This article presents critical psychology in some new light. First, it presents the history of US critical psychology in terms of the overall foundation of its critique (identity-based, ideologically-based, and epistemologically-based). Second, it broadens the population that can be called critical psychologists. The argument is made to include: (1) philosophers of language, science, and mind critical of psychology’s foundational assumptions, conceptions, and methods of inquiry; and (2) non-professional, ordinary people who live their lives critical of psychology by eschewing mainstream approaches (...) and taking alternative routes to getting help with their emotional and physical pain, or the education of their children. Third, the article discusses ontology-based critique through the example of the practical-critical theory/practice of social therapy. (shrink)

Conventional categories of creativity are being deconstructed after the so-called postmodern debate. This article takes this process deeper, to what we will show is the hidden subtext of gender underlying how creativity has been socially constructed. It also proposes a more contextualized approach to creativity that takes into account both its individual and social dimensions and how this relates to what Eisler (1987) has called a partnership rather than dominator model of society.

This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a ‘Dialogic Unconscious’. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon conscious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics (...) and, thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud's famous case histories, such as that of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud's own theory of repression was itself repressing. (shrink)

Este ensayo se centra sobre los orígenes y principios básicos de la psicología de la liberación. Un enfoque afín a la psicología comunitaria y a la psicología política que emergieron en América Latina a partir de los 70, así como a la psicología crítica que se desarrolló en Occidente por esa misma época. Específicamente, aquí discuto cómo la epistemología, la ontología y la ética de este enfoque difieren de las asumidas por la psicología tradicional o predominante. La psicología predominante concibe (...) su rol como la descripción de la vida social existente, desprovista de su contexto ideológico o cultural, y entendida como una composición construida a partir de Yos esencialmente “moleculares”, aislados e individualistas. La psicología de la liberación denuncia estos supuestos —explícitos o implícitos— como fundamentalmente errados, abogando en cambio por un conjunto de nociones entrelazadas: el conocimiento como praxis; el conocimiento como diálogo; la inseparabilidad del Yo y del Otro; la relación como el verdadero locus del ser; los imperativos éticos de superar la exclusión y de transformar las condiciones de vida que la producen... Así se plantea que a fin de convertir a la psicología en un esfuerzo genuinamente liberador, ésta debe ir más allá del modelo terapeuta-cliente, hacia una movilización y transformación de la conciencia, hacia la liberación no sólo de los individuos, sino más bien de las colectividades donde esos individuos están inmersos. (shrink)