REVOLUTION

IN PSYCHOLOGY

Alienation to Emancipation

IAN PARKER

LONDON ANN ARBOR, MI

First published 2007 by Pluto Press345 Archway Road, London N6 5AAand 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Ian Parker 2007

The right of Ian Parker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted byhim in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HardbackISBN-13 978 0 7453 2536 1ISBN-10 0 7453 2536 X

PaperbackISBN-13 978 0 7453 2535 4ISBN-10 0 7453 2535 1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed andsustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected toconform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press byChase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth EX10 9QG, EnglandTypeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, IndiaPrinted and bound in the European Union byCPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

1 What Is Psychology? Meet the Family 9

2 Psychology as Ideology: Individualism Explained 33

3 Psychology at Work: Observation and Regulation

of Alienated Activity 55

4 Pathologising Dissent: Exploitation Isolated

and Ratified 74

5 Material Interests: the Manufacture of Distress 94

6 Spiritless Conditions: Regulating Therapeutic

Alternatives 112

7 Professional Empowerment: Good Citizens 130

8 Historical, Personal and Political: Psychology

and Revolution 147

9 Commonsense: Psychological Culture on the Left 166

10 Elements of Opposition: Psychological

Struggles Now 184

11 Transitional Demands: Taking on Psychology 200

12 What Next? Reading and Resources 215

References 222

Index 258

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible unless there had been

objections to psychology right from the early days of the discipline.

The voices against psychology have been diverse – anti-capitalist,

anti-racist, ecological and feminist – and some of the recent critics

have been willing to discuss the ideas in this book and help me

sharpen the arguments. The arguments in the chapters were

rehearsed as a series of lectures in 2005 in Guadalajara, Mexico

(in the Departamento de Psicología Aplicada, Universidad de

Guadalajara), and I would particularly like to thank Erica Burman,

Bernardo Jiménez-Domínguez, Rosa Margarita López Aguilar, Juan

Alberto Hernández, Raul Medina and Alfredo Salmerón. A seminar

series in 2005–06 in Manchester, UK (in the Discourse Unit,

Manchester Metropolitan University) was then devoted to the

chapters, and thanks again to those who listened and contributed;

Alex Bridger, Jill Bradbury, Geoff Bunn, Khatidja Chantler, Paul

Duckett, Thekla Giekeimi, Jeannine Goh, Romy Graichen, John

Griffiths, Rebecca Lawthom, Ken McLaughlin, Sue Makevit Coupland,

Vera Marten, Ilana Mountian, Teija Nissinen, Christine Paalsrud,

Julia Robinson, Asiya Siddique, Judith Sixsmith and Emma Wilmer.

Introduction

1

This book is about psychology, the way the discipline of psychology

betrayed its promise to understand and help people, and what we

need to do to make psychologists work for social change rather than

against it. The discipline of psychology as a field of academic study

and professional practice aims to discover how we behave and think

and feel, but the knowledge and technology that psychologists pro-

duce is designed to adapt people to society. Because present-day

society is organised around exploitation and subordination, even

the most well-meaning psychologist contributes to alienation, to

the separation of our selves from others and from our own creative

abilities.

The book is for those who want to change the world, for those

trying to make sense of their own psychology and to make connec-

tions between psychology and radical politics. Activists involved in

anti-capitalist, anti-racist and feminist politics often try to connect

big political change with change at the more intimate level of every-

day relationships. They are quite right to make this connection, and

one of the lessons of failed revolutions and authoritarian ‘socialist’

societies is that this apparently ‘psychological’ level is woven into

political change. Activists need to know about psychology, and what

needs to be done to prevent it from operating only as an instrument

of social control.

We Encounter Psychology Indirectly in Political Debate

Psychology is important not because it is true but because it is so

useful to those in power. Psychological descriptions of individual

action are often enthusiastically taken up by those who have most to

lose from those descriptions; and those who benefit from persuading

people that a problem can be reduced to the way someone thinks

or feels also, quite understandably, really believe in psychology

themselves. Psychology is an increasingly powerful component of

ideology, ruling ideas that endorse exploitation and sabotage struggles

2 Revolution in Psychology

against oppression. This psychology circulates way beyond colleges

and clinics, and different versions of psychology as ideology are now

to be found nearly everywhere in capitalist society.

