Critical psychology is a perspective on psychology that draws extensively on critical theory. Critical psychology challenges the assumptions, theories and methods of mainstream psychology and attempts to apply psychological understandings in different ways.
The field of critical psychology does not fall under a monolithic category. One can observe different starting points of critiques, similarities, as well as substantial differences. Thus, critical psychology should be perceived as an “umbrella term”Walkerdine, V. (2001). Challenging subjects: Critical psychology for a new millennium. The International Journal of Critical Psychology, 1, 9-15. that includes various critiques against the status quo of mainstream psychology. A common theme of critical approaches in psychology is the assessment of the social effects of psychological theories and practices. Critical psychology is a movement that challenges psychology to work towards emancipation and social justice, and that opposes the uses of psychology to perpetuate oppression and injustice.Austin, S., & Prilleltensky, I. (2001a). Diverse origins, common aims: The challenge of critical psychology. Radical Psychology, 2(2).
Critical psychologists believe that mainstream psychology fails to consider how power differences and discrimination between social classes and groups can impact an individual's or a group's mental and physical well-being. Mainstream psychology does this only in part by attempting to explain behavior at the individual level. However, it largely ignores institutional racism, postcolonialism and deficits in social justice for minority groups based on differences in observable characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, religious minority, sexual orientation, or disability.
Origins Psychology, draws a history filled with theoretical and political conflict. Within its history various stream of critiques have emerged, some of them sharing similarities, as well as different starting points and substantial differences. Criticisms of mainstream psychology consistent with current critical psychology usage have existed since psychology's modern development in the late 19th century. Use of the term critical psychology started in the 1970s at the Freie Universität Berlin. The German branch of critical psychology predates and has developed largely separately from the rest of the field. As of May 2007, only a few works have been translated into English.Klaus Holzkamp (1992): On Doing Psychology Critically. Theory and Psychology 2, S.193–204; for further references see also Charles Tolman (1994): Psychology, Society and Subjectivity: An Introduction to German Critical Psychology, London: Routledge & Thomas Teo (1998): Klaus Holzkamp and the Rise and Fall of German Critical Psychology. History of Psychology 1998, Vol. 1, Nr. 3; Wolfgang Maiers (1999): Critical Psychology – An Unfinished Modern Project. In: Wolfgang Maiers et al. (Eds.): Challenges to Theoretical Psychology, 457–66 The German Critical Psychology movement is rooted in the post-war student revolt of the late 1960s; see German student movement. Marx's Critique of Political Economy played an important role in the German branch of the student revolt, which was centered in West Berlin. At that time, the capitalist city of West Berlin was surrounded by communist-ruled East Germany, and represented a "hot spot" of political and ideological controversy for the revolutionary German students. The sociological foundations of critical psychology are decidedly Marxist.
Klaus Holzkamp
One of the most important and sophisticated books in the German development of the field is the Klaus Holzkamp (1983): Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt/M.: Campus (Foundations of Psychology) by Klaus Holzkamp, who might be considered the theoretical founder of German critical psychology. Holzkamp wrote two books on theory of scienceKlaus Holzkamp (1964), Theorie und Experiment in der Psychologie. Berlin: de Gruyter (Theory and Experiment in Psychology); Klaus Holzkamp (1968): Wissenschaft als Handlung. Versuch einer neuen Grundlegung der Wissenschaftslehre. Berlin: de Gruyter (Science as Action – A new Approach to the Theory of Science) and one on sensory perceptionKlaus Holzkamp (1973): Sinnliche Erkenntnis. Historischer Ursprung und gesellschaftliche Funktion der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum (Sensory Perception: Historical Origins and Social Functions of Perception) before publishing the in 1983. Holzkamp believed his work provided a solid paradigm for psychological research because he viewed psychology as a pre-paradigmatic scientific discipline (T.S. Kuhn had used the term "pre-paradigmatic" for social science).
