activities by direct introspection.
Rational psychology produced a priori and
deductive judgments about the soul. I. Kant
(1724–1804) criticized the “paralogisms” of
rational psychology’s claims about the soul as
an immaterial, spiritual, immortal substance
(Richards, 1980).
In Germany at the end of nineteenth century,
W. M. Wundt suggested the foundation of a “new
psychology” as a discipline of consciousness
(Bewusstseinswissenschaft) referring to interior,
self-contained states of individuals (Graumann,
1996). However, W.M. Wundt attempted also to
create a “second psychology” (V€olkerpsychologie)
focused on the analysis of the cultural and historically developed dimensions and products of the
psyche (i.e., myths, language, art, customs). It is
worth noting that in different European languages
(English, Russian, Greek, etc.), the word
“consciousness” refers to mutual knowledge,
knowing with others.
S. Freud (1856–1939) and C. Jung (1875–1961)
used the German word “Seele” as a synonym of
“psyche” which was enlarged to include not only
conscious possession as in Wundt’s works but also
unconscious. According to Carl Jung, the psyche is
the totality of psychological processes, conscious
as well as unconscious (The C.G. Jung page, The
C.G. Jung page, 2012).
At the end of the nineteenth century with the
rise of “new psychology,” the perspective of the
establishment of a science of psyche was
defeated. The term “soul” has been gradually
replaced by other terms (mind, behavior, etc.).
The word “mind” lost the spiritual, transcendental connotation of the term “psyche” and focused
mainly on the intellect and cognitive processes.
Before the advent of Watson’s behaviorism,
German philosopher, sociopolitical theorist, and
psychologist F.A. Lange (1828–1875) developed
a program of psychology without a soul. F.A.
Lange argued that the soul is an empty concept,
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an “old myth,” and psychology should focus on
actions and other manifestations of life (Teo, 2002).
J. Watson (1879–1958) and B. Skinner
(1904–1990) from the perspective of radical
behaviorism eliminated the term “soul” and
other concepts of rational and empirical psychology (consciousness, self, etc.). Psychology was
transformed into a discipline of behavior focused
on the study of external, observed, measured
stimulus and reactions.
One of the paradoxes of contemporary psychology is that despite fabricating and widely
using psyche-rooted neologisms (psychedelic,
psychotherapy, psychopathology, psychosis,
psychoanalysis, etc.), the term “psyche” is
marginalized in mainstream North-Atlantic
Psychology (Rollins, 1999). It can be defined
as the paradox of “psychology without psyche.”
In recent years, there has been talk of
reintroducing the concept of “psyche” into the
domain of psychology as a result of dissatisfaction with positivism and behaviorism.
In traditional academic psychology, the question of relationships between body and mind
(psyche, consciousness, etc.) arises again and
again. The first serious limitation of traditional
psychological discourse on psyche and its relation with the body was connected with the focus
on isolated individuals and the underestimating
of sociocultural dimensions of the psyche (mind,
consciousness, etc.). The second serious limitation of traditional psychological discourse is
the naturalization of the psyche and the ignoring
of the historical character of psychological
processes and psychological concepts.
Critical Debates
Cultural-historical psychology and activity
psychology emerged as an attempt to overcome
the dualism of traditional psychology. This
dualism was between the psychology of consciousness, representing the psyche in the
domain of individual, inner, internal mental
states and the behavioristic total rejection of the
psyche and consciousness. In accordance with
cultural-historical psychology and activity
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theory, the psyche and psychological processes
have a social character and are formed through
a long historical development. L. Vygotsky
(1896–1934) raised the issue of the reconstruction of the history of the human psyche in phylogenetics, in the history of civilization, and also in
ontogeny (Ballantyne, 2004).
A. N. Leontiev, from the perspective of activity theory, established a classical theory of the
origin of psyche, discovering the basic stages of
its development. Psyche (he used the term
“psychika”) was presented by A. N. Leontiev
(1981) as the orientation of a subject in
a heterogeneous environment. Psyche is involved
in the control and regulation of activity in organisms. A. N. Leontiev distinguished three stages of
the development of psyche in animals (sensory
psyche, perceptive psyche, animal intellect).
Human consciousness differs from animal psyche in its capacity for a reflection of material
reality in its separateness from the subject’s
actual attitudes to it. Consciousness as
a specifically human form of subjective reflection
of objective reality was presented by A. N.
Leontiev (1978) as a product of relations that
arise in the process of the development of society.
Moreover, human consciousness offers the possibility of developing self-observation of the subject in his/her own inner world.
K. Holzkamp (1927–1995), the founder of
German Critical Psychology, regarded the
psyche as the most fundamental category of psychology as science. K. Holzkamp, following
A. N. Leontiev (1903–1979), attempted to reconstruct the development of the psyche, by using
analysis of categories based on a functionalhistorical method. K. Holzkamp developed
a project about historicization of human psyche
on the basis of empirical evidence of various
sciences (sociology, history, biology, physiology,
ethology, anthropology, archaeology, etc.).
Following the evolutionary history of the psyche,
he developed a system of categories for
a conceptualization of the subject matter of psychology. In contrast to reductionist approaches,
Holzkamp focuses on qualitative transitions in
the development of psyche: the transition from
prepsychical to psychical organisms, the
Psyche
evolution of the capacity for learning and individual development, and the emergence of the
societal-historical form of development (Tolman,
1994; Teo, 1998).
Overcoming dualisms in traditional psychology
(mind-body, individual-social, natural-social, etc.),
matching different psychological processes and
psychological concepts are some of the main
tasks of psychology. The historical reconstruction
of the psyche raised by cultural-historical psychology, activity theory, and German critical psychology remains as a fundamental, open-ended issue of
psychology as science.
References
Ballantyne, P. F. (2004). Leontiev’s activity theory
approach to psychology: Activity as the “molar unit
of life” and his “levels of psyche”. Retrieved 20 Jan
2012 from http://www.igs.net/pballan/AT.htm
Graumann, C. (1996). Psyche and her descendants. In
C. Graumann & K. Gergen (Eds.), Historical
dimensions of psychological discourse (pp. 83–102).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leontiev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Leontiev, A. N. (1981). Problems of the Development of
the Mind (M. Kopylova, Trans.). Moscow: Progress
Publishers.
MacDonald, P. (2003). History of the concept of mind:
Speculations about soul, mind, and spirit from Homer
to Hume. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Richards, R. J. (1980). Christian Wolff’s prolegomena to
empirical and rational psychology: Translation and
commentary. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124(3), 227–239.
Rohde, E. (1987). Psyche: The cult of souls and the belief
in immortality among the Greeks. Chicago: Ares
Publishing.
Rollins, W. G. (1999). Soul and psyche: The bible in
psychological perspective. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.
Teo, T. (1998). Klaus holzkamp and the rise and decline of
German critical psychology. History of Psychology,
1(3), 235–253.
Teo, T. (2002). Friedrich Albert Lange on neoKantianism, socialist Darwinism, and a psychology
without a soul. Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, 38, 285–301.
The C.G.Jung page (2012). Psyche. Retrieved 10 Jan 2012
from
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option
¼com_content&task¼view&id¼752&Itemid¼41
Tolman, C. (1994). Psychology. Society and subjectivity.
An introduction to German critical psychology.
London: Routledge.
Psychic Space, Colonization
Psychic Space, Colonization
Esther Rapoport
Private Practice, Reidman College, Tel Aviv,
Israel
Introduction
In her book The Colonization of Psychic Space
(2004), the American philosopher Kelly Oliver
brings together psychoanalysis and postcolonial
theory in the hope of illuminating the damaging
effects of colonialism on the individual psyche of
the colonized subject and outlining the possibilities for transforming these effects through the
psychological processes of sublimation, idealization, and forgiveness.
Psychic Space: Definition and
Traditional Conceptualizations
The concept of psychic space has been developed
within the psychoanalytic tradition by theorists
such as Winnicott, Bion, Britton, Kristeva, and
Grotstein (Bléandonu, 1990; Grotstein, 1978;
Houzel, 2001; Kristeva, 1997; Ogden, 1985).
Variously named and defined (e.g., Winnicott
spoke of “potential space”), the space in question
is usually understood to be free, unoccupied, and
protected space within the individual’s mind and/
or at the meeting point between the mind and the
external reality, which allows for creativity, play,
symbolization, and meaning-making, as well as
the growth processes that rely on these functions,
to take place. Psychic space may contain psychic
objects within it that do not necessarily interfere
with its functions (Grotstein, 1978); however,
when it is forcefully taken over by an intrusive
and deadening internal object, it can no longer
fulfill its function, and psychopathology ensues
(Green, in Kohon, 1999; Ogden, 1985).
Keywords
Psychic space; colonization of the mind; decolonization of the mind; colonialism; postcolonial;
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Fanon; Kristeva; sublimation; idealization; forgiveness; alienation; valuation; the third
Critical Debates
In an entirely different disciplinary context,
a highly politicized one, many decolonization
activists and postcolonial thinkers have spoken
of the colonization of the mind, pointing out that
this is a vital, perhaps core, aspect of colonial
domination. For African postcolonial philosophy,
in particular, colonization and decolonization of
the mind have been among its central concerns
(Dascal, 2008). Colonization of the mind involves
replacing the culture of the colonized with that of
the colonizer, and brainwashing the colonized
into believing that their culture and their very
selves are inferior to the colonizer’s; the resultant
sense of inferiority dominates the inner life of the
colonized as well as the social dynamics
between the colonized and the colonizers. The
psychic and social dynamics related to the colonization of the mind tend to persist long after the
formal dismantlement of the colonial structures
in a given society. Fanon’s Black Skin, White
Masks (2008/1952) and The Wretched of the
Earth (1963), Chinweizu’s (1987) Decolonizing
the African Mind, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s (1994)
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, and Nandy’s
(1983) The Intimate Enemy: The Loss and
Recovery of Self Under Colonialism are some
of the works that shed light on the psychological
mechanisms of mind colonization and advocate
for various methods of its decolonization.
Some have argued for categorical and complete
rejection of the colonizer’s culture and way
of life as the only way to decolonize the mind
(e.g., Hotep, 2008), while others suggested that
such categorical rejection of all things nonnative
is not necessarily liberating (Nandy, 1983) and
pointed out that once the colonized are able to
develop a certain kind of subjectivity, the colonizer’s culture may no longer be a threat
(Nandy). Dascal (2008) argued that to decolonize their minds, the colonized had to stop
accepting the epistemic authority of the
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colonizer, i.e., believing that the latter’s knowledge was superior.
Drawing heavily on the work of Julia Kristeva
and Frantz Fanon, Oliver (2004) provides an
account of the processes of colonization and
decolonization of psychic space that incorporates
insights from both the psychoanalytic and
the postcolonial theories. Oliver focuses on the
affective representations of drives, or bodily
impulses, as the link between the body and signification. In order for the drives to be transformed
into affects and reach signification, the capacity for
sublimation is required. Because the colonized are
excluded from meaning-making in the given society, the colonized subject will find it difficult to
sublimate; likewise, the related capacity for idealization, which is the precondition for imagining
the possibility of transformation and setting goals
for action, will become impaired. Following
Fanon, Oliver also suggests that in the colonial
situation, the unwanted affects of the colonizers
are deposited into the bodies of the colonized.
Being forced to take in the negative affects of the
colonizers while being excluded from the signifying structures and thus unable to articulate their
own bodies gives rise, in the colonized, to the
internal reality of debilitating alienation and
shame. Finding no way out, the “negative affects
of oppression” (Oliver, p. 153) turn inward, producing depression and somatic symptoms.
According to Oliver, “colonization of psychic
space is the occupation or invasion of social
forces – values, traditions, laws, mores, institutions, ideals, stereotypes, etc. – that restrict or
undermine the movement of bodily drives into
signification” (p. 43). When the translation of
bodily drives into meaning is undermined in this
way, psychic space becomes restricted. One
becomes cutoff from the world of meaning and
one’s affects turn inward; as a result, subjectivity,
identity, and agency become impossible, and
depression and self-hatred follow.
Oliver extends the concept of the colonization of
psychic space beyond the actual colonial and
postcolonial situations, arguing that it is applicable
to sexism as well as racism and suggesting that
other marginalized groups (e.g., queers) may also
have their psychic space colonized in various ways.
Psychic Space, Colonization
To decolonize their psychic space, Oliver
argues the colonized need to develop their own
value systems; moreover, they must reevaluate
the very structure of valuation in the given society, opening it up for transformation. The colonized must “articulate [their] own bodies and
lives and thereby transform the very means of
production of value” (p. 42). What makes such
revaluing and new meaning-making possible is
the presence of the third (a concept Oliver
borrows from psychoanalysis, via Kristeva’s
work on imaginary father, and transposes into
the broader social context), as a loving, supportive social force that can enable the colonized
subject to experience her singularity and agency,
obtained through psychic revolt (also a Kristevan
concept), within a community. The formerly colonized is then able to experience forgiveness, in
the Hegelian sense of overcoming alienation and
being reintegrated into the community.
