This article outlines the essential characteristics of a psychology from the subject standpoint that starts from the principal unity of selfdetermination and determining the relations that determine one's own actions. The main research object in subject science understood in this way is the many forms of hindrances and obstacles, both in theory and in practice, that prevent us from realizing this unity. In contrast to standard research, where one attempts to grasp the dependency of the individual agency of others on societal structures and their cultural meanings, psychology from a subject standpoint is about relating to the societability of one's own actions, that is, analysing them to grasp their own real preconditions and implications. Consequently, in such a subject science perspective, the aim is less to gain or disseminate knowledge and more to analyse the many ways in which "critical" knowledge urging change is ignored or modified to make it compatible with one's own actual possibilities to act. As the paper details, such subject science research is not possible from an external standpoint but entails subjecting one's own assumptions and methods to a critical analysis.
This paper attempts to show the relevance of a subject-orientated understanding of ideology as it has been developed by Critical Psychology, an approach closely associated with the name of Klaus Holz-kamp. Ideology, in this view, is understood as a one-sided world view from the perspective of the dominant classes; it doesn't need to be imposed but is `voluntarily' sustained by subordinated classes since it appears to embody a proven method of coming to terms with life under given power relations. One of ideology's essential functions is to explain away or justify the asocial consequences of suppression and one's own unavoidable participation in it. Contrary to the common-sense view, participation doesn't alleviate our own suppression but rather aggrevates it. To understand this fully, we need to examine the prevailing dichotomy of individual and society and to critically review both the ideology of people's natural asociality and the `progressive' inclination to avoid the issue of `human nature' altogether.
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