Politics and “Applied Psychology”? Theoretical Concepts that Question the Disciplinary Community

Abstract

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 direction of travel of concepts around so that psychology itself rather than the outside world becomes the object to which ideas are 'applied'. The five political theoretical concepts described here are 'performativity', 'standpoint', 'the personal as political', the 'tyranny of structurelessness' and 'intersectionality'.

What does Theory & Psychology have to offer community-orientated psychologists?

“…Articles in Theory & Psychology repeatedly demonstrate the importance of learning from our disciplinary histories and in particular how applied theory and research has shaped the focus, scope, and efficacy of psychology (Hill, 2006; Parker, 2015). For example, Colucci and Colombo (2018) helpfully consider the relationship between what we read as the scholarly activism of John Dewey and Kurt Lewin.…”

“…Such interdisciplinary dialogues were seen as a crucial means of fostering more holistic and dynamic theories of humanity and effective approaches to addressing the social problems that populate their lives. Like more recent critical scholars (Parker, 2009(Parker, , 2015, Dewey and Lewin emphasised the economic and material basis of psychological phenomena and the importance of direct experience in theorising and working through responses to the issues of the day. Their engaging and problem-focused theory and practice efforts are brought into stark relief as responses to the worldwide economic breakdown that is accompanying the current COVID-19 pandemic are developed.…”

“…Articles such as those by Colucci and Colombo (2018) and Parker (2009Parker ( , 2015 comprise crucial contributions to the collective memory of the discipline, which has a tendency to omit the historical and emancipatory theories and the applied and very political activities of psychologists from mainstream textbook histories (Hodgetts et al, 2020). A key issue that runs through the works of classic figures such as Dewey and Lewin as well as those of their feminist contemporaries, including Marie Jahoda, is that psychology needs to engage more in making sense of its own and other disciplinary and professional efforts to make the world a more equitable and habitable place for human diversity.…”

“…In considering the broader theorising of action in this journal, we were also reminded of the disciplinary habit of depopulating psychology or losing sight of actual people. Parker (2015) usefully notes that concerns around the depopulating of psychology and the dehumanising treatment of people were key concerns for the "new paradigm" movement in 1970s psychology. This practice of depopulating psychology by transforming human beings into abstract objects, such as variables, data, behaviours, discourses, conditions, or tropes and themes can be seen as a form of epistemic violence (Teo, 2010).…”

“…This involved conducting a keyword search of the journal up to and including volume 29 (2019) using the terms action*, engagement*, community*, participative*, activism*, and praxis*. It quickly became apparent that this journal has offered sophisticated reflexive engagements with exemplars of: praxis (Colucci & Colombo, 2018;Gergen & Zielke, 2006), social change initiatives (Parker, 2009;Stephenson & Kippax, 2006), efforts to address men's family violence (Haaken, 2008), resisting homophobia (Russell & Bohan, 2006), promoting the efficacy of feminist practice (Macleod, 2006), engaging in collaborative inquiry (Sugiman, 2006), key concepts in applied scholarship (Parker, 2015), professional deafness to client and community voices (Raeff, 2019;Swartz, 2005), and Indigenous psychologies and decoloniality (Nwoye, 2015(Nwoye, , 2017.…”