References
Bléandonu, G. (1990). Wilfred Bion. His life and works
1897–1979. London: Free Association Books.
Chinweizu. (1987). Decolonising the African mind.
Lagos, Nigeria: Pero Publishers.
Dascal, M. (2008). Colonizing and decolonizing minds.
http://doc.downloadzite.com/read-file-at-downloadzite/.
Accessed April 24, 2012, from http://www.tau.ac.il/
humanities/philos/dascal/publications.html
Fanon, F. (2008/1952). Black skin, white masks. London:
Pluto Press.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York:
Grove Press.
Grotstein, J. (1978). Inner space: Its dimensions and its
coordinates. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,
59, 55–61.
Hotep, U. 2008. Decolonizing the African mind: Further
analysis and strategy. Accessed April 27, 2012, from
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99562978/Decolonizingthe-African-Mind-Further-Analysis-and-Strategy-byDr-Uhuru-Hotep
Houzel, D. (2001). The ‘nest of babies’ fantasy. Journal of
Child Psychotherapy, 27(2), 125–138.
Kohon, G. (Ed.). (1999). The dead mother: The work of
André Green. London/New York: Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (1997). The new maladies of the soul.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy: The loss and
recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi, India:
Oxford University Press.
Psychic Structures
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1994). Decolonising the mind: The
politics of language in African literature. London:
James Currey.
Ogden, T. (1985). On potential space. The International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66(2), 129–141.
Oliver, K. (2004). The colonization of psychic space:
A psychoanalytic social theory of oppression.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Online Resources
Parts of Oliver’s book. The colonization of psychic space:
A psychoanalytic social theory of oppression may be
read
online
at
http://www.google.co.il/books?
hl¼iw&lr¼&id¼6QPirqosgPcC&oi¼fnd&pg¼PR9&dq¼Oliver+effects+of+oppression&ots¼gQ0Nhdnxkq&s
ig¼-vWu4eniPSb7trT9n_SVE1sqD4Q&redir_esc¼y
#v¼onepage&q¼Oliver%20effects%20of%20oppress
ion&f¼false
Fanon’s Black skin, white masks and Nandy’s the
intimate enemy are available online in full text at
http://melodypanosian.info/wp-content/uploads/2011
/05/Frantz-Fanon-Black-skin-White-masks.pdf
http://multiworldindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/
the-intimate-enemy.pdf
Psychic Structures
Lucie Cantin
Groupe Interdisciplinaire Freudien de Recherche
et d’Intervention Clinique et Culturelle, GIFRIC,
Québec, Canada
Introduction
We owe to Lacan the notion of psychic structure
and the identification of three distinct structures:
psychosis, neurosis, and perversion. In his return
to Freud, Lacan gave all of its clinical weight to
Freud’s intuition that important mechanisms
other than repression were at work in the treatment of the life of the drives and of the reality
principle.
Bound up with the structuralism of his epoch,
Lacan established the framework within which it
was possible to support this Freudian intuition
and to think it through beyond the developmental
perspective. He clarified that the psyche is organized by a structure given by the fantasy that
defines, in the unconscious, the subject’s position
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with regard to a jouissance that is censored by
language, a jouissance that does not pass through
the signifier. In this path traced by Lacan, his
disciples will develop three possible positions of
the subject with respect to this jouissance: repression and compromise in neurosis, denial in perversion, and foreclosure in psychosis.
Such an approach, which inscribes itself
beyond observable symptomatology, presupposes that we take the radicality of the Freudian
unconscious into account. That is to say, a scene
other than that of perception-consciousness,
where the Thing (das Ding) is at work, i.e. an
obscure energy investing mental representations
that are never named because they are censored
albeit inscribed (as mnemic traces) in the body
where they remain always active.
Definition
The psychic structure refers to a dynamic and
economic organization of the lieu which is the
unconscious, an organization determined by precise mechanisms that manage Das Ding, which is
the free energy of the drive at work in the unconscious, in search of a satisfaction that is outside
the bounds of language and unconcerned with the
pleasure and reality principles. From the mechanisms at work in that management and the subjective positions that arise from it, Freudian and
later, Lacanian, psychoanalysis identified three
distinct psychic structures: psychosis, neurosis
and perversion.
Keywords
Psychoanalysis; psychosis; neurosis; perversion;
jouissance; the thing; unconscious; denial; repression; foreclosure; structure; fantasy; language.
History
With the “polymorphous perversion” of the child
(Freud, 1905), Freud posits, at the very constitutive origin of the human subject’s constitution,
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the production of the body as an eroticized body,
detached from the organism, turned away from its
biological functions and inhabited by the search
for a satisfaction different from one based on
a logic of pleasure/unpleasure (Freud, 1915).
With this primary perversion at the basis of the
production of the desirous body, Freud conceives
the drive: an active psychic energy that is not
bound by the imperatives of life, and that is at
work investing goals and objects in search of
a satisfaction that is unnamable and (socially)
non-receivable because obscene. For the first
time in the development of the knowledge of
humanity, Freud posits an energy in the human
that terminates in a jouissance quite useless from
the standpoint of nature and not to be confused
with the search for pleasure.
Psychosis poses most directly the fundamental
elements of subjective experience. A “Thing”
introduced by the Other, rejected by language,
has eroticized the being and produced the body,
where it is at work, and the being feels itself
subjected to the work of this Thing, which cannot
be grasped or known except in the effects of his
jouissance. Taken over by Voices, assailed by
unbearable thoughts that impose themselves
upon him and make him act against his will,
delivered up to corporeal manifestations that he
does not control and that torture his flesh, the
psychotic is submitted to the work of a nameless
jouissance that the language and signification it
makes possible have been (and continue to be)
impotent to manage.
What constitutes psychosis is the solution that
the psychotic develops and promotes. The psychotic identifies jouissance as a fundamental Evil
and imputes it to a failure of language to circumscribe, name, and hence to manage this jouissance. What constitutes his malaise is the idea
that it is up to him alone to solve this original
Evil, in a mission in which he invests himself
entirely with the pretention of producing a new
language for a new social bond. A language that
will make a place for this jouissance and that will
transform the disorder of humanity into a creative
evolution.
Classically, two types of solution are distinguished: schizophrenia and paranoia. The
Psychic Structures
schizophrenic carries in his body this thing that
is censored by language and that not only cannot
find a symbolic space that makes it bearable, if
not desirable, but risks destroying language and
the social bond. The mission of the schizophrenic
will go by way of the sacrifice of his very being,
which contains the cause of the Evil identified as
the primordial fault responsible for the destruction of humanity. The paranoiac will elaborate
rather the unmeasured ambition to reconstruct the
language itself in order to re-found the symbolic
and produce a new world order, a “new humanity,” says Schreber.
As regards the pervert, in the very organization of the life of his drives, he bears witness to
a veritable terror, mixed with fascination, in the
face of a jouissance that would not be controllable, that is at work in his body and that he experiences as the potential source of the annihilation
or disappearance of his being. As if he had experienced very early the destructive, indeed murderous violence borne by the free energy of the
drive in jouissance. In order to parry the action
within him of a censored jouissance, the perverse
subject produces in reality the staging of a system
whose function is to maintain the illusion of
a mastery of jouissance, in the Other.
Traditional Debates
With fetishism, Freud places at the center of
perversion a mechanism different from repression: denial (Verleugnung). But what is essentially at stake in fetishism is the object on
which the Verleugnung bears: the fetishist,
says Freud, denies the reality of the castration
of the Mother and designates a fetish object as
“a substitute for the mother’s penis” that he
“does not want to give up” (Freud, 1927,
pp 152–53). By way of this denial of the castration of the Mother, it is of course the
castration of the subject that is avoided, denied
after having been noted.
In the logic of Freud’s thought, the maintenance of the existence of the penis in the
Mother functions to negate her “penis envy.”
Here, Penisneid should be understood as the
Psychic Structures
woman’s envy of phallic jouissance, i.e. of
a limited jouissance centered on an organ, in
order to screen her from, and to place at
a distance, feminine jouissance, which is all
too open to the unforeseeable and unlimited
return of the censored. The denial of the
absence of the penis in the Mother is therefore
more exactly the denial of this lack in the
Mother and it will constitute the first step in
the perverse subject’s solution of the problem
posed by an unlimited work of jouissance. To
make of the Mother a phallic woman will shelter him from this limitless and nameless jouissance that is at work in the female body of his
mother.
In the field of psychosis, Freud addressed the
elaboration of the delusive construction as an
attempt at a solution by the paranoiac (Freud,
1924a). But, by his own admission, he was not
able to apply the psychoanalytical method of
treatment to the psychotic. Recognizing in the
paraphrenia the withdrawal of the libidinous
energy from the world of objects (Freud, 1914),
Freud perceived in that narcissistic retreat the
impossible installation of transference. He nevertheless expressed the hope and the wish that,
one day, changes could be made to the analytical
technique that would allow for the treatment of
psychosis.
The neurotic solution goes by way of the repression of all jouissance other than what language
authorizes. But whoever says repression, Freud
reminds us, necessarily says return of the
repressed, hence symptom-formation, and the sudden appearance of acting-out and failed acts – in
short, productions and manifestations of the unconscious that repression will forever be impotent to
eradicate. The neurotic solution is the imaginary
that foments and nourishes the illusion of
a possible compromise. If he wants to know nothing of a jouissance not controlled by language, the
neurotic also refuses the reality that poses an obstacle to what the drive seeks in the unconscious.
Thus, confronted with the reality principle, which
poses an obstacle to the fantasy, the neurotic
rearranges, reconstructs an “imaginary” reality
(Freud, 1924b), an imaginary social bond against
the reality of castration.
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Critical Debates
Lacan and the analysts of his school have
followed the indications given by Freud and
developed the specificity of perversion as
a psychic structure, notably by articulating the
denial of the Mother’s castration with the invalidation and denegation of the paternal phallus as
signifier of the desire of the Father in the discourse of the mother and therefore of the symbolic law to which a woman’s desire ought to
have been articulated. Lacan thus establishes
what is at stake directly at the level of discourse,
of the signifier, thereby suppressing an ambiguity
too often maintained between penis and phallus.
The denial of the castration of the Mother is the
denial of the phallus as signifier of the lack (here
the Mother’s lack); its removal from discourse
leaves it outside of language. The Lacanian analysts (Clavreul, 1978) will make manifest the
double dimension of the denial, i.e. the necessity
that the Law of the symbolic be first recognized in
order to then be denied, the pervert investing
in this double task of maintaining its presence in
order to reiterate its disavowal.
In the perspective of the last teachings of
Lacan, oriented toward the real and jouissance,
the masochist – in organizing a total selfabandonment to the Other in a jouissance whose
limit remains in the Other’s power, even up to
possible death – reveals what is truly going on in
perversion, namely the implication of the Other
in the control of the consequences of jouissance.
Still more clearly than the fetishist, the masochist – in the organized simulacrum of his
self-abandonment to the jouissance of another
whose true Master he remains – illustrates well
that it is above all a matter of escaping from the
Other, i.e. from what the Other could set off in
him that would not be controllable.
Through what arrangement to control the
Other who introduces a demand, a speech,
a jouissance that mobilizes the unconscious and
provokes a response with unforeseeable consequences? This will be the question to which the
perverse solution will pretend to respond. Thus,
the pervert does not speak or act, either of which
would engage him as a subject in a relation to the
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Other that would risk mobilizing in his being this
unknown and anguishing real in which he loses
control of his life.
The scenario is situated there, in lieu of a true
speech or act, and organizes a mise-en-scène in
the real which is in itself the demonstration of the
uselessness of the phallus as signifier of the desire
of the Other. A contract sets up with the chosen
partner the necessary, repeatable, non-negotiable,
and explicit conditions of the appearance of
jouissance in the Other. Through the mise-enscène which dispenses them both of any speechact, the pervert at once pretends to deny the
usefulness of the signifier and to regulate ultra
precisely the release of a – henceforth controlled –
jouissance.
Further, the acting-out that comes to replay
and reinforce the pervert scenario emerges at
precise times: in moments of anxiety occasioned
by the unveiling of the scenario-construction,
when its factual existence has been perceived
and undone by the other or questioned by
a manifestation of the unconscious. The demand
of another – namely a woman –, or any other who
foregrounds the work of a feminine jouissance
that is assimilable to what was working in the
body of the Mother but that the pervert cannot
control – risks provoking a violence or a profound
anxiety to which he responds by a form of acting
out that negates this other.
