Critical Psychology

The introduction of second-generation ecopsychology has prompted a debate about which way the field should go. In this article I suggest that the choice is actually not between first-generation and second-generation paths but rather between radical and mainstream ones. By the term radical I do not mean extremist politics; I refer merely to the perception that our collective problems are of a deeply rooted or thoroughgoing nature and to the corresponding conviction that these will not be solved without significantly altering our thought and action. That ecopsychology is best understood as a radical ecological transformation of psychology can be seen by considering the various meanings of ecology, the implications of conceptualizing the psyche ecologically, and the challenges of being truly holistic. This understanding of the field reveals the first generation as a largely unrealized, inherently radical ecopsychology, the second generation as a largely denatured, mainstreamed ecopsychology. My position, then, is that ecopsychology will find good form, and resolve the first-generation/second-generation impasse, only if developed in a manner faithful to its radical nature. This will include directing eco-psychology away from psychology's historically individualistic praxis to the collective level of cultural and social engagement. I conclude this article with the idea that as a critical dialogue between ecology and psychology, ecopsychology shows the latter's anthropocentric, philosophical , methodological, and political economic biases. With this idea in mind, I offer some responses to the second-generation authors in the interest of furthering the dialogue about the development of the field.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Empirical research within critical psychology is strongly associated with the use of qualitative methods. In the field of qualitative psychology a distinction can be made between experiential and critical approaches (Braun & Clarke, 2012a, Reicher, 2000), both of which involve some kind of critique of mainstream psychology. Experiential approaches aim to capture participants’ experiences and perspectives and ground research in participants’ accounts, rather than researcher’s categories, but view language as a reflection of “internal categories of understanding” (Reicher, 2000: 3), and so assume it is possible to ‘read off’ participants’ thoughts, feelings and practices from their use of language. By contrast, critical approaches challenge what experiential approaches have in common with mainstream psychology – the assumption that language is only of interest as a description of inner states. Critical approaches (usually some version of discourse analysis) understand and analyse language as something that is constitutive, rather than reflective, of our social and psychological words, as a form of social action. One of the most common qualitative methods is (some form of) thematic analysis (TA); however, there is debate about whether TA is an experiential or a critical approach, and thus an appropriate analytic method for critical psychology.

The main concern of this book is with the possibilities for an interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology and history. At fi rst sight it might seem obvious that psychology and history, as scholarly disciplines, have a lot in common. For one thing the two traditions of enquiry share, and are continuously brought into contact by, their concern with the human condition: with individual and collective beliefs, mentalities, human behaviour and motivation, memory, personality, emotions and feelings. And yet the dialogue between the two disciplines has been, for the most part, sporadic and fraught with both theoretical and epistemological tensions.

Bildungskonzepte beinhalten generell einen Lernbegriff, wobei Lernen als individuelle Aktivität verstanden wird, die die Basis des Bildungsprozesses darstellt. Sie fokussieren dabei auf das Individuum in seinem Verhältnis zur Gesellschaft. In diesem Sinne hat die dem jeweiligen Bildungsbegriff zugrunde gelegte Gesellschaftstheorie große Relevanz; sie bestimmt das entsprechende Konzept von Bildung und Lernen. Dabei entscheidet sich, ob Lernende als bloße Empfänger_innen von präparierten Inhalten oder als
interessierte gesellschaftliche Subjekte gedacht werden.

In der Lerntheorie der Kritischen Psychologie werden Lernende als Subjekte gedacht, deren Lernprozess immer zugleich eine Erweiterung des eigenen Weltzugriffs und damit soziales Handeln darstellt. Dieser Perspektive auf Lernen folgend muss eine kritische Bildungsarbeit bei den Interessen und Handlungsgründen des Individuums ansetzen, um den Lernenden gerecht zu werden.

""L’objectif est de mettre au jour la construction de l’événement dans sa rhétorique et sa performance, sa diffusion médiatique et sa reconnaissance sociale. Comment la production discursive autour de la Marche des Fiertés 2011 interroge-t-elle les enjeux
de représentations – et donc l’identité LGBT et l’action du mouvement ?

