Madden, S. & Moane, G. (2006) ‘Critical Psychologies in Ireland: Transforming Contexts and
Political Possibilities’, Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 5, pp. 281-304
www.discourseunit.com/arcp/5
Siobhán Madden and Geraldine Moane1
Critical Psychologies in Ireland: Transforming Contexts and Political Possibilities2
1. Introduction
…and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that
the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon
will not be there.
Lines from ‘That the Science of Cartography is Limited’ by Eavan Boland (1994)
It is our view that the science of psychology is limited. More than this, as an ‘ingenious
design’ which claims mastery in persuading complex curves of subjectivity into the flat and
abstract plane of positivist thought, we regard mainstream psychology as a site of power and
control. And we are not persuaded.
In this paper, our aim is to re-view psychology in Ireland from a critical perspective. In this
re-viewing, we do not wish to reproduce the masterful claims of mainstream psychology by
making any claims to comprehensiveness. Our paper is necessarily selective and its
possibilities in many ways limited by our own particular locations, engagements and
perspectives. By the same token, we hope that the specificities of our own locations and
commitments can also open up other possibilities for critical psychology.
In not claiming a neutral perspective, we too wish to engage in our own persuasions. Our own
positionings, perspectives and engagements simultaneously converge and creatively diverge
1
Contact: siobhanmadden@eircom.net & ger.moane@ucd.ie
We would like to thank Eilish Dillon and Eunice McCarthy for their support in this project and for useful
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Responsibility for the final version, with all its imperfections, is of
course our own. Our thanks also to Ian Parker for the invitation to contribute to this Special Issue, and to the
editors, Manolis Dafermos, Athanasios Marvakis and Sofia Triliva, for their kind patience and flexibility.
2
281
in several ways. Our interest is in a critical psychology which struggles for social justice as
part of a broader movement of transformation. We therefore wish to centre activism and
ourselves as activists. Feminism in particular has been central to both of our practices of
critical psychology albeit through somewhat different political and intellectual commitments.
We are also differently located within/without/ institutional psychology, although we both
experience life here/there on the margins. These similarities and differences are reflected in
the writing of the paper itself. Our different voices move in and through it, reflecting these
different contexts, locations and angles of vision which infuse and animate each other.
Boland’s poem invites a rethinking of the notion of context itself: from fixed flat planes, to
dynamic spheres which circle and move in relation to each other. Our own paper weaves in
and between intersecting contexts of critique: of psychology, history, local and global, social
movements, and struggles, genres and kinds of practices, women’s groups, class-rooms. Our
pluralisation of ‘critical psychologies’ is informed by recognizing multiple sites of resistance
and transformation; there is no one way of ‘doing’ critical psychology.
The specificities of an Irish context and particular manifestations of power and oppression
have been an important part of our own learning about critique. This has included silencing of
questions in regard to abortion, sexuality, racism, Northern Ireland, our colonial history and
Ireland’s current embrace of neoliberalism. Such silencing has sometimes been blatant, as in
outright censorship, but more often has taken more subtle forms of control. Silencing has
never been complete, of course, and voices and movements of dissent have been empowered
by histories which include resistance to colonialism and links with international postcolonial
and other liberation movements.
Indeed, the instabilities of context and power relationships extend to contestations which
challenge any simple notion of ‘Ireland’. ‘Ireland” can refer to the island as a whole or to the
26 counties comprising the Republic of Ireland, which gained political independence from
Britain in 1921. Northern Ireland refers to the six counties which are politically part of “The
United Kingdom (U.K.)”; our disputes with this political arrangement and its ambiguities are
a topic for another paper. Our own particular locations are within the Republic of Ireland
(West and East respectively), and this is reflected in much of the content of the paper. We
recognise and regret the limitations of this ‘partitionist’ position.
All too cognisant then of the politics of map-making, we nonetheless attempt to articulate a
cartography of critical psychologies in Ireland through movement between different contexts.
We begin the paper by re-viewing the field of psychology, discussing political struggles and
critical practices/perspectives in and on the boundaries of the field. In doing so, we attempt to
de-centre mainstream psychology’s claims to masterfulness by centre-ing what we regard as
contestations of the disciplinary boundaries of mainstream psychology in Ireland. The inquiry
foregrounds and then blurs disciplinary boundaries, thus opening onto dynamic and
intersecting contexts of critique in Ireland. We reconstruct ‘critical psychologies in Ireland’
by recognizing a rich range of activist/academic interdisciplinary work informed by Irish
cultural, historical and political specificities. We then return to a different ‘base’ for critical
psychologies which centres our own activist concerns, and situates our own sometimes
contradictory theoretical positionings in more personalized discussions of critical psychology
in action. We can position ourselves as ‘critical psychologists’ to the extent that critical
psychology offers tools, not only for politicising theoretical understandings of the personal,
but also politicising the experience of the personal, reflecting our concern with supporting
feminist political agency. Discussion of these questions is framed through our shared political
282
commitments regarding feminism, post-colonialism and neo-liberal critique. The theoretical
ground covered includes feminist theory, liberation psychology, post-colonial theory,
Foucauldian theory, poststructuralism, and Bakhtinian theory.
In our conclusion we draw our arguments into a hopefully clearer sense of our understanding
of critical psychologies which can open onto transformative horizons for their ongoing
development nationally and internationally.
2. The Field of Psychology – Limiting Horizons
When the field of psychology was being established in the 1950s in Ireland it built on a long
Catholic tradition of voluntary service, with many settings for the practice of psychology
involving Catholic institutions. The Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI), formed in 1970,
set out with an intention to be a professional society for both the Republic of Ireland and
Northern Ireland, itself a particular political stance. Yet, it remained a side player in much
political discourse, although progressive forces within the field did their best to provide a
critical voice. The establishment of professional fields and gaining recognition and status,
rather than critical reflexivity, have been and continue to be the main concerns of the field.
Thus the programmes which were established in the main universities, although varying in
philosophical emphases, drew on the established positivist psychologies of Britain and the
USA with little attempt to contextualise theory and research or acknowledge the specificities
of the Irish context. The field adopted a strong scientist-practitioner model, with the PSI code
of ethics stating that scientific evidence must be the basis for knowledge. Programmes in
clinical psychology became established in the 1980s, and moved to professional doctorate
level in the 1990s. Social and organisational psychology was also established in the mid
1980s, while educational psychology and other areas followed later.
One exception to the asocial emphasis characteristic of mainstream psychology was in the
field of social and organisational psychology, pioneered in the 1980s by Eunice McCarthy.
Social issues such as gender and equality were central to the field from the beginning,
including an open critique of the failure to attain key objectives on women’s equality in
employment (McCarthy, 1988). Over decades, McCarthy was the principle contributor from
the field of psychology of briefings and research papers on equality related issues (e.g.
McCarthy, 1988; McCarthy and McGinn, 1996). The main arena for any collective politically
oriented involvement related to the Northern Ireland conflict. A Special Interest group was set
up in the 1970s within PSI (Psychologists for Peace) whose aim was to promote cross-border
academic and professional cooperation and to encourage public debate by organizing public
lectures and events over many years. While the group became a rallying point for some of the
more politicized members, it did not get involved in debates about the nature of the field, or
contribute to public debate in other areas.
There was strong pressure in PSI to remain out of public discourse, despite the many political
debates about issues of central concern to psychology such as gender, sexuality and the role of
women, that occurred in Ireland from the 1970s on. The main argument was that it would be
impossible to establish a position on issues like divorce, abortion and sexual orientation on
which all members could agree, an argument which obscured the conservative political and
professional motives behind such silencing. The main counterargument was that the field had
a responsibility to inform the public about relevant scientific research. This debate – itself
phrased within PSI’s own terms - was played out particularly in 1986, 1992 and 2002 abortion
referenda. At these times proposed amendments to the written constitution of Ireland aimed to
283
prohibit abortion entirely, and in both cases suicide as a threat to life became a central issue.
In 1986, after strong pressure from feminist and progressive members PSI published a 12page scientific review of research on abortion written in a strictly positivist mode, although
the weight of the evidence presented supported a pro-choice position. The publication of this
provoked much controversy – not about its content but about its publication - and resulted in
resignations from the Society.
The 1992 referendum also aimed to ban information about abortion which would have
widespread repercussions, including in the areas of counseling and psychotherapy. A number
of psychologists founded a group, Psychologists for Freedom of Information (PFI), which
could function outside the restrictions of PSI and operate in the political domain, making
public statements, and providing resources. For strategic purposes, this group agreed to
operate within the positivist and professional frameworks of the field, bringing psychological
knowledge and arguments into public discourse. The group had some support in PSI, although
most members preferred to keep a separation between political and professional issue, and it
played an active role in political debate. Over the decade that followed, PSI consistently failed
to make statements in political debates in areas such as sexual orientation, childcare, suicide
and abortion, with psychiatrists more likely to provide commentary on issues of relevance to
psychology. In the late 1990s, when the government was seeking submissions relating to
abortion and suicide, PSI remained silent, with Psychologists for Freedom of Information
providing the only formal submission for psychologists. By 2002, when another referendum
on abortion focused specifically on suicide, PSI was one of the few professional societies in
the health services to remain silent. It released a statement on suicide only days before the
vote and only after intense pressure from a reformulated Psychologists for Freedom of
Information.