Personality profiles of political leaders are increasingly used to

explain away political issues, for example, and here psychological

ideology seeps into the way we understand the world, making it

seem as if there is nothing we can do to change it. The historical

conditions in which certain figures give orders and other people

follow them then, as far as the psychologist is concerned, simply

serve as the backdrop to how individual motivations and decisions

are played out. The focus on the childhood of political enemies then

psychologises politics, and the activity of those engaged in political

resistance is sidelined, marginalised as something irrelevant and

useless. This reduction of political struggle to what is going on

inside the minds of individual characters then reduces the rest of us

to being mere spectators.

Advice about personal improvement takes the place of social

transformation, and the psychologisation of social life already

encourages people to think that the only possible change they could

ever make would be in the way they dress and present themselves to

others. Confession, reconciliation and ‘makeover’ thus operate as

sites of psychologisation on television; sometimes the expert coun-

sellor is quite explicit about how a person or relationship needs to

change, but often the participants have already absorbed enough

psychological ideology to be able, without much guidance, to burst

into tears, own up to their faults and ask forgiveness. There is always

a message about what healthy psychological functioning is like

here, and how it is the root of everything else.

Ideas about sex and race divide people from each other, and

psychological theories have played an important role in making us

believe that differences between people are essential, necessary

qualities of human beings that can never be changed. Psychology

provides ever more sophisticated and so more effective arguments

for sexism and racism than the old biological theories, and this new

psychology as ideology serves to justify violence and reinforce

stereotypes. Notions from so-called ‘evolutionary psychology’, for

example, supplement the worst old religious arguments about

differences between men and women. The shift of attention from

racial classifications to cultural differences, from biology to psychology,

follows the same logic, and treats underlying mental processes as

responsible for economically structured white privilege.

Popular arguments about ‘human nature’ make it seem as if social

change is out of the question, and psychological theories undermine

those who believe that another world is possible. Psychological

explanations for war, invasion and mass-murder not only mislead

us, and draw attention away from economic, political and historical

conditions, but they also sap the confidence of those committed to

change. Every theory of human nature that tells us what cannot be

changed at a deep psychological level has insidious economic func-

tions and dangerous political consequences. Taking a distance from

psychology will enable us to refuse to accept the mistaken view that

brutality is wired in to our brains and behaviour.

We Encounter Psychology Directly in Political Activity

Psychological ideas not only float around in day-time television,

providing false explanations for problems in the world and misleading

us as to how we could make this world a better place. Psychology as

ideology is not just the stupid stuff that can be avoided while we are

doing real politics, not merely the froth on the surface of our lives

that can be quickly skimmed off. Psychology has also come to be

structured into the way we have learnt to think about ourselves as

individuals, and so it also enters into the way people think of them-

selves as political agents. It impacts on how we interpret and how

we try to change the world.

We are subject to categories of ability and intelligence in school,

for example, that leave deep scars on what we been made to think of

as our own individual ‘psychology’. The sorting and grading of

people into different kinds of school mark the class position and

identity of every child. An individual path through school is experi-

enced as something ‘psychological’; each child comes to live their

failure as something from which they are alienated, as if it were

something deep within themselves which they could never really

comprehend or escape. Then, as our own children suffer from an

ever-increasing system of assessments and decisions about what

they cannot do, we feel even more helpless.