L’étude du cas de 2011 permet d’interroger les potentialités médiatiques et communicationnelles du discours polémique. Pourquoi y a-t-il eu polémique ? Quels enjeux cristallise l’affiche ? Y a-t-il réellement eu polémique ? En quoi les discussions
suscitées par l’affiche de l’édition 2011 de la Marche des Fiertés révèlent les enjeux de l’événement qu’elle est censée promouvoir ? Finalement, en quoi « l’affaire de l’affiche » marque-t-elle une rupture et témoigne-t-elle (déjà) des transformations
du « répertoire d’action collective » [Tilly, 1986] ?

La polémique autour de l’affiche implique différents acteurs : l’Inter-LGBT, les associations LGBT, l’agence créative, les journalistes et, dans un second temps, le grand public. J’ai analysé le conflit interprétatif à travers le prisme du temps (la
durée) et celui des médias (la capacité à diffuser). J’ai étudié ce cas de manière diachronique, en tenant compte des trois dimensions de « l’affaire de la Marche des Fiertés 2011 » : en amont, en nous intéressant aux raisons et conditions de
conception de l’affiche (entretiens avec des membres de l’Inter-LGBT et l’agence créative chargée de la conception de l’affiche) ; en suivant le déroulé de l’affaire, en considérant les acteurs et les espaces médiatiques mobilisés ; et en aval, en
analysant la reconnaissance de l’affiche (test de l’affiche).

Si à ses débuts la Gay Pride était subversive – au sens strict puisqu’illégale –, elle fait aujourd’hui partie du calendrier festif parisien. La montée en généralité opérée dans le discours d’accompagnement, et notamment le passage de l’homosexualisation de l’espace public à sa sexualisation tout court, réinterrogent cette subversion dans le cadre du mouvement LGBT.

Le discours d’escorte participe à la représentation du groupe cible en ce qu’il le raconte : un système complexe de discours polyphoniques s’articule selon une double logique identitaire et médiacentrique. La polémique autour de l’affiche de la Marche 2011 participe de ce discours et voit dans le médiatique sa modalité privilégiée. Avec la polémique – médiatique – comme cadre, l’affiche 2011 devient prétexte à des discours identitaires qui la dépassent : l’objet de la dispute s’éloigne du visuel-affiche pour venir se placer au niveau plus global de la représentation
du mouvement LGBT, représentation mise en tension entre l’idéologie d’une organisation militante et les réactions-commentaires polémiques du public à travers
les médias – sociaux. Il s’agit alors de distinguer l’objectif des médias de « faire polémique », les effets involontaires d’une communication inappropriée et les objectifs stratégiques que pourrait avoir une organisation militante à exploiter les
potentialités communicationnelles d’une polémique médiatique.

Finalement, dans le discours d’escorte de la Marche des Fiertés LGBT, la représentation des sexualités alternatives – et de la sexualité en général – n’est plus un signe subversif mais un signe de reconnaissance et un mécanisme de captation,
elle correspond à un horizon d’attente, à une demande sociale.

Mots clés : polémique, médias, représentation, sexualité, mouvement LGBT, militantisme""

Evidence-based practice has become an important approach to social work practice. This paper highlights some of the ethical dilemmas which may be implicated by this approach, and encourages social workers and social work researchers to carefully consider these potential quandaries.

The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 29 No 1 June 2018 © The Australian Psychological Society Ltd Bhutan is a tiny Himalayan Buddhist kingdom that has faced challenges in societal changes to youth wellbeing. Twenty-five percent of its 708,000 inhabitants are school children (National Statistics Bureau, 2011). Bhutan transitioned from a feudal and monastic education structure to a modern capitalist economy and mass education system where English became the medium of instruction for primary, secondary and tertiary education (Ministry of Education, 2013). Since Western modernisation, there have been concerns of its greater influence of social and economic development on Bhutanese culture, traditional values and belief systems. Youth now have a lifestyle based on consumerism and Western modern values (Mathou, 2000). A rise in self-harm, suicide, drug abuse, theft and crime rates has been linked to a shift of values, attitudes and expectations that potentially isolate and create ...