Through this construction, which pretends to
control jouissance and to escape from the symbolic Other – whom any other in reality can
incarnate – the pervert intends to maintain an
absolute separation between the space of the
social bond and the space opened by the eroticism where a censored jouissance is at work
that in fact cannot be managed except through
its expression in an aesthetics and an ethics of
the relation to the Other. This external division
that comes in the place of the division of the
subject is the very figure of the denial of castration, as the pervert refutes the possibility of
the phallus, of a speech or an act that could
provide a place in the symbolic for a piece of
jouissance. As if no Other could provide
a credible and reliable guarantee of an ethical
frame that would make possible the evocation
Psychic Structures
and the expression of the jouissance that is
working through the body.
With the notion of “symbolic abolition”
(Freud, 1911; Freud, 1918), Freud attempted to
account for the hallucination that resulted from
the abolition, in the symbolic, of the possibility of
a (socially) receivable representation for the part
of the censored that remains active and demands
a place in returning to haunt the real.
In his approach to psychosis, Lacan takes up
again this idea of symbolic abolition and radicalizes it with the notion of foreclosure, specifying
the object of the foreclosure that he conceives to
be at the origin of psychosis: the foreclosure of
the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father [Nom-duPère] (Lacan, 1955–56; 1957–58). That is to say,
the radical absence of a primary metaphor, the
paternal metaphor which as such opens the child
to the universe of the symbol and to the field of
speech as to a space of possible symbolization in
which he can produce metaphors, signifiers that
don’t say reality but evoke hallucinatory experience, the imaginary and fantasmatic world, and
enable the subject to negotiate a jouissance other
than the one that language authorizes.
In the perspective of psychoanalytic clinic, it
is not the presence of a delusion or hallucinations
that as such define psychosis, but rather the mission to which the psychotic devotes himself,
which envisages the reconstruction of a new
language in order to repair for all of humanity
the fault responsible for the destructive work of
jouissance. The production of the delusion, in
which the psychotic identifies a particular Evil,
establishes his status as elect – based on an inexplicable revelation – and determines the objectives of his mission, constitutes a spontaneous
attempt at recovery (Apollon, Bergeron, &
Cantin, 2000). The delusion is not the primary
experience of the psychotic but rather the retrospective development of an explanation or interpretation that would justify his experience of
finding himself invaded in his body and in all
of his being by the manifestations of
a jouissance beyond meaning, the debilitating
effects of which he experiences in all of his life.
The problem in psychosis is not fundamentally this other jouissance but rather the language
Psychic Structures
that cannot provide a space for the censored
jouissance, which is pushing the subject to act
(Apollon, 2013). This innovative apprehension of
psychosis opens the possibility of its treatment
through speech. It is not that the psychotic lacks
something essential, but rather: he poses in
a radical manner what is also a problem in the
impasse encountered by neurosis and perversion,
namely the impossibility of producing in the symbolic an expressive pathway for the jouissance
that is rejected by language that structures the
social bond. The analyst’s position creates and
supports an ethical framework, offering
a credible space for the reception of a speech
that evokes the unsaid, the unsayable, the
nonpresentable, and restores a symbolic space
for the managing of the effects of this jouissance
beyond meaning that is at work in the
psychotic. This speech produces effects of reorganization in the body and in the relation to the
Other, and it modifies the subject’s relation to
the other jouissance, which finds itself
transformed, limited, and divided by signifiers
produced in the act of speech, rendering progressively useless the delusional interpretation and
the psychotic mission. (Apollon, Bergeron, &
Cantin, 2008; Cantin, 2009).
The Mirror Stage (Lacan, 1949), and along
this same trajectory, the entry into the Oedipus
in which the Ego [le Moi] constructs and consolidates itself and its narcissistic investment against
the work of jouissance, mark the position of the
neurotic. The neurotic invests the signifier that
names, organizes, and produces meaning against
the real of a jouissance that is at work in the
unconscious, never named, beyond language,
and that mobilizes the letter of the body, returning
in the uncontrollable form of unforeseeable acts
and symptoms.
In order to guarantee himself against the work
of the unconscious, the neurotic precipitates himself in an imaginary identification, producing an
image of himself that would be in conformity to
the ideals and prohibitions of the time and that
would respond to the demands of the Other (parents, society, culture), the proper guard-rail
against the real of jouissance. The production of
this Other – a place that an other can occupy in
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the neurotic’s reality – that would guarantee
the barrier against uncontrollable jouissance is
what is at stake in the construction of the seduction-fantasy of which the Oedipus is the first
version.
The difficulty in the clinic of neurosis resides
no doubt in the retreat of the neurotic faced with
the responsibility for the jouissance that works in
the unconscious. This retreat goes at once by way
of the maintenance of an imaginary Other who is
made responsible for the prohibitions and hence
for the castration of the subject, and by way of the
fantasy that allows for a satisfaction that is nonnegotiated – extracted and “hidden” from the
(imaginary) Other – as a way in which the neurotic intends to manage the censored. The symptom, the failed act, and acting-out by keeping
jouissance outside of the signifier (unnamed and
hence non-transformed), enable the neurotic to
shirk on the responsibility for what returns thus
into the real, estranged from the Ego, as a witness
to what is at work in the unconscious.
International and Practice Relevance
and Future Directions
If one approaches psychic life by way of the logic
that regulates in each of the structures the subject’s position with respect to a jouissance that is
censored by language, one becomes capable of
distinguishing between illness and structure. One
can then identify precisely the possible stumbling
blocks that will turn into “illness” what is actually
the impasse in which the subject finds himself in
the management of this jouissance and its effects
in social coexistence. This creates the possibility
of a psychoanalytic clinic that will envisage not
a change of structure but a modification of the
subject’s position, which will remove the
impasse in requiring a new ethics and producing
for the expression of the censored a space other
than the symptom, the delusion, or the enactment
of a scenario. The history of civilizations, sciences, and religions is overflowing with neurotics, perverts, and psychotics who, basing
themselves precisely on the fantasy that governs
the logic of their psychic lives, have enabled the
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determining advances that constitute the heritage
of humanity.
Such a conception refocused, following Freud,
on what is at the heart of the subject’s constitution
becomes universal. Indeed, it refers back to what
any human being faces, whatever the period, the
culture or the civilization in which he lives,
namely, on one hand, the presence of representations of things – a fantastic, imaginary, hallucinatory world – and its investment by an energy
from then on diverted from the natural logic of
life and, on the other hand, the necessary management of that unique mental universe in relation to the requirements and constraints of social
coexistence. Such a perspective makes visible the
ways through which a symptomatology develops
by abiding to the diversities of historical, social
and cultural contexts that shape it by determining
the censored and the frameworks where its
expression and management are possible or not.
That perspective thus opens up new avenues of
research, analysis and treatment for the development of the clinic, among other things, by
inscribing itself beyond the inevitable peculiarities and changes of the phenomenology
presented, on which are too often focused nowadays the objectives of the treatment.
References
Apollon, W. (2013). Le traitement psychanalytique des
psychoses: ses principes, ses stratégies, sa logique, ses
conclusions. In Un avenir pour le psychotique, Le
dispositif du traitement psychanalytique (pp. 61–76).
Québec, Canada: Les éditions du Gifric.
Apollon, W., Bergeron, D., & Cantin, L. (2008). La cure
psychanalytique du psychotique : Enjeux et stratégies.
Québec, Canada: Les éditions du Gifric.
Apollon, W., Bergeron, D., & Cantin, L. (2000). The
treatment of psychosis. In K. R. Malone & S. R.
Friedlander (Eds.), The subject of Lacan, a Lacanian
reader for psychologists (pp. 209–227). New York:
SUNY.
Cantin, L. (2009). An effective treatment of psychosis
with psychoanalysis in Quebec City, since 1982.
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March 15, 2012, from http://www.discourseunit.com/
annual-review/arcp-7-lacan-and-critical-psychology/
Clavreul, J. (1978). Perversions. In Encyclopedia
Universalis (Vol. 12, pp. 844–845). France: Encyclopedia Universalis.
Psychoanalysis
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality.
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(pp. 123–244). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1911). Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (Dementia
paranoides). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition
of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud
(Vol. 12, pp. 1–82). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: An introduction. In
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psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14,
pp. 73–102). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1915). Papers on metapsychology. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14,
pp. 105–216). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1918). From the history of an infantile neurosis.
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pp. 7–122). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1924a). Neurosis and psychosis. In J. Strachey
(Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 149–153).
London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1924b). The loss of reality in neurosis and
psychosis. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition
of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud
(Vol. 19, pp. 183–187). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1927). Fetishism. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The
standard edition of the complete psychological works
of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 21, pp. 147–158). London:
Hogarth Press.
Lacan, J. (1949). Le stade du miroir comme formateur de
la fonction du Je. In E´crits (pp. 93–100). Paris: Seuil,
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Lacan, J. (1955–56). Le Séminaire. Livre III. Les
psychoses. Paris: Seuil, 1981.
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Paris: Seuil, 1966.
Psychoanalysis
Roger Frie
Educational Psychology and Human
Development, Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Introduction
Psychoanalysis fundamentally challenges standard psychological accounts of human experience. Psychoanalysis was originally developed
Psychoanalysis
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by Sigmund Freud to analyze the unconscious
experience of patients with a history of trauma.
For many psychologists, psychoanalysis is still
identified exclusively with Freud. This is
a misperception and overlooks the diverse and
ever-growing body of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Psychoanalysis today
consists of many different schools, some of which
have little relation to Freud.
subject and clinical concerns; on the emergence
of a contemporary psychoanalytic approach that
eschews objectivism and neutrality and emphasizes the role of the psychoanalytic relationship
in the therapeutic process; and on a nonreductionist approach to persons and their problems in living that challenges dominant diagnostic schemas and technique-driven, manualized
approaches in psychotherapy.
Definition
Keywords
The plurality of psychoanalytic viewpoints began
with the divergence of early psychoanalytic
adherents such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung,
Ludwig Binswanger, Melanie Klein, Otto Rank,
Wilhelm Reich, and Sandor Ferenczi. The history
of psychoanalysis is replete with the formation of
distinct approaches to theory and practice, from
ego psychology and Kleinian and Bionian
psychoanalysis to object relations, self psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and relational,
interpersonal, intersubjective, and existential
psychoanalysis. While it is difficult to speak of
a unitary definition of psychoanalysis, these
approaches share an appreciation of the multiplicity of emotional life as well as a focus on
the therapeutic relationship as a vehicle for
psychological change.
Any account of psychoanalysis will necessarily be selective. This discussion will be confined
to those theories that contribute to the critique of
essentializing trends in psychology. For critical
psychologists, psychoanalysis can provide alternative frameworks for conceptualizing such central themes as the human subject, the unconscious
and otherness, gender and sexuality, context and
culture, clinical practice, and psychiatric diagnosis. In examining each of these themes, the focus
will be on the psychoanalytic critique of Cartesian rationalism, which is cloaked in the guise of
the self-sufficient subject and dispassionate
objectivity; on psychoanalytic explorations of
gender and sexuality that reveal dominant forms
of rationality and assumptions about power and
patriarchy; on the irreducibility of social contexts
and cultural influence in the formation of the
Unconscious; otherness; desire; language;
gender; sexuality; feminism; culture; contexts;
intersubjectivity; hermeneutics; dialogue; critical
theory; existentialism; philosophy
Critical Debates
The Unconscious and Otherness
The radicality of Freud’s project of psychoanalysis
lay in its assertion that the capacity to reason is
undermined by unconscious forces. In a general
sense, the unconscious refers to thoughts and emotions that are experienced outside of conscious
awareness, whether as a result of inattention, dissociation, or repression, and shape psychological
life. The notion of the unconscious presents
a direct challenge to Cartesian rationalism. In contrast to Descartes’ self-aware and self-determining
subject, psychoanalysts emphasize the inevitability of distortion in human thought.
Freud presents a variable picture of the human
mind by combining rationalism with irrationalism. Freud subverts the Enlightenment belief
that reason enables us to be conscious agents of
all our actions. The Freudian subject is determined as much by desire and fantasy as it is by
a compilation of past and present experience.
According to Freud, we are never truly masters
in our own house. In taking this stand, Freud
lends credence to an entire tradition of German
philosophy from F.W.J. Schelling through
Friedrich Nietzsche. The philosopher, Paul
Ricoeur (1970), refers to Freud’s approach as
a “hermeneutics of suspicion.”
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Freud believes that reason can be used to
strengthen the conscious mind, but he also seeks
to do justice to the underside of reason, namely,
the unconscious. The tension between these two
seemingly oppositional forces – rationalism and
irrationalism – is evident in his best-known dictums. Freud remarks that “Where id was, there
shall ego become” (Freud, 1933, p. 111) yet also
states that “The ego is not master in its own
house” (Freud, 1917, p. 143). The former statement demonstrates Freud’s loyalty to the Enlightenment and forms the cornerstone of ego
psychology. The latter statement is endorsed in
the work of Jacques Lacan and proponents of
decentration, who seek to undermine the view
of the ego as the center of all action and
motivation.
