The hidden roots of critical psychology. Michael Billig (2008). London: Sage; 232 pp. ISBN 9781412947244 (Pbk), 237 pp.

Critical psychology comprises a broad range of international approaches centered around theories and practices of critique, power, resistance, and alternatives of practice. Although critical psychology had an axial age in and around the 1970s, many sources can be found decades and even centuries earlier. Critical psychology is not only about the critique of psychology, which is a broader historical and theoretical field, but about doing justice in and through theory, justice with and to groups of people, and justice to the reality of society, history, and culture as they powerfully constitute subjectivity, as well as the discipline and profession of psychology. Doing justice in and through psychological theory has a strong basis in Western critical approaches, representing a privileged position of reflection in Euro-American research institutions. Critical psychologists argue that traditional psychology is missing its subject matter and hence is not doing justice in methodology, and its practices of control and adjustment are not doing justice to the emancipatory possibilities of human agency or human science. Critical psychologists who are attempting to do justice with and to human beings are not neglecting the onto-epistemic-ethical domain, but are instead focusing on people, often marginalized or oppressed groups. Critical psychologists who want to do justice in history, culture, and society have argued that traditional psychological practice means adaption and adjustment. This means that not only subjectivity, but also the discipline and profession of psychology need to be connected with contexts. Psychologists have attempted to conceptualize the relationship between society and the individual, as well as the ability of humans not only to adapt to an environment but to change their living conditions and transform the status quo. This conceptualization also means providing concrete analyses of how current society, based in neoliberal capitalism, not only impacts individuals but also the discipline of psychology. Despite the complexities of critical psychology around the world, critical psychologists emphasize the importance of reflexivity and praxis when it comes to changing the conditions of social reality that create mental life. Given that subjectivity cannot be limited to intra-psychological processes, critical psychologists attend to relational and structural societal realities, requiring inter- and transdisciplinarity in the discipline and profession.

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Internet Addiction: A Critical Psychology of Users

Psychoanalysis Culture & Society ◽

10.1057/s41282-021-00230-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Janice Haaken

Keyword(s):

Internet Addiction ◽

Critical Psychology

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German Critical Psychology

Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology ◽

10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_124 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 784-791 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Katrin Reimer ◽

Morus Markard

Keyword(s):

Critical Psychology

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Criticism and Psychology: The Understanding with a Postmodern Psychology

10.31235/osf.io/yf5gk ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Juan David Millán ◽

Jean Nikola Cudina ◽

Julio César Ossa

Keyword(s):

Scientific Realism ◽

Quantitative Method ◽

Short Form ◽

Intermediate Stage ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Critical Psychology ◽

Post Modernism ◽

Discourse Psychology ◽

The Web ◽

Mainstream Psychology

Frequently, “Critical psychologies” question the ideological and political framework that develops and legitimizes certain mainstream psychology. Nevertheless, it is still a field of knowledge which has not been fully differentiated from its crisis –mainly- because an exhaustive ontological categorical demand has not been made. From the analysis of Ian Parker’s La Critical Discourse Psychology (CDP) and Critical Psychology, we observed that the causes and consequences of the introduction of Scientific realism as an intermediate stage in the elaboration of what has been called radical meta-psychological project or a general critic of psychology. We reviewed, from the quantitative method Multi-RPYS References, an approximate of 51 papers and 10 books of Ian Parker's work analyzed by the web program RPYS i/o. From the start, CDP and PCL avoided the short form of the critic, which is barely a differentiation from the totality of dominant psychology. Instead, they announced, implicitly, some methodological and theoretical tools which could be useful to prevent its definite adhesion to post-modernism, where "anything goes" is its most manifest condition.

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