History and theories of psychology: A critical perspective

✍ Scribed by Geoff Bunn

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 119 KB
• Volume: 39
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.10041

✦ Synopsis

BOOK REVIEWS constructionism is not cited, nor is Ian Hacking's work on the looping effects of human kinds. Jill Morawski's study of reflexive practices in American psychology is also absent. That the book does not even reference the work of Michel Foucault -arguably the most influential critic of the human sciences of our age -is a fatal oversight. It is gratifying, however, to see Graham Richards' important contributions receiving extensive coverage.

One of the chief insights of post-Foucaultian scholarship is the recognition that the history of psychology can no longer be regarded as an unproblematically bounded discipline. E. G. Boring, that F. R. Leavis of psychology, set the agenda for the discipline over 70 years ago -and it has yet to be challenged. Even critical histories broadly accept "the great tradition" that Boring initially sketched out. The time has surely come to abandon the Leavisite history of psychology and replace it with an enterprise that rejects the study of psychobiographies, -theories, and -isms altogether. A truly critical evaluation of the relationship between psychology and history would have human subjectivity as its focus. Jones and Elcock's book ends with a useful discussion of "Social Constructionism," but this should really only be a beginning for critical psychology.