En su más reciente libro publicado por Routledge, Psychology through critical auto-ethnography, Ian Parker (2020). Asume el rol de antropólogo para explorar el mundo de la psicología en tanto disciplina académica. En contraste con los etnógrafos clásicos que viajaban a tierras lejanas para describir otros mundos —otras culturas— y descubrir en ellos claves de la existencia y la organi- zación humana, Parker elige el camino de la autoetnografía, para escudriñar el mundo de la psico- logía a través de su propia experiencia como estudiante, investigador, profesor y activista social.

O capítulo discorre sobre a Psicologia Política e sua presença na América Latina. Destaca como as propostas elaboradas a partir da década de 1980 na América Latina contribuíram para o desdobramento de perspectivas críticas na Psicologia Política.

Today, identity politics seems almost quaint. Faded into memory are NEA funding battles and culture wars over representations of identities, dismantling of identity-based social programs such as college admissions and affirmative action, and the spawning of an all-purpose, anti-progressive code phrase, “politically incorrect.” Moreover, scholars, particularly those working in critical/cultural areas, have theorized identity away in a multitude of ways: combining categories into hybrids and cyborgs, challenging its liberal humanist assumptions, critiquing its biases, tracing its processes of discursive constitution, queering its dualisms, and envisioning its aftermath in a post-identity world. Identity—at least insofar as an authentic expression of some aspect of inner self from which to build coalitions—seems to have had its moment in the sun, now safely tucked into a thematic week or two on syllabi or a chapter in a textbook: a familiar, but not terribly new or exciting topic.

This paper offers steps towards overcoming current fragmentation within sociocultural approaches by expansively reconstructing a broad dialectical view on human development and learning (drawing on Vygotsky's project) underwritten by ideology of social justice. The common foundation for sociocultural approaches is developed by dialectically supplanting relational ontology with the notion that collaborative purposeful transformation of the world is the core of human nature and the principled grounding for learning and development. An activist transformative stance suggests that people come to know themselves and their world as well as ultimately come to be human in and through (not in addition to) the processes of collaboratively transforming the world in view of their goals. This means that all human activities (including psychological processes and the self) are instantiations of contributions to collaborative transformative practices that are contingent on both the past and the vision for the future and therefore are profoundly imbued with ideology, ethics, and values. And because acting, being, and knowing are seen from a transformative activist stance as all rooted in, derivative of, and instrumental within a collaborative historical becoming, this stance cuts across and bridges the gaps (a) between individual and social and (b) among ontological, epistemological, and moral-ethical (ideological) dimensions of activity.

Over the least decade, the hopes of fighting oppression and discrimination against gay people in Africa by means of introducing and strengthening laws which defend equal rights and
cultural and personal diversity has become increasingly difficult. This applies in many ways also to South Africa, in spite of the exemplary words on the subject in the South African constitution
More than 50% of African governments have taken action and steps to formally criminalize same-sex unions. There is an increased awareness of homophobia in the continent with
many African media adding to the furore. Nonetheless, anti-gay laws in Uganda are now weakened due to human rights opposition and Malawi witnessed the presidential pardon of a
gay couple. In March 2011, at the second recall at the United Nations Assembly in Geneva on the Joint declaration to decriminalize homosexuality, the number of African countries who
signed rose from six to eleven including Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Mauritius, Central Africa Republic, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Angola, South Africa, Seychelles, Rwanda and Sierra
Leone, thirteen countries abstained and twenty-eight opposed Joint Statement on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI).
The popularity of gay rights and advocacy for the social status of same-sex relationships have provoked politicians and governments in Africa to react. Recent cases of criminalization of
same-sex relationships have worsened a situation already characterized by harassment, humiliation, extortion, arbitrary arrests, judicial violence, imprisonment, torture, hate crimes
and honour killings on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity all over Africa. These abuses are happening whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not. Every
year, there are numerous cases of hate crimes towards sexual minorities and gay and lesbian advocates working to deliver more justice. The abuse is escalating.

