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Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation
"A radical methodological approach to psychology that is open to social change - in an anti-capitalist, anti-racist and feminist politics." Antonio Negri Psychology is meant to help people cope with the afflictions of modern society. But how useful is it? Ian Parker argues that current psychological practice has become part of the problem, rather than the solution. Ideal for undergraduates, this book deconstructs the discipline to reveal the neoliberal sensitivities that underlie its theory and practice. Psychology focuses on the happiness of 'the individual'. Yet it neglects the fact that the happiness of the individual depends on their social and political surroundings. Ian Parker argues that a new approach to psychology is needed. He offers an alternative vision, outlining how the discipline can be linked to political practice and how it can help people as part of a wider progressive agenda. This groundbreaking book is at the cutting edge of current thinking on the discipline and should be required reading on all psychology courses.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 2007
8 people are currently reading
194 people want to read
About the author
Ian Parker
104 books35 followersIan Parker is a British psychologist who has been a principal exponent of three quite diverse critical traditions inside the discipline. His writing has provided compass points for researchers searching for alternatives to ‘mainstream’ psychology in the English-speaking world (that is, mainstream psychology that is based on laboratory-experimental studies that reduce behavior to individual mental processes).
The three critical traditions Parker has promoted are ‘discursive analysis’, ‘Marxist psychology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’. Each of these traditions is adapted by him to encourage an attention to ideology and power, and this modification has given rise to fierce debates, not only from mainstream psychologists but also from other ‘critical psychologists’. Parker moves in his writing from one focus to another, and it seems as if he is not content with any particular tradition of research, using each of the different critical traditions to throw the others into question.
The three critical traditions Parker has promoted are ‘discursive analysis’, ‘Marxist psychology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’. Each of these traditions is adapted by him to encourage an attention to ideology and power, and this modification has given rise to fierce debates, not only from mainstream psychologists but also from other ‘critical psychologists’. Parker moves in his writing from one focus to another, and it seems as if he is not content with any particular tradition of research, using each of the different critical traditions to throw the others into question.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 14, 2018
Decent analysis of the traps we as therapists fall into due to the structure of capitalism and the way mental healthcare fits that structure, but he often just repeats that complaint over and over.
March 18, 2020
A very good and pensive critique of psychology as a discipline.
December 21, 2021
After reading this book it reminded me of how Palestinians are suffering under apartheid Israel.
I felt sad and angry when he mentioned about Apartheid in South Africa and I draw many parallels with Palestine.
Pscyhology are still used to support Apartheid Israel and the racist ideas of separate development between arabs and jews are just copied ideas from apartheid South Africa. History is repeating itself but people don't learn.
Psychology focuses political change on leaders, individualising them and pathologizing them
The emphasis on "regime change" which identifies particular leaders to be removed, perhaps the same ones that were paralayed with in lucrative arms-sales deals in years just beforehand, makes indivdualist worldview of western leaders clear.
Psychologists are always at hand to back up this worldview, and they actively participate in the reduction of political action to the level of the kind of small-group interaction or individual behaviour that can more easily, they think, be predicted and controlled.
Pscyhologists are implicated in this problems at the levels of representation and practice.
At the level of representation, they feed the press with the investigations of childhood trauma sufferd by dictators of different stripes and diagnoses of mental instability to explain why these people should hate democracy. In practice they encourage negotiations between leaders of different groups -small group meetings held in secret that isolate the leaders from those they represent, treating them as individuals with whom relations of trust can be built and then hail peace accords that sell the hopes of the opressed peoples down the river as steps forward in conflict resolution.
Psychology reinforces the ideas of seperate development.
One of the most brutal expression of the logic of development linked to psychology was in the construction of the apartheid in South Africa. Hendrik Vewoerd the first Apartheid prime minister and architect of the separate development of races, was a professor of psychology at Stellenboch university before putting ideas from psychology into politcal practice. The formation of the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa was designed to exclude blacks, for example , and the presidential adress in 1962 spoke of the natural need for protection against a worldwide hysterical mass-movement of equalization etc..