By 2002, interest within PSI in political issues seemed to have almost disappeared, with very
little response to the attempts by PFI to organize, and little interest in Psychologists for Peace.
Yet at this point, with no consultation or discussion, senior officers in PSI began launching
public attacks on complementary medicine of all kinds, publishing a column by the then
President of PSI in the Irish Psychologist, the Society’s newsletter/magazine (Hughes, 2004).
While this could be regarded as a “professional” issue, clearly the definition of professional
related to the interests of the field rather than to a critical analysis. The majority of academic
and professional psychologists concurred in defending the field whose conservatism was also
apparent in another domain, namely that of sexual orientation, where there has been little
discussion of the impact of anti-gay Catholic views in a context where many health services
are provided in Catholic dominated institutions. Thus far from challenging the status quo,
much of the field, especially in professional areas, has reproduced patriarchal and imperialist
agendas of normalization.
While Psychologists for Freedom of Information mobilized in a specific political context, it
did operate within the terms of the field by grounding its arguments in positivist research,
reflecting the narrow constitution of evidence both in the public domain as well as in the field.
And there have been and are numerous examples of researchers who, though not challenging
the field itself, move beyond the narrow interests of the field, particularly those who have
addressed issues of social concerns using positivist methods. Research on social issues can be
and is used for purposes of social control. However, such research can also break silences and
inform social policy in progressive ways. Examples include Curtis in the National University
of Ireland (NUI) Galway, one of the first to publish on AIDS (Curtis, 1984), and Taylor’s
(University College Cork) contributions to national policy on pornography and child sex
284
abuse through the COPINE project (Taylor et al, 2001). At NUI Maynooth, McGilloway has
focused on the relationship between psychological factors and the community context of
health and social care provision, touching on gender, class and homelessness among other
topics (McGilloway and Donnelly 2001). Several researchers have also disputed the
ascendancy of the quantitative paradigm, for example Guerin and Hennessy (2002) in
University College Dublin who have used qualitative methods to explore children's
understandings of bullying.
3. Critical Psychologies – Disrupting Boundaries
The relatively narrow and positivist view of the field has been reflected in the Irish Journal of
Psychology, which publishes almost exclusively positivist research on Irish and international
samples. The major exception to this was the publication in 1994 of a special issue of the
Journal on the theme of “The Irish Psyche”. Many of the articles adopted perspectives that fall
within the domain of Critical Psychology. Although they did not interrogate the phrase “Irish
Psyche”, the editors themselves posed questions about specificity and location, encouraged
multiple perspectives, and sought considerations of cultural issues that would inform Irish
psychology (Coyle & Halliday, 1994). The Special Issue was intentionally interdisciplinary
and touched on a broad range of issues thus itself broadening the terms of reference for the
field. It was launched at an interdisciplinary event and received much attention, but
unfortunately its attempt to begin a more critical discussion did not at the time result in a
more sustained emergence of critical psychologies.
In the Special Issue, as well as in their ongoing work, some of the contributors to this issue
relate directly to critical psychology. Eunice McCarthy, Sheila Greene, and Geraldine Moane
have consistently combined feminism and psychology, including teaching psychology of
women and feminist psychology and establishing programmes in women’s studies in Trinity
College Dublin and University College Dublin (UCD). In the Special Issue, McCarthy (1994),
for example, theorised ‘A Celtic Model’ of work systems, arguing for new understandings of
social systems underpinned by feminist and culturally specific understandings embodied in
language, traditions, norms, folklore and social practices. She drew on Gleick’s Chaos Theory
as a framework for conceptualising the dynamics of change, embracing uncertainty,
recursiveness, complexity and diversity in order to encounter what is hidden, uncertain,
unexpected and disordered thus grounding her analysis is a long historical tradition. Greene
(1994) also adopted a systemic view, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, to provide a critical
analysis of Irish society as a context for development. She continued with her feminist and
ecological analysis in her research – her recent book (Greene 2002) adopted a critical
perspective towards developmental psychology. Greene also adopted leadership in the
recently funded National Longitudinal Study (NLS), ensuring that a contextualized
understanding of development will emerge. Moane’s (1994) contribution focused on the
implications of colonialism for psychological and social functioning. Adopting a life-span,
ecological and feminist perspective, she disputed the unitary nature of “the Irish Psyche’. She
argued that psychological patterns related to colonialism are related to gender, class, age and
ethnic grouping, and that decolonization remained to be theorized. She continued to work
with the intersections of gender and colonialism to develop a liberation psychology as an
alternative to mainstream psychology which she criticized as supporting the status quo
through its individualism, acontextualism and racist, sexist and class biases (Moane 1999).
In addition to this Special Issue, three earlier writers on colonialism and oppression were
Barry Fitzpatrick, Vincent Kenny, and Sean Ruth, all of whom published their articles in
285
interdisciplinary journals. Fitzpatrick (1983) presented an early challenge to psychology’s
alignment with the authority of church and state, ‘as a science of “adjustment” and
“socialization”’. Kenny (1985) adopted an explicitly post-colonial perspective and used
Kelly’s Construct Theory to describe patterns which derive in part from the complementary
relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Ruth’s (1988) perspective was grounded
in re-evaluation counselling and also focuses particularly on the relational aspects of
oppression and liberation. Remaining on the boundaries of the field, more recently he has
presented an account of how relations of power and of powerlessness can be acted out through
attacks on leaders and how leaders can respond, thus providing leadership for liberation (Ruth
2006).
Ciarán Benson’s contribution to the Special Issue focused on the intersections of art and
nationalism (Benson 1994). In his subsequent book, he articulates a ‘cultural psychology of
self’, adopting a discursive psychology approach which theorises mind as emerging through
joint activity mediated through cultural and historical narratives (Benson 2001). Also in UCD,
although not a contributor to the Special Issue, Adrian Brock adopts a social constructionist
perspective. His work is concerned with developing a more international history of
psychology in order to raise issues currently marginalized in psychology, such as cultural
imperialism, the project of modernity, and the relationship between indigenization and
universalism in psychology (Brock, Louw, & van Hoorn, 2004; Brock, 2006). Michael
O’Connell in UCD has focused on the relationship between inequality in society and
psychological well-being and on changing Irish attitudes and values in a neo-liberal context
(O’Connell 2001). Along with Malcolm MacLachlann in Trinity College, he has also
published on the topics of racism and on healthcare (MacLachlann & O’Connell 2000).
MacLachlann has published extensively on critical perspectives to health, and how
embodiment is social and cultural (e.g. MacLachlann, 2004).
These publications reflect, to some extent, the range and diversity of critical psychology in
Ireland. It is also the case that in the universities much of critical psychology is offered in
coursework, or presented in theses and reports. Outside the mainstream universities in Ireland,
students who study with the Open University in Ireland are offered theoretical tools of
analysis for challenging psychology’s role in social control. Nonetheless, as yet, in the PSI or
university departments, there is no concerted interrogation of mainstream psychology’s
epistemological assumptions. In particular, there is no shared project to critique mainstream
psychology’s role in social control. However, the increasing visibility of critical psychology
and related areas nationally and internationally is creating a vital context for the emergence of
new voices. For example a Symposium at the annual PSI conference in 2005, on ‘Critical
Directions in Clinical Psychology’ convened by Michael Guilfoyle of Trinity College Dublin
focused on how clinical psychology conceals the relationship between the personal and the
political (Guilfoyle, 2005). The symposium included papers adopting critical discursive
approaches to raise questions about the sociopolitical conditions of ADHD (Seery, 2005),
deficit models of schizophrenia (Meehan, 2005) and the collusion of psychotherapy in
gendered power relations with women presenting with depression (O’Dea, 2005).
On the boundaries of psychology, one might also include social scientists in other disciplines
who have drawn on wider theorizations of critical psychology to inform research on
subjectivities in an Irish context. For example, Breda Gray (2004) in the University of
Limerick has drawn inter alia on the work of Nicholas Rose to analyse the discursive
production of Irish emigrant Traveller and settled women’s selves in Irish global modernity;
Anne B. Ryan (2001) in NUI, Maynooth, explicitly locates her feminist critique of adult
286
education pedagogical practices within critical psychology; Michael Breen, Eoin Devereux
and Amanda Haynes, social scientists in the University of Limerick, have published their
research on media representations of asylum seekers in the International Journal of Critical
Psychology (Haynes et al, 2006). Moreover, it is important to recognize that there are a range
of critical psychologies which exist outside the academy underpinned by analyses of power
relations. Full consideration of these forms of critical psychology is not possible here, but of
particular note are feminist developments of radical approaches to therapy, and political
interventions in the broad area of violence against women.
Indeed, the diversity and interdisciplinary nature of the above works suggests that to make
sense of critical psychology, it becomes necessary to situate psychology and critical voices in
the broader context of critique in Ireland over time.
