Held, J. (2006) ‘Beyond the Mainstream: Approaches to Critical Psychology in the German-Speaking Community and their International Significance’, Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 5, pp. 101-113 www.discourseunit.com/arcp/5

Josef Held1

Beyond the Mainstream: Critical Psychology in the German-Speaking Community and Its International Significance

Grounded in 1968, critical psychology has represented a term for various theoretical approaches in the German-speaking community whose roots stretch farther back than the mid-late twentieth century. All critical psychological approaches reject experimental-statistical mainstream psychology, place a programmatic emphasis on the active subject, and recognize a relationship between the individual and societal context as object of research in psychology.Hegemonic mainstream psychology, defined according to its experimental-statistical methods, interested only in the reactive side of human existence as seen from an external controlled standpoint, and understood no longer as a social science, but more as a natural science in the tradition of neuropsychology and computer science, ‘did everything it could [during the 1990s] to erode the last locales of humanities-oriented and critical psychology. At the overwhelming majority of (German) universities, these locales are merely hushed up, or their scientific legitimacy is denied’ (Engemann 2001, p. 4). They are the first to be affected by funding slashes and faculty cuts. The relaxation of polarity between Germany’s East and West at the beginning of the 1990s failed to increase tolerance for alternative approaches; they remained at a disadvantage and were forced to retreat into neighbouring academic fields and non-university-affiliated institutes. In psychology departments, aside from the few ‘leftovers’ and marginalized ‘inveterates,’ there do exist subliminal critical in critical psychology that align themselves with, for example, constructivism or action theory (Brandtstädter 2001). Because these currents are either temporary or do not exhibit themselves openly, they are neglected in ways that will be described below.

1. Critical Psychology as Agenda

Psychology departments were a major focal point of Germany’s student movement in the 1960s. It was here that a radical re-thinking of psychology was developed. Two streams of thought, both explicitly dubbed ‘kritische Psychologie’ (critical psychology) but also keeping separate from one another due to inherent differences, branched off from traditional psychology. In written form, the two versions of critical psychology differentiated themselves only by the spelling of the letter K. The Kritische Psychologie spelled with a capital K was the approach associated with Berlin’s Freie Universität and Klaus Holzkamp. This approach strove to develop a consistent theoretical basis that embodied Marxist theory in its understanding of the subject. In Kritische Psychologie, the psychological is reconstructed as historically based, dialectic, and imparted by society (Holzkamp 1983). In its later development, the Berlin approach began to emphasize subject-scientific elements (Holzkamp 1997). While developing a distinct method of its own, feminist psychology also shared a critical solidarity with the Berlin approach.

1 Contact: josef.held@uni-tuebingen.de

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The kritische Psychologie spelled with a lowercase k oriented itself according to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, etc.). A fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxist theory was characteristic to this approach. The lowercase kritische Psychologie took a sceptical stance toward the increasing emphasis on theory and turned toward criticism. The trend eventually broke into heterogeneous splinter groups that remained only loosely connected to one another, which ultimately led to the allegation that kritische Psychologie was subject to postmodern arbitrariness.

Despite their similar names, both critical psychological approaches developed according to different traditions, and they continue to be represented by separate academic journals (Forum Kritische Psychologie and Psychologie & Gesellschaftskritik).

2. The Diversity of Alternative Approaches

Today, critical psychology in the German-speaking community is not limited to two lines of thought. There is a whole series of pragmatic approaches, all of which bear relation to earlier traditions, stand in stark opposition to the psychological mainstream, and thus fit within the realm of critical psychology. The sheer diversity of alternative approaches in German-speaking psychology is worth noting, and these approaches are met with particular interest in other countries.

The following will provide a short introduction to the German approaches. Despite their marginalization on the outskirts or outside of academic psychology, these approaches exhibit a certain continuity. Other branches besides K(k)ritische Psychologie include:

political psychology activity psychology - socio-historical school action theory psychology discursive psychology phenomenological psychology constructivist psychology qualitative psychology

Since these German approaches primarily emphasize the subject’s position, after their short introductions, this paper will elucidate subject orientation in greater detail. In conclusion, the paper will investigate critical psychology’s critical, and specifically socio-critical, components.