Lacan sought to follow Freud by rethinking
the unconscious in relation to language, hence his
famous principle, “the unconscious is structured
like a language” (Lacan, 1977, p. 203). In
Lacan’s work, the unconscious is understood as
a function of language, and he asserts that the
experience of sexuality is something that occurs
through language. For Lacan, the symbolic order
is experienced as profoundly dislocative.
Because the subject is dependent upon expressing
itself through signifiers whose meanings have
been endowed by others, the symbolic order separates the subject from itself, resulting in
a fundamental misapprehension. The gap
between the expression of self-identity in language and the subject’s actual experience constitutes the otherness of language, which Lacan
refers to as the subject of the unconscious. The
symbolic order is not constituted by conscious
thoughts, but rather is understood as constituting
the subject.
Together, Freud and Lacan present a view of
the subject as fundamentally divided by the
dislocating impact of the unconscious and the
otherness of language on all psychological experience. Their account forms an important contrast
to the essentialist view of the human being as
self-determining, coherent, and self-aware,
though Freud’s stalwart belief in the relevance
of universals is rejected by post-Freudian, contemporary psychoanalytic traditions.
Psychoanalysis
In contrast with Freud and Lacan, contemporary relational psychoanalysts focus less on the
divided nature of the subject than on the social
and cultural constitution of all psychological life.
They reject any attempt to reify the self or the
unconscious and question the universalism at
work in traditional accounts of psychoanalysis.
Using a post-Cartesian perspective, relational
psychoanalysts see selfhood as infused with otherness and view psychological processes such as
the mind and unconscious as socially and culturally constituted.
Gender and Sexuality
Psychoanalysts have traditionally viewed sexual
desire as a central aspect of human experience.
Freud argues that the drive for satisfaction, born
of unconscious desire, structures the nature of
human relationships. The fact that desire often
conflicts with the norms of society gives rise to
a mind in conflict. From a young age, children are
forced to balance desire with the needs of others
and society as a whole.
Freud suggests that life begins in a state of
“polymorphous perversity,” in which the child is
not predisposed to desire any particular person or
body. As children develop through the early stages
of childhood, however, the fluidity of sexual desire
is determined by a gendered system, after which
desire is channelled towards sexual reproduction
in preexisting societal structures. For gender theorists and feminist psychoanalysts, the societal
repression of sexual desire that begins early in
life is useful for understanding the dynamics of
sexual difference and gender hierarchy.
Psychoanalytic perspectives on gender and
feminism are generally divided along two lines:
object relations and contemporary relational psychoanalysis on the one hand and Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-structuralism on the other
(cf. Elliot, 2002). Whereas the former views
gender and sexuality in terms of relational development and social contexts, the latter seeks to
deconstruct gender through recourse to the structuring and dislocating impact of the symbolic
order.
For psychoanalytic feminists in the relational
school (cf. Jessica Benjamin, Nancy Chodorow),
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s grounding of sexual difference in terms
of the presence (masculinity) or absence (femininity) of the phallus betrays his misogynistic
view of gender. They challenge essentialist definitions of gender and of maternity and mothering
on the basis of an intersubjective account of
development. The experience of gender and sexuality is not seen as essentialist or as an individual
creation, but as generated through gendered relationships and repressive social norms. The goals
of emotional awareness, interpersonal communication, and societal change are of central
importance to gender transformation.
Lacanian feminism (cf. Juliet Mitchell) similarly engages in a critique of patriarchy but sees
the definition of sexual difference as located in
the unconscious. For Lacan, the differentiation of
sexuality is an effect of the impact of language on
the body. In other words, sexual difference is not
a pre-given biological essence, but the result of
the phallic structure of society itself. For postLacanians (cf. Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva),
women are seen as the excluded Other of masculine discourse and culture.
Though different in many ways, both perspectives investigate the lack of agency in women and
seek to explain the formation of gender in social
and political contexts. Feminist psychoanalysts
challenge biological accounts of gender that have
so often been used to justify and perpetuate patriarchal society. They demonstrate that gender identity and sexual division are products of society and
the symbolic order and are furthered in interpersonal relationships. Psychoanalytic theories of gender and sexual difference challenge psychology’s
traditional assumptions about sexuality and have
had a powerful impact on the discussion of gender
identity (cf. Judith Butler). In contrast to normative
definitions, they emphasize gender fluidity, the
hidden forces of power and patriarchy, and need
for social and cultural change.
International Relevance: Culture and
Context
In Freud’s model of the mind, the subject is in
constant negotiation with its own desire and the
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demands of the external world. While Freud complicates the notion of self-determination, his
approach neglects the constitutive role of social
contexts and culture in the formation of all
self-experience, an argument initially made by
Alfred Adler. Beginning in the 1920s, diverse
psychoanalysts developed alternative ways of
understanding the subject’s relation to others
and the sociocultural world. Chief among these
was Erich Fromm of the Frankfurt School of
Critical Theory, which included Max
Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert
Marcuse. They sought to position the subject
within social, political, and ideological relations,
revealing the inalterable effect of these forces on
human experience.
Taking its cue from the dialogical tradition of
Marxist thought, Fromm’s work forms an important part of the so-called relational turn in psychoanalysis. Fromm posited a primary human
relatedness that precedes the emergence of the
individual. Not only is the intrapsychic realm
defined by Freud secondary to the interpersonal
dimension, but Fromm sees the interpersonal
dimension as itself subordinate to the wider
sociocultural context of experience. As early as
the 1930s, he argues that society is always at
work in the person so that the person exists as
a fundamentally social being: “Society and the
individual are not ‘opposite’ to each other. Society is nothing but living, concrete individuals,
and the individual exists only as a social human
being” (Fromm, 2010, p. 58).
Following his emigration to N. America,
Fromm joined with Harry Stack Sullivan and
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to form the interpersonal school of psychoanalysis at the William
Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York, which was
initially referred to as the “Culturalist School of
Psychoanalysis.” The emphasis on culture was
a distinctive break with Freudian psychoanalysis,
which espoused a universal theory of drives and
a focus on the constituent parts of the psyche. For
interpersonal psychoanalysts, the focus is on the
interaction between persons, not on discovering
structures within the mind of the person. Interpersonalists assert that events that unfold in
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a relational dyad must be understood within the
contexts in which they occur.
For contemporary psychoanalysis, a tradition
that broadly includes the British independents
and North American relational, interpersonal,
and intersubjective orientations, psychological
life is formed in a nexus of relational interaction.
From the perspective of contemporary psychoanalysis, the notion of an isolated subject or
internal mind separate from or only tangentially
related to others is a form of Cartesian thinking.
The problem is that with their emphasis on the
intrapsychic world of the individual, traditional
forms of psychoanalysis are hard pressed to
explain the role of society, politics, or culture as
anything other than manifestations of the
dynamic conflicts among the constituent parts of
an isolated psyche. Contemporary psychoanalysts eschew talk of internal and external
and reject such Freudian and Kleinian notions
as “introjects” or “projective identification.”
Instead, they see all human experience as fundamentally contextualized.
In contrast to the intrapsychic focus of classical psychoanalysis, contemporary psychoanalysts have developed various approaches for
understanding human experience (Burston &
Frie, 2006; Frie & Orange, 2009). Relational
psychoanalysts (Aron, 1996) who follow in the
tradition of Sullivan understand the person in
terms of multiplicity and an unfolding compilation of self-states in social contexts. Interpersonalists (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983) who
draw on Fromm maintain a sociopolitical perspective that embraces the ethical imperative for
agentic action. Intersubjective psychoanalysts
(Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002) embrace
a broad-based philosophy of contextualism that
rejects Freudian universals and undercuts the
persisting dichotomies between the intrapsychic
and the interpersonal, recognizing the person and
his or her world of experience as a subsystem
of more encompassing social and cultural
suprasystems. Existential psychoanalysts (Frie,
1997) likewise reject the split between subject
and object in traditional psychoanalysis and view
psychological experience as unfolding within
Psychoanalysis
world horizons. In contrast to post-structuralism,
these post-Cartesian approaches in psychoanalysis
do not entirely subvert the subject as agent or
reduce it to a mere function of language. Instead,
they retain a conception of the subject, however
minimal, and view agency as an emergent, social
phenomenon.
The historical preoccupation with psychoanalysis as a medical science meant that the
formative importance of culture and society
was overlooked. Like mainstream psychology,
psychoanalysis traditionally viewed culture and
society as the purview of anthropology or sociology, which could do little to advance
a properly scientific account of the psychoanalytic situation. It was often left to thinkers
outside disciplinary psychoanalysis to make
these connections. For postcolonial theorists,
psychoanalysis provided a means to uncover
hidden psychological forces at work in the history of colonial oppression. In Black Skin, White
Masks (1967), Frantz Fanon draws on psychoanalytic principles to explain the feelings of
dependency and inadequacy experienced by colonized subjects. Fanon speaks of the divided
self-perception of “black subjects” who, as
a result of an inferiority complex, lose their
native cultural originality and embrace the culture of the colonizer. For social theorists such as
J€urgen Habermas (1987), psychoanalysis is
a participant in a critical theory that wants to
achieve liberation from coercive social and
political forces and has human emancipation as
a guiding value.
The emergence of a hermeneutic perspective
in psychoanalysis (Cushman, 1995) has emphasized the inclusion of culture and society in the
analytic setting. From a hermeneutic perspective,
culture and society do not merely influence how
persons act, think, or feel. They permeate every
aspect of human experience so that psychoanalysts, like their patients (a term used to refer to
“the one who suffers”), are inalterably shaped by
their sociocultural contexts. This implies that
both participants in the dyad are implicitly
prejudiced beings whose understandings are
inherently limited. Contemporary psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysis
attend to the impact of race, ethnicity, and cultural values in the analytic setting, particularly
the way in which they are experienced and
expressed by both participants. When culture is
understood as only one of multiple contexts of
development or when understandings of diversity
and difference are limited to minority cultures,
then the degree to which all persons are inescapably embedded in cultures, histories, and
languages that are not of their own making is
neglected. A hermeneutic perspective sees
psychological phenomena such as the self and
mind as constituted and not simply facilitated
by culture and society.
Practice Relevance
Economic and political pressures have led to the
recent growth of empirically validated psychotherapies that conform with the objectives of
research psychology. Within this medicalized
approach to psychotherapy, the efficacy of treatment depends chiefly on the knowledge, expertise, and technique of the practitioner.
Traditional forms of psychoanalysis are analogous to the medical model in that the psychoanalyst is seen as a scientific expert who is capable
of viewing the patient’s mind with objective and
neutral detachment. The Freudian analyst seeks
to control and distance his or her feelings to
make possible a treatment environment free of
the influence of the other person in the dyad.
This approach is often referred to as a oneperson psychology because it discounts the pervasiveness of the psychoanalyst’s subjectivity
and of broader contexts in the analytic focus
and emphasizes the authoritarian role of the
analyst.
By contrast, contemporary psychoanalysts
(Aron, 1996) reject the possibility of achieving
analytic neutrality and view psychoanalysis
instead as fundamentally dialogical in nature.
Psychoanalysis is seen as a collaborative process in which the analyst works with the patient,
rather than simply offering interpretations to the
patient. A one-person psychology is rejected in
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place of a dialogical approach that undoes the
strictures of both the medical model and the
traditional psychoanalytic relationship. In the
process, a host of clinical possibilities are
opened up. Once psychoanalyst and patient are
seen to mutually impact that therapeutic process, the psychoanalytic relationship itself
becomes a focus for analytic inquiry, and
a goal of treatment is to reach an understanding
of psychological phenomena as they emerge
between the psychoanalyst and patient and the
contexts in which each exists. As a result, contemporary psychoanalysts also question the
strict division between psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy, which they see as a vestige
of traditional forms of psychoanalysis that
privilege the power of the analyst.
When working dialogically, psychoanalysts
seek to understand their patients in the context
of lived intersubjective experience, rather
than explain or translate unconscious mental
contents. In contemporary psychoanalysis,
intersubjectivity refers to the field of ongoing
engagement between the analytic participants
and their surround (Stolorow et al., 2002).
In contrast to Freud’s emphasis on the intrapsychic experience of the patient and the neutrality of the analyst, an intersubjective
perspective focuses on the interacting worlds
of the patient and therapist, which always
unfold in history, culture, society, and politics.
Clinical observations are not objective but
a reflection of the dyadic interaction and
understood within the social and cultural contexts in which they occur.
Future Directions
A contemporary psychoanalytic stance provides
a critical perspective on the objectivism that has
prevailed in mainstream psychotherapy practice
and research as well as in academic psychology
as a whole. In place of a strictly diagnostic
attitude, this approach is characterized by the
dialogical effort of participants in the psychoanalytic dyad to understand the ambiguous,
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context-dependent experiences that evolve in
the process of therapeutic interaction. Contemporary psychoanalytic practitioners prefer to
understand their patient’s suffering in terms of
“problems in living,” rather than the prescribed
diagnostic categories of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association (DSM). They assume a holistic
attitude that embraces the complexity of their
work and maintain a critical stance towards
the reductionisms implicit in evidence-based
treatments and neuroscientific explanations of
behavior (McWilliams, 2011). In a professional
milieu that increasingly privileges psychopharmacology and short-term manualized psychotherapies, contemporary psychoanalysts argue
for the importance of meaning-oriented therapies that allow for understanding and change
beyond immediate symptom relief.