4. Intersecting Contexts of Critique in Ireland3
While the psychology which emerged in 1950s Ireland drew on a long tradition of
Catholicism, this was not the only tradition. One concern of critical theory in Ireland, for
instance, has been to argue that the hegemonic status of ‘traditional Irish Catholicism’ in the
1950s has obscured the contest and resistance of its making (Wills, 2001). The critical voices
on the boundaries of psychology in Ireland do not emerge in a cultural vacuum, but have
resonances with and are supported by broader critical theory in Ireland and internationally,
both historically and in contemporary contexts. This context includes a rich indigenous
language and literary culture, as well as social movements such as feminism, the left and
nationalist struggles, anti-colonial struggles, Irish language activism, global solidarity
struggles, and, more recently, anti-racism movements. Such critical perspectives occupy
spaces both within and without academies and assume different cultural forms. All this points
to a dynamic, often contradictory, context of contestations of and resistances to normalizing
discourses, including those constitutive of mainstream psychology itself.
Some of the contestations and resistances referred to by Wills (2001) are exemplified by The
Bell, a literary journal founded in 1940 by Seán O’Faoileán and Peadar O’Donnell, two
writers, intellectuals and socialists who had been active in the political struggle for Irish
independence. In the first editorial, O’Faoileán calls for the experimental, fresh recreation of
all our symbols in order ‘to create a genuinely participatory community of minds’ (Kearney,
1983, p. 167) Ireland is conceived, not as a homogenous cultural unit, but as ‘a complex,
teeming synthesis of different views’ (ibid.). But by the last editorial in 1954, O’Faoileán has
grown weary and pessimistic. The context in which psychology emerges is one where the
possibilities for new creative alternatives seem to have receded, and where critique alone
cannot sustain the energy for new visions of Ireland.
But the 1970s marked a period of intense resurgence of radical political mobilization,
including the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – followed by British military
occupation and armed conflict, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Left and the
Gaeltacht4 Civil Rights Movement. Inevitably, debates and tensions were manifest between
The section on ‘Intersecting Contexts of Critique in Ireland’ was written by Siobhán Madden, although the
content very much reflects both authors’ shared understandings and positionings.
4
‘Gaeltacht’ refers to regions where the Irish language is predominantly spoken. The Gaeltacht Civil Rights
Movement (Gluiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta) was ‘Composed of a small cadre of well-educated and
politically inspired young people, [who were] committed to collectivised forms of self-help’ (Powell and
Geoghegan, 2004, p. 67).
3
287
and within all strands of resistance. In this context also, ‘revisionist’ versions of Ireland’s
colonial history gained hegemonic status, institutionalising repressive and censorious forms of
social control for those who challenged partition and/or State abuses of human rights in
Northern Ireland.
The Cranebag, another journal for critical thinking, emerges in this context, founded in 1977
by philosophers Mark Patrick Hederman and Richard Kearney. The Special Issues
characteristic of the journal pick up strands of wider cultural and political debate, including
issues, for instance, on Images of the Irish Woman, The North, Minorities, Irish Language
and Culture, Latin-America, Socialism, and Media and Popular Culture. The First Editorial
explicitly addresses the nature of ‘the critical way’ as historicising and dynamic, not
concerned with facts but with ‘examining their roots and their reason for being there in the
first place…it is never complete, its borders always shifting, disintegrating, reforming’
(Hederman and Kearney, 1977, n.p). A critical encounter is also a creative one: The Crane
Bag aims ‘to promote the excavation of such unactualised spaces within the reader. From such
a place a new understanding and a new unity might emerge’ (ibid.).
In ‘The Forum Issue’, The Cranebag extends an explicit invitation to psychology as a
discipline to partake in this critical attitude. This issue provided a forum of inquiry for
exploring possibilities of cooperation between Religion, Education, Art and Psychology,
mirroring somewhat the later interdisciplinary issue in The Irish Psychologist. However,
while the later venture sought considerations of cultural issues to inform Irish psychology, the
earlier critical project casts psychology as itself a ‘cultural mode of self-representation’, and
links a critical review of Ireland’s ‘ideological hegemony’, including psychology, to a
political transformation of society (Hederman and Kearney, 1983, n.p.).
The Field Day enterprise was another important critical literary venture which emerged
around the same time. It continues mainly in the form of the Field Day Critical Conditions
publications series, drawing on a variety of intellectual resources including the Frankfurt
School, post-colonialism, critical theory and, albeit less so, on feminist theory. Lloyd (2001)
for instance outlines the aim of postcolonial projects as to rethink and re-envision the legacy
of occluded Irish anti-colonial struggles in the light contemporary struggles. Cleary (2005)
notes that while the series contributors do not share a methodological agenda, they articulate
an overall critical skepticism toward liberal teleologies of progress which is at odds with the
dominant intellectual, political and popular cultural consensus in Ireland.
However, while critical literary projects such as The Cranebag and Field Day have been
important in introducing critical ideas into Irish cultural discourse, their wider public impact
has been deemed less impressive (McCormack, 1986; Cleary, 2005). Confinement of critical
discussion to an ‘intellectual coterie’ (Cleary, 2005, p.19) contrasts sharply with other kinds
of alternative interdisciplinary spaces, forged in resisting the mainstream academy’s refusal to
engage with radical perspectives and social movements. These critical spaces articulate a
vision of education in and about social change, and a vision of knowledge where political
struggles inform academic analysis. Critical to their politics are active connections with
communities and social movements through ‘organic intellectuals’. The variegated nature of
social movements and the range of concerns have led to specific academic institutional spaces
inquiring into the complex power relationships of people’s lives - including those of women,
working class people, lesbians, gay men and bisexual people, disabled people, Travellers,
refugees and asylum seekers – and broad areas of concern for social movements such as
community development, adult education, and global solidarity.
288
The impact of feminism as a major intellectual and political tradition in Ireland, and as a
primary site for radical change in academia, deserves special mention here (e.g. Byrne et al,
1996; Byrne and Leonard, 1997; Connolly, 2003; MacCurtain and O’Corráin, 1978; Smyth,
1993). In the early 1980s, feminists started developing the field of Women’s Studies as a
challenge to the patriarchal academic mainstream and with strong links with women in the
wider community. Programmes are now established in several universities throughout Ireland.
Arguably, these institutional spaces provided one important catalyst for the renewed
mobilization of active feminist resistance in the late 1980s and 1990s, as public debate
erupted about the legalization of abortion and information on abortion (see Smyth, 1992).
Socialist ideas have also long informed Irish progressive movements and, in the 1980s, also
became established in academic contexts. The Equality Studies Centre in University College
Dublin opened in 1989, drawing on Marxism and critical theory as well as feminism (Baker et
al, 2004). In the 1990s, racism began to be theorized by social scientists in Ireland based on
the notion of the ‘specificities of Irish racism’, informed by an analysis of Ireland’s
contradictory location in racialised discourses (McVeigh, 1992; Lentin and McVeigh, 2002).
These developments have also spearheaded epistemological interrogation of academic
knowledge as deeply implicated in the operation of power. The publication of (Re)searching
Women: Feminist Research Methodologies in the Social Sciences in Ireland (Byrne and
Lentin, 2000) marks an important landmark here in tracing a history of epistemological debate
in Ireland (e.g. Daly,1987; Lentin,1993; Mahon,1994;O’Dowd, 1988) and in situating
feminist debates in the context of wider theoretical developments in the US, Europe, Australia
and New Zealand. The volume also showcases examples of feminist emancipatory and
interpretative research methodologies in Ireland, based on reflexively questioning dualisms of
objectivity/subjectivity, and the ethics and politics of research practices, including the social
relations of knowledge production.
While the challenges endemic to operating in an academic environment hostile to radical
ideas cannot be overstated, all these institutional strands have intersected with and supported
each other in complex ways to create a vibrant intellectual culture of resistance and critique.
This has important implications for critical psychologies in Ireland. These interdisciplinary
contexts have offered crucial intellectual and political possibilities for individuals in the field
of psychology. Although critical psychologists from the discipline of psychology have not yet
developed a strong presence in these wider critical debates, the blurring of disciplinary
boundaries has itself arguably expanded the range of critical psychologies. Practices of
critique in these spaces have laid claim to much of the subject matter of psychology in
interrogating questions of self, subjectivity and identity. In the process, psychology’s
traditional subject matter has been transformed in ways which necessarily problematise
analytical distinctions between individuals and their social contexts.
Yet, with some notable exceptions (e.g. McDonnell, 2003; Ryan, 2001), these challenges to
the mainstream have tended to be framed as challenges to mainstream sociology, leaving
psychology beyond social critique. Byrne and Lentin (2000), for instance identify a core
challenge for feminist research in the social sciences as being that of ‘creating a sociology
with women’ (p.31). A critical focus on sociology is somewhat understandable given that
these debates have largely been driven by critics from within this discipline. Nonetheless,
even these radical approaches in the social sciences have not provided a concerted critique of
the taken for grantedness of psychology’s conceptual apparatus of the individual and the
implications of this for social control.
