Critical Psychology in Turkey: Recent Developments
Aysel Kayaoglu
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
The present article focuses on some of the new developments in Turkey after 2008. Firstly it is laid out that how neoliberal policies in Turkey shaped psychology both as scientific and market enterprise because it is maintained that only by exposing this context actual state of affairs in psychology can be understood. Secondly, it is explicated how critical psychology attempts in early 2000s gave rise to the most recent critical psychology movement in Turkey. Thirdly, principles and practices of Association of Psychologists for Social Solidarity (TODAP) are closely scrutinized for this association has represented critical psychology movement in public in Turkey. Finally, although the writers of this article criticize TODAP's way of understanding of critical psychology, they underline historical importance of this movement in the context of Turkey.
Related papers
How did ‘Turkish’ psychology become the mainstream? A discourse analysis on the trajectory of its colonial legacy
2023
Apart from a few studies after 2000, Kurds and Kurdishness are almost absent in psychology studies in Turkey. In this chapter, we argue that a domestic colonial mentality lies behind such a systematic denial that has eventually led psychology in Turkey to transform into a 'Turkish' psychology by systematically excluding various groups (i.e., Others) for the sake of the national progress principle of Turkish modernisation. We employ a decolonial approach (i.e., denaturalisation) to reveal the ruptures and continuities of colonial dichotomies via representations of Self (i.e., in-group) and Others (i.e., out-group) in psychology texts across the 20 th century by subjecting selected works of influential psychologists to discourse analysis. We found that while the 'Turkish' Self was reconstructed via Dominant, Progressive and Modern, various Others were reconstructed via Masses and Outdated interpretative repertoires across selected materials and time. As a first attempt to show a domestic colonial mentality pierced into various stages of psychological knowledge production in Turkey, our findings contribute to the critical psychology literature and open doors for further research on the scope and manifestation of coloniality in 'Turkish' psychology.
On critical psychology in Slovenia
2013
This article presents the development of critical psychology theory and alternative practices in therapy and consultation in Slovenia during the 1970s and 1980s. From the perspective Critical Theory (Frankfurt School), German critical psychology and psychoanalysis, psychologists (a rather small number of them) problematized behavioural conceptions and positivism in psychology. At that time, young psychologists of different theoretical orientations initiated changes in social work with marginalized groups, changes in/of total institutions, they introduced alternative practices in counseling and therapy. Critical theory, field work, problematization of power relations within the institutions and in the society in general, far exceeded the frames of academic and professional psychology – it was implicit and explicit critique of social and political relations, and it was a type of social movement for autonomy of social and academic space. At the end of the article we sum up critical ref...
Teo, T. (2021). History and systems of critical psychology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. Oxford University Press.
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.
Critical Psychology in Changing World Editorial This World Is not Enough : The Dialectics of Critical Psychology
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, all foes of real understanding. Likewise tolerance, or broad wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
20 Theses on Psychology and Neoliberalism: From Mainstream Psychology to 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...
Critical Psychology: What It Is and What It Is Not
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2007
Critical psychology alerts us to the limitations of mainstream research in the discipline, and it promises to put 'social' issues on the agenda in the whole of psychology. A starting point of the stance of critical psychological research is that the claims that psychologists make about human beings often seem to vanish almost as quickly as they are discovered. People, a group or culture do not behave or think like the model would predict, and, more importantly, we find that our awareness, our reflection on a process described by a psychologist changes that process. It is in the nature of human nature to change, to change as different linguistic resources, social practices, and representations of the self become available, and for human nature to change itself as people reflect on who they are and who they may become. That means that any attempt to fix us in place must fail. But it will only fail in such a way that something productive emerges from it if we do something different, and one place to do something different is in psychology. We need to step back and look at the images of the self, mind and behaviour that psychologists have produced, the types of practices they engage in, and the power those practices, those 'technologies of the self ' have to set limits on change. When we appreciate this, we can start to look at what psychologists might do instead as part of a genuinely critical approach.