Psychoanalysis, which began with the work
of Freud, has thus evolved and changed over
time to incorporate the contributions and work
of multiple viewpoints and disciplines. Contemporary psychoanalysts avoid reductionist
accounts of human experience in terms of drives
or the psychic apparatus; they emphasize the
patient’s unique lived experience and the multiplicity of gender and sexuality; they participate
in the therapeutic situation and seek to understand their own impact on the therapeutic process; they view concepts and practices as
historically, culturally, and politically constituted; and they appreciate that the healing
process of psychoanalysis is always filled with
uncertainty and that there are numerous ways to
live a good life.
References
Aron, L. (1996). A meeting of minds: Mutuality in psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Burston, D., & Frie, R. (2006). Psychotherapy as a human
science. Pittsburg, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing
America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Elliot, A. (2002). Psychoanalytic theory: An introduction.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Psychoanalysis
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C. L.
Markmann, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Originally published 1952).
Freud, S. (1917). A difficulty in the path of psychoanalysis. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 17), London:
Vintage, 2001.
Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of
Sigmund Freud (Vol. 22). London: Vintage, 2001.
Frie, R. (1997). Subjectivity and intersubjectivity in philosophy and psychoanalysis: A study of Sartre,
Binswanger, Lacan and Habermas. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield.
Frie, R., & Orange, D. (Eds.). (2009). Beyond postmodernism: New dimensions in theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Fromm, E. (2010). Beyond Freud: From individual to
social psychology (R. Funk, Ed., A. Schreiber,
Trans.). New York: American Mental Health Foundation. (Original work published 1937).
Greenberg, J., & Mitchell, S. A. (1983). Object relations
in psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). Knowledge and human interests (J. J.
Shapiro, Trans.). Oxford: Polity Press. (Original work
published 1968).
Lacan, J. (1977). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Hogarth.
McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic diagnosis:
Understanding personality structure in the clinical
process. New York: Guildford Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on
interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Stolorow, B., Atwood, G., & Orange, D. (2002). Worlds
of experience: Interweaving philosophical and
clinical dimensions in psychoanalysis. New York:
Basic.
Online Resources
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology, New York: http://www.
wawhite.org/
Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles:
http://icpla.edu/
New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: http://postdocpsychoanalytic.as.nyu.edu
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Division 39, American Psychological Association: http://www.apadivisions.org/
division-39/
The Sandor Ferenczi Center at The New School for Social
Research: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/subpage.
aspx?id¼24638
University College London, Psychoanalysis Centre:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychoanalysis/
International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin: http://
www.ipu-berlin.de/
Psychologization
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Keywords
Psychologization
Jan De Vos
Centre for Critical Philosophy, Department of
Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent
University, Ghent, Belgium
Psychologization; psychologism; individualization; therapeutic culture; biopolitics; neurological turn; neuropsycho-politics
History
Introduction
Psychologization is not a consensual concept, nor
within the literature of (critical) psychology, nor
within adjacent disciplines. Due to diverging
theoretizations, it does not point to a clear-cut
phenomenon. However, overviewing the primary
and secondary literature on the subject, it is clear
that the critique of psychologization is central to
the critique of psychology. Albeit that the concept
itself has been criticized, e.g., formulations such as
the psychologization of spirituality, of emotional
distress, of humanitarian aid pose the problem that
the second term always already is inextricably
linked to the psychological discourse (and is
almost unthinkable or unconceivable without the
psy-discourse). No wonder then that psychologization has been called an unworkable bulldozer
concept (Illouz, 2008). Still others consider it nevertheless as the central tenet of critical psychology
or even as a crucial concept for a psychoanalytic
critique (De Vos, 2011; Parker, 2010) as it questions the conditions of possibility of psychology.
Definition
Minimally defined, psychologization is the
spreading of the discourse of psychology beyond
its alleged disciplinary borders. In this way,
psychologization is the (unintentional) overflow
of psychological theories and praxes to the fields
of science, culture, and politics and/or to subjectivity itself. Generally the concept entails some
kind of critique, targeting inappropriate psychology (theories misconceiving the human and/or
the societal), inappropriate use of psychology
(e.g., in inappropriate contexts), or inappropriate
users of psychology (e.g., so-called laymen).
Psychologization is not a fully fleshed-out concept
with an easy traceable tradition. Psychologization
has been considered as a minor side effect, while
others have assessed it as a vast phenomenon
affecting numerous fields if not the whole of society. Some authors have focused on the psychologization on individuals; others have put central the
critique of the individualization of communal
interests and stakes. It has been seen as involving
only particular psychological theories and/or
praxes, while, alternatively, it has been conceived
as an issue touching upon the whole psy-discipline. It can be looked at as a symptom that can
be dealt with, while some consider it an incurable
anomaly laying bare the fundamental and structural deadlocks of psychology.
Traditional Debates
The Critique of Psychologism
The psychologization issue has its roots in the
philosophical debate at the turn of the twentieth
century on so-called psychologism. Opposing
the viewpoint of philosophical naturalism, philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Gottlob
Frege criticized the attempts to ground logic
(which had to provide the base for scientific
knowledge) in the psychology of the human
being (Kusch, 1995). Frege, for example,
opposed John Stuart Mill’s contention that
logic is a branch of psychology. For Frege psychology concerns the conditions under which
humans accept the truth of judgments or the
validity of inferences; hence, psychology does
not determine the conditions under which judgments themselves are true and inferences valid;
this is the terrain of logics proper (Kusch, 2009).
Husserl takes this a step further as he moves
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from the critique of psychologism to a critique of
psychology itself. He argues that because of its
naturalism and objectivism, psychology misses
the radical and genuine problem of subjectivity
and, hence, will never realize its ambition to be
the keystone of the sciences (Husserl, 1970, p.
299). Here the debate shifts from criticizing
“psychologism” (philosophy taking recourse to
psychology) to criticizing “psychologization”
(the wrongful naturalization and objectivation
and hence misconceiving of human subjectivity)
(De Vos, 2012).
In this way, the whole of the modern sciences,
if not the whole project of modernity, became the
subject of critique through a critique of psychology. Just consider how still today the issue of
psychologization puts into question other disciplines such as sociology. Maryse Bresson, for
example, warns that an analysis of psychologization could paradoxically lead to a general naturalistic approach, as it would presuppose that
sociology has a natural area of research and praxis
threatened to be colonized by psychology
(Bresson, 2006). Of interest is that Husserl’s solution for these deadlocks, phenomenology, itself
has been reproached for not escaping naturalism,
as it has been criticized for falling back in psychologism (Husserl, 1970, p. 271) and even for
intensifying (if not initiating) the twentieth century
forms of psychologization proper (De Vos, 2012).
The Critique of Individualization
The critique of psychologization is also
connected to the critiques of individualization.
The thesis that modernity is equivalent to the
process of individualization goes back to theorists such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile
Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Norbert Elias.
Critiques of psychologization often refer to
Elias who wrote in 1939 that the “civilizing process” led to the emphasis on the “inner life” and
made “self-restraint” the central tool in regulating interpersonal violence (Elias, 1982). Individualization is commonly seen as having positive
sides – as it emancipates from traditions and
vested power relations – and negative sides, as
individualization is said to lead to the loss of the
public and hence political sphere.
Psychologization
More recently these issues were explored by
authors such as Habermas, Giddens, Beck, and
Bauman. These sociological approaches of processes of individualization and psychologization
however are regularly criticized for their alleged
Archimedean position. Nikolas Rose (Rose,
1996a), for example, argues that Elias falsely
naturalizes many of the key analytical categories
central to his enterprise (character, subjective
interiority, psychological personality). In other
words, critiques of individualization are on
their turn reproached for succumbing to
psychologization.
The Critique of Therapeutic Culture
The debate on psychologization is also indebted
to the post-World War II cultural-political
critiques on “therapeutic culture” (Sennett,
Rieff, Lasch). Especially Christopher Lasch’s
assessment of therapeuticizing discourses and
praxes was very influential in its attempt to
explain where individualization connects to the
psychologizing discourses. For Lasch, having
replaced religion as the organizing framework
of American culture, the therapeutic outlook
threatens to disvalue politics by transforming
collective grievances into personal problems
amenable to therapeutic intervention (Lasch,
1978, pp. 13–14).
However, Lasch has been criticized not only
for his political critique falling back in
a conservative and nostalgic stance (see, e.g.,
Barrett & McIntosh, 1982) but also for his
unquestioned recourse to psychoanalysis drawing
him inadvertently into a kind of metapsychologization (De Vos, 2010). Recent similar
discussion on psychological culture and therapeutic discourse can be found in Parker (Parker,
1999, 2007) and Furedi (1997).
The Critique of Biopolitics
Many political critiques on the psy-discourses
grew out of Michel Foucault’s understanding of
biopolitics. Foucault argued that at a certain point
in modernity biological life as such entered the
sphere of politics, becoming the subject of
knowledge on which power could be exerted
(Foucault, 1978). In the “administration of bodies
Psychologization
and the calculated management of life”
(Foucault), the “technologies of the self”
(Foucault, 1988) made it possible for premodern
discipline to become internalized. In this vein
others argued that the psy-sciences provide the
central discourse for this self-disciplination.
Robert Castel, for example, argues that coercion,
segregation, and repression are effected, not by
the enhancement and expansion of the state apparatus but rather by the diffusion of a culture of
psychology (see Bresson, 2006). Also Nikolas
Rose analyzes the growth of psychiatric and psychological discourse during the twentieth century
starting from the discursive practices, ideas,
values, and norms of the psy-disciplines (Rose,
1985). For Rose “therapeutic ethics” play
a central part in contemporary sociopolitical
arenas: it governs while allowing to construct
ourselves through the choices we make, shaping
our existence according to an ethics of autonomy
(Rose, 1996b).
It has been argued however that, as in
a Foucaultian perspective power is everywhere
and the subject nowhere, the Foucaultian critiques on psychologization are at risk to lose
any dimension of subjectivity and the psyche
(De Vos, 2012). And, somewhat paradoxically,
precisely here the Foucaultian anti-psychology
approaches put forward alternative conceptualizations of subjectivity which on their turn can be
criticized for relapsing into psychologization. As
the later Foucault, for example, advanced an
aestheticized dandyish subject (Foucault, 1985),
this has been denounced for being a narcissistic
retreat to the self (e.g., Wolin, 1986) hence
coming close to the typical psychologizing discourses on self-realization.
The Critique from the Psy-Sciences
Themselves
In the last decennia the psy-sciences themselves
have testified of a critical turn towards their own
discipline and praxis starting from the issue of
psychologization. K.J. Gergen, for example, contends that psychologists are mostly not aware of
what he calls the enlightenment effect, the fact
that the dissemination of psy-knowledge modifies the patterns of behavior upon which the
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knowledge is based. Gergen warns against the
lure of approaching this new, enlightened reality
with the same models and techniques employed
previously (Gergen, 1973). Similarly, concerning
psychotherapy, Abraham de Swaan remarks that
we have moved from the therapist translating
particular problems into the theoretical framework
of psychology to the patient himself already
doing his part in this translation. De Swaan calls
this proto-professionalization (Brinkgreve et al.,
1979). Still other critics evoke the issue of
psychologization pointing to the corporatist interests of professional and academic psychology to
extend the reach of their discipline and profession
(Dineen, 1999). In the same vein Big Pharma has
been denounced for intensifying psychologization
processes in order to secure and to broaden its
market (Goldacre & Farley, 2009; Lane, 2007).
It will come to no surprise that also these
critiques are on their turn criticized for remaining
psychological and academic. They are said to be
unable to deal with their own ouroborosian
moment and structurally condemned to repeat
what they criticize. Hence, in order to avoid this
aporia, other authors attempted to base the critique in other extra-academic resources such as
Marxism (Parker, 2007) and/or in psychoanalysis
(De Vos, 2012; Parker, 2007). This is where the
critique takes the radical stance that psychology
and psychologization are co-originary and that
the only way to deal with this is to transcend the
framework not only of psychology itself but also
of academia as a whole.
Critical Debates
The central and recurring question in the traditional debates on psychologization is clearly if
and how a critique of psychologization itself can
keep free of it. In current discussions, this issue is
connected to the observed heightening of phenomena of psychologization in the last decades
(Illouz, 2008; McLaughlin, 2010). Hence, the
crucial question becomes as follows: if psychologization is omnipresent and all-invading, how
then to conceive of a free-space for critique and
for resistance (see, e.g., Madsen & Brinkmann,
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2011)? From here it is clear that psychologization
is a core issue for the critical debates and the
future directions of (critical) psychology itself.