289
At stake here is more than the need to contest received definitions of psychology’s
appropriate subject matter and ‘who’ is entitled to engage in critical interrogation of
psychology. While links with social movements and grass-roots activism provide a vital
context for purposeful development of emancipatory knowledge paradigms, emerging debates
suggest that the political agency and, indeed, the very constitution of, grass-roots social
movements cannot be taken for granted. The assertion, for instance, that the ‘mushrooming’
of grassroots women’s groups over the past two decades marks a new phase in the women’s
movement (Connolly,1996, 2003; Coulter, 1993; Mahon, 1995) is disputed, in part, through
questioning the emphasis on personal development courses on their agendas (e.g. Mulvey,
1994; Clancy, 1995). Mulvey, for instance, has argued for the need to ‘move beyond’ the
personal in order to focus on systems and structures. These debates open onto key questions
about the personal as a critical focus of inquiry in facilitating women’s groups as agents for
social change. Broader questions also trouble political agency in Ireland given the assumed
transcendent status of neo-liberalism. Critics challenge the policy-making paradigm of ‘Social
Partnership’, a corporatist approach to policy that draws community development into
partnership with government and capital, and which is the main institutional framework for
community development organizations to interact with the state (Powell and Geoghegan,
2004). Meade (2005) argues that community development projects are positioned as social
rehabilitators but not critics, given the government’s role in mobilizing, surveillance, and
controlling a ‘top-down model of active citizenship’ (p. 360). While energy is sublimated into
the partnership process, it does not allow for more critical voices or a radical restructuring of
agendas. These various discontentments invite work for critical psychological scrutiny, and,
in particular, highlight the importance of conceptual and theoretical tools to address questions
of agency as they relate to political transformation in specific contexts.
In conclusion, relocating critical possibilities from the field of psychology to the wider
context of social critique in Ireland provides a wider frame of political and cultural references
for understanding critical voices within psychology. Challenging disciplinary boundaries
expands the range of critical psychologies in Ireland, and makes available rich strands of
critique linked to activism to inform critical psychologies of transformation in Ireland.
However, it is suggested that these critiques also prise open urgent questions relevant to
critical psychology regarding the search for meaningful political agency in Ireland today.
5. Negotiating Personal and Political: Critical Psychologies for Transformation
This section takes another shift in context by exploring the particularities of our own attempts
as feminist activists to negotiate the personal and political in order to illustrate some
possibilities for understanding political agency. We each present a more personal account of
some of the political and theoretical trajectories and engagements which we find interesting
and useful in informing our own engagements as activists, and as critical psychologists
negotiating political agency for radical change. Our accounts are framed through our shared
political commitments regarding feminism, community education, post-colonialism and neoliberal critique, with emphases on structuralist (Geraldine) and post-structuralist (Siobhán)
analyses respectively.
Geraldine’s Journey: Liberation Psychology, Gender and Colonialism
These multiple strands of critical thinking obviously provided a rich and challenging context
for theory and activism in Ireland, yet with the exception of the work of McCarthy outlined
above (McCarthy 1988; 1994), the Psychology programme in which I participated in the
290
1970s made no connections with Irish cultural and political contexts. Joining a feminist group
while an undergraduate provided experience of direct action which has continued since.
Central themes in these political contexts were the importance of inclusion, equality and
accessibility. The phrase ‘the personal is political’ at that time encompassed the view that
structural power inequalities had an impact on all areas of functioning, that internalized
oppression acted as a block to solidarity and to activism, and that personal change could be
linked with political change. (All of these, of course, have since been problematized). On the
academic front, the often atheoretical positivism of psychology contrasted with the
uncertainties and challenges of feminist theory and critical theory, yet the field of psychology
remained stubbornly committed to quantitative positivist methodology and the defense of
professional issues, and impervious to the theorizing outside the field reviewed above. This
reflected the international context which disciplined the field in Ireland.
When Women’s Studies started to emerge in Ireland in the 1980s, it offered the opportunity to
engage in an interdisciplinary context which seemed to encompass activist as well as
academic ideals of transformation. In UCD we adopted a feminist perspective, and defined
Women’s Studies as ‘Feminism in action criticizing accepted knowledge and advancing new
women centred knowledge’. This definition encompassed the critical and deconstructive
agenda of Women’s Studies, its critical grounding in women’s experiences, its aim to
construct new knowledge and its radical approach to teaching and learning. Thus, in the face
of the intransigence of Psychology, I chose to operate in Women’s Studies and the women’s
movement rather than try to mobilize a Critical Psychology.
In Women’s Studies (and elsewhere) in the 1980s and 1990s, post-structuralist perspectives
challenged many assumptions about power, the unitary nature of psyches and of identities,
and understandings of social change and of activism (Burman et al. 1996; Nicholson, 1990).
The difficulties of poststructuralist approaches for clear political analysis have been outlined
by Brodrib (1992) among others. Brodribs’ title, ‘Nothing Matters’, identified the tendency in
post-structuralist analyses to reduce political issues to such a degree of specificity that they
seemed irrelevant. Other difficulties frequently identified in post-structuralist theorizing
include that of identifying clear political targets (where power is dispersed rather than
institutionalized) and a tendency to minimize the role of structural and material forces and
indeed sometimes of power itself (Delphy and Leonard, 1992). There was a danger of
undermining solidarity among groups as the focus shifted to specificity and subjectivity.
Furthermore post-structuralist perspectives – including postmodernist feminist writings, postcolonial theory and queer theory – all employ a mode of discourse which is difficult if not
impossible for those without university education. I engaged with these critiques in the
context of co-teaching Feminist Theory to postgraduates in Women’s Studies (Smyth, 1993)
and Equality Studies (the latter committed to a structuralist perspective, Baker et al. 2004),
while also involved in direct action groups concerned with reproductive rights and lesbian and
gay rights.
The difficulties of post-structuralist perspectives became particularly apparent through
teaching Women’s Studies to undergraduates and in community contexts as the Women’s
Studies programme extended to involve women with little formal education. As personal
development and psychology courses proliferated, critics focused on the acontextual and
individualizing nature of such courses (Kitzinger and Perkins, 1993; Mulvey, 1994). Yet, my
experience in teaching and workshops was that the draw of Psychology in a Women’s Studies
context lay precisely in the opportunity it offered to link the personal and the political in a
way which Sociological and other perspectives did not. How to offer a clearly political yet
291
also constructed view of the personal and of agency and transformation became my central
interest. The validity of the above critiques of social constructionist approaches also became
more apparent through the experiences of the annual Lesbian Lives conference and the
emergence of Queer theory in UCD. Both of these aimed to provide a context which bridged
the academic and the community, yet as post-structuralist perspectives gained prominence,
those without university education became alienated, complaining of inaccessible language
and irrelevant theorizing. Post-structuralist analyses clearly provided a very important and
necessary challenge to the simplifying and universalizing tendencies of much structuralist
theorizing, tendencies which had also been criticized by post-colonial, black and global
feminism(s) (Basu, 1995; Mama 1995; Rajan 1993), and offered emancipatory analyses, but
could also be alienating and disempowering.
In my work I have attempted to combine structuralist and poststructural perspectives by
presenting a structuralist view of society while at the same time acknowledging the
negotiation of subjectivities by class, race, gender and other social categories. I argue, along
with others in critical psychology and liberation psychology (Fox and Prilleltensky 1997;
Martin-Baro, 1994; Prilleltensky and Nelson 2002), that a politicized psychology can
facilitate political activism and that an understanding of internalized oppression is crucial for
agency and solidarity. In my contribution to the Special Issue of the Irish Journal of
Psychology, I identified six patterns labelled ‘mechanisms of control’, clearly locating these
patterns as interconnected and as forming a system of oppression (Moane, 1994). The six
mechanisms have been used throughout my work, and are: violence; economic exploitation,
political exclusion, control of culture, sexual exploitation, and fragmentation. The works of
feminist psychologists (e.g. Miller 1986) and writers on colonialism (Fanon, 1967; Memmi,
1967) and postcolonial theory (Kiberd, 1995; Lloyd, 1993; Said, 1993) provided a basis for
identifying cultural and psychosocial patterns which could vary across different social groups,
across historical time and across the life-span. The article also considered strategies for
liberation, an analysis which was developed further in a chapter on lesbian and gay liberation
(Moane 1995) which argued for the necessity for change at the personal level of internalized
oppression, the interpersonal level of community and the political level of the socio-political
system.
These themes were fully developed in the book Gender and Colonialism (1999), a work
which rejected positivist psychology and drew on feminist and critical psychology as well as
postcolonial theory to develop an analysis of internalized oppression, agency, resistance,
solidarity and activism. The book elaborated three elements which became the basis for
classes and workshops in Liberation Psychology. The courses used the phrase ‘Liberation
Psychology’ but outrightly rejected institutionalized psychology as individualistic and as
involved in social control. These were delivered by tutors in settings that included community
women’s education groups (The UCD certificate in Women’s Studies), religious life, lesbian
groups, prison groups and trainee psychotherapists. The overall aim is to challenge the
separation of the personal and the political, and to present them as constituting each other.