The development of intelligence tests in South Africa is actually another lesson for radicals as to how idelogical agendas determine psychological techniques.
Just as women in the United States were originally shown to score better on tests, until the tests were adapted, so in South Africa the psychologists had to deal with the embarrassing discovery that poor whites scored worse on the early tests than black subjects. Once again, the test items were changed so that the measure of intelligence would come into line with what the researchers knew must be the reality, and now white intelligence could assume its rightful place at the top of the cross-cultural tables.
I felt sad and angry when he mentioned about Apartheid in South Africa and I draw many parallels with Palestine.
Pscyhology are still used to support Apartheid Israel and the racist ideas of separate development between arabs and jews are just copied ideas from apartheid South Africa. History is repeating itself but people don't learn.
Psychology focuses political change on leaders, individualising them and pathologizing them
The emphasis on "regime change" which identifies particular leaders to be removed, perhaps the same ones that were paralayed with in lucrative arms-sales deals in years just beforehand, makes indivdualist worldview of western leaders clear.
Psychologists are always at hand to back up this worldview, and they actively participate in the reduction of political action to the level of the kind of small-group interaction or individual behaviour that can more easily, they think, be predicted and controlled.
Pscyhologists are implicated in this problems at the levels of representation and practice.
At the level of representation, they feed the press with the investigations of childhood trauma sufferd by dictators of different stripes and diagnoses of mental instability to explain why these people should hate democracy. In practice they encourage negotiations between leaders of different groups -small group meetings held in secret that isolate the leaders from those they represent, treating them as individuals with whom relations of trust can be built and then hail peace accords that sell the hopes of the opressed peoples down the river as steps forward in conflict resolution.
Psychology reinforces the ideas of seperate development.
One of the most brutal expression of the logic of development linked to psychology was in the construction of the apartheid in South Africa. Hendrik Vewoerd the first Apartheid prime minister and architect of the separate development of races, was a professor of psychology at Stellenboch university before putting ideas from psychology into politcal practice. The formation of the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa was designed to exclude blacks, for example , and the presidential adress in 1962 spoke of the natural need for protection against a worldwide hysterical mass-movement of equalization etc..
The development of intelligence tests in South Africa is actually another lesson for radicals as to how idelogical agendas determine psychological techniques.
Just as women in the United States were originally shown to score better on tests, until the tests were adapted, so in South Africa the psychologists had to deal with the embarrassing discovery that poor whites scored worse on the early tests than black subjects. Once again, the test items were changed so that the measure of intelligence would come into line with what the researchers knew must be the reality, and now white intelligence could assume its rightful place at the top of the cross-cultural tables.
October 10, 2019
Una lectura obligada para cualquier persona que pretenda estudiar psicología y para los psicologos. Es una crítica sensata a esta disciplina y debería ser un punto de reflexión acerca de la función de la psicología en la sociedad. El libro es un análisis psicológico a la psicología, resaltando las patologías innatas a su concepción y crecimiento. Ampliamente recomendable.
August 24, 2021
Hakkında bloguma uzun bir yazı yazacağım, şimdilik böyle dursun.
December 30, 2025
Muy bueno como introducción a la psicología critica pero falla en dar alternativas viables y científicamente adecuadas
February 17, 2009
Has good and bad points - for the good, a critical look at the fake science and pseudoscientific principles of much psychological practice, and the effect that dominant ideologies play in determining what is "normal" and what research will get funding.
And the bad? A general dismissiveness of any research that would indicate genetic reasons towards intelligence and brain function as this would send out the message that nature may be a more important contributor than nurture, which obviously a marxist would rather not know. Also, it's a bit rich knocking psychology as junk science when the writer is a psycho-analyst.
And the bad? A general dismissiveness of any research that would indicate genetic reasons towards intelligence and brain function as this would send out the message that nature may be a more important contributor than nurture, which obviously a marxist would rather not know. Also, it's a bit rich knocking psychology as junk science when the writer is a psycho-analyst.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews