Critical psychology
The German branch of critical psychology predates and has developed largely separately from the rest of the field.
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.
Holzkamp wrote two books on theory of science[6] and one on sensory perception[7] before publishing the Grundlegung der Psychologie in 1983.
At the same time, the Grundlegung 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.
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.
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.
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.
Undergraduate concentrations can also be found at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Prescott College, and at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Fremantle).
Oppression refers to “a state of asymmetric power relations characterized by domination, subordination, and resistance, where the dominating persons or groups exercise their power by restricting access to material resources and by implanting in the subordinated persons or groups fear or self-deprecating views about themselves”.
A similar reflection is the one that divides possibilities of liberation in relation with power into: aesthetic, interaction, and labor dimension.
Thus, the aims of critical psychology toward emancipation exceeds from the individual, to the larger societal level of reflection and action.
[25] South Africa is a good example of a context in which mainstream psychology positioned itself alongside neo-colonialism, racism, and capitalist exploitation - during the country's Apartheid era - which led to the need for critical alternatives within the field that could challenge ideological complicities.
[26] During apartheid, mainstream psychology supported the oppressive political system - some psychologists actively and others passively.
In the early 1980s, at the height of apartheid, progressive white psychologists and a growing number of black psychologists began to research and practice alternative programmes to critique and resist mainstream psychology's role in perpetuating apartheid in South Africa.
Firstly, psychology was accused of being a product of, and supporter of, an oppressive political system in which its supposed neutrality and scientific objectivity were informed by the sectors of society that benefited from the ideological and economic dominance that it upheld.
[27] Secondly, once critical psychologists in South Africa revealed the ideological flaws in mainstream psychology within the country's context, work began to reconfigure the field as a progressive and socially relevant practice with theoretical and methodological approaches that could benefit all members of South African society.
Although the field was not necessarily fully formalised during this time, spaces and organisations were created for its ideas to be expressed and developed: such as in the University of Cape Town's (UCT) psychology department, the formation of the Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa (OASSSA), Psychologists Against Apartheid, the South African Health and Social Services Organisation (SAHSSO), and the establishment of the academic journal Psychology in Society (PINS).
[26] Some of the main theoretical and practical achievements of these developments were: the forging of a way to critique the categories of class, race, gender, and other structural factors impacting the discipline of psychology, the encouragement of students to think critically about the politics of psychology, and rebuilding international links as well as relationships with other social and health sciences in South Africa.
The University of West Georgia offers a Ph.D. in Consciousness and Society with critical psychology being one of the main three theoretical orientations.