The approach begins with a structuralist analysis of oppression by elaborating on the
specificities of the six mechanisms of control in the particular context being examined. This
provides participants with a clear political analysis which provides the basis for solidarity and
support as well as for an analysis of internalized oppression. The second step is to explore the
impact of these structural patterns on the individuals who experience these patterns
(internalized oppression). An important theme here is that oppression is associated with both
strengths and weaknesses, a theme emphasized particularly in feminist writings (Miller 1986)
and in writings on liberation psychology (Martin Baro 1994). Areas identified include anger
292
and despair, for example, but also courage, humour and generosity. This allows a personalized
as well as a collective exploration of the construction of psyches. The third element is an
analysis of transformation by identifying strategies for change at the personal, the
interpersonal and the political levels (the ‘cycle of liberation’). Change at the personal level
linked to areas of personal development, while the interpersonal level involved groups and
communities, and the political level involved taking action to bring about change at the
system level. These levels are presented and explored as intrinsically interconnected in a
‘cycle of liberation’ (Moane, 2003). In essays and evaluations of these classes and workshops,
participants repeatedly confirmed that participation had enhanced their political analysis, their
understanding of the link between the personal and the political, their sense of solidarity and
their interest in activism. Rather than seeing themselves and the political as separate, they saw
them as mutually constructed and mediated through the interpersonal realm of relationships
and community. This approach, like that of others in liberation psychology (Nelson and
Prilleltensky, 2002), thus breaks down the dichotomy between individuals and society and
also facilitates agency, resistance and solidarity through clear structural/systems levels of
analysis.
This work on liberation psychology provided the basis for returning to an analysis of the
legacies of colonialism for Irish society in 2002, in an article that placed the analysis of
liberation and of decolonization in the context of Ireland’s historical legacies and also of
contemporary economic and social changes. Again linking the personal and the political,
albeit in a different context, this article argued that specific psychosocial weaknesses which
could be seen as legacies of colonialism placed Irish society at greater risk for domination by
a hegemonic discourse such as neo-liberalism which would in turn enhance these weaknesses.
It also suggested that there were cultural strengths gained from history that, if acknowledged
and supported, could increase the capacity to resist such domination. It still remains the case,
however, that the bulk of writing on postcolonial themes in an Irish context, even in the social
sciences, comes from outside the field of psychology (Connolly, 2004), and, as noted in the
previous section, even critical psychologists have not developed a presence in numerous
critical debates in contemporary Ireland.
Siobhán’s Story: Rooting and Shifting: Feminism and Poststructuralist Dilemmas in
Negotiating Solidarity
If it were possible to easily trace a point in time of becoming a self-consciously political
agent, then the late 1980s, post psychology degree, mark the moment when I entered the
wider swarm of critique and resistance. Through involvement in the radical politics of (a
male-dominated) left republican group, I first encountered the notion of ‘structures’ as a core
explanatory concept allowing for the development of clear political strategies. Yet, these
structures seemed to evade and silence the realities and intensities of mental life, for which
psychology had earlier seduced me with unrequited promises of understanding. And if it were
possible to easily trace a day of political and conceptual shifts, then I trace the day the words
THE POLITICS OF REALITY screamed at me urgently from a book-spine (Frye, 1983) on a
book-shop browse, propelling me resolutely into a feminist politics of linking the personal
and political. The taken-for-granted surface of social relations was disturbed anew by the
discovery of Henriques et al’s (1984) Changing the Subject, which also opened possibilities
for a more active critical engagement with psychology. Feminist post-structuralism has since
addressed for me some core dilemmas, but also created new ones, in understanding personalpolitical links, embracing diversity and contradictions, and in opposing and subverting power
relationships (e.g. Henwood et al, 1998; Roulston, 1999).
293
I have constructed this narrative in order to encapsulate a sense of ongoing dilemmas for me
in negotiating a sense of myself as a political agent and feminist activist, and the intertwining
of politics and ideas. These dilemmas set the terms for my engagement with critical
psychology in this section, where I try to think through some issues of political agency which
arise for me given the specificities of my own political concerns. In doing so, I draw on some
wider contributions to critical thinking in Ireland.
I work for a community-based women’s centre in a small town in a rural part of Ireland where
the main focus of my work is supporting women’s groups in becoming agents for social
change. Social partnership sets the primary context within which we are funded and negotiate
for social justice and gender equality. This context often presents challenges for me in linking
theory and practice to support my own political agency.
The work of Anne B. Ryan (2001) offers an important contribution in this regard. Her concern
is to theorise forms of subjectivity to support social movements such as feminism and she
does this from a feminist post-structuralist perspective drawing inter alia on the work of
Hollway, Mama and Henriques et al. She reframes debates which question personal
development practices of women’s groups in Ireland by challenging the implicit individualsociety dualism in arguments to ‘move beyond the personal’. Critiquing mainstream
psychology’s role in conceptualizing and regulating these practices, she argues that the issue
is not to deny the personal but to negotiate the ‘tricky ideological ground’ involved in
attending to it. She adopts a Foucauldian approach to agency, discursive practices often
making it not thinkable/doable for women to assume positions as agents, especially in
heterosexual relationships. Her own research suggests that women who can deal with
uncertainty are likely to be agentic in pursuing feminist goals in a multiple and complex
world. She therefore makes selective use of psychoanalysis to engage with emotional
experiences, such as ambivalence and guilt, associated with change. This analysis informs her
creation of pedagogical conditions for self-reflection as ‘a politically radical act for women’
(p.3), using the content of standard personal development courses. The facilitator’s role is
crucial in providing terms outside of individualistic discourses in which women can interpret
their experiences. As a facilitator, she openly questions dominant discourses about women
and men, naming power and the social nature of feelings and contradictions. Her practice
includes careful listening to women’s stories to discern current understandings of control in
their lives. Introducing questions of why and how, she encourages women to read themselves
as multiple, feminist subjects through multiple interpretations of the same event. One
pedagogical tool she employs to explore relational elements of subjectivity and resistance is
Lerner’s (1985) idea of relationships as a dance.
This post-structuralist critique of psychology also permits for me a range of alternative
questions for critical inquiry, based on interrogating wider functions served by psychological
discourses in Ireland. It enables inquiry, for instance, about the funding arrangements of the
State, and the discursive practices involved in framing and regulating personal development.
For instance, the (then) Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs (1998) locates
obstacles to participation within the individual as ‘low self esteem and social skills’ (p. 16),
while personal development courses are constructed as providing a ‘first step’ to ‘escape from
poverty and disadvantage’ (p. 16). In this account, individuals, such as women with whom I
work, are positioned as passive and denied their personal histories of survival and resistance.
In addition, a reified poverty entails ‘escape’ but not critique, with personal development
processes constructed as paving the way for community involvement in the pre-constituted
294
world of social relations which is social partnership. Psychological discourses of personal
development can in this sense be interpreted as part of the moorings of dominant discourses
of social partnership, based on ideologically saturated and multi-layered notions of
‘development’.
Feminist research and analyses also suggest identity processes going on here linked to neoliberalism. Breda Gray (2003) draws on feminism, poststructuralism and development theory
to address the discursive production of women’s ways of describing their conduct as subjects
and selves in Irish global modernity, analysing the shifting conditions of possibility for the
categories ‘Irish’, ‘women’, ‘migrant’ ‘national’ and ‘diaspora’ in the 1980s and 1990s. She
argues that Irish global modernity is marked by new modes of gendered, classed racial and
national classifications, hierarchised by a privileging of ‘white’ Euro-American mobility.
However, social partnership processes tend to preclude and undercut the possibility of
politically challenging these hierarchical relationships. In particular, such depoliticizing
effects include the construction of discrete identity categories around demands for ‘inclusion’
which flatten power relationships. Categories of identity such as women, Travellers, lone
parents, disabled, lesbians etc. no longer signify power relationships but have become ‘new
axes of identity along which social consensus can be broadened’ (Meade and O’Donovan,
2002, p. 3).
Psychological discourses then are reworked through neoliberal discourses and practices to
contain and regulate social movements by subverting possibilities of critique at a number of
points. These challenges point to the urgent need to expand the range of thinking about
political subjects to address solidarity as a theoretical and political concern. But while
feminist post-structuralism offers critique, the possibilities for reclaiming political agency
appear correspondingly insurmountable given the difficulties assumptions of multiple
subjectivities raise for collective identities. Indeed, collective identities are themselves
appropriated and emptied of power through the terms of engagement offered by social
partnership. While the notion of discursive positions offers some agentic possibilities, it does
not necessarily tap into questions of solidarity. In this clash between epistemology and
politics, between critique and the search for alternatives, it is necessary to chart new strategies
and understandings.
I am also on the voluntary management executive of a small feminist organization called
Banúlacht. Banúlacht works with grass-roots women’s groups in Ireland linking local and
global issues in solidarity with women in the global South. Our Economic Literacy
programmes facilitate women to critically explore their experiences in regard to gendered
representations of ‘the economy’, offering possibilities for political agency through
international women’s human rights frameworks (Madden, 2000; Maeve Taylor, 2004).