Some key questions:
A first matter of contention is that the ubiquity
of psychologization puts into question the status
of psychology as a science. That is, as psychologization turns out to be not just a phenomenon in
the margin, is it then not connected to the very
core of psychology? One of the possible positions
is to consider psychologization precisely as the
basic paradigm of psychology: traceable in
experiments, theory building, and therapeutic
practices,
psychologization
forms
the
unacknowledged backbone of how psychology
posits itself as a science (De Vos, 2012).
A second challenge today is to interpret the
current strong neurological turn in the psy-fields
(and its very tendency to de-psychologize the
human being). Scott Vrecko argues that the rise
of the neuro-discourses should be understood in
its “psy”-lineage (Vrecko, 2010, p. 3). From this
idea follows that psychology and psychologization are most likely to remain in business
after the neurological turn. This would entail
that one should look within the neuro-sciences
for the discursive traces and the discursive strategies of psychology. Concerning the latter, it has
been observed that the psychologizing techniques
of psycho-education, inducing the so-called layperson to adopt the perspective of the psy-expert,
are still in vigor as they take the form of neuroeducation (Verhaeghe, 2010).
The overarching issue to which these debates
lead is whether the personal, the social, the cultural, or the political are at risk to become more
and more psychologized, or, if they are not – as
these domains are connected to the advent of
modernity – not psychological en prima facie.
That is, maybe these fields cannot be cut loose
from the birth of the psychological gaze in
modernity (De Vos, 2012). This argument could
open the perspective: when in the enlightenment
psychology saw light as a modern discipline,
already something thoroughly had changed; the
advent of the psy-sciences already signaled the
end of naı̈ve psychology (human psychology
unmediated by psychologization).
Psychologization
International Relevance
In our globalized era even the critics of the
psychological discourse agree that it triumphed
(Illouz, 2008), Western, and above all North
American psychology, has been said to have
become the hegemonic force in world
psychology touching us all (Burton & Kagan,
2007, p. 487). This internationalization of psychology(zation) is now increasingly linked to
the processes of globalization and the expansion
of neoliberal capitalism. This necessitates a shift
in focus from biopolitics to neuropsychopolitics.
Traditionally, psychologization is conceived
as turning the political field into a psychological
domain excluding social or economic issues.
However, current internationalized psychologization processes are not about obscuring or
excluding social, political, or economic aspects,
but about the direct socializing and direct economizing of subjectivity (De Vos, 2012). Just
consider the worldwide centrality of the psydiscourse in education, the human resources
and management discourses, popular culture,
publicity, and consuming. Psychologization is
hence not inseparable linked to the Western
(European) welfare state; therapeutic culture
will not wither away with its decline (as
suggested by Scialabba, 2010). For as Hardt
and Negri have observed, so-called postFordism is about bringing subjectivity and
social relations directly within the exchange
processes of the late-modern capitalist market
(Hardt & Negri, 2000). This could allow to
rethink current psychologization and neuropsychologization phenomena in line with Ian
Parker’s contention that we need to develop
a response to social problems which works at
the interface of the personal and the political
instead of pretending that society is something
separate from us (Parker, 1999, p. 104).
Future Directions
As such it is clear that the contemporary forms of
psychologization are of central importance to
Psychologization
critical psychology. They question the very right
of existence of critical psychology: can it be
different from psychology? Is it something
besides psychology or is it a subdiscipline
(Gordo López, 2000)? Is it really critical to psychology and is it really critical as such? Can it
claim to be above psychologization, above individualization? Can it really claim to keep the way
of politics open? Must it and how could it avoid
a “critical psychologization”?
References
Barrett, M., & McIntosh, M. (1982). Narcissism and
the family: A critique of Lasch. New Left Review,
135, 35–48.
Bresson, M. (Ed.). (2006). La psychologisation de l’intervention sociale: Mythes et réalités. Paris: Editions
L’Harmattan.
Brinkgreve, C., Onland, J. H., & De Swaan, A. (1979).
Sociologie van de psychotherapie 1. De opkomst van
het psychotherapeutisch bedrijf. Utrecht/Antwerpen:
Het Spectrum.
Burton, M., & Kagan, C. (2007). Psychologists and
torture: More than a question of interrogation. The
Psychologist, 20(8), 484–487.
De Vos, J. (2010). Christopher Lasch’s the culture of
narcissism: The failure of a critique of psychological
politics. Theory & Psychology, 20(4), 528–548.
doi:10.1177/0959354309351764.
De Vos, J. (2011). Psychologization or the discontents of
psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society,
16(4), 354–372.
De Vos, J. (2012). Psychologisation in times of globalisation. London: Routledge.
Dineen, T. (1999). Manufacturing victims. London:
Constable.
Elias, N. (1982). State formation and civilization. Oxford,
UK: B. Blackwell.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1)
(R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1985). The history of sexuality, Vol. 2: The
use of pleasure (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York:
Viking.
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H.
Martin, H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault
(pp. 16–49). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Furedi, F. (1997). Culture of fear: Risk-taking and the
morality of low expectation. London: Cassell.
Gergen, K. J. (1973). Social psychology as history.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26(2),
309–320.
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Goldacre, B., & Farley, R. (2009). Bad science. London:
Harper Collins.
Gordo López, A. J. (2000). On the psychologization of
critical psychology. Annual Review of Critical
Psychology, 2, 55–71.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences
and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction
to phenomenological philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.).
Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Illouz, E. (2008). Saving the modern soul: Therapy, emotions, and the culture of self-help. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Kusch, M. (1995). Psychologism: A case study in the
sociology of philosophical knowledge. London:
Psychology Press.
Kusch, M. (2009). Psychologism. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
Lane, C. (2007). Shyness: How normal behavior became
a sickness. London: Yale University Press.
Lasch, C. (1978). The culture of narcissism. New York:
Norton.
Madsen, O. J., & Brinkmann, S. (2011). The disappearance of psychologisation? Annual Review of Critical
Psychology (Online), 8, 179–199.
McLaughlin, K. (2010). Psychologisation and the
construction of the political subject as vulnerable
object. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 8,
63–79.
Parker, I. (1999). Deconstructing diagnosis: Psychopathological practice. In C. Feltham (Ed.), Controversies
in psychotherapy and counselling (pp. 104–112).
London: Sage.
Parker, I. (2007). Revolution in psychology: Alienation to
emancipation. London: Pluto Press.
Parker, I. (2010). Lacanian psychoanalysis. Revolutions in
subjectivity. London: Routledge.
Rose, N. (1985). The psychological complex: Psychology,
politics and society in England, 1869–1939. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Rose, N. (1996a). Authority and the genealogy of
the subject. In P. Heelas, S. Lash, &
S. Morriss (Eds.), Detraditionalization. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.
Rose, N. (1996b). Inventing our selves: Psychology,
power, and personhood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Scialabba, G. (2010). A skeptic and a democrat. Dissent,
58(1), 99–104.
Verhaeghe, P. (2010). Geestdrift voor het brein. In
M. Kinet & A. Bazan (Eds.), Psychoanalyse en
neurowetenschap. De geest in de machine
(pp. 59–78). Antwerpen-Apeldoorn: Garant.
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1–10.
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Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
Pauline Mottram
Research Institute for Health and Social Change,
Manchester Metropolitan University,
Manchester, UK
Introduction
Psychology has endeavored to explore the
phenomena of art in diverse ways ranging from
empirical investigations to behavioral observations
to more philosophic-based approaches. These
inquiries have espoused various perspectives such
as art as artistic practice, as creative process, as an
object, as well as broader social considerations.
Particular aspects have also been focused upon
such as artistic perception, motivation, and artist’s
personality. Understanding of the parts has developed, but the whole remains elusive.
Freud (1928) identified a paradox in art that it
appears to simultaneously engage conscious and
unconscious processes, and he suggested that
psychoanalysis cannot penetrate the mystery of
artistic creativity. Langer (1951) developed this
thinking by explication of discursive (secondary
process) and nondiscursive (primary process)
symbolism. This opened up considerations of
a discursive rationality that uses socially consensual language as opposed to a nondiscursive
mode that condenses and displaces meanings
and, within this construction, artworks are understood to be nondiscursive. Wittgenstein (1961,
para 6.522, p. 73) asserts:
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into
words. They make themselves manifest. They are
what is mystical.
Over time psychoanalytic thinking has come
to associate art with unconscious, nonverbal processes, and as such, it has been co-opted into
medical treatment as therapy or rehabilitation.
The profession of art therapy involves the use of
art within a therapeutic setting to help clients to
effect personal change and growth. Today an “art
therapist” is a registered health professional who
Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
has trained at an approved clinical master’s level.
Art therapists are professionally registered and
professional development is regulated (e.g., in
the UK, it is the Health Professions’ Council
which performs this regulatory function). They
work to an agreed code of ethics and are accountable for their professional conduct. The profession is small (in 2009, it was estimated that 1,500
art therapists were employed in the UK) and
consequently the literature and research base is
limited. Social, political, and economic structures
that inform the delivery of health provision in
a particular geographic area have shaped the
development of art therapy as a profession in
that locality. This applies both within countries
as well as in terms of the profession’s general
development in that country.
Definition
Art therapy clinical practice is informed by psychotherapeutic principles. It engages intrapersonal processes, interpersonal processes, and the
intermediary area of the artwork. Art therapy
clinical practice includes verbal and nonverbal
actions, interactions, and reactions: webs of
behavior, perceptions, emotions, feelings, cognitions, sensations, and intuitions are engaged.
A degree of reflexivity is needed to create signs
and symbols to express meaning in art. An
impulse to create artistically is contingent upon
an ability to look at the world and to think imaginatively and metaphorically. The meaning of the
artwork is also dependant on the medium used,
the expression and personality of the maker, and
the expression of culture in terms of time and
place. Within an art therapeutic setting meaning
may be cocreated around the image through dialogue between the art therapist and the client.
Greenwood and Killick (1995) suggest that art
therapy provides a reticulum of containers: the
room, the structure of the sessions, the media,
the image, the interpersonal relationship, and the
intrapersonal processes. These are adapted and
adjusted to meet the individual needs of a client.
The whole is always more than the sum of the
parts and meaning that may be attributed both
Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
during and as a result of these processes is open
to a variety of interpretations. When viewing
a client’s image an art therapist may recognize
formal qualities in the artwork that can suggest
whether the image may be read narratively,
whether it presents codes to be identified, or
whether the forms are symbolic and require imaginative engagement. Schaverien (1993, p. 83)
asserts that “. . .both the knowledge acquired
through making pictures and through study of art
history are called upon each time the art therapist
regards a clients picture.” Formal aesthetic analysis of images can identify recurrent themes and
links may be made with significant biographical
factors. Contained within a psychotherapeutic
alliance, art therapist and client cocreate understandings that when presented to professional
colleagues are usually reinterpreted into the
language and constructs of the art therapist’s or
the multidisciplinary team’s preferred model of
psychoanalytic understanding.
Keywords
Artistic creativity; discursive rationality;
nondiscursive mode; psychotherapeutic; psychoaesthetics; transference
History
The initial theorizing of art therapy grew from
diverse roots ranging from art education, art theory, art history, philosophy, sociology, social
anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry.
These included Freud’s understandings of the
unconscious and the association of art with neurosis, Arnheim’s (1966) explorations in art and
psychology, the thinking of liberal art educationalists Herbert Read (1943) and Elliott Eisner
(1972), and early pioneers who used art in rehabilitation settings such as Adrian Hill (1945) and
Adamson (1984).
Art therapy literature identifies an uneasy tension between words and images. Debate has
been endemic within the art therapy profession.
The pioneers of art therapy disagreed over the
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significance, role, and function of the “art” and
the “therapy” in clinical practice (Adamson,
1984; Naumberg, 1958; Wadeson, 1980). Traditional psycho-aesthetics were based upon Freud’s
notions of repression of conflict in the unconscious and the return of the repressed, masked,
and disguised. Unconscious conflicts experienced by the maker were identified in the image
and deciphered psychoanalytically. The artwork
was understood and valued as an expression of
these dynamics.
In terms of its historical development, art therapy has been shaped by sociopolitical and health
legislative structures. For example, early American art therapy, in order to serve the requirements
of Psychiatry, was particularly concerned with
using art work for diagnostic purposes. In Britain
art therapists shunned this approach and their
theorizing concentrated on psychotherapeutic
perspectives in an attempt to gain recognition
from psychotherapists. Psychotherapy theory
and language increasingly informed art therapy
literature and correspondingly clinical practice
adopted much of the conceptual framework and
language of psychotherapy. This served the ongoing professionalization of art therapy and negotiations for adequate remuneration and a career
structure. As art therapy became more recognized, the focus in both countries began to shift
from the art product to emphasis being placed on
the processes involved in creating the art work in
a psychotherapeutic context. For example,
Schaverien (1987) researched the processes
involved in making, viewing, and disposing of
art therapy images and related these to Jungian
psychoanalytic theory of transference. By so
doing she conceded the hegemony of a Jungian
psychoanalytic discourse in her work. Kleinian
psycho-aesthetics opened up considerations of
the conditions under which intrapsychic conflict
and id-phantasy is transformed into an aesthetic
object as reparation for destructive impulses.