Discourses of Psychologists on Sex/Gender in Turkey: A Qualitative Study
Asya Studies, 2021
The aim of this study is to find out 'interpretative repertoires' used as discursive resources for sex/gender explanations of psychologists working in various fields in Turkey. Within the scope hereof, in-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen psychologists. Interviews were recorded and then transcribed. Interview texts were analyzed through discourse analysis. As a result of the analysis, four different interpretative repertoires were identified; dichotomy, feelings, nurture and difference. As to dichotomy repertoire, sex/gender is constructed within biology-society and woman-man dichotomies while it is defined as an individual and inner phenomenon in the feelings repertoire. When it comes to nurture repertoire, sex/gender is described as an identity acquired by nurturing processes while sexual differentiation is constructed as the source of difference and variety among people in difference repertoire. The results of the study manifest that the participants conceptualize sex/gender and sexuality within a dichotomous and essentialist framework to a large extent. The discourses of psychologists in Turkey have undergone some shifts in parallel with the transformations in Western psychology, however it is still possible to argue that essentialist, dichotomous and heteronormative assumptions on sex and sexuality keep forming their discourses to a certain extent in explicit or implicit ways. This is connected with the limited relation of (mainstream) psychology to other disciplines, critical and social constructionist perspectives, qualitative methodologies and activism as well as the fact that psychology in Turkey has mostly been imported from the West. -------------------------------- [TR] Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de farklı alanlarda çalışan psikologların cinsiyete/toplumsal cinsiyete ilişkin açıklamalarına kaynaklık eden ‘açıklayıcı repertuarların’ tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Çalışma kapsamında, on dört psikologla derinlemesine bireysel görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Katılımcıların onayı dahiilinde görüşmelerin ses kaydı alınmış ve ardından yazıya dökülmüştür. Görüşme metinleri söylem analizi ile analiz edilmiştir. Analiz sonucunda, cinsiyete/toplumsal cinsiyete ilişkin konuşmalara kaynaklık eden dört farklı açıklayıcı repertuara ulaşılmıştır; ikilik, hissiyat, yetiştirilme ve farklılık. İkilik repertuarında cinsiyet, biyoloji-toplum ve kadın-erkek ikilikleri içinde inşa edilmekteyken; hissiyat repertuarında içten gelen bireysel bir olgu olarak, yetiştirilme repertuarında ise yetiştirilme sonucu edinilen bir kimlik olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Farklılık repertuarında ise cinsiyet ayrımı insanlar arasındaki farklılık ve çeşitliliğin kaynağı olarak inşa edilmektedir. Çalışmanın sonuçları, katılımcı psikologların cinsiyeti ve ilişkili olguları, büyük ölçüde ikili ve özcü bir çerçevede kavramsallaştırdıklarını ortaya koymaktadır. Batı psikolojisinde cinsiyetin ele alınışında son otuz yılda gerçekleşen dönüşümlere paralel olarak Türkiye’deki psikologların söylemlerinde de birtakım dönüşümler olduğunu; ama özcü, ikili ve heteronormatif cinsiyet/cinsellik varsayımlarının -açık veya örtük biçimlerde- Türkiye’deki psikologların söylemlerini belirli ölçülerde şekillendirmeye devam ettiğini söylemek mümkündür. Bu durum, (anaakım) psikolojinin diğer disiplinlerle, eleştirel ve sosyal inşacı perspektiflerle, niteliksel yöntemlerle ve aktivizm alanıyla kurduğu sınırlı ilişkisellikle bağlantılı olduğu kadar, Türkiye’deki psikolojinin büyük ölçüde ithal edilmiş oluşuyla da bağlantılı görünmektedir.
Sağlik Psi̇koloji̇si̇: Türki̇ye Açisindan Bi̇r Durum Değerlendi̇rmesi̇ne Doğru
Psikoloji Calısmaları Dergisi, 2005
öyle düşünülmüşe hile 'sağlık psikolojisi' ülkemizde bir çok psikologun çalışmakla olduğu bir alandır. Bu yazının amacı sağlık psikolojisinin Türkiye açısından bir durum değerlendirmesini yapmak ve bu konuda gelecekte yapılabilecek daha kapsamlı çalışmalara bir zemin oluşfıırmaklır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda, Öncelikle, ülkemizdeki psikologların sağlık psikolojisi ile ilgili algı ve görüşlerinin, bu alanda verilen eğilimlerin, yapılan araştırma ve uygulamaların saplanması hedeflenmiştir. Yazının ilk bölümünde sağlık psikolojisi alanının ortaya çıkış nedenleri kısaca özetlenmektedir. İkinci bölümde İstanbul'da ilki. ]993'tc, ikincisi de 2004'le, sağlık kurumlarında çalışan toplam ¡41 psikologla yapılan saha araştırmalarının bulguları paylaşılmaktadır. Internet üzerinden yapılan bir uraştırnıanın Özetlendiği son bölümde ise, Türkiye'de sağlık psikolojisi alanı ile ilgilenenlerin görüşleri ve ulaşabildiğimiz, kadarı ile, bu alanda ne gibi çalışmalar olduğu bilgileri paylaşılmakta ve önerilerde bulunulmaktadır. Health Psychology; A step towards understanding the situation of the field in Turkey ABSTRACT Although it is generally not recognized, 'health psychology' is the field within which many psychologists in Turkey work. The aim of this article is to assess the situation of health psychology in Turkey, and to provide a basis for future studies of a more comprehensive nature. In line with this aim, priorit}' was given to exploring the perceptions of psychologists regarding health psychology, and to identifying training, research and applications in this area. In the first section.
