Essay answering: "A first-year psychology student asks you what critical psychology is all about.
Explain to them what critical psychologists do and how critical psychologists approach the theory, contexts and practices of psychology using gender as an example." I have summarized the essay into bul...
EXPLAIN WHAT CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS DO AND HOW CRITICAL
PSYCHOLOGISTS APPROACH THEORY, CONTEXTS AND PRACTICES OF
PSYCHOLOGY USING GENDER AS EXAMPLE
Critical psychology: approach to psychology that looks reflexively at the discipline
→ Considers implications of psychological knowledge
Involves critical thinking executed in reflective and independent way
→ Through process of questioning and using logic
Considered an orientation rather than theory concerned with psychological
knowledge, practice and relations of power
By definition it’s diverse and cuts across various sub disciplines in psychology
→ Trans-disciplinary
Rejects assumption that there can be neutral representation of objective facts
→ Concerned with critiquing oppressive uses of psychology and disrupting
imbalances of power
Psychological knowledge, expertise and practice contribute to formation of power
relationship
→ CP critiques power relationship and interrogates assumptions it makes of
o Reality, human nature and knowledge that’s maintained by mainstream
psychology
Particularly analyses the way psychology is used as instrument of power
→ And way of implementing social asymmetries with specific focus on
o How psychology reproduces and legitimises inequalities of race, sexuality
and gender
Furthermore serves emancipatory and socially transformative agenda through its
concern with
→ How vocabularies, theories and clinical techniques create and hold versions of
people in place
It approaches its agenda with awareness of how psychology defines what is
normal/abnormal within western societies
→ Critiques imperialism of western psychology and how it tends to reduce and
generalise certain human experiences
o By marginalising traditional forms of knowledge
CP applies change that’s properly responsive and suitable to demands of developing
society
CP centred on three principles
First: maintains that CP is an ethical practice and response to some form of principled
outrage
→ CP claims to offer interventions in problems of human unhappiness to make
lives better
→ Understands that experience can’t be understood in isolation in terms of
o internal processes and mechanisms
Second: CP is contextual and attempts to understand people in their social/material
worlds
→ Attempts to fundamentally challenge foundations on which discipline is built
→ Believes that CP is trans-disciplinary
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