Object relation theorists developed Klein’s work
locating the initial creative impulses in the relationship between mother and infant. Espousal of
psychoanalytic theoretical constructs resulted in
understandings of the artwork being constrained
by understanding of transference processes.
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Transference was regarded to be reflected in the
making as well as in aesthetic formal qualities of
the art therapy image. This tended to occlude
other possible understandings of an image.
In the strategic policy review of NHS Psychotherapy Services in England (Parry &
Richardson, 1996, p. 32), art therapy is referred
to as one of many “psychological therapies,”
and further in the document it is listed as one
of the professions in psychotherapy (Parry &
Richardson 1996, p. 106).
Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy: art
making without a skilled therapist is not necessarily healing and can be diversionary or at
worst damaging. But many art therapists have
a resistance to seeing themselves as psychotherapists; perhaps the issue of the artist’s identity overrules everything. Art therapists work with some
patients other psychotherapists would not consider
taking on (Parry & Richardson, 1996, p. 106).
This rather confused description of art therapy
can be attributed to the conflicts and unsettled
debates that circulate in and around the profession. Art therapy theoreticians have adopted
much of the conceptual framework and language
of the articulated disciplines of psychotherapy to
express those parts that are similar, but as yet art
therapists have not adequately engaged in the
description of the phenomena of visual representation and communication that are essentially
different to the verbal therapies.
The Arts in Health movement has challenged
the dominant position of art therapy particularly
within mental health and learning disabilities
services. In the arts and health discourse, art is
centrally placed and very broad diversionary
and salutary benefits are suggested. Occasional
uneasy partnerships have been made between
arts in health and art therapy, with clear respect
for difference, but as yet a position of constructive coexistence and mutual recognition has
not been attained. The situation is currently
exacerbated by diminishing funding and few
opportunities for any development. This is further exacerbated by limited research capacity
and skills within the profession, lack of funding
for research, and a consequent lack of randomized controlled trails to demonstrate clinical
Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
effectiveness as defined by health-care funding
bodies. This has in places promoted the assertion
that art therapy is ineffective as a treatment and
art in clinical settings should only be used in
a diversionary manner.
Traditional Debates
In art therapy, the traditional debate of whether
the art process and the image are the primary
curative factor or whether psychotherapeutic
interventions are the major factor is unresolved
and continues to circulate. Read (1943) expressed
his discomfort with psycho-aesthetics due to the
emphasis being placed on the process of the mental activity, rather than in the concrete reality of
the art media, the formal elements, and the communicative content of the image. Arnheim
(1966) in his early work acknowledged that pertinent work in psychology and theory of visual
arts, although related, do not readily match and
asserted that many adjustments are needed and
gaps are prematurely closed. The argument as to
whether the art aspect in art therapy is accessible
to discursive rationality continues to circulate in
art therapy literature.
Critical Debates
The hegemony of psychoanalytic understandings
is evident in art therapy literature. Rigorous
professional gatekeeping has for many years
prevented interrogation of this dominant discourse. Consequently articulation of alternative
ways of understanding art therapeutic processes
has been occluded. Additionally engagements by
the profession with broader critical debates
around social function of art, constructions of
mental health, and understandings of illness
have been neglected. Some of this may be attributable to the smallness of the profession and its
perceived struggle for professional recognition by
the larger disciplines of psychotherapy and psychiatry. A small group that perceives a struggle
for autonomous survival may have difficulty in
accommodating internal heterogeneity.
Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
Polanyi (1967) explores tacit knowledge
asserting that there is knowledge that is not articulated in verbal form. Art therapists in practice
have a common tacit knowledge that is
seldom reflected in art therapy literature. The
phenomenon of a concrete image in art therapy,
as opposed to its absence in verbal therapy, is
a distinguishing feature of art therapy practice.
The skills and interventions used by art therapists
in relation to the image constitute a specific contribution not made by a clinician of another tradition. Application of the theories of verbal
psychotherapies to art therapy highlights those
parts of art therapy practice that are similar to
the verbal therapies, but aspects that are different
may be neglected. By becoming aware of the tacit
knowledge that is drawn upon in practice, it may
be that art therapists can become more aware of
gaps that exist between verbal descriptions and
the actuality of practice.
Critique from a cultural perspective opens up
vast areas for exploration. Art educator Eisner
(1972) suggests that in both revealing and
concealing meaning, the arts accommodate ambiguity and can engage multiple interpretations. In
contrast to this view, Regis Debray (1996) suggests that we increasingly live in a logocentric
world. He identifies processes of socialization
that encode, regularize, or curb what may be
irregular or disordered. In this process images
are co-opted and reduced to signs that point to
verbal discourses beyond themselves. Debray
asks “Have we semiotised visual forms in order
to be rid of them, dissolve their insistent barbarity
in the analytic acid of linguistics?. . . The feared
dizziness of vision may be precisely its monstrous and intimidating silence” (p. 152).
Whether art constitutes a set of signs within an
overall semiotic system, reductable and interpretable within that particular social context, or
whether it evokes some non- or pre-discursive
numinous mystery which may be fruitfully
explored within wider considerations of the
social function of art in the producing society
remains an unsettled debate. The current requirement in health services for empirical evidencebased research to justify spending constrains art
therapy research in a very particular way and
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marginalizes hermeneutic approaches to understanding the role and function of art in treatment.
The art therapy profession has followed different trajectories of development in the UK and
the USA due to the different social, economic,
and political models of health funding and provision. Given the current requirement for increased
clinician accountability and outcome-based treatments in the National Health Service in the UK, it
will be interesting to see if the health service
business discourses that have long circulated in
the USA will begin to be rearticulated in the UK.
Most recently an innovative effort was made to
bridge UK and USA art therapy by Spring who
edited a publication of contributions by UK and
American art therapists “Art in Treatment –
Transatlantic Dialogue” (Spring, 2007). The
publication evidences strong differences in the
practice of art therapy due to the shaping effects
of sociopolitical and health legislative contexts.
International Relevance
Art therapy as a profession has limited international presence. The UK, the USA, Canada, and
Australia have well-established systems for professional registration and monitoring of approved
clinical master’s level practitioners. Since the
1980s substantial work has been undertaken by
ECARTe (European Consortium for Art Therapy
Training and Education) to develop a framework
for the standardization of art therapy training at
master’s level across Europe. There have been
some developmental initiatives in Russia, Hong
Kong, South America, and South Africa. In
recent years an art therapy training course based
on psychotherapeutic principles was established
in Singapore. This development evidences the
global expansion of individual-centered understandings of mental health/illness and treatment:
the western psy-complex (Parker, 1997).
Practice Relevance
Sex was repressed in Freudian times. Is silence
what is repressed in the current time? Our lives
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are saturated with sound. People are constantly
“informed” and “updated” and are also
bombarded with images: images that may be
familiar and part of their daily world; images
that serve a heteroglossia of discourses that interlace local and global twenty-first-century culture;
images that unfiltered invade lives through film,
TV, magazines, and newspapers; images that
expose viewers to “realities” of which they have
no experiential knowledge – disembodied, sometimes voyeuristic, intimate, or painful images of
unknown others; images that are designed to tell,
not to show; and images that may not manifest
truth accompanied by words that may mask dubious principles. All are consumed like junk food
and resultant visual indigestion or verbal nausea
and psychological and cultural ill health may be
unrecognized. Despite this constant flow and
bombardment, critical time and space are vital
to consider what is being seen and how responses
to that seeing are working out. In clinical settings
the visual real and virtual worlds that clients may
inhabit and the value systems that inform these
can no longer be assumed to be shared with those
of the clinician.
Future Directions
An art therapy voice is absent in contemporary
debates that are emerging in relation to images in
social and cultural studies and in critical art theory. This is hardly surprising, given art therapy’s
modernist adherence to a psychotherapeutic
hegemony and the consequent privileging of
intra- and interpersonal dynamics. Yet the making of an artwork involves a dialogue between the
artist, the artwork, and the sociopolitical and cultural context in which the work is made. Global
flows of goods, ideas, education, and cultural
products across the world and their locally
constructed hybridization suggest that postmodern, poly-vocal approaches may be more relevant
to understanding the complexities of social/cultural constellations that clients inhabit in the
twenty-first century. It may be that its very ambiguity and resistance to simplification is art’s
particular therapeutic strength and gift.
Psychology of Art/Art Therapy
Arthur Koestler suggests that “Creative
originality. . .always involves un-learning and
re-learning, undoing and re-doing. It involves
the breaking up of petrified mental structures,
discarding matrices which have outlived their
usefulness, and reassembling others in a new
synthesis” (1979, p. 149).
References
Adamson, E. (1984). Art as healing. London: Coventure.
Arnheim, R. (1966). Towards a psychology of art.
Berkley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Debray, R. (1996). Media manifestos: On the technological transmission of cultural forms. London: Trans Eric
Rauth Verso.
Eisner, E. W. (1972). Educating artistic vision. New York:
Macmillan.
Freud, S. (1928). Vol. 21 Dostoevsky and parricide. In
J. Stachey (Ed. & translator), (1953–1974) The standard edition of the complete psychological works of
Sigmund Freud, 24 volumes. London: Hogarth Press.
Greenwood, H., & Killick, K. (1995). Research in art
therapy with people who have psychotic illnesses. In
Gilroy & Lee (Eds.), Art and music therapy and
research. London: Routledge.
Hill, A. (1945). Art vs illness. London: Allen & Unwin.
Koestler, A. (1979). Janus: A summing up. London: Pan
Books.
Langer, S. (1951). Philosophy in a new key. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Naumberg, M. (1958). Art therapy: It’s scope and function. In E. F. Hammer (Ed.), Clinical applications of
projective drawings. Springfield, Il: C. C. Thomas.
Parker, I. (1997). Psychoanalytic culture. Psychoanalytic
discourse in western society. London: Sage.
Parry, G., & Richardson, A. (1996). NHS psychotherapy
services in England: Review of strategic policy.
London: MHSE-Department of Health.
Polyani, M. (1967). The tacit dimension. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Read, H. (1943). Education through art. London: Faber
and Faber.
Schaverien, J. (1987). The scapegoat and the talisman:
Transference in art therapy. In Dalley (Ed.), Images
of art therapy. London: Tavistock/Routledge.
Schaverien, J. (1993). The retrospective review of pictures. Data for research in art therapy. In Payne (Ed.),
Handbook of enquiry in the arts therapies: One river
many currents. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Spring, D. (Ed.). (2007). Art in treatment – Transatlantic
dialogue. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Wadeson, H. (1980). Art psychotherapy. New York:
Wiley.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractus logico-philosophicus
(D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, Trans.). London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Psychology of Oppression
Psychology of Oppression
Carl Ratner
Institute for Cultural Research and Education,
Trinidad, CA, USA
Introduction
Psychology of oppression is both a phenomenon
and an explanatory construct – just as psychology
is a phenomenon and also the study of that
phenomenon (e.g., behavioristic psychology,
cognitive psychology). The phenomenon called
“psychology of oppression” is the psychological
effects of social oppression and the psychological
requirements that sustain (are functional for)
social oppression. In other words, social
oppression includes a psychological complement
in the victim that contributes to his subjugation.
(Psychology of oppression also includes the
psychology of oppressors, that we shall not
explore here; but see Tabensky, 2010).
The construct “psychology of oppression” is
a way of understanding psychological debilities
as products of social oppression. It is a socialpsychological construct that integrates psychology and society as two sides of the same coin.
It identifies society as oppressive in certain ways
and peoples’ psychology as implicated in that
oppression (both as an effect of oppression and
also a contribution to – reinforcement of –
oppression). It says that psychological debilities
are an index (measure) of social oppression.
The phenomenon “psychology of oppression”
consists of psychological stultification across
a wide range of psychological processes. Social
oppression enlists, co-opts, and corrupts many
psychological processes in its victims to do its
bidding.
Oppressed psychology falls short of realizing
the person’s individual potential/aptitudes; it
also falls short of realizing his/her potential for
what he/she could and should be as a social being.
