Psychology as Practical Biopolitics

Springer, 2019

Neoliberal capitalism is the dominant cultural system in the world today. As such, it is an essential topic for cultural psychology. The cultural psychology of neoliberalism is essential for understanding people's psychology in the modern era. Neoliberal psychology is also a vital window into the culture, economics, and politics of neoliberal capitalism, for those interested in understanding them. Neoliberal psychology adds insights into neoliberalism by revealing its psychological effects. I utilize cultural psychology to provide a distinctive insight into neoliberal culture and modern (neoliberal) psychology. I specifically extend Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology to accomplish this task. In addition, the cultural psychological exploration of neoliberal psychology and culture enriches the academic

Political Psychology, 2001

2019

In this article, we present and discuss 20 theses to characterize the relationship between psychology and neoliberalism on the one hand, and neoliberal psychology and society on the other. These theses consist of three overarching themes which are psychology education, clinical and counseling psychology in practice, and the psychological profile of the neoliberal subject. With regard to psychology education, our discussion revolves on privatization of psychology degrees, commodification of higher education, quantity fetishism, studying to get rich, double-edged popularization of psychology, customerization of psychology education, clinical chauvinism, and packaged and pacified psychology. Under the title of clinical and counseling psychology in practice, factory models of psychological services, financialization of success, privatized life-long training, psychologization of the social and political, neoliberal psychology as the guardian of status quo, fake psychologists, and the cla...

Annual Review of Critical Psychology , 2019

We live in a transitional social period of historic proportions, in which the historical class compromise of Fordism has been revoked 'from above. ' In response to what has been 'achieved' and based on their current strength, those 'above' are seeking a new model of social organization and are trying to push it through -let's call this model 'neoliberalism.' Like its predecessor, Fordism, neoliberalism demands and enables a specific form of social organization, which 'needs' (both enables and presupposes) certain types of 'average' people. Let's call these 'forms of subjectivity,' i.e. configurations of subjectivity and new templates for historical normality. What prevailed in the 20th century as Psychology-and shapes our inherent understanding, whether approving or critical, of a normal person and his/her subjectivity-was just Fordist psychology, i.e. a psychology that had to help organize (i.e. develop and use) the productive force 'individuality' in a manner useful for Fordism. Psychology has/d to help get people to think and act 'functionally' -why else should bureaucracies or ruling classes invest in it? The nascent neoliberalism involves other (normality) requirements -which are always simultaneously both hindrances and opportunities for the subjects! Today, the productive force 'individuality' is simply being organized differently and poured into more current efficiency/profit molds of subjectivity. The respective concepts of a person in Fordism and neoliberalism can be condensed in buzzwords: Fordist 'homogeneous normality' vs. neoliberal 'differential normality' from 'above'-we are still and always dealing with a practice of normalization of (developing and exploited) individuals! In Fordism, it was the task of the predominant social sciences (such as psychology) to homogenize people along specific socially produced patterns, social categories (both: to control and reorient them, to fix them): the right/normal man, the normal worker, normal sex ... Neoliberalism no longer needs homogeneity (that much). It 'operates' with differentiality. Homogeneity is not as crucial and important, everyone can (but also must) be individually useable in his/her own way or prove (!) his/her usability individually. Individuality, idiosyncrasies, peculiarities are not only ok., but may effectively support one's utility even better. For neoliberalism, collectives are not only no longer 'in,' they even smell of homogeneity -yuck! And exactly here lie both the crux and the trap of 100 years of criticisms from and of dominant psychology: any critique of Fordist psychology boiled down to questioning homogeneity -and expounding individuality. However, homogeneity was not only submission to a 'norm;' at the same time it (also) meant or promised social protection -which had to be won, to be sure! It is exactly this social protection that is the original sin of the neoliberal religion! If criticism fails to reflect the dialectic of homogeneity and (the promise of) social protection by historicizing itself and its context, by becoming aware of its respective societal relativity, then its painful thorn against Fordist homogeneity will quickly become a knitting needle useful for the individual's straitjacket in his/her struggle with neoliberal differential normalcy. Criticism is not some timeless rhetorical jewelry, nor an academic frock one puts on and carries around individually, but rather a social relationship with the historical 24 NEOLIBERAL FRAMING OF (CRITICAL) PSYCHOLOGY mainstream as the counterpart; it is a social relationship in which real subjects (must) form historical regimes of agency in and for their lives! In addition, there are dynamics of 'dis-simultaneity' (Ungleichzeitigkeit) in the organization of our societies: neither Fordism nor neoliberalism were or are the same everywhere and for everyone! There never was, nor is there now, a single, possibly dominant, mode of working, mode of living or mode of desiring: neither intra-societally nor inter-nationally. Not all (social groups of) people live in the same historical Nowwith the same opportunities and obstacles! There were and are structural contradictions -such as class, gender, 'race'/colonialism, ... -and the relationships between these shape sociability (societality) historically. Any one, geo-politically specific, psychology depends on the confrontation with these structural contradictions: as scientific topic, as academic discipline, and as professional occupation.