This paper explores the continuing research-practice gap that exists within sport and exercise psychology. It explores the reasons why this gap exists, and, crucially, considers solutions to reduce the magnitude and impact of the gap between researchers and practitioners within the field. In this narrative review, we explore what the consequences might be for the future of the field of sport and exercise psychology if solutions are not developed that are advantageous to both arms of the profession. The paper concludes by exploring strategies for closing the research-practice gap, including a renewed emphasis on practical theories, and the development of theories of practice that are research-informed and practitioner-led.

In this essay I examine the racial achievement gap in American education in terms of an impaired psychosocial developmental process. I argue that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members’ early scholastic experience. I go on to suggest that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. In part, they may do so by adopting a "transcultural" pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self-concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap "from the bottom up"—one classroom at a time.

In the following essay I propose some thoughts concerning stability (percepts and affects) and modification (desire). The two works written by Deleuze and Guattari that I consider are What is Philosophy? and the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia – Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. I make reference to Joyce’s literature, although mention of Joyce in Deleuze and Guattari is rare. The reason for using Joyce is that the Irish writer seems to have more than one affinity with the texts produced in the intersecting lives (Dosse, 2011) of the two French writers.
At the same time, Spinoza, among the philosophers who influenced Deleuze, is the benchmark of my essay for understanding the distinction between stability, concerning the work of art, and the work of the unconscious. The distinction between the philosophical mainstream (particularly Aquinas) in regards to “desire” and the importance of body in Spinoza’s philosophy is the path I follow for demonstrating that Schizoanalysis is a breaking point for philosophy, for psychology and for psychoanalysis.
In continuing the line traced out by Spinoza, and followed by Nietzsche and Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari break with the psychoanalytical vision of desire as a negative instance (the missing of something to be endlessly fulfilled) and foster the positive instance of desire as a production of the unconscious. Finally I note that the distinction between the stability of the work of art and the modification of desire – in connection with the distinction made by Spinoza – permits Deleuze to entirely regain the issue concerning: “what a body can do”.

The formation of queer psychology has been a critical intervention in breaking apart the psychological tendency of reifying categories of gender and sexuality. Nonetheless, latent Orientalism and white-centered epistemologies in psychology have continued to produce culturally essentialist depictions of a repressive "Chinese sexuality" and "backward Asian culture." In this article, I present three main problems in psychological representations of Sinophone queers: (a) "cultural colorblindness" resulting from the conflation of race and culture, (b) the problematic analytical category of "Chineseness," and (c) race and culture being theorized as a burden for Sinophone and Asian queers. In order for psychology and queer studies scholars to destabilize these epistemologically violent interpretations, this article argues that we must engage with Sinophone critique and shift away from a framework of culture to one of "concerns" in order to capture the heterogeneity of queer Sinophone subjectivities.

Sociohistorical analysis of four words commonly used in the language of Western mental health, Indigenous, intelligence, disorder, and depression reveal a “Domination Code” masking past and present professional complicity of the U.S. and global mental health system in the oppression of Indigenous peoples. A historicity is offered of concepts of inferior Indigenous intelligence and current pseudoscientific ideologies within Western biological psychiatry dominating WHO’s mhGAP (Mental Health Gap Action Programme) exported to these communities. mhGAP’s cultural hegemony is achieved through Western mental health ideologies that decontextualize, depoliticize, minimize, and marginalize the lived experience of cultural oppression on health and wellbeing. This program appears to violate the spirit of Article 23 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people.
Keywords: Indigenous, Native American, American Indian, First Nations, Aboriginal, Mental Health, Behavioral Health, Eugenics, Liberation Psychology, World Health Organization, WHO, mhGAP, Mental Health Gap Programme