Wetherell’s (1995) discussion of post-structuralist understandings of feminist politics
provides a starting point for me in making sense of Banúlacht’s collective identity (Madden,
2005). She describes a ‘politics of articulation’ which combines contradictory movements of
closing and opening. Banúlacht’s negotiation of an identity from which to act through its
‘Feminist Principles’ creates closure by articulating commitments such as women-only
spaces, anti-racism and challenging global inequalities. But an openness of identity is
sustained through recognizing these principles as holding multiple meaning possibilities, and
building in the possibility of their own questioning through ongoing critical reflection. The
idea of moments of opening and closing is of itself however limited theoretically in not
explicitly engaging with questions of solidarity at stake for an organisation such as Banúlacht.
295
Notions of ‘closing’ and ‘opening’ resonate with another set of ideas integral to the concept of
‘transversal politics’. Transversal politics is a concept developed by Italian peace activists for
understanding alternative forms of solidarity (Yuval-Davis, 1997). Eilish Dillon, another
Banúlacht activist, and I stumbled across the concept in an attempt to analyse the tensions
involved in Banúlacht’s work (Dillon and Madden, 2004). Transversal politics challenges
universalism and homogenisation but also relativistic understandings which assume that
shared political goals are not possible. It moves beyond uncritical notions of solidarity which
conceptualise differences as a fixed ‘otherness’, and which deny historical and political
aspects of their construction (Yuval-Davis, 1997). The concepts of ‘rooting’ and ‘shifting’,
underpin the idea of non-closure of identity so that ‘each participant in the dialogue brings
with her the rooting in her own membership and identity, but at the same time tries to shift in
order to put herself in a situation of exchange with women who have different membership
and identity’ (ibid, p. 131) (see also Cockburn and Mulholland, 2000).
In applying these concepts to Banúlacht’s work, we argued for the need to situate transversal
politics of solidarity in the wider context of other relationships to be negotiated. In order to
understand multiple sites of negotiation and alliances embraced at local, national, regional and
international levels, we suggested pluralizing and expanding the concept of transversal
politics to a ‘web of transversalisms’. However, these positions and relations are not fixed or
simply determined, but complexly infused with power issues/dynamics in terms of actors,
structures and discourses. Since not all relationships are best understood as ‘transversalism’, it
seemed to us also necessary to include an analysis of how constraining relationships, such as
funding relationships, intersect with transversal politics at all levels. We conceptualised this in
terms of the intersection of ‘shrinking tensions’ and ‘stretching tensions’: Banúlacht is
constrained to some extent by its own identity, position and funding and other relationships
which try to diminish/control its feminist agency’; it is also ‘stretched’ through transversal
relationships with women’s groups and organisations in Ireland, Europe and the South, as
well as other non-governmental development organisations, which have created spaces of
mutually expanding feminist agencies. The ongoing struggle then in negotiating tensions is
considered as always complex, contingently resolved, yet dynamic.
These understandings of transversal politics facilitate me in making sense of my own political
agency, and support a politics of identity based on solidarity which goes against the grain of
the prevailing model of social consensus. I am also interested in theoretical connections
offered by Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogical understandings of self-other relationships, and his
theorization of social life which also centres ideological struggle. Indeed, the notion of
intersecting ‘shrinking’ and ‘stretching’ tensions resonates with Bakhtin’s conceptualisation
of struggle through intersecting authoritative discourses which fix meaning, and open
provisional discourses which unfix meaning.
Bakhtin’s historicized understanding of this openness, whereby any utterance must ‘brush up
against thousands of living dialogical threads’ (ibid. p. 276), also offers leverage for further
theorising political possibilities of rooting and shifting to encompass an expanded temporal
horizon linking past, present and future. The constitution of the present through multiple
dialogical threads of the past, casts it as a site potent and alive with an unstable ‘heteroglossia’
of contradictory voices. Where histories of the present are up for grabs, then so too is the
future: permitted is a refusal to accept as ‘destiny’ the univocality of authoritative discourses
of liberal progress; by the same token, a radical political activism is empowered to sustain
296
open and hopeful dialogues with alternative futures, such as in the announcement by the
World Social Forum that ‘Another World Is Possible’.
These concerns also find support from other recent strands of critical thinking in Ireland.
Cleary (2005) notes emerging understandings of history in contemporary Irish scholarship
which assume that ‘all our “nows” …represent a continuous process of anticipated futures and
reconstructed pasts lived in traumatic relay with each other’(p. 19). Kirby et al (2002) also
argue for the linking of past and present transformative energies in Irish culture,
foregrounding ‘diasporic and dissident energies’ in order to contest the present neo-liberal
orthodoxy in Ireland (p. 206). In setting out these possibilities for the emergence of a critical
culture and community of liberation in Ireland, they delineate ‘a cultural politics of dynamic
rooted-ness’ (p. 206). This kind of historical rootedness is conceptualized by post-colonial
projects in terms of ‘the reconstitution of alternative narratives which emerge in the history of
our present’ (David Lloyd, 1999, p.41).
One concept which usefully links the individual and social in the reconstitution of such
narratives is that of ‘radical memory’. Whelan (2005) introduces the concept as a framework
for understanding inventions of tradition by the post-Famine generation of activists (circa
1880s)5 who deployed the past for radical political purposes to challenge the present and
reshape the future. According to Whelan, the most engaged of these cultural thinkers
differentiated between two modes of memory: an individualistic form internalising damage as
melancholia, and a culturally induced form seeking wider explanations and political
strategies. Radical memory, in recognising that individual memory and social memory are
inextricably linked, restores agency and allows for translation from the personal to the public
sphere.
One contemporary example of the practice of radical memory is the organization Afri which
draws on Ireland’s historical experience of Famine6 in order to inform a critical social
consciousness relevant to strategies of global solidarity in the present. A range of scholarship
also explores the possibilities for solidarity through practices of historical remembering in
Ireland, with new implications for global feminist solidarity. Examples include Margaret
Kelleher’s (1997) work on contemporary and twentieth century literary representations of the
Great Famine, and how a sense of unspeakability coexists with the emergence of the
‘feminization of famine’ as a representational strategy enabling narration. Her purpose is to
inform an ongoing critique of representations of famine, their concomitant occlusions and
political consequences. Breda Gray (2004) also explores discursive and structural factors in
the collective memory of emigration, where ‘our’ homogenized history of emigration is
invoked as a basis for solidarity with new immigrants, thereby assimilating the other into the
self. She discusses how to use memory for an ethical political project to ‘keep contestation
and negotiation at the heart of how memory operates in the present’ (p. 13). Arguing for an
openness to radical difference, she suggests bringing experiences to memory in different ways
by locating them in different contexts to open new interpretive frameworks. Examples include
5
The ‘Great Famine’ of 1845 to 1852, the immediate cause of which was the failure of the potato crop, is
considered to be the single most calamitous event which occurred in Ireland in the modern period. Over one
million people died and two million people emigrated within a decade (Whelan, 2005). Eavan Boland’s poem,
quoted in the introduction of this paper, is an invocation of the British government’s famine relief works which
employed starving people in building roads, often leading to nowhere. These famine roads can still be seen all
over Ireland. In Boland’s poem, they are the ‘lines which cry hunger’ and which ‘find no horizon’
6
See note 5.
297
responses to new immigrants which make connections between settled people and Travellers,
or in relation to how ‘whiteness’ was/is inhabited in the Irish diaspora.
The notion of radical memory, constituted in part through contrast with its melancholic,
individualistic opposite (Whelan, 2005), also suggests that keeping contestation at the heart of
memory explicitly requires critical attunement to insinuations of ahistorical, individualistic
discourses of psychology in practices of collective remembering. In the case of
commemorations of the Great Famine, for instance, Lloyd (2000) critically interrogates the
therapeutic discourse of psychoanalysis which emphasized ‘the function of that mourning as
socially healing for the present’ (p. 221) in popular discourses. A core question for Lloyd is
how to theorise the transition from the individual to the social, recognizing that any relation
between the psychological and the social is always already ideological. Here he spots a
developmental narrative: famine commemorations on these terms are about shaking off ‘the
burden of the past’ in order to ‘enter modernity as fully formed subjects’ (p. 221). For Lloyd,
the commemorations, and the psychological/therapeutic discourses constitutive of them, align
with Ireland’s uncritical embrace of transnational capitalist modernity, so reproducing the
same colonial attitudes toward other post-colonial peoples in the global present. In this sense,
the problematics of ‘personal development’ and psychology’s individualism discussed above
(Ryan, 2001) reverberate through wider socio-political-cultural-historical spheres of action.
This underlines that the search for alternative notions of political agency cannot attempt to
transcend critique. Rather, the activity of critique is itself an ongoing process of rooting and
shifting in dialogue with new (and old) alternatives.