Related papers
A Brief History of Turkish Cross-Cultural Psychologist Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı (1940-2017)
2017
Professor Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı (1940-2017) was a prominent name in the history of Psychology and one of the founders of Social Psychology in Turkey. Her scholarly achievements can best be summarised in three main headings: her contributions to cross-cultural psychology, her work on “The Value of Children,” and her pivotal role in Turkish letters and feminism. The following paper traces her important influence, and discusses some of her main theories.
On the psychologization of critical psychology
2000
This paper argues against the recuperative aspects of critical psychology. In particular I will argue against the renewed critical psychological concern with action research, namely those that are limited to clinical and psychotherapeutic spheres. I will also argue against the renewed psychologising interests that have focused on new forms of subjectivity, often ‘liberated’ from institutional and international socio-economic orders. Drawing upon influential critical traditions, the final part of the article advances related lines of possible action. The first suggests that we continue to scrutinise historical and material processes in order to understand the ways psychology prevents us from thinking about its ethical and social investments in both local and international spheres. The second line of action indicates concrete ways of reflecting upon the market and political conditions of possibility of current critical psychological issues and trends. The third line discusses the pros and cons of identifying research subjects inside and outside the boundaries of the discipline of psychology including ‘critical psychology’. These complementary approaches are discussed as reference points, rather than tantalising promises, for resisting the increasing recuperative aspects of critical psychology and its possible reformist dangers.
Mapping Out the Methodology of Psychology Research in Turkey
The aim of this study is to discuss the research literature of psychology in Turkey. The paper consists of two subfields, ‘educational psychology’ and ‘social psychology,’ as a case study and focuses on the methodology employed in these researches. 84 research studies (n=44 for educational psychology and n=40 for social psychology) were included within the current study. Findings of the analysis have revealed that (a) the methodological approach was based on quantitative and positivist paradigms in 74 (88.1%) studies, (b) the methodology employed in 53 (63.1%) studies were found to employ a methodology having little connection with the purpose and questions of the research study, (c) the implemented procedure contained crosssectional data collection in 81 (96.4%) studies, and (d) the sample in 24 (54.5%) studies in the field of educational psychology was located only in one school while the sample in 34 (85%) studies in the field of social psychology was located in one city. Findings of the current study help to shed light on the psychology researches and create awareness in regards to how methodology is utilized in these researches by providing a detailed description of these studies.
The analectic turn: critical psychology and the new political context
Les cahiers psychologie politique [En ligne], 2013
In this article I explore the limitations of academic critical psychology, suggesting that it is a spent force, largely irrelevant to real problems of oppression and liberation. An alternative approach which I characterise as ‘analectic critical psychology’ can be seen in the Latin American traditions of liberation psychology and community social psychology as well as in some developments in other regions.
Click for updates Turkish Studies Diagnosing the National Neurosis: The Underground Journal Şizofrengi and Its Critique of 1990s Turkish Society
Turkish Studies, 2015
This paper examines the attempt by the Turkish underground journal Sizofrengi (1992–98) to provide a space for psychiatrists, artists, and mental patients to voice their personal concerns as a means to critique problems in Turkish society. Sizofrengi was founded by young psychiatrists in order to critique the problems they felt were endemic to their field. Rejecting the institutional practices and assumptions the editors found constraining in their psychiatric community, Sizofrengi sought to give the patient a space to speak for themselves in order to deconstruct the vaunted role of the psychiatrist in Turkey. But Sizofrengi also sought to appropriate the language of psychology and the “madnesses” of the patients it strives to cure in order to revitalize what the editors felt was a moribund literary culture. The journal gave a voice to marginalized, underground writers, critics, and film makers that would go on to become far better known outside the confines of the journals’ pages. While the result demonstrates that care must be taken when borrowing the discourse of the mentally ill, Sizofrengi presents an interesting case of a journal that was able to draw on issues of psychiatry in order to critique both literary and mainstream society.