Viele Psychotherapeut*innen schreiben ihrer Praxis eine Förderung von Selbstreflexion und selbstbestimmter Lebensführung zu, wohingegen Kritiker*innen eine Individualisierung und Verinnerlichung gesellschaftlicher Zwänge konstatieren. Ebenso umstritten ist, ob die Präsenz von Depressionen Folge einer pervertierten Emanzipation oder von selbstwertschädlichen Abhängigkeiten und Einschränkungen ist. Können und sollen Psychotherapien bei Depression Emanzipation fördern? Und wie lässt sich ein kritischer Anspruch in der Praxis der Verhaltenstherapie umsetzen, die traditionell als Anpassungsinstrument für fremdgesetzte Ziele angesehen wird? Dieses Buch versammelt eine Auswertung der interdisziplinären Literatur zu diesen Fragen und die Ergebnisse einer Interviewstudie mit Psychotherapeut*innen und Betroffenen, die von ihren Begegnungen, ihrer Arbeit sowie Klärungs- und Sorgeprozessen im Spannungsverhältnis von Selbstbestimmung, Einsamkeit, Solidarität und Abhängigkeit berichten. Daraus ergeben sich Anregungen für eine handlungstheoretische Weiterentwicklung der Verhaltenstherapie bei Depression und Anforderungen für eine emanzipatorisch intendierte Psychotherapie.

The history and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Islander people in Australia has been characterised by colonisation and oppression. Academia, and psychology has played a role in the colonisation and oppression of Indigenous people through processes of othering and objectification. In the paper I explore the challenges associated with the process of situating myself, as a black South African man, alongside Indigenous people and developing an empowering praxis. Becoming engaged in true collaborative activity is not an easy task because the process of negotiation requires explicating and resolving issues of identity and power within a context of intergroup relations. I explore the dynamics of negotiation and the tensions that develop because of hidden assumptions and social identities. I conclude drawing theoretical lessons emphasising the importance of recognising our own group memberships and the implications of those for partnerships in the context of race relations.

Over the last 30 years we have developed an approach to working in community contexts that is our approach to "Critical Community Psychology". We will set out its defining characteristics and highlight some aspects that distinguish it from other approaches in both community psychology and critical psychology. These include 1) the concept of prefigurative action, which relates work with local projects and initiatives to a wider project of principled social change, attempting to combine a pragmatic practice with utopian/value-based perspective, 2) an understanding of community that reflects lived diversity and the contested nature of the concept, 3) a priority for working with those most oppressed or excluded by dominant power systems, 4) an emphasis on ecological and systems thinking which includes our own distinctive use of boundary and edge and the ethic of stewardship (responsible use and conservation of resources), 5) use of a wide repertoire of methods and theories ("psychological " and "non-psychological"), necessary for the variety of problem contexts community psychologists can encounter. Finally we will offer some critical reflections on our approach.

‘[A]s soon as language is involved, interpretation has been initiated.’ (p. 78)

When I first saw that Carla Willig had published a book on interpretation in qualitative research, I rejoiced. As a relatively novice qualitative researcher I had at times searched in vain for some kind of methodological meta-literature that would be able to provide me with information and food for thought on this central concern of ours. I had loved the first edition of Carla Willig’s Introduction to Qualitative Research in Psychology: Adventures in Theory and Method (2001). Her explanations of epistemology and ontology across different methods made these rather complex concepts not only a lot clearer but also more attractive and inviting; the original sub-title of her textbook as about ‘adventures’ shared enthusiasm and passion with the reader, which had inspired me to engage in qualitative research. Since then I had completed my own doctoral research, which in part drew on ‘interpretative pluralism’ (Coyle, 2010; Frost, 2011) for analysing/interpreting data, and I thus felt keen to deepen my understanding of the notion of interpretation in qualitative research by reading this book closely.

A Critical Introduction to Psychology is the first scholarly book, in which fifteen critical psychologists analyze chapters from popular Introduction to Psychology textbooks. In their critiques of mainstream (Euro-American) psychology, the authors of this edited volume also envision a pluriversal, transdisciplinary psychology, which is inclusive of critical voices from all over the world.