2.1 Political Psychology

One branch of alternative psychology most often referred to as humanistic psychology has followed in the footsteps of the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer and Adorno in its adherence to psychoanalysis and Marxist theory. Erich Fromm is the point of reference humanistic psychology. Another political approach to psychology has survived for the last thirty years, but only by reducing itself to an under-discipline of psychology. In Germany, political psychology eventually gained establishment as a branch of the Professional Association of Psychologists (Berufsverband deutscher Psychologinnen und Psychologen or BDP). Political psychology was also able to establish itself successfully in Austria (cp. Gstettner 1992; Ottomeyer 1992).

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In the 1960s, political psychology was grounded as a paradigmatic school that, in accordance with the Frankfurt School, sought a connection between Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, and whose goal it was to develop a ‘historical-materialistic theory of the subject (Schülein, et. al. 1981). This all-encompassing project, which stemmed from Frankfurt’s Sigmund Freud Institut and associated itself primarily with Klaus Horn and Alfred Lorenzer, but the critical claim on psychology was upheld, and it maintained a continuity in personnel. The introduction of the section for Political Psychology, for instance, begins: ‘Political psychology (PP) deals on the one hand with intersections of power and domination, and on the other with our own subjectivity.’ Besides a chapter and journal, this socio-critical branch also created the Political Psychology Research Group (Arbeitskreis Politische Psychologie) (see www.sfi-frankfurt.de) as a form of organization.

2.2 Activity Psychology - Socio-Cultural Approach

Activity psychology also strives to forge a connection between Marxist social theory and psychology. This psychology depends on the historical stroke of luck that, in the early 20 th

century Soviet Union, there was a school of thought that developed a new demand for Marxist thought in psychology. The founder of the socio-cultural approach was the Russian psychologist Lew Vygotskij (Keiler 2002). Vygotskij’s student Alexejew Nikolejew Leontjew placed activity at the hub of his psychology, which led to the origin of the term activity psychology. Vygotskij’s writing was banned during Stalin’s reign, and it was not until 1964 that the first translation of his programmatic text Thought and Speech appeared in Germany. The first translation of Leontjew’s seminal text followed in 1973. This marked the beginning of an active period of translation that started in East Germany and continues today. The texts from the socio-cultural approach now form the backbone of contemporary activity psychology. Still, some of the school’s most important writing has yet to be published or translated. Due to the shifting of activity psychology’s focal point from Leontjew to its founder Vygotskij, the school has become both more internationally acclaimed and more heterogeneous. The spectrum ranges from the Bremen-based professor of disabilities pedagogy Wolfgang Jantzen, who relies heavily on the neuropsychologist Luria of the early socio-cultural days and who argues for an orthodox Marxist methodology (Jantzen, 1987), to Professor Joachim Lompscher, who published socio-cultural texts in East Germany (Lompscher 1985) and whose primary commitment lies outside the critique of mainstream psychology. Today, Joachim Lompscher is highly involved in the important publication series ‘International Study of Activity Theory.’ The International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR) was created as an international organization with its own chapters, conventions, and publications (see www.iscar.org). A particular interest in this psychological approach exists in the United States.

The historically established activity psychology serves as a critical reaction to developments in mainstream psychology. This psychology’s socio-critical components were never at its foreground.

2.3 Action Theory in Psychology

Action theories have various roots in psychology. They correspond in part to Leontjew’s activity psychology, which was developed into work psychology in East and West Germany (Hacker 1978). The work psychology approach, which is defined as a structural action theory, should not be counted among the critical approaches because, essentially, it criticizes neither mainstream psychology nor societal relations.

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Largely independent of this, critical action theories have developed symbolic interactionism or early approaches to humanities-based interpretive psychology with recourse to sociological approaches (especially those of Max Weber). Of particular importance are the theories of action that developed into cultural psychology (Straub 1999), developmental psychology (Brandtstädter 2001), and learning psychology (Dulisch 1994). In German-speaking psychology, the Erlangen School has made special efforts to develop an elaborate action theory (Straub 1999, Straub/Werbik 1999). In this approach, action is recognized in the full sense of the word as specifically human action. In developmental psychology, this applies to the Trier-based psychologist Jochen Brandtstädter (Brandstädter 2001). These tendencies stand in diametric opposition to the tenets of mainstream psychology.