In this section, I have drawn on feminist post-structuralism, critical theory and post-colonial
theory to argue that psychology works with neoliberalism to diminish spaces for articulating
oppositional discourses. But accounts of political subjectivities as open, multiple and
contingent conjoin with notions of rooting and shifting to connect the self, the other and the
social in dynamic, ongoingly critical, historicized ways, suggesting transformed radical
political possibilities for solidarity.
Through our two presentations, we can see that practices of critical psychology are emerging
in debates where questions of the personal and of identity have become a site of conceptual
and political contestation in the context of ongoing political struggles in Ireland.
Engagements such as these, we suggest, can also contribute to further development of critical
psychologies in Ireland as part of a wider politics of transformation.
6. Conclusion
The consideration of critical psychologies in Ireland prompted by this Special Issue
confronted us with a host of contradictions and challenges, including the very questions of
what constitutes ‘Ireland’ and the meaning of critical psychology. Our re-view of psychology
in an Irish context highlights both a range of critical psychologies in an Irish context, but also
points to the limitations of attempts to achieve change by organizing from within mainstream
psychology. While such an option may sometimes be strategically necessary, experience in
Ireland suggests that possibilities for radical critique are blunted by the terms of the
mainstream.
This underlines for us the importance of constituting critical psychology through being:
explicitly critical of the field of psychology itself and of its role in social control;
interdisciplinary; contextualized; engaged with radical social transformation. We do not
298
confine critical psychology to those within or on the socially constructed boundary of
mainstream psychology. Indeed, we would see forms of critical psychology as most
effectively practiced by those who traverse the boundaries. Nonetheless, we do not see critical
psychology as a pre-constituted domain of inquiry; its constitution is an open-ended question
and a deeper deconstruction of ‘critical psychology’ in terms of its multiple forms merits
further attention in the Irish context.
We have centred here the role of political activists, of alliances between academics and
activists, and of those who stride the academic/activist interstices. In sustaining the insistence
of critical psychology to challenge personal/political individual/social dichotomies, we situate
these insistencies in the context of ongoing political struggles. These we suggest are vital and
urgent sites of conceptual and political contestation. In these contexts, particular questions
and dilemmas can provide an impetus for theoretical developments and for debate about
alternative political interventions. Challenges here include the ongoing development of
emancipatory concepts for theorizing agency and solidarity. In this paper, we have discussed
concepts such as ‘internalised oppression’, ‘cycles of liberation’, ‘transversal politics’ and
‘radical memory’. In this regard also, we argue that feminism has a central role to play in
critical psychology in the ongoing development of strategies of political transformation
through the personal/political nexus.
The specificities of an Irish context also point to particular challenges and possibilities. The
institutional weakness of, and mainstream resistance to, critical psychology perspectives in
Ireland underscores the vital role being played by international critical psychology spaces for
supporting the local legitimization of critical perspectives. The possibility of our contributing
to the current journal is a case in point. By the same token, however, Ireland’s contradictory
location between a colonial history and current ‘Celtic Tiger’ embrace of neo-liberalism
underscores for us the importance of not uncritically adopting forms of critical psychology
developed elsewhere. Ireland offers particular possibilities for the ongoing development of
critical psychologies in dialogue with international developments, including rich traditions of
critical thinking and resistance, existing institutional spaces of critique and a strong
community education movement.
We suggest that transformative developments can only come about through moving beyond
the boundaries of the field of psychology, collectively organizing and theorizing across
disciplinary boundaries, and across institutional and community spaces in a pluralist dialogue.
In this expansion and complication of critique, we see political possibilities for critical
psychologies as part of a wider national and international movement of transformation.
Finally, Eavan Boland’s opening poetic of critique serves as a reminder that the work of
critique is to tell ourselves again and again of those lines which find no horizon in
cartographic persuasions of form and design. But our hope is that forms of critical
psychology, in signposting new re-mind-ings, can also help to liberate alternative horizons for
alternative futures.
References
Baker, J, Lynch K, Cantillon S, and Walsh J (2004), Equality: From Theory to Action,
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogical Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
299
Basu, A. (ed.) 1995. The challenge of local feminisms.: Women's movements in global
perspective. Boulder: Westview Press.
Benson, C. (1994). ‘A Psychological Perspective on Art and Irish National Identity’ The Irish
Journal of Psychology: 'The Irish Psyche' Special Issue, 15, 2 &3, 1994, pp. 316-330.
Benson, C. (2001). The Cultural Psychology of Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human
Worlds. London: Routledge
Boland, E. (1994) In a Time of Violence. Manchester: Carcenet Press.
Brock, A. C. (Ed.) (2006). Internationalizing the history of psychology. New York: New
York University Press.
Brock, A. C., Louw, J. & van Hoorn, W. (Eds.) (2004). Rediscovering the history of
psychology: Essays inspired by the work of Kurt Danziger. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum
Brodribb, S. 1992. Nothing mat(t)ers: A feminist critique of post-modernism. N.Y.: New York
University Press
Burman, E., Alldred, P., Bewley, C., Goldberg, B., Heenan, C., Marks, D., Marshall, J.,
Taylor, K, Ullah, R and Warnder, S. 1996. Challenging women: Psychology's
exclusion, feminist possibilities. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Byrne, A and Lentin, R (eds) (2000) Researching Women: Feminist Research Methodologies
in the Social Sciences in Ireland, Institute for Public Administration: Dublin.
Byrne, A. and Leonard, M. (1997) Women and Irish Society: A Sociological Reader. Belfast:
Beyond the Pale Publications.
Byrne, A., Byrne, P. and Lyons, A. (1996) ‘Inventing and Teaching Women's Studies’. Irish
Journal of Feminist Studies. 1:1 Spring. p. 78-99
Clancy, N. (1995) ‘Personal Development as a Tool for Empowering Women’, Unpublished
MRD Thesis, University College Galway.
Cleary, J. (2005) ‘Introduction: Ireland and Modernity’ in Cleary, J and Connolly, C. (Eds)
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cockburn, C. and Mulholland, M. M (2000) ‘Analytical action, committed research: What
does a feminist action research partnership mean in practice?’ In Byrne, A and Lentin,
R (eds) Researching Women: Feminist Research Methodologies in the Social Sciences
in Ireland, Institute for Public Administration: Dublin.
Connolly, L. (1996) ‘The Women's Movement in Ireland, 1990-1995: A Social Movements
Analysis’ Irish Journal of Feminist Studies. 1:1 Spring. p. 43-77
Connolly, L. (2003) The Irish Women's Movement: From Revolution to Devolution. Dublin:
The Lilliput Press.
Connolly, L. (2004). ‘The Limits of “Irish Studies”: Culturalism, Historicism, Paternalism’.
Irish Studies Review, 12: 2: 139-162.
Coulter, C. (1993) The Hidden Tradition: Feminism, Women and Nationalism in Ireland.
Cork: Cork University Press.
Coyle and Halliday (1994) ‘Introduction: The Irish Psyche considered’ The Irish Journal of
Psychology: 'The Irish Psyche' Special Issue, 15, 2 &3, 1994,
Curtis, R. (1988) ‘Perception of Risk of AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Third
Level Students.’ Irish Journal of Psychology, 9, 31-42.
Daly, M. (1987) ‘Feminist Research Methodology: The Case of Ireland’, paper presented at
the Third International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, July 6-10 1987, Trinity College
Dublin.
Delphy, C. and Leonard, D. 1992. Familiar exploitation. London: Polity Press.
300
Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs (1998) Review of Expenditure
Programmes: Schemes of Grants for Locallly-Based Women’s Groups and for
Locally-based Men’s Groups. Dublin: DSCFA.
Dillon, E. and Madden, S. (2004) ‘Positioning between tensions and connections: A critical
exploration of Banúlacht’s work in contesting globalisation through linking local and
global issues’. Paper presented at Women’s Education Research and Resource Centre
Conference, ‘Feminism Contesting Globalisation’, University College Dublin, April,
2004.
Fanon, F. (1967) The wretched of the earth. London: Penguin books. (Original French edition,
1961)
Fitzpatrick, B. (1983) ‘Freud and Ireland’ Cranebag,7(2), 177-182.
Fox, D.R. and Prilliltensky, I. (eds.) (1997) Critical psychology: an introduction. London
Sage.
Frye, M. (1983) The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New York: The Crossing
Press.
Gray, B. (2004) ‘Remembering a ‘multicultural’ future through a history of emigration:
Towards a feminist politics of solidarity’, University of Limerick, Department of
Sociology Working Paper Series, Working Paper WP2003-02.
Gray, B. (2004) Women and the Irish Diaspora. London: Routledge.
Greene, S. (1994). ‘Growing up Irish – Development in context’ The Irish Journal of
Psychology: 'The Irish Psyche' Special Issue, 15, 2 &3, 354-371.
Greene, S. (2003). The psychological development of girls and women: rethinking change in
time. London, New York, Routledge.
Guerin, S. and Hennessy, E. (2002). ‘Pupils' definitions of bullying.’ European Journal of
Psychology of Education, 17 (3), 249-262.
Guilfoyle, M. (2005) ‘Critique and clinical psychology’ Paper presented at The
Psychological Society of Ireland 36th Annual Conference 17th-20th November 2005
Abstracts November 2005.