Within philosophy of science the belief in universal, value-free science has been largely abandoned over the recent decades due to the epistemological and moral bias latent in Western “white male” metaphysics (Code, 1991; Lloyd, 1993). However, as this paper will examine, psychology as an academic discipline may yet have to adapt to this widely accepted theoretical criticism regarding its own underlying presumptions. This suspected neglect is discussed in relation to Sandra Harding’s notion of depoliticisation applied to three cases: (1) A recent debate on caregiving and fatherhood in Norway, (2) a debate on infidelity in a Norwegian newspaper, and (3) the conduct of the research project The Bergen Child Study (2002—). The three case studies illustrate how some psychologists may no longer theoretically embrace universal realism, but in psychological research and in public debate that draws on psychological experts, this ideal of knowledge still persists in all three cases. The explanation for this might be that the psychologists in question in their clinical practice, or their research, are professional representatives of an internal belief system where the psychologist’s role is to uncover and ultimately heal what is really “out there.”

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Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science

This article presents a discussion inspired by the invitation formed by Kevin Carriere’s book: “Psychology in Policy – Redefining Politics Through The Individual”. From a theoretical standpoint in culture psychology Carriere challenges the idea of politics as a particular practice carried out by mainly politicians. Instead, he attempts to anchor processes of politics in the everyday lives of individuals, directed at changing their worlds. In this article, we discuss how this ambition could evolve even further by relating it to other theoretical approaches working with similar ambitions.

2013

This book provides an introduction to political psychology through a focus on European politics and topics. It describes a style of doing political psychology in Europe that has developed out of dialogue with as well as critique of North American approaches. By emphasising the theoretical and methodological diversity of political psychology, the book is intended to contribute to a greater understanding of the strength and utility of the field. • Opens up and extends the study of political psychology to a variety of socio-political contexts and manifestations of political behaviour • Clearly outlines the usefulness and promises of distinctive critical approaches in social and political psychology • Explicitly considers the role of language, communication, identity and social representations in the construction of political meanings. Political Psychology will appeal to upper-level students and scholars who seek to extend their knowledge of the complex relationship between psychology, politics and society.

Theory & Psychology, 2015

This paper responds to a set of problems in contemporary psychology that cluster around the notion that the discipline might be “applied” to the real world, and that such application would thereby serve as the methodological and conceptual grounding for “political psychology.” The specific problems addressed comprise “interpretation” of material in the quantitative and qualitative traditions, the notion of “application” as such which rests on the prior modelling of individual and collective psychological phenomena, the conceptions of “politics” that operate in disciplinary interventions, the idealisation of “community” in different traditions of community psychology in the US and Europe, and finally “psychology” itself as the background against which these other problems are elaborated. In response to these problems the paper describes political theoretical concepts from feminist interventions in Left practice and brings them to bear on the discipline of psychology, turning the dire...

We contribute to a greater understanding of political psychology by 1) collecting data in a more systematic way for the intellectual community, 2) sensitizing students to the extent to which any intellectual discipline is socially constructed and is a work in progress, 3) heightening awareness of the political aspects of intellectual life, 4) exposing readers to the wide variety of diverse approaches and methodologies utilized by political psychologists, and 5) suggesting the range of topics that political psychology can address successfully and the range of techniques it can utilize.