There is a strong trend in cultural psychology that is couched in action theory and leans in a distinctly sociological and subject-oriented theoretical direction (Straub 1999). This is not an isolated movement; rather it thrives in cultural psychology departments at various universalities (e.g., Chemnitz, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Regensburg, and Salzburg) that are in dialogue with one another. In 1986, the Society for Cultural Psychology was founded in Salzburg. The group’s object was to support scientific cultural psychology and comparative psychology in their research and teaching efforts. The Society, with its international and interdisciplinary aims, can be conceptualized as an organizing movement in critical cultural psychology.

Despite the flurry of discussion surrounding the term ‘action’ in psychology today, a clearly defined action theory comprising societal processes serves only in marginalized areas—for instance, in cultural psychology—as a scientific basis.

2.4 Discursive Psychology

German-speaking psychology has developed a distinct discursive approach. Like the above-mentioned approaches, this discursive psychology defines itself via its unique definition of purpose. The object of psychology consists not only of the psychological actions and abilities contained in the subject, but also the psychological products produced by a societal and social exchange in the discourse. It was not until the mid-1990s (following the development of discursive critical psychology in the Anglo-Saxon community) that this approach originated. Discursive psychology builds upon Paris-based psychologist Serge Moscovici’s theory of social representations. The theoretical approach shares similarities to the above-mentioned socio-historical school without making direct reference to it (Moscovici 1995). This was how German-speaking psychology gained access to international critical discursive psychology. Nevertheless, to this day, German psychology shares no relationship to the ‘critical discursive analysis’ developed in the neighbouring fields of linguistics and social science (Jäger 1993).

A cohesive interpretation of the theory of social representations was brought to life for the first time in Austria in 1994 (Wagner 1994). At this turning point, Wolfgang Wagner laid new emphasis both on discursive psychology and on the everyday (Alltag) as a viable field of research, thereby departing from the paradigm of laboratory experimentation. Moscovici emphatically addresses this turn toward everyday life and everyday people in the forward to Wagner’s book (Wagner 1994, pp. 7-13).

At the same time, Moscovici engenders a distinct rejection of a reductionist, neurobiological psychology that strives to explain all psychological processes as functions of brain

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physiology. According to Moscovici, ‘Our theory insists radically upon the social origin of common sense and everyday thought’ (10). Moscovici argues that we view ‘our collective beliefs, our images and know-how, not as distinct from one another, but as things that are produced simultaneously’ (12). Wagner’s conception of the object of social psychology closely resembles Vygotskij’s. The individual’s psyche is at issue here, but more important is the manner in which societal conditions reoccur in the individual. ‘The psychology of the individual, that which he/she has in his/her head, is the very psyche that social psychology strives to study’ (Vygotskij quoted in Keiler 2002, p. 122). Similarly, Wolfgang Wagner strives explicitly to seek ‘the un-individual, the social, and the a priori cultural in the individual’ (Wagner 1994, p. 29). At the same time, both Wagner and Vygotskij recognize that besides the social psychology of the individual in society, there must also exist a collective psychology that shares a positive and productive tension with the various forms of communication and cultural products.

In Uwe Flick’s Psychology of the Social, the social representations approach, Anglo-Saxon discursive psychology (Flick 1995), and communication between the individual, the social, and society is pushed to the forefront. Wagner defines this communication as a ‘unity between sociality and individual action’ (1994, p. 32).

This social science-oriented standpoint is utilized to criticize mainstream psychology’s ‘reactive-mechanistic idea of the human’ and offer instead ‘an image of the human being as an active and reflective image of his/her environment’ (Wagner 1993, p. 30).

2.5 Phenomenological Psychology

In the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl developed a branch of phenomenological psychology in Germany. In the first half of the 20 th century, Gestalt psychology developed as a genuinely German tradition. This was a qualitatively experimental approach whose sources were perception and thought psychology. The work of Kurt Lewin, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Metzger, and Max Wertheimer made the Berlin School famous. Wolfgang Köhler’s groundbreaking chimpanzee experiments are still known today. The Tübingen-based psychologists Wolfgang Metzger and the late Rudolf Bergius also emerged from the Berlin school. Following World War II, the triumphal procession of behavioralism managed to suppress Gestalt psychology, but it did not stop the phenomenological Heidelberg school from emerging, thanks to the school’s most widely recognized proponent Carl Friedrich Graumann and the psychologists Groeben and Scheele, who developed the concept of subjective theories. Gestalt psychology became critical of the influx of statistics and the dissection of reality into variables. In particular, the social psychologist Kurt Lewin recognized that psychology’s future did not lie in statistical orientation.