With a fundamental interest in further developing and specifying the theoretical and ethical framework of Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), the article at hand asks: What is the PSS researcher's position in and responsibility toward society? What does the theoretical concept of the co-researcher, which is so pivotal in this tradition, entail for conceptualizing the relationship between the academic researcher and all those others who participate from different societal positions? Is there a specific, emancipatory contribution the PSS researcher is to make to the production of societal conditions, including the production of knowledge? What is the contribution of the other co-researchers then, and how do they gain from the PSS researcher's labor, in particular her scientific explorations of the world?
The article's analyses delve into various versions of understanding and implementing emancipation through psychological co-research, i.e. of how PSS research differently aims at bettering one another's living conditions. First, the original methodology developed in the Berlin context is presented, which can be roughly described as a theoretically informed dialogical exchange between academically trained people. This is secondly followed by a critique of this model, articulated by the Scandinavian Practice Research tradition and mounding in substantial conceptual and methodological developments-in particular of the understanding of the (co-)researcher relationship. Thirdly, it is illustrated that Practice Research instantiated some new ambiguities, by analyzing its methodology of fellow knowledge gaining through the lens of cultural-historical psychology and foremost Stetsenko's texts on the researcher as a transformative activist. Finally, it proposes mutual knowledge-sharing as the primary task of PSS co-research projects, in order to specify and nuance the co-researcher concept in relation to the conceptualization of the nominal researcher. Thereby, we intend to resurrect lively debates of PSS’ emancipatory potentials and contribute to dialogically nuancing its self-understanding.

As therapists, our professional training is ongoing. We learn from our supervisors, our mentors and our clients. As the events within CAMFT have recently demonstrated, there is a gap in the standards of professional training for MFTs: cultural competency (CC) with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Communities.

The authors conducted a content analysis of articles listed in
PubMed on bisexual health (N = 348). Methodological approaches
favored cross-sectional surveys. Fewer than 20% of the articles analyzed
data for bisexuals separately; most combined their data with
homosexual participants. Most articles used convenience samples
with poor representation of women, socioeconomic status and minorities.
One fifth of the articles framed bisexuals as an infection
bridge, whereas about one sixth framed bisexuality as a legitimate
identity. More than 90% of the bisexuality medical research was
atheoretical. To address health inequities, further study is required
on the needs of this forgotten minority group.

""Largely based on pre-theory that ties high testosterone (T) to masculinity, and low T to femininity, high T is mainly studied in relation to aggression, mating, sexuality, and challenge, and low T with parenting. Evidence, however, fails to support this, and the social variability in T is better accounted for by a competition–
nurturance trade-off as per the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (van Anders et al., 2011). Four key domains are discussed: adult–infant interactions, sexual desire, sexual behavior, and partnering. Empirical engagements with gender/sex are shown to lead to important insights over assumptions about masculinity–femininity. Humans are discussed within a comparative framework that attends to cross species principles informed by human insights alongside human-specific particularities like social constructions, which are critical to evolutionary understandings of the social role of T. This paper thus integrates seemingly orthogonal perspectives to allow for transformative approaches to an empirically supported social phenomenology of T.""

El presente capítulo muestra cómo la psicología crítica exige cierta sensibilidad ante el aspecto estructural de la violencia para poder cuestionar la forma en que tal aspecto se ve disimulado, soslayado y psicologizado en la investigación psicológica dominante. Lo que aquí se pone de manifiesto, en otras palabras, es que la autocrítica de la psicología implica necesariamente una crítica de la estructura cultural, económica, social y política en la que se genera la violencia y en la que se inserta la misma disciplina psicológica. Esto habrá de ilustrarse a través del caso particular de México, en donde la psicología de la violencia, intentando explicar expresiones individuales de la espiral violenta que se vive en el país, tiende a ocultar sistemáticamente diversas formas de violencia estructural como la desigualdad, la discriminación y la explotación, el racismo y la miseria.

The paper reflects on the advancement of the psychologisation of Western society through the notion of «the therapeutic ethos» and discusses political and moral implications of its “triumph”. It is argued that the attempt to exorcise a “therapeutic Zeitgeist” showcases the problems of critique of contemporary culture. The Zeitgeist reveals itself as much in the tools of critique as the objective of critique. I therefore conclude that popular critical methods like discourse analysis have itself become a hegemonic discourse, which rarely equals its philosophical originator Michel Foucault's imaginative radical ambition.