Most of us are encouraged to change the way we behave and the

way we speak in order to adapt ourselves to this world. Capitalist

society is dependent on those who work for a living, the working

class that is still the mass of the population, but society presents

itself to itself as middle class, as if workers were an unfortunate and

dwindling minority. This contradiction between image and reality,

a lie about who we are, means that as we fit ourselves in we also start

Introduction 3

to live out certain assumptions about what is wrong with us and what

is right about the strategies we adopted to survive. Individual choices

that cover over structural inequalities feed more psychologisation,

and the ability to chatter about feelings and personal journeys

becomes more evidence to others and our selves that we will not

cause trouble. We are taught to give up on social change, and accept

that the aim of changing the world was itself the product of

psychological motivations like envy and resentment at the success

of others.

Those who refuse, those who remained steadfast in socialist and

feminist politics and those who are now building the new social

movements, are often able to keep psychologisation at bay, keep

psychology in its place, but even then it remains a potent force. We

are sometimes stressed, burnt out or traumatised by our struggles,

and when we collapse in exhaustion and despair it is vital to know

what demands to make on professionals who make it their business

to patch individuals up when they fall apart. Because psychology is

part of the problem – individualising and essentialising social

processes – we need to know how to treat the problems we experience

as social processes instead of handing ourselves over to those who

will turn them into psychology again.

Unbearable misery is treated by psychology as if it were a disorder,

failure or illness. One of the most destructive aspects of alienation is

the separation of people from feelings of misery and anger, either at

their own plight or the plight of others. Our own oppression is then

turned by psychologists into ‘negative thinking’ that we feel bad

about finding within ourselves, and the oppression of others is

turned into fateful misfortune at the hands of maladjusted people.

In capitalist society driven by profit and the imperative to consume,

there is a premium placed on ‘positive psychology’ so that happiness

has come to be viewed as the normal state. Self-activity and

solidarity are replaced by anti-depressants and charity.

The Domain of Psychology is a Political Issue

Psychology as a discipline has come to play a very precise function

under capitalism, and the academic theories and professional prac-

tices that comprise psychology in schools, companies, hospitals and

prisons fit hand-in-glove with power. This in itself should be enough

to put psychology on the agenda for those involved in radical politics.

There is also another more pressing reason for tackling psychology,

however, which is that the domain of individual experience that we

4 Revolution in Psychology

call ‘psychology’ was itself formed under capitalism, and close analysis

of this psychology will help us understand something deeper about

the functioning of capitalism itself. A close analysis of the develop-

ment of psychology can actually enable us to understand something

about the nature of alienation in capitalist society and the role of

different forms of oppression within it.

The ‘psychologisation’ of everyday life under capitalism is not an

optional extra, nor is it a simple political device used by those in

power to divide and rule us; psychologisation is essential and neces-

sary to capitalism. And this is why the phenomena of racism and

sexism, for example, are interlaced with capitalism. Some aspects of

oppression appear to be more ‘psychological’ precisely because they

complement and underpin what is, to some, more immediately

visible exploitation.

This capitalist society is exploitative and alienating, and for sure it

intensifies individual experience, but it also constitutes that indi-

vidual experience as something ‘psychological’, as something that

operates as if it were inside each person. Whether it is viewed as a

mental or emotional process it operates as something simultane-

ously as the particular property of the individual and as something

that cannot be completely comprehended by them. Alienation is

not merely the separation of our selves from others but a kind of

separation from our selves in which we experience our selves as

inhabited and driven by forces that are mysterious to us. These mys-

terious forces include economic forces that structure our lives as

beings who must sell our labour power to others; however, psychol-

ogisation of the different dimensions of oppression that have made

capitalism possible also condenses ‘race’ and ‘sex’ into highly

charged, sometimes exciting and sometimes frightening, forces out of

our control.

There is an intimate connection between private experience,

personal relationships and the state that calls upon this ‘psychological’

realm and mobilises it so that threats to private property can be

defended against. Psychologisation has become such a deeply

embedded part of life under capitalism that it is now not only the

psychologists who blame individuals and treat them as those who

are being ‘defensive’ when racism and sexism are mobilised.

Attacks on immigrants, for example, accompany rational political

debate so that middle-class folk can show themselves to be

psychologically minded, thoughtful and emotionally literate at

the same time as another ‘psychology’ that is supposed to belong

Introduction 5