Psychology and Politics: Intersections of Science and Ideology in the History of Psy-Sciences

Abstract

IntroductionPsy-sciences (psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, criminology, special education, etc.) have been connected to politics in diverse ways during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This relationship manifests itself either through direct political pressure or through more general and subtle interactions between cultural and social processes and scientific currents and practices. The book collects ideas and findings on the history and politics of psy-sciences including scientific and theoretical discourses, institutions, and professionals. This volume will allow us to compare the development of the psy-sciences and the institutions in which they are practiced in Eastern European with developments in other regions.Concerning the history of these disciplines, demarcations and shifts instigated by power relations can be found within scientific movements and schools in the field of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. But when closely investigated, politics can also be grasped in the epistemology of psysciences and in the governmental practices based on them. Human relations, emotions, everyday ethical principles, etc. have become conceivable in psychological terms, thus giving way to practices of normalization, as well as their utilization and manipulation by political decision-makers and diverse institutions. What is the form and dissemination of certain regimes of truth as they are reformed and as they become the center of old and new ideological struggles? What are the historical-political processes that influence the fields of psy-knowledge, inducing transformations of professional perceptions of the 1 The research team was formed within the Social and Cultural Psychology Group of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The team was headed by Anna Borgos and its members included Balázs Berkovits, Ferenc Erős, Melinda Friedrich, Júlia Gyimesi, Melinda Kovai, and Dóra Máriási. The research was funded by the Hungarian National Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) between 2013 and 2017. The history of our research group goes back to the late 2000s, when the editors of the present volume, in collaboration with other colleagues, began their systematic explorations into the history of Hungarian psychoanalysis, as well as delved into the methodological and epistemological questions, gender issues, and cultural and political aspects related to it.