2.6 Constructivist Psychology

While the previously characterized approaches represent particular schools of psychology that are endued with a commonly shared programmatic and individual communicative structures, constructivist psychology, a more intellectual branch of German-speaking psychology, is not represented by any organized research community. Jean Piaget, who is considered the first constructivist, represents one important point of origin for the constructivist mindset, and many constructivist psychologists refer to his theories. Others lean more toward philosophical constructivism, which is based on the theory of the Chilean biologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela (1987) and visible today primarily in pedagogical and pedagogical-

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psychological theories. Still others adhere to postmodern theories that have a certain proximity to constructivism. This is the case in the approach of the social psychologist Heiner Keupp and his Munich-based task force (1999).

The constructivist paradigm collides distinctly with causal theory, which is at the forefront of experimental statistical psychology. Thus constructivism can be understood as a critical current in psychology.

2.7 Qualitative Psychology

Even more than constructivist psychology, qualitative psychology represents a receptacle for various thought currents opposed to the development of experimental statistical psychology. The critics come from various backgrounds and can be defined by their relation to qualitative methodology. This methodology is founded mostly on the idea that the subject, which exacts his/her own methodological reflection, is the purpose of psychology. Since qualitative methodology has been developed primarily in pedagogy and sociology, it is no wonder that qualitative psychologists rely heavily on these two fields. Over time it has become clear that psychology needs its own qualitative methodological avenues and a corresponding methodological reflection. Centres of this development are located at universities in Berlin, Hamburg, and Tübingen. The Freie Univeristät in Berlin publishes the online journal fqs, which, despite being openly sociological, also concentrates on psychology (www.fqs.de). Even more concentrated on psychology is the Tübingen Initiative, which aspires to support networking of psychologists who utilize the qualitative method through its website (www.qualitative-psychologie.de), yearly international conferences, and publications. Also worth mentioning is the Handbook of Qualitative Social Research (Handbuch Qualitative Sozialforschung), published by the psychologists Uwe Flick, Ernst v. Kardorff, Heiner Keupp, and Lutz Rosenstiel, that concentrates more on general social sciences (1991).

Those who support the various alternative approaches discussed above take active part in the discussion surrounding qualitative methods in psychology.

Since mainstream psychology is defined largely by its methodology, its proponents react sensitively, and not without resorting to aggression and exclusion, to approaches that have a different methodology. This behaviour only strengthens qualitative psychology as an oppositional movement.

3. Joint Organizational Attempts in Critical Psychology

During the second half of the 20th century, the relationship between various alternative critical approaches was defined through vigorous conflict. Today these internal conflicts have been mostly diminished. Joint congresses now exist that represent all of the critical psychologies listed above. This is certainly due partially to the appreciation of difference in postmodernism, but it also has to do with inherent weaknesses in the individual approaches. Whereas the Congress of (uppercase) Critical Psychology could boast 3,000 members in the 1970 and 1980s alone, today, a congress of all joint critical approaches has only a few hundred participants.

The New Society for Psychology (Neue Gesellschaft für Psychologie) represents an attempt to bring alternative psychologies into contact with one another. The society’s Journal for Psychology also serves this purpose, but the success of its organizational attempts remains

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questionable. Critical mindsets fail to chime with the postmodern Zeitgeist, yet at the same time, they are indebted to it and subject its influence.

Academic German-speaking psychology pays little heed to critical psychologies, which means that it shares more of the international limelight. Other countries, including the United States, exhibit a distinct interest in critical psychology and, in turn, a greater awareness of the crisis surrounding academic psychology. What is distinctive about these German approaches when compared internationally with other critical approaches, particularly those in Anglo-Saxon countries?

4. The Subject as Programmatic Starting Point in Critical Psychology

Because a number of psychological approaches programmatically give the subject great significance, we will elaborate on this tendency.

The term ‘subject’ in alternative approaches in psychology corresponds primarily to an everyday concept in which a ‘subject’ is brought in opposition to an ‘object’ and brought in relation to actions, interests, intents, needs, and responsibilities. The discourse surrounding the subject, a term that is constitutive for society (Haug 1985, p. 70ff), emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of the individual in society. One can accept the following definition in relation to this everyday concept: ‘The concept of subject places the individual in relation to social reality and sees this reality as an active instance of perception and praxis that operates in a goal-oriented manner on the natural and social environment’ (Keupp 2001, p. 39). Therefore, the subject places itself ‘in a formative relationship to its world and is more than a passive product of its natural and societal conditions’ (ibid. 39).