Holzkamp mostly based his sophisticated attempt to provide a comprehensive and integrated set of categories defining the field of psychological research on Aleksey Leontyev's approach to cultural–historical psychology and activity theory. Leontyev had seen human action as a result of biological as well as cultural evolution and, drawing on Marx's materialist conception of culture, stressed that individual cognition is always part of social action which in turn is mediated by man-made tools (cultural artifacts), language and other man-made systems of symbols, which he viewed as a major distinguishing feature of human culture and, thus, human cognition. Another important source was Lucien Séve's theory of personality, which provided the concept of "social activity matrices" as mediating structure between individual and social reproduction. At the same time, the systematically integrated previous specialized work done at Free University of Berlin in the 1970s by critical psychologists who also had been influenced by Marx, Leontyev, and Seve. This included books on animal behavior/ethology,Volker Schurig (1975): Naturgeschichte des Psychischen 1: Psychogenese und elementare Formen der Tierkommunikation. (Natural History of the Psyche 1: Psychogenesis and Elementary Forms of Animal Communication. Frankfurt/M.: Campus; Volker Schurig (1975): Naturgeschichte des Psychischen 2: Lernen und Abstraktionsleistungen bei Tieren (Natural History of the Psyche 2: Learning and Abstraction Capabilities in Animals. Frankfurt/M. Campus; Volker Schurig (1976): Die Entstehung des Bewußtseins (The Emergence of Consciousness). Frankfurt/M.: Campus;. Frankfurt/M.: Campus; sensory perception, motivationUte Osterkamp (1975/1976): Grundlagen der Psychologischen Motivationsforschung (Foundations of Psychological Research of Motivation, Frankfurt/M: Campus (2 Volumes) and cognition.Rainer Seidel (1976): Denken. Psychologische Analyse der Entstehung und Lösung von Problemen. (Cognition. Psychological Analysis of Formulating and Solving Problems. Frankfurt/M.: Campus He also incorporated ideas from Freud's psychoanalysis and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology into his approach.
One core result of Holzkamp's historical and comparative analysis of human reproductive action, perception and cognition is a very specific concept of meaning that identifies symbolic meaning as historically and culturally constructed, purposeful conceptual structures that humans create in close relationship to material culture and within the context of historically specific formations of social reproduction.
Coming from this phenomenological perspective on culturally mediated and socially situated action, Holzkamp launched a methodological attack on behaviorism (which he termed S–R (stimulus–response) psychology) based on linguistic analysis, showing in minute detail the rhetorical patterns by which this approach to psychology creates the illusion of "scientific objectivity" while at the same time losing relevance for understanding culturally situated, intentional human actions.Klaus Holzkamp (1987): Die Verkennung von Handlungsbegründungen als empirische Zusammenhangsannahmen in sozialpsychologischen Theorien: Methodologische Fehlorientierung infolge von Begriffsverwirrung (Mistaking Reasons for Causes in Theories of Social Psychology: Methodological Errors as a Result of Conceptual Confusion), Forum Kritische Psychologie 19, Berlin: Argument Verlag, pp. 23–59.Klaus Holzkamp (1993): Lernen: Subjektwissenschaftliche Grundlegung. Frankfurt/M.: Campus, Chapter 1: "Hinführung auf das Verfahren der Problementwicklung" (Introduction to the Sequence of Presentation), pp. 17–39 Against this approach, he developed his own approach to generalization and objectivity, drawing on ideas from Kurt Lewin in Chapter 9 of .
His last major publication before his death in 1995 was about learning.Klaus Holzkamp (1993): Lernen: Subjektwissenschaftliche Grundlegung ("Learning: Subject-Scientific Foundations"). Frankfurt/M.: Campus It appeared in 1993 and contained a phenomenological theory of learning from the standpoint of the subject. One important concept Holzkamp developed was "reinterpretation" of theories developed by conventional psychology. This meant to look at these concepts from the standpoint of the paradigm of critical psychology, thereby integrating their useful insights into critical psychology while at the same time identifying and criticizing their limiting implications, which in the case of S–R psychology were the rhetorical elimination of the subject and intentional action, and in the case of cognitive psychology which did take into account subjective motives and intentional actions, methodological individualism.
The first part of the book thus contains an extensive look at the history of psychological theories of learning and a minute re-interpretation of those concepts from the perspective of critical psychology, which focuses on intentional action situated in specific socio-historical/cultural contexts. The conceptions of learning he found most useful in his own detailed analysis of "classroom learning" came from cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave (situated learning) and Edwin Hutchins (distributed cognition).
The book's second part contained an extensive analysis on the modern state's institutionalized forms of "classroom learning" as the cultural–historical context that shapes much of modern learning and socialization. In this analysis, he heavily drew upon Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Holzkamp felt that classroom learning as the historically specific form of learning does not make full use of student's potentials, but rather limits her or his learning potentials by a number of "teaching strategies." Part of his motivation for the book was to look for alternative forms of learning that made use of the enormous potential of the human psyche in more fruitful ways. Consequently, in the last section of the book, Holzkamp discusses forms of "expansive learning" that seem to avoid the limitations of classroom learning, such as apprenticeship and learning in contexts other than classrooms.
This search culminated in plans to write a major work on life leadership in the specific historical context of modern (capitalist) society. Due to his death in 1995, this work never got past the stage of early (and premature) conceptualizations, some of which were published in the journals Forum Kritische Psychologie and Argument.Klaus Holzkamp (1995): Alltägliche Lebensführung als subjektwissenschaftliches Grundkonzept (Everyday Life Leadership as Basic Concept of a Scientific Theory of the Subject). Das Argument, 37. Jahrgang, Heft 6, November/December 1995
1960s–1970s