[Part 2/3] Reflections on critical psychology: What kind of discipline is it?

I wonder if I can add something around the critical psychology conversation that was happening, which I think I missed half of. But I think also what's really interesting for someone like me, who hasn't ever really been in a psychology department, but has been in other kinds of spaces, is that I've always, when I was studying psychology, always felt that it was an incredibly uncritical discipline and that we needed more critical work in psychology, which we do. At the same time, I think since I've moved into a sociology department, I've realized the extent to which psychology has really developed an entire sub-discipline of critical psychology that you actually don't find in other disciplines. I suppose maybe I always assumed other disciplines had the same kind of thing, but you really don't. I've thought a lot about why that is, and I think others here would probably have better ideas than I do about why. But I think in some ways it's because psychology has become, certainly in my context, almost entirely defined by its clinical practice. So that is what people imagine psychology to be. I think that is why the students so badly want to study it. There's a certain mysticism around therapeutic practices and so on, but it also means that there is a kind of body that has to critique its practice in that sense. Maybe other disciplines with less obvious applied practices don't have that. But you can't say that psychology doesn't have a critical body of knowledge. It's more for me a question of what has it managed to achieve? Where has it taken us, and what has it done for us as a discipline? Rather than a question of saying, is it not there? Because I think it's very much there. If you did a Google search for critical sociology, you would never find the body of literature you would get if you search for critical psychology. So I think it's just a question of how is that happening, rather than whether it's happening and with what effects. I can hear Ian Parker's voice in my head saying, oh, but sociology was founded as the depoliticised discipline for critical theory and politics anyway. That's one thing that might be said. But on the other hand, it's so interesting to hear you say that, give us that representation of, or give me that representation of psychology, Ingrid, because I don't think that's the way psychology is seen in the UK. So it's really interesting to hear. I mean, I know there's a lot about the development of psychology that has contributed to the high, you know, the privileging, if you like, of the clinical discourse within psychology and everybody wanting to be clinical psychologists. And in a sense, the particular and peculiar status of being an academic psychologist, even in the registration and classification processes. So there's a particular institutional histories that draws attention to in terms of all our contexts. But in a UK context, I don't know what, you know, Johanna and Sarah and Rose think, but the sense is that the discipline is founded on a sort of quasi-spurious scientific practitioner model of, you know, where the privileges that kind of methodological orientation of the focus on methods rather than any substantive theory or practice. So I think it's really interesting to hear just how, you know, and that, I think, has produced what is British psychology and the problems with British psychology, which are different from the ones with South African psychology, I think. And in Brazil, it's very different. Yeah, this is, I think it was speaking of what am I going to say, because it is, and I think this is interesting also to think about this question, because in Brazil, we have different traditions in psychology and from psychology, from North America, from England, from Europe, from France, from Russia, with Vygotsky. And there is a development of some kind of social psychology in Brazil, thinking about the context of Latin America, and there is an important influence from psychoanalysis and other studies from philosophy. And so our curriculum, let's say, it's also a bit different. And I think it's a fundamental question to ask, because first, it's very diverse in Brazil, the teaching and learning of psychology. Also, the practice of psychology that it is, well, of course, many people go to the clinic. But psychology also works in a huge number of organisations in Brazil. Also, many times when I was seeing the work of social workers in England, I was thinking how in some of this work was also done by psychologists. So I think the position of psychology in Brazil, perhaps it's a bit different as well from South Africa, or anyway, from England, because I think of these traditions. Recently, there has been lots of debates on the academic production in psychology, thinking critically, from this Brazilian context and coming from a Latin American context. So this has been a kind of decolonial talk, let's say, and debate that has been going on. Also, there are many, but anyway, I'm not going to because this is a huge debate, but there are some interesting critical work going on. I think the question, how does this critical work happen, it's important to keep in mind. And I can see that there are some, anyway, some groups, some locations, anyway, I'm not going to give so many examples because of the time, but there are as well. But anyway, just to say that in Brazil also, the way that psychology is taught and practiced is a bit different. I was going to ask you off the back of Ingrid's really interesting question about, you know, there being a kind of critical sub-discipline of psychology that maybe differs from sociology. What role do you think the academy plays in that? Because for me, it very much feels like there are silos of critical psychologists in the UK, and they operate out of particular institutions. And then, but that doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening in other institutions and across the field. Is that reflected similarly by your experience in your context? Maybe I can quickly add that that's exactly where I was kind of going with that comment, is to think that it does seem to operate almost independently. And that's one of my concerns, that I don't see those ideas finding their way into the other aspects of psychological practice. In the same way that I don't see the kind of interdisciplinary work and other work on the cusp, as we've called it here, I don't see that finding its way into a kind of everyday psychological practice. And so that is, I suppose, why I also started with a concern that I think some of the oldest critiques of psychology remain just as relevant as they ever were. Can I just, I see what you're saying, but I'm wondering if, although maybe critical ideas and thinking haven't actually permeated kind of the mainstream of psychology, it feels a bit like the language of it has permeated psychology. So you get the talk of interdisciplinarity, you get, especially with feminism, there's a lot of speaking to feminist psychology. Whereas I think you're right, there's an imperviousness to it, even in the UK, where the actual systems of assessment, academic systems of assessment, like, for example, Iraq, will fail to acknowledge those things while speaking to them in a kind of, like, I don't know if that's something that's also happening in other places, because obviously criticality gets produced in different ways. I mean, you talked a lot about Latin America, there's the whole liberation psychology tradition that kind of pulls out of that kind of Catholic tradition, which in itself is colonial, you know. So, yes, I'm just interested in the way they play out and the way they're acknowledged in particular kinds of ways, what they're doing. And I think, I don't know, maybe I'll continue thinking about the context of Brazil. And I think there is also, that Ingrid also mentioned, but I guess this is an experience also found in the UK, the use of psychology in everyday life. So the psychologization of many, and individualization, let's say, of many situations and groups. And I think this is crucial to look at, because I think that's the risk that we are talking about when we think about critical psychology as well. Because by producing this psychologization, we also, anyway, we see that the social context, the relationships, all these aspects regarding gender, race, class, sexuality, and so on, tend not to appear as structural issues or issues that should be taken into account. And this happens also here in Brazil. But there is, anyway, but I think, yeah, I think this is why it's so hard also to, anyway, I think it's a question that we can continue for a long time, because we can see how these reproductions of specific moral discourses, medical discourses, psychological discourses, can appear also in critical psychology. This is why I always think that this constant exercise of reflexivity, of positioning the researcher, the psychologist, and allowing the subject to speak, to appear, is crucial. Because this is why I was saying that I'm very much concerned about this encounter, because these reproductions, the naturalization of them in language, in our everyday life, it's a given. So how can we look at these phenomena critically? And I see very much on this, in terms of this constant reflexivity exercise, like we are, it's an exercise of looking at these relationships, of these relations. Similarly, I think across a range of other disciplines, maybe others have examples, but that this is something else in terms of the interdisciplinarity. It's not just about how ideas from other disciplines can help to inform psychology, it's also about how ideas from psychology get taken up in other disciplines. Coaching is enormously popular at the moment in the institutions that I've been working in, and that I know in South Africa. And so I think we see psychological ideas all over the place, and that's also worth reflecting on.