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Interview:
Critical Psychology and Social Struggles
Dennis Fox
November 2012
Meydan
(Turkish anarchist magazine)
December 25, 2012 #6 pp. 14-15.
Email interview
Note:
This version differs from the final Turkish version.
Questions1. Describe to
us your experience as an associate professor of legal studies &
psychology and an anarchist (or at least a person who is inspired by
the anarchism ideas). Do you find contradictory the fact that one who
is "against" the law at the same time is teaching the law? Answer
2. What kind of role can psychology take in social changes and what is the aim of re-look in society with psychology? Answer
3.
Is psychology possible which cooperates with the resistance movements
that struggle against state, economic and social violences ? Answer
4. What is Critical Psychology? Answer
5.
How can critical psychology takes place in academy which criticise the
mainstream perception that claims to be objective universal, and
neutral? Answer
6.
Since psychological knowledge is very open to be manipulated by power
groups is it useful or necessary to use this knowledge in the
perspective of the oppressed ones? Answer up
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Answers
by Dennis Fox
1.
We know that psychology discipline is related with the conditions and
the power relationships as other disciplines. This situation helps
power groups to continue and to reproduce their status. So, can a
psychological approach help individuals that are oppressed by these
power groups to free themselves ?
This
is an important question. I think we need to distinguish between two
meanings of “psychology.” When we talk about “the psychology
discipline” we generally mean the profession, which includes clinical
psychologists and research psychologists, as well as psychologists who
work as consultants and other roles. As with any mainstream
professional discipline, psychology as a discipline is very much an
important part of maintaining power relations and sustaining the status
quo. But “psychology” can also mean not the profession but the body of
knowledge about human behavior. Psychologists have generated a lot of
data about human behavior. Trying to understand how people act, why
they act in certain ways, how to change the way people act - answering
questions such as these has been part of human inquiry not just by
psychologists but by philosophers, political theorists, and many other
professions, and also by ordinary non-professionals who try to figure
out why we do the things we do. Although much of what mainstream
psychology claims to understand is biased by status-quo
interpretations, awareness of this kind of information can sometimes
help individuals who are trying to overcome their oppression. Some
psychologists, for example, have tried to learn more about how groups
of people can become more effective, how they can try to persuade
others to work together, to become aware of oppressive forces. So I
think it can be useful in that way, especially when psychologists
explicitly address issues of power and oppression from an activist
position. A somewhat separate area has to do with psychotherapists and
psychoanalysts who have incorporated specific radical critiques into
their theory and practice. This focus, while always a small minority,
has existed for more than a century, with psychologists working to
understand fascism, for example, while also trying to help people
overcome the internal consequences of living in repressive hierarchical
society. While individual therapy cannot directly lead to political
change, it can help individuals gain a better sense of what they are up
against and figure out how to become more effective.
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2. What kind of role can psychology take in social changes and what is the aim of re-look in society with psychology?
As
noted above, some psychologists adopt a political framework for their
work and try to discover how to help advance social change. Although
the profession as a whole is, on average, moderate and accepting of the
status quo, some psychologists with liberal - and sometimes radical -
perspectives explicitly focus on trying to change things. Psychologists
who endorse this tendency can try to have a positive impact working
with activists and others, despite the general trend in other
directions. But doing so requires learning about psychology's
traditional role in society and then working to escape traditional
mainstream patterns. This is not easy, and I don't think very many do
this, but some do.
3. Is psychology possible which cooperates with the resistance
movements that struggle against state, economic and social
violences?
Yes,
this is possible, as I've said above. For example, the Salvadoran
social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró, who was also a Jesuit priest,
used social psychological methods to demonstrate inequity and
oppression in Central America in order to encourage change; as a
result, he and other Jesuit priests were murdered by a government death
squad in 1989. His work, generally described as liberation psychology,
has been an influential model for psychologists looking to engage in
resistance. More recently, groups of activist psychologists have tried
to support various movements, though my impression is that most of this
work is not connected enough to resistance movements. Psychologists
tend to be middle-class career-minded professionals, for whom activism
is not generally a high priority.
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4. What is Critical Psychology?
The term critical psychology
refers to a range of philosophical, scientific, and political
objections to the workings of the mainstream discipline of psychology.
Critical psychologists generally identify mainstream psychology
essentially as a political enterprise, in the sense that its accepted
practices produce and disseminate particular forms of knowledge
compatible with society's dominant power structures. Mainstram
psychologists exhibit selective assumptions about what counts as
relevant knowledge and how to obtain it, unjustified confidence that
professional norms can ensure scientific objectivity, and misguided
faith that such objectivity (if even possible to attain) frees the
field of biases that sustain an unjust and unsatisfying status quo. In
response, critics work to identify mainstream psychology's
unacknowledged assumptions, demonstrate their impact on psychology and
on the larger society, and propose alternative theoretical frameworks,
research methods, and professional practices. I want to emphasize that
one of the most difficult things to confront is the belief of most
psychologists that their work is entirely apolitical - that they're
just trying to help people. Indeed, most really are trying to help
people. The problem is that their work often embraces assumptions they
haven't fully considered, so that the kind of help they offer
disproportionately encourages people to adapt to difficult
circumstances rather than challenge them. As a consequence, millions of
people learn to see systemic problems as merely “individual.”
5. How can critical psychology takes place in academy which criticise
the mainstream perception that claims to be objective universal, and
neutral?
This
is an excellent question. In a sense, critical psychology - just the
same as critical sociology, critical legal studies, and other
variations of critical theory - is aimed directly at this mainstream
faith in objective, universal, neutral “truth.” By trying to show how
our science is shaped by our culture, our history, our values, critical
theory challenges an essential component of the university's
collaboration with mainstream power. This is a problem for critical
psychologists especially because, compared to critical theoriests in
other fields where systemic thinking is somewhat more common, in
psychology the mainstream focuses obsessively on the individual
separate from culture and histroy, as if these don't matter in
explaining human behavior. So it should not be that surprising that
critical psychologists have a much harder time making headway in the
academic discipline than sociologists or anthropologists. I should
point out that, to some extent, this difficulty is somewhat an
advantage. If critical psychology does gain more ground in academe,
then critical psychologists will have to focus more on traditional
academic norms that stand in the way of radical collaborative work. If
we fall victim to the “publish or perish” mania and worry more about
finding jobs and getting promotions, much of our critical energy will
be deflected.
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6. Since psychological knowledge is very open to be manipulated by
power groups is it useful or necessary to use this knowledge in the
perspective of the oppressed ones?
Psychological
knowledge can be useful. But relying on it can be risky, since, as you
suggest, it can be manipulated for elite ends. The point of critical
psychology is to resist this tendency, to identity where it happens and
to develop alternative understandings. But critical psychologists are a
small minority. Mainstream psychologists are much more likely to see
systemic problems as individual ones, thus de-politicizing analyses of
how oppression is maintained and encouraging adaptation rather than
resistance. Unfortunately, this individualizing tendency is Western
psychology's primary method of deflecting resistance.
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