Haynes, A. Devereux, E. and Breen, M. (2006) 'Fear, Framing and Foreigners' International
Journal of Critical Psychology, Spring, Special Edition on 'White Fear'.
Hederman, M.P. and Kearney, R. (1977) ‘Editorial’ The Crane Bag, 1(1) n.p.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C. and Walkerdine, V. (1984) Changing the
Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. London: Methuen.
Henwood, K., Griffin, C. and Phoenix, A. (eds) (1998) Standpoints and Differences: Essays
in the Practice of Feminist Psychology. London: Sage.
Hughes, B. M. (2004). ‘The mythical provenance of “holistic” therapies.’ Irish Psychologist,
30 (6), 125-126.
Kearney, R. (1983) ‘Between Politics and Literature: The Irish Cultural Journal’, The
Cranebag, 7(2) 160-171.
Kelleher, M. (1997) The Feminization of Famine: Expressions of the Inexpressible? Durham:
Duke University Press.
Kenny, V. (1985) ‘The post-colonial personality’ The Crane Bag, 9, 70-78.
Kiberd, D. (1995). Inventing Ireland. London : Jonathan Cape.
Kitzinger, C. and Perkins, R. 1993. Changing our minds: A radical lesbian critique of
psychology and its dangers. London: Onlywomen Press.
Lentin, R. (1993) ‘Feminist research methodologies – a separate paradigm? Notes for a
debate’, Irish Journal of Sociology, vol. 3: 119-138.
Lentin, R. and McVeigh, R. (Eds) (2002) Racism and Anti-Racism in Ireland, Belfast:
Beyond the Pale Publications.
301
Lerner, M.G. (1985) The Dance of Anger: A woman’s guide to changing the pattern of
intimate relationships. New York: Harper and Row.
Lloyd, D. (1999) Ireland After History Critical Conditions: Field Day Series. Cork: Cork
University Press.
Lloyd, D. (2000) ‘Colonial Trauma/Postcolonial Recovery?’ in Interventions Vol 2(2), 212228.
MacCurtain, M. and O’Corráin, D eds (1978) Women in Irish Society: The Historical
Dimension; Dublin: Arlen House.
MacLachlan, M. and O'Connell, M. (eds.) (2000), Cultivating Pluralism: Psychological,
Social & Cultural Perspectives on a changing Ireland. Dublin: Oak Tree Press.
MacLachlan, M. (2004) Embodiment: Clinical, Critical & Cultural Perspectives on Health &
Illness. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Madden, S. (2000) Putting the Action into Beijing: Institutional Mechanisms and the Beijing
Platform for Action. Dublin: Banúlacht.
Madden, S. (2005) ‘Negotiating Identities: The Case of a Feminist Organisation in Ireland
Linking Local and Global Issues’ Paper presented at International Critical
Psychology Conference, “Beyond the Pale”, 28 June -1 July, University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, South Africa, 2005.
Mahon, E. (1995) ‘From Democracy to Femocracy: The Women’s Movement in the Republic
of Ireland’, in Clancy, P., Drudy, S., Lynch, K. and O’Dowd, L. (eds) Irish Society:
Sociological Perspectives, Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.
Mama, A. 1995 Beyond the Masks. Race, Gender and Subjectivity. London: Routledge.
Martin-Baro, I. 1994. Writings for a liberation psychology. Essays, 1985-1989, edited by A.
Aron and S. Corne. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
McCarthy, E. (1988) Transitions to Equal opportunity at Work in Ireland: Problems and
Possibilities. Dublin: Employment Equality Agency.
McCarthy, E. (1994) ‘Work and mind: Searching for our Celtic legacy’ in The Irish Journal
of Psychology, 15, 2&3, pp. 372-389.
McCarthy, E. and McGinn, A. (1996) Women in Management in Ireland. Commissioned by
the Women’s Rights Committee of Dáil Eireann. Dublin: Stationery Office.
McCormack, W.J. (1986) The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate
Dublin: Lilliput Press.
McDonnell, P. (2003) ‘Developments in special education in Ireland: Deep structures and
policy making’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Vol. 7, No. 3, 259–269.
McGilloway, S, and Donnelly, M. (Eds) (2001) ‘Homelessness and Mental Illness - studies
from Western Europe’. International Journal of Mental Health, Special issue, Vol 30.
McVeigh, R. (1992) ‘The Specificity of Irish Racism’ Race and Class, 33 (4), 31-45.
Meade, R. (2005) ‘We hate it here, please let us stay! Irish social partnership and the
community/voluntary sector’s conflicted experiences of recognition’ Critical Social
Policy Ltd Vol. 25(3): 349–373.
Meade, R. and O’Donovan, O. (2002) ‘Editorial Introduction: Corporatism and the ongoing
debate about the relationship between the state and community development’ in
Community Development Journal, January, 1-9.
Meehan, T. (2005) ‘Self-disruption in schizophrenia: A critique’ Paper presented at The
Psychological Society of Ireland 36th Annual Conference 17th-20th November 2005.
Memmi, A. (1967) The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. (Original French
edition, 1957)
Miller, J.B. (1986) Toward a new psychology of women. 2nd Edition. London: Penguin.
Moane, G. (1995) ‘Living visions’. In I. O'Carroll and E. Collins, (eds.), Lesbian and gay
visions of Ireland: Towards the twenty-first century. London: Cassells.
302
Moane, G. (1994) ‘A psychological analysis of colonialism in an Irish context’ The Irish
Journal of Psychology: 'The Irish Psyche' Special Issue, 15, 2 &3, 1994, pp 250-265
Moane, G. (1999) Gender and Colonialism: A Psychological Analysis of Oppression and
Liberation. London: Macmillan/Palgrave.
Moane, G. (2002) ‘Colonialism and the Celtic Tiger: Legacies of history and the quest for
vision.’ In Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin (eds.), Reinventing
Ireland: Culture, society and the global economy. London: Pluto Press.
Moane, G. (2003) ‘Bridging the personal and the political: Practices for a liberation
psychology.’ American Journal of Community Psychology, 31, 91-101.
Mulvey, C. (1994) Evaluation report on the Allen Lane Foundations's funding programme in
Ireland, 1989-1991. Dublin: Allen Lane Foundation.
Nicholson, L.J. (ed.) (1990) Feminism/Postmodernism London: Routledge.
O'Connell, M. (2001), Changed Utterly: Ireland and the New Irish Psyche. Dublin: Liffey
Press
O’Dea, A. (2005) ‘Discursive and material factors in women’s depression’. Paper presented
at The Psychological Society of Ireland 36th Annual Conference 17th-20th November
2005 Abstracts November 2005
O’Dowd, L. (ed) (1988) The State of Social Science Research in Ireland. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy.
Powell, F. and Geoghegan, M. (2004) The Politics of Community Development. Dublin: A&A
Farmar.
Prilleltensky, I., & Nelson, G. (2002). Doing Psychology Critically: Making a Difference in
Diverse Settings. Macmillan Press.
Rajan, R.S. (1993) Real and imagined women: Gender, culture and postcolonialism.
Roulston, C. (1999) ‘Feminism, Politics and Postmodernism’ in Galligan, Y., Ward, E.
and Wilford, R. (eds) Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South.
Oxford/Colorado: Westview Press.
Ruth, S. (1988). ‘Overcoming Oppression and Liberation’. Studies, 21, 252-259.
Ruth, S. (2006). Leadership and Liberation: A Psychological Approach. London:Routledge
Ryan, A. B. (2001) Feminist ways of knowing: Towards theorising the person for radical
adult education. Leicester: NIACE
Said, E.W. (1993) Culture and imperialism. London: Vintage.
Seery, L. (2005) ‘Teachers’ constructions of ADHD’ Paper presented at The Psychological
Society of Ireland 36th Annual Conference 17th-20th November 2005 Abstracts
November 2005
Smyth, A (ed) (1992) The Abortion Papers, Ireland, Dublin: Attic Press.
Smyth, A. (ed) (1996) Feminism, Politics, Community. WERRC Annual Conference, 1996.
Dublin: WERRC, University College, Dublin. 24-27.
Smyth, A. (ed.) (1993) Irish Women's Studies Reader. Dublin: Attic Press.
Taylor, M. (2004) Looking at the Economy through Women’s Eyes: a Facilitator’s Guide for
Economic Literacy. Dublin: Banúlacht.
Taylor, M., Quayle, E and Holland G. (2001) ’Child Pornography, the Internet and
Offending.’ ISUMA, The Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 2 (2), 94-100.
Wetherell, M. (1995) ‘Romantic discourse and feminist analysis: interrogating investment,
power and desire’ in Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger (Eds) Feminism and
Discourse London: Sage.
Whelan, K. (2005) ‘The cultural effects of the Famine’ in Cleary,J. and Connolly, C. (Eds)
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
303
Wills, C. (2001) ‘Women, Domesticity and the Family: Recent Feminist Work in Irish
Cultural Studies’, Cultural Studies, 15 (1), 33-57.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) Gender and Nation. London: Sage.
304