Gadamer (1960/1997) argued in Truth and Method that âthe logic of the human sciences is a logic of the questionâ (p. 370). The logic of theoretical psychology (or the psychological humanities ) is not one of natural-scientific discovery, hypothesis-testing, modeling, verification, or falsification , but one of raising questions and issues, particularly those that are frequently avoided, about psychology as a discipline, profession, and practice. The limits and limitations of the question constrain the possible answers. Because primacy does not belong to the answer but to the question, it is imperative to extend the horizon of the question, certainly beyond the boundaries of methodology and methods. I would like to demonstrate that criticalâtheoretical interrogations that involve basic questions and demand candid answers make for a better psychology, or at least, to remain Kantian, they prepare the conditions of the possibility of an improved psychology. Any science and profession, particularly a discipline that has been characterized as problematic (Teo, 2005, 2012; Woodward & Ash, 1982), can be theoretically enriched.
From a criticalâtheoretical perspective, raising basic questions regarding the discipline and profession of psychology is a first step. In their research practices, traditional psychologists also ask questions, often conceptualized as hypotheses or specific research problems, but theoretical psychologists need to assess those questions themselves. They engage with what Ĺ˝iĹžek (2006) suggested as the task of philosophy that not only debates answers but, most of all, submits âto critical analysis the questions themselves, to make us see how the very way we perceive a problem is an obstacle to its solutionâ (p. 137). In critical traditions asking questions about psychology and raising questions about the questions that are asked has been identified as a process of reflexivity and interference .
Habermas (1968/1972) characterized positivism as the abandonment of reflexivity. For psychology, we can add that the meaning of psychological knowledge is not exhausted by what psychologists do (and publish), and that the knowing subject needs to be included in the process of research. Yet, critical investigations are not only required for epistemology, but also for ontology , ethics , and aesthetics , discarded by positivism as meaningless and neglected by the discipline. But discarding, neglecting, or omitting questions of reflexivity in those philosophical areas, or pretending that basic questions have been answered, does not really solve these problems. Although some answers to basic questions are underdetermined, meaning that there exist no answers that transcend time and geographical space, one must still engage with these questions, given that they implicitly guide the work of psychologists.
As the approaches of Gadamer and Ĺ˝iĹžek indicate, a critical point of view is not identical with a theoretical point of view, and the term âcriticalâ can be used in many ways. Slife, Reber, and Richardson (2005) challenge critical thinking in traditional psychology , where rigorous scientific thinking is identified with the term critical, whereas they provide reflections about psychology, challenging unquestioned assumptions in the discipline and practice. The American Psychological Associationâs Board of Educational Affairs (American Psychological Association, 2013) identifies critical thinking as an outcome of quality education in the discipline but the concept of critical is not clearly defined (see also Teo, 2011a). The term critical, as it is used in this book, is about raising questions, issues, and problems, and advocates for being critical in but also about psychology, in both academia and professional life. It includes critical traditions and reflections as interrogations about the sociohistorical dimensions of psychology as a science and practice, as well as reflections on issues of power and what can be done about it. Criticalâtheoretical questions are metatheoretical interrogations that study the embeddedness of theory and practice in history , culture , and society, and its relation to subjectivity and to the conduct of everyday academic life.
Critical thinking as embraced in this book has various historical traditions, with Gadamer (1960/1997) emphasizing that tradition is an important source of knowledge. Yet, tradition is also an important constraint and, as Habermas (1967/1988) argued, tradition might produce distortions of knowledge, which applies to all approaches in psychology. However, it remains impossible to advance arguments without traditions. The critical traditions that inspire the argument in this book are engendered by several programs of reflexivity and interference , from Kantâs critiques of human reason, particularly his Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 1781/1998) and his Critique of Practical Reason (Kant, 1788/1968a), which laid out a process of investigation that challenged traditional assumptions, to Marxâs and Engelsâs (1932/1958) Critique of the Latest German Philosophy (subtitle of the book The German Ideology) and Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1859/1961) (also the subtitle of Das Kapital), which provided a program and attitude for a critique of the status quo as well as a framework for social inquiries and practices, and to Friedrich Nietzscheâs critical studies, for example, his reflections on the history of morality and on how conventional morality may restrict human development (Nietzsche, 1887/1998). These programs, which also worked on ideas critical of self-misunderstandings, have had an influence on various critical programs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book is also inspired by more recent philosophical and criticalâpsychological works that include feminist, indigenous, postcolonial, and social-constructionist approaches, and by the critical intentions of the psychological humanities (Teo, 2005, 2017a).
An important feature that guides this work is the idea of the social , historical , and cultural embeddedness of all human activities, including the activities of scientists and psychologists. Derrida (1993/1994) attributed what I call the sociohistorical trauma of humanity to Marx and added it to Freudâs (1917/1999) list of traumas that included the cosmological (Copernicus), biological (Darwin), and psychological (Freud) (see also Teo, 2011a). The sociohistorical trauma reveals that âmyâ own subjectivity (the terms âIâ and âmeâ are used as a generalized first-person point of view and do not literally refer to this author), what âIâ think makes âme,â is itself a result of society, history, and culture. Had âIâ been born in the fifth century with the same genetic makeup, âIâ would not think, feel, want, and do the same things that âIâ do now.
For the academic discipline and profession of psychology this also means that its subject matter is sociohistorically embedded and that one could only be a psychologist to the degree that history, culture, and society enables one to be a psychologist. Psychologists did not exist in the fifteenth century and certain parts of the world indicate no presence of psychology as a discipline or profession, even today (Arnett, 2008). Psychological thinking and imagination is framed by the history and society we live in. If we were active as academic psychologists in the 1950s in the United States, we probably would follow some form of neo-behaviorism and we could not imagine the emergence of neuroscience into mainstream psychology that occurred thereafter. But we also cannot think far beyond our own time and imagine how psychologists will operate in 200 years, or even whether the discipline will still exist hundreds of years into the future. The psychological, including the intellectual, mental life of the psychologist, is equally embedded in history, culture, and society, and there is no horizon from nowhere for the academic or professional psychologist (horizons are always anchored by contexts).
The sociohistorical trauma also suggests that power that permeates society influences our work as psychologists, which is another important topic of analysis in critical thinking. What are the limits of independent subjectivity in research and practice, and do our thoughts, utterances, and actions represent the interests of powerful groups and institutions? What we perceive as the true, the good, and the beautiful may very well be nourished by our own position in society. If that is the case and if we align ourselves with groups and institutions that benefit from distortions, neglects, or misrepresentations, in short, from ideologies , we may produce false understandings of psychosocial reality. But critical theory also provides a solution to this problem, because a questioning attitudeâcritical reflexivity and interfering activityâmay provide the condition of possibil...