The Contemporary Turkish Government, Ideological Strategies and the Symbolic: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Contemporary Politics of Turkey
POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science, 2019
The contemporary government of Turkey has been seeing increasing support for several years, and obstacles it has faced have not reduced the number of its supporters by much. This paper emphasizes that the inquiries which interpret this political conjuncture should consider the Turkish ideological atmosphere and discursive arrangements employed by politicians to manufacture consent. The author aims to discover the relation between the success of the ruling party and its discursive strategies while examining its symbolic structure and imaginary constructions using Lacanian psychoanalysis by employing interpretative discourse analysis. The author intends to highlight the nodal points of the hegemonic discourse, seeks to uncover rhetorical patterns, and attempts to explore the applicability of psychoanalysis on political and sociological issues.
"At the Edge of (Critical) Psychology" in Critical Psychology in a Changing World: Building Bridges and Expanding the Dialogue (ARCP 10)
Annual Review of Critical Psychology (ARCP), 2013
Critical psychology, born out of the womb of the west, is an internal critique of the west's intimate principles. Critical psychology, drawing upon a critical version of psychoanalysis and an equally critical version of discourse analysis – drawing upon a re-reading of both Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault – and perhaps setting to dialogue in the process the dissenting children of the west – has tried to carve out a space for a re-formed (not merely reformed) psychology in the west. What can India offer to this field? One, Indian can offer ‘Savage Freud’ Girindrasekhar Bose's re-reading of one of the resources of critical psychology: psychoanalysis. Will this add value to the critique that critical psychology embodies? Perhaps. One will however have to demonstrate how and where it adds value. Two, India can also offer its own critical reading (a critical reading premised on cultural difference) of the qualitative methodology – once again considered a vital resource for critical psychology – given the obsession of the mainstream with quantitative psychology. Three, India can offer to the paid/contractual clinical setting (paradigmatically standing for the professional method in the west, which critical psychology now wishes to re-form) the wholly/holy Other, provisionally termed ‘faith healing’. What does faith healing do to the clinical setting that critical psychology wishes to re-form? How are relationships of suffering-healing organized in faith driven settings? What clues do they offer to a modern culture that now sees the clinic as the only site of cure, and that has stripped itself of all other resources and imaginations of healing? In this paper, we would also like to suggest that the tradition of critical psychology in India cannot just rely on a critique of psychiatry or mainstream psychology. It has to be, simultaneously, a critique of (Brown) Orientalism (see Chaudhury, 1994). Critical psychology in India is thus premised on a dual critique. It is critique of both the hegemonic Occident and the Occident’s hegemonic description of the Orient. It is critique of both the West’s hegemonic principles and principles (emanating from either the West or from the East) that hegemonize the East."""
Activism Encyclopedia of critical psychology
The relationship between psychology and activism has taken many forms. Throughout the history of the discipline, psychologists have used psychological research in order to under- stand and address issues of inequality and injustice, to promote social and political change, while others have taken activism and social movements as objects of inquiry. Some of the most powerful and radical activism within psychology has come from those who have challenged the power structures and practices of the discipline itself. This rich, though often omitted, history of activism in psychology has informed and inspired an ongoing tradition of critical activist work in and around psychology.
The origins, characteristics and development of Critical Psychology in Italy
The paper discusses the development of Italian Critical psychology, as a current that enjoys full recognition within the psychological discipline, although it critiques the hegemonic currents making up the mainstream. We reconstruct its roots in the historical, political and cultural developments of the Country: the influence of German-language philosophy and science in the Italian culture; the socialist tradition of the nascent Italian social psychology of the 19th century; the protest movements of the late '60s in Italian psychiatric hospitals as well as in the universities; the "paradoxical" situation due to the fact that Gramsci's Marxism promoted openness to psychology as the science of subjectivity; but 'official' Italian Marxism failed to recognize the potential emancipatory relevance of psychology. In this context, the publication in 1974 of the Italian translation of Holzkamp's Critical Psychology appealed to Italian left-wing psychologists as the answers they had been waiting for regarding the external relevance of psychology and its relationship with Marxism, articulated in a complete systemic model of psychology. The relationships with the Cultural Historical School are also explained. Critical Psychology still enjoyed an active presence in Italy during the 1980s and we suggest that it still continues to exert a significantalthough not manifest-influence on the areas of Italian psychology outside of the hegemonic mainstream. This influence -concerning in particular the emancipatory aims and use psychology to address concrete social problemsis visible in the development of the European Social Psychology, which has grown up in opposition to mainstream North American Social Cognition, in Rhetoric and discursive psychology and in the Italian critical community psychology informed by Lewin's action research.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.