The idea of human as subject collides in many fundamental aspects with experimental psychology’s conception of the human, but this idea also remains separate from many other definitions of humankind: ‘This everyday psychology is most clearly understood in the self-defined image of the human as an autonomous, free, and capable individual…. The subject model of the actor-self is contained, according to Bruner, in all of the communicative patterns offered to us by our (western) culture’ (Erb 1997, p. 148). Since we know that such subjectivities are highly constricted and partially suppressed in our everyday experience of society, this concept contains a further meaning: ‘On the other hand, the root of the term ‘subject’ expresses the failure of any claim to absolute sovereignty: The subject is the ‘self-submitting’ individual that must incorporate him/herself into a world that has always existed and that is structured according to power… In this sense, knowledge of reduced, limited, or abandoned sovereignty is always incorporated as a subtext in the subject discourse’ (Keupp 2001, p. 50).

The described subject model can be located in the earliest approaches to humanities-based psychology (Dilthey and Spranger). Symbolic interactionism (Mead 1973), ethnography, and cultural studies (Grossberg 1999) form part of a series of approaches outside of psychology that also utilize the concept of subject.

These diverse approaches agree on the point that the subject cannot exist without an intentional reference to the world, including the life-world (Lebenswelt) and concrete situations. This must accordingly be accounted for by empirical investigations. Carl Friedrich Graumann devised the following phenomenological implications of the category ‘subject’ for psychological analysis:

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1. The unabbreviated description of the situated subject can derive only from its corporeality. This is not only because subjects have locations, from whence they perceive and act and whose environments they perceive and handle. The sense of things, events, and conditions is also constructed differently according to the subject’s bodily constitution…

2. The correlative of corporeality in the phenomenological subject is the materiality and spatiality of the intentional environment… As the correlative to my intentional state of things (the hopes and fears, the loves and hates) and my spiritual bearing (contemplations, doubts, dreams), the intentional environment is also a spiritual world, a dream world, an imaginative landscape, and something that penetrates, superimposes, goes beyond the world of my reality…

3. The collaboration of the real with the possible decided upon in the horizon’s structure brings the temporality of experience, and more generally the historicity of situatedness, to the forefront… No one can rise him/herself above this historical world…

4. It is not only those with whom we communicate, and with whom we share a language, that belong to our history (‘my’ history, strictly speaking, does not exist…). Our experiential horizon is opened, widened, and narrowed through our fellow humans’ horizon (Graumann 1985, pp. 45-47).

Here the dimensions of body, space, time, and sociality are differentiated. It is made clear that the object of psychological analysis is not a unary individual, but an intentional ‘person-environment relation’ (Graumann 1985, p 44).

Thus the described subject-oriented approaches in psychology combat Cartesian dualism (of body and soul, subject and object) and the individualism touted by ruling psychology (Tolman 1994). Subject-oriented psychology postulates that the societal and the social always belong to the object of psychology.

Reconstruction of the History of Ideas The subject-oriented approaches listed above exhibit a certain proximity to the understanding of the ‘subject’s’ everyday, and in general, they also understand day-to-day experiences as an object of psychology. Yet these approaches cannot be explained away as mere divergences from an understanding of the everyday. The issue at hand does not pertain to arbitrary findings or standards; in fact, these approaches are the result of a long philosophical tradition without which they could not be understood.

The term subject and the corresponding image of humankind that we come across in subject-oriented approaches originated during the Enlightenment: ‘Based predominantly on the criticism of totalitarian regimes (crown and cross) asserted during the Enlightenment, we have lent the rational, self-defined individual great significance’ (Gergen 2002, p. 131). Immanuel Kant is without doubt the point of entry for the modern understanding of the subject. For this reason, Kant’s philosophy is often termed subject philosophy. The philosophers of German idealism - Schelling, Schleiermacher, Fichte, and Hegel - later expanded on the concept of subject more formally. The subject exists at the centre of their systems (Daniel 1981, p. 39), and it marks ‘the human’s exit from his/her self-inflicted immaturity’ (Kant, in “What is Enlightenment?”).

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It is interesting that not only the subject-oriented approaches share their origin in the Enlightenment; so do the natural science-oriented approaches in contemporary mainstream psychology. The fascination of the natural sciences and technology benefit the foundation of an experimental natural science-oriