The neoliberal framing of (critical) psychology

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...

Theory & Psychology, 2018

This is an introduction to the special issue on the impact of neoliberalism on the sociality, politics, and governmentality of contemporary psychological life. The articles suggest that Euro-American psychology writ large has not been a force for human freedom. Still, the articles are additional evidence of the historical and current lines of resistance and activism that indicate a move toward an emancipatory psychology. Keywords alternatives in history and theory of psychology, critical studies in psychology, decoloniality in psychology, neoliberalism, policy and sociality, social imaginary and politics In the last third of the 20th century, much of the world's political economy underwent a shift from a state-centered regulatory framework to a neoliberal orientation that continues to the present. Begun as an economic theory to counter Keynesian economics, the impact of neoliberalism has been felt in politics, policy, and sociality. Many of its ideas are implicit in capitalism, but one could argue that the line of descent began much earlier with the establishment of human settlement for agriculture and the social, economic, and political hierarchies, with attendant inequities, that emerged in those settings (see Scott, 2017; cf. Suzman, 2017). The articles in this special issue primarily deal with the impact of neoliberalism on sociality, though the reader is urged to be mindful that sociality is not truly separable from the whole of economic and political life. In light of that, the term "social imaginary" is the best expression for understanding the pervasiveness of the state we are all living in. The social imaginary of any time and place is the default sense of order and social arrangement. As Taylor wrote, "once we are well installed in the modern social imaginary, it

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

This paper explores the relationship between humanistic psychology/psychotherapy and late 20th century/21st century neoliberalism, or the economization of the social/personal. I argue that humanistic psychotherapy, aiming at a cultivation of the self which corresponds to Michel Foucault's notion of an aesthetic "care of the self," as opposed to a capitalistic "knowledge of the self," may inadvertently reinforce oppressive social and economic practices, if it does not carry forward an awareness of the subject's ultimate worldedness and ecological embeddedness.

Based on a Neo-Sprangerian geisteswissenschaftlichen approach to forms of life in Western cultures, and drawing on humanities-based ideas about personality, a critical-hermeneutic description of a neoliberal form of life and its corresponding form of subjectivity is presented. It is argued that the neoliberal Lebensform has become dominant in western and globalized cultures and is colonizing all spheres of physical and mental life. In the neoliberal form of subjectivity, the self becomes central, but in a way that the distinction between an ego and the self are no longer relevant. Neoliberal thinking is reduced to utilitarian, perceptual thinking in all domains of life from work, to interaction, and to identity. Feeling is considered relevant, much more than thinking, and is used to manage stress while aiming for forms of happiness, which are core to a neoliberal form of subjectivity. It is argued that agency is reduced to self- and family-interests while consequences for the conduct of life are presented. Concepts such as a new nihilism, the reduction of individuality, and the (im)possibility of resistance in the overarching neoliberal form of life, are discussed.

Journal of Social Issues, 2019

This article examines the material and ideational conditions in academia and broader society under neoliberalism and their effects on social psychology, both as an academic community and as a source of knowledge production. Social Representations Theory (SRT)-embedded in the discipline of social psychology-is taken as a case study, which mirrors not only the specific impacts of neoliberalism on the theory and scientific community of SRT, but by extension also on social psychology as a whole. Specifically, we observe how neoliberalism has impacted on SRT's ability to address those features of social psychology which led many scholars to label it 'a discipline in crisis' by the 1960's and which included: its reliance on a realist ontology, positivist epistemology and quantitative methods, as well as the absence of an axiological frame which led to its distancing away from a humanistic, action-oriented social psychology. Rather than lessening these challenges, it is argued that neoliberalism has, in fact, further entrenched them in two interconnected ways. First, at the level of academic practice, neoliberalism has structured academic work or labour in the neoliberal university/academia in ways, which are more consistent with the production of knowledge that subscribes to positivist principles. Second, on a conceptual level the hegemony of neoliberalism has been accompanied by a corresponding hegemony of conceptual and methodological individualism in the social sciences. This in turn has led to an environment conducive to and encouraging of positivist approaches in social psychology.

Oxford University Press, 2021

Critical psychology comprises a broad range of international approaches centered around theories and practices of critique, power, resistance, and alternatives of practice. Although critical psychology had an axial age in and around the 1970s, many sources can be found decades and even centuries earlier. Critical psychology is not only about the critique of psychology, which is a broader historical and theoretical field, but about doing justice in and through theory, justice with and to groups of people, and justice to the reality of society, history, and culture as they powerfully constitute subjectivity, as well as the discipline and profession of psychology. Doing justice in and through psychological theory has a strong basis in Western critical approaches, representing a privileged position of reflection in Euro-American research institutions. Critical psychologists argue that traditional psychology is missing its subject matter and hence is not doing justice in methodology, and its practices of control and adjustment are not doing justice to the emancipatory possibilities of human agency or human science. Critical psychologists who are attempting to do justice with and to human beings are not neglecting the onto- epistemic-ethical domain, but are instead focusing on people, often marginalized or oppressed groups. Critical psychologists who want to do justice in history, culture, and society have argued that traditional psychological practice means adaption and adjustment. This means that not only subjectivity, but also the discipline and profession of psychology need to be connected with contexts. Psychologists have attempted to conceptualize the relationship between society and the individual, as well as the ability of humans not only to adapt to an environment but to change their living conditions and transform the status quo. This conceptualization also means providing concrete analyses of how current society, based in neoliberal capitalism, not only impacts individuals but also the discipline of psychology. Despite the complexities of critical psychology around the world, critical psychologists emphasize the importance of reflexivity and praxis when it comes to changing the conditions of social reality that create mental life. Given that subjectivity cannot be limited to intra-psychological processes, critical psychologists attend to relational and structural societal realities, requiring inter- and transdisciplinarity in the discipline and profession.

For theoretical and philosophical psychologists exploring the nature of human thought, recent interest in neoliberalism provides fertile ground for interrogating a wide range of issues that emerge at the intersection of political, economic, and psychological theory. This article reviews the various contributions to this special issue on neoliberalism and psychological theory. In addition to investigating the role that psychological theory can play in illuminating various aspects of neoliberal theory and practice, this review also explores the way that critique functions within a neoliberal context.

This article introduces an edition of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology made up of papers originally presented at the Second Conference of Marxism and Psychology held in Morelia, Mexico, from 9-11 August 2012. We begin by introducing Marxism as a resource for critical psychology, one that is uniquely positioned to link the refusal of psychology, which lies at the core of critical work in the discipline, to a broader refusal of social relations and forms of subjectivity under capitalism and the ideological role psychology itself plays in their reproduction. We then sketch a panoramic overview of critical and reconstructive encounters between Marxism and psychology in various contexts around the world ever since Marx's own reflections on the nature of the psyche, serving as a background to the equally diverse encounters with Marxist theory and politics in the articles making up this edition of the Review. Finally, we zone in on the immediate context of the conference itself, giving substance to the idea that a Marxist critical psychology is one that both inspires and is further developed from forms of collective action, which locates its critique of psychology and capitalism not just in theory, but in practices of everyday life that already articulate and live this double refusal.

Journal of Critical Psychology, …, 2001

In this paper we explore what we have termed the ideology of individualism in relation to both the academic discipline of psychology and its various related practices. We demonstrate that mainstream psychology, in its uncritical acceptance of dominant ideologies regarding the individual, acts not to explain, describe and ‘help’, but rather maintains and promulgates a series of understandings and practices that legitimate individualised notions of distress while simultaneously drawing attention away from the material and social underpinnings of such distress. We contrast this position with that of critical psychology wherein the individual is reconceptualised, not as a discrete and isolated phenomenon, separate and distinct form an external and objective reality, but as fundamentally interpenetrated by and interwoven with the social, material, political and economic circumstances within which we reside. We conclude by arguing that any approach that does not pay heed to this ‘relationship’ cannot hope to effect sustainable change to either our own thoughts, feelings and experiences or to the circumstances that are implicated in their creation