Psychology of oppression stunts people’s capacity to understand, own, and control their society,
which are all necessary to understand and fulfill
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oneself. Indeed, this is the primary function of
psychology of oppression. Stunting the panoply
of psychological processes, such as cognition,
perception, emotions, motivation, sensibility,
imagination, aesthetics, morals, and self-concept,
serves social oppression by oppressing social
being. Social oppression is the basis, function,
and character of psychological stultification. Personal stultification is part of this social process, not
its origin. Personal and psychological stultification
are social problems that can only be eradicated
through democratizing and cooperativizing the
society. Stultification cannot be overcome through
personal means at the personal level which do
not directly transform social oppression.
Psychology of oppression is not limited to
morbid psychopathology such as schizophrenia
and depression. Oppression may debase normal
psychological phenomena. Poor environments
may curtail educational achievement.
Psychology of oppression is not limited to
psychology that is disfavored (e.g., low
educational achievement, prejudice, superficiality, apathy). It may also include socially valued
psychological phenomena such as craving,
impulsively buying, and identifying with consumer products; Islamic women accepting gender
apartheid; electing political candidates and
endorsing political policies that represent the
interests of the elite class rather than the
populace; conforming to restrictive, punitive
theological dogma; enjoying vile, vapid
entertainment programs; crude, superficial, and
sensationalistic aesthetic taste; believing superficial and biased news; feeling insecure, harried,
and docile at work; and irrationality, conformity,
selfishness, and short-sightedness (quick return
on investment). All of these are debased/stunted
psychological forms that fall short of fulfillment
and are ultimately based in, serve, and embody
social oppression and diminished social being
(i.e., understanding, owning, and controlling
macro cultural factors).
Psychology of Oppression Is Objective:
An “Objektiver Geist”
Designating the foregoing phenomena as the
psychology of oppression is not an arbitrary
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designation based on the evaluator’s personal
prejudices. Psychology of oppression can be
objectively demonstrated to diminish the subject’s psychology and sociality and to subjugate
him to the economic and political interests of
a ruling social elite.
Employees who are insecure, docile, and
obsequious (and valued by employers for this)
clearly operate at diminished capacity and will
accept employers’ dictates regarding working
conditions.
A public that is stupefied by news coverage of
political events which focuses upon superficial,
personal, sensationalistic, and immediate events
is easily misled into voting for policies and
officials which benefit the ruling class to the
detriment of the populace. Capitalist politicians
can disguise their true goals of promoting predatory capitalism under superficial images of being
black, female, growing up poor, being personable, etc., that convince voters to elect them.
Similarly, engineering a consumerist psychology that is impulsive, irrational, conformist,
superficial, sensationalistic, uncritical, lazy, and
disinterested in understanding vital product
features allows marketers to induce people to
purchase unnecessary, injurious, and expensive
products on the basis of glitzy appearance, and
association with prominent paid spokespeople,
which critical, discerning, and rational analysis
would repudiate.
Artistic taste/sensibility/perception may have
this same oppressive social character with similar
social consequences. Musical taste may be
informed by the same crude, extreme, and sensationalistic quality that advertising has, and it may
similarly deprive people of the discerning,
profound sensibility and transcendent vision of
beauty and harmony that are necessary to
comprehend, critique, and humanize society and
psychology. The Frankfurt School explored this
issue (Adorno, 1978; Adorno & Horkheimer,
1972). Marcuse (1969, p. 23–48) said that sensibility is a political factor. Beauty is an important
sensibility for practicing freedom. (“The beautiful would be an essential quality of freedom.”)
Crude, vapid, and superficial sensitivity accepts
the unfreedom of the crude, vapid status quo.
Psychology of Oppression
A new sensibility that is an aesthetic ethos
“would foster, on a social scale, the vital need
for the abolition of injustice and misery and
would shape the further evolution of the standard
of living.”
The oppressive causes, characteristics, and
function of psychology of oppression are
also objectively demonstrable in the case of
fundamentalist religion: engineering a mystified
consciousness that feels confused, weak,
ignorant, and afraid of alien, unfathomable,
miraculous, punitive, and spiritual forces leads
people to uncritically submit to spiritual leaders.
Devotees are taught to abandon analysis, logic,
empirical reality, and critique and to adopt an
extraordinary form of consciousness – blind
faith in religious authority – to know what is
going on.
All these examples of psychology of oppression are valued by the oppressive groups that
impose them because they sustain their wealth
and power.
The Form and Content of Psychology of
Oppression
Both the content and the form of psychological
phenomena may become oppressed and
oppressing/oppressive.
The content of desire may include wanting
junk food or wanting some watch that a movie
star wears. This content is oppressive because it is
unhealthy and conformist. Additionally, the form
of desire may become oppressive, as when we
develop an insatiable craving for shoes or handbags. Here, the form of desire as an insatiable
craving is oppressive because it dominates us.
The same is true for thinking: the content of
what we think about may become oppressive, as
when we believe that pro-capitalist politicians and
policies are good for us when they are not or when
people deny global warming and suffer from its
devastation. The form of our thinking may also
become oppressive, as when we base our ideas
upon spurious, superficial associations without
firm evidence. This is the case when we associate
a consumer product with an attractive or prestigious model or when we believe a political candidate will work for our interest because he/she
Psychology of Oppression
served in the army, or appears sincere, or had
immigrant parents, or is black, or a woman.
The form of psychological phenomena may be
more important and more difficult to understand
and re-educate than the content is. We may be able
to understand that the content of junk food and
movie stars’ watches are not good to pursue; however, if the form of our thinking remains irrational,
impulsive, and sensationalistic, we will find it
difficult to studiously inform ourselves about
consumer products, and we will find it difficult to
control our impulses for their attractive glitter.
The Importance of Psychology of Oppression
The construct “psychology of oppression”:
• Makes oppression an explicit topic of
psychological research and theory. Relates
psychological processes and phenomena to
societal oppression. Oppression is a societal
term that includes oppressor and oppressed.
Relating these political constructs to
psychological issues frames the latter in cultural-political terms. Oppression is far different from personalized terms such as
mistreatment or abuse. Research will seek to
identify oppressive social factors – such as
poverty, stupefying entertainment, superficial
news media, mystification in the form of
advertising, religion, and political and corporate lies – and oppressive psychological
effects of these social factors. Psychology of
oppression cannot be studied by conventional
acultural theories and methodologies. The
concept of psychology of oppression calls for
radically new cultural-psychological theories
and methodologies. A case in point is the act
and psychology of State-sanctioned violence.
When a government makes a geopolitical
decision to conquer a country such as Vietnam
or Iraq, and it sends soldiers to kill local
citizens, this act and psychology of violence
is entirely a cultural-political phenomenon.
It is a cognitive decision based upon strategic
interests of the leaders; it’s motive is to
conquer and control and extract advantages;
it is planned and prepared for over time;
weapons are stockpiled; and troops are
recruited, trained, and indoctrinated about the
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importance of the mission. This offensive
aggression to exploit a population has
nothing to do with animalistic mechanisms or
reasons such as an instinct to kill for food,
or an instinctive defense against an immediate
physical threat to the individual animal.
Reducing political-cultural violence to
animal instincts/mechanisms (and employing
methodologies designed to study the latter)
falsifies its cultural-political basis, character,
and function
• Explains numerous debilitating psychological
phenomena in a parsimonious way through a
common explanatory construct. They are
neither accidental, mysterious, surprising,
personal, nor natural. They are the result
of social oppression. They are necessary
for social oppression to maintain itself.
They must exist. They can never be eliminated
as long as social oppression exists. They
are political phenomena, they make politics
central to Psychological theory and research.
Psychology of oppression frames different
competencies in lower class and upper class
individuals in terms of class differences
in power and opportunities. Lower class
competencies in communication, language,
literacy, and logical reasoning are deficiencies
caused by oppression and functional for
maintaining the oppression of lower class
individuals. Lower class competencies are
just as impoverished as their wages, houses,
and neighborhoods are. Lower class competencies are not merely stylistic differences
from upper class competencies. Psychology
of oppression sensitizes us to the organic
wholeness of material and psychological
oppression
• Enhances psychological science by identifying true explanatory constructs and descriptors
of psychological phenomena, and debunking
false explanatory constructs and descriptors
• Regards psychological debilitation as victimization of societal abuse. Victims of psychology
of oppression are not blamed for their debilitations, however, their oppressed psychology/
behavior is criticized for being debilitated and
debilitating (Boltanski, 2011)
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• Exposes and challenges oppressive elements
of society
• Develops interventions that repudiate and
circumvent
oppressive
psychological
phenomena. This is critical for removing
debilitating perceptions, emotions, desires,
needs, self-concept, motivation, and reasoning
processes that prevent people from understanding social problems and from pursuing
concrete, viable actions that will eradicate
them. Alleviating the psychology of oppression is prerequisite to developing viable emancipatory actions on the personal, group, and
international levels
• Illuminates theoretical issues regarding the
relation between psychology and culture.
Psychology of oppression exemplifies and
validates cultural psychology – particularly
“macro cultural psychology.” Psychology
of oppression utilizes – exploits – general
principles of macro cultural psychology,
particularly political origins, characteristics,
and functions of psychological phenomena;
the socialization of psychology; the active
internalization of this socialization in individual cognitions, perceptions, emotions, and
self-concept; and the active externalization
(performance, reproduction) of socialized
cultural-psychological phenomena in behavior.
Of course, psychology of oppression includes
distinct concrete features such as mystification
that are not present in emancipatory psychology
• Ties psychological improvement to social
improvement, and vice versa
The psychology of oppression is therefore
a scientific psychological construct, a political
construct, a socially critical construct, and an
emancipatory construct, all in one.
Definition
Psychology of oppression refers, first and
foremost, to the fact that oppressed psychology
is the subjective processes that sustain oppression
within the victims of oppression. Oppressed psychology is oppressive, oppressing psychology.
It is not the passive result of oppression, but an
Psychology of Oppression
active reproducing of oppression by consciousness/subjectivity/agency (Ratner, 2011). Victims
of oppression are unwittingly complicit in their
own oppression. Psychology of oppression consists of motivation, agency, perception, emotions,
ambitions, ideals, reasoning, memory, aesthetics,
and morals that accept the oppressive social
system, desire it, identify with it, take it for
granted as normal and even as ideal, take pleasure
in it, defend it, and reject alternatives to it. This is
only possible because consciousness/psychology
has been mystified and manipulated to not perceive, understand, or resist the oppressive society
and the oppressive social basis, characteristics,
and function of psychological phenomena.
Psychology of oppression reveals that oppression is not always perceptible and repellant. It can
be disguised and beguiling. People do not always
know they are oppressed. Sometimes they have to
be educated about their oppression. The reason is
that oppression stunts people’s critical, rational,
analytical, and probing capabilities. Normative
oppression also becomes taken for granted and
mundane and therefore imperceptible.
Psychology of Oppression Is Promulgated by
Oppressing/Oppressive Social Groups
Oppressors promote psychology of oppression
through the institutions, artifacts, and conceptual
apparatuses they control – think tanks, advertising, news outlets, entertainment institutions,
university research institutes, and political
parties and governmental agencies (Ratner,
2012, pp. 310–322). Foucault (1978/2012,
pp. 105–106, 110, emphasis added) describes
the vastness of this process in one example:
“I study things like a psychiatric asylum,
the forms of constraint, exclusion, elimination,
disqualification, let us say, the reason that is
always precisely embodied, embodied in the
form of a doctor, a medical knowledge,
a medical institution, etc., exercised on madness,
illness, un - reason, etc., what I study is an
architecture, a spatial disposition; what I study
are the disciplinary techniques, the modalities of
training, the forms of surveillance, still in much
too broad terms, but. . . what are the practices that
one puts in play in order to govern men, that is, to
Psychology of Oppression
obtain from them a certain way of conducting
themselves?. . . it was out of this machinery of
exclusion, of surveillance, of training, of therapy,
etc., that there came to be constituted the hospital—first confinement, then the hospital, then
psychiatry. That is the relation of power as principle of intelligibility, of the relationship between
materiality and rationality.” “ From this analytical grid we can at once reconstruct the way
possible objects of knowledge are constituted,
and on the other hand how the subject constitutes
itself, that is to say, what I call subjectification
[l’assujettissement], a word I know is difficult to
translate to English, because it rests on a play on
words, subjectification [assujettissement] in the
sense of the constitution of the subject, and at the
same time the way in which we impose on
a subject relations of domination.”
The main purpose of psychology of oppression is to adjust to social and material oppression,
and to curtail and distort people’s understanding
of social reality so they will not see its oppressive
character. Everything that distracts from a rational, objective comprehension of social reality
obfuscates oppression and allows it to flourish
undetected. Oppression is sustained by a wide
network of distracting, obfuscating tactics.
These include official lies, stupefying entertainment, banal art, superficial news, irrational
philosophies, and organized religion.
For example, when religious authorities
convince people to believe in fictitious, unfathomable religious entities, ideas, and rituals, this
forces devotees to rely on “wise” authorities to
lead them. A non-existent god cannot be known
by ordinary powers of perception and reason
because it does not exist. Consequently, devotees
who believe in an institutionalized god are