German critical psychology as emancipatory psychology

Abstract

Introduction The focus of this chapter is a psychology that had its origins in the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. When it first acquired a name, it was called “critical-emancipatory psychology,” but in time the label was shortened to “critical psychology,” though it never lost its emancipatory intent. By way of introduction, I shall first say something about its history and the conceptual and ideological issues that motivated it. As we move on, we shall see how, crucial to its emancipatory goals, it formulated the subject matter of psychology as human subjectivity. We shall then look at how psychology itself was reconstructed in order to reflect the nature of its subject matter. There were many catalysts that precipitated the collective actions of a highly politicized postwar student generation in the Germany of the 1960s. These included restrictions by both governments and university officials on free speech. Many students and others complained of a lack of relevance of the material taught at universities. There was a general unrest stemming from the universities' authoritarian approach to the curriculum. In the end, however, the complaint that had by far the greatest impact on subsequent developments concerned the ideological nature of the subject matter being taught, particularly in philosophy and the social sciences. Two debates were particularly crucial to the later development of Critical Psychology in Germany. The first took place in 1967 and had to do with the relevance of psychological or any other kind of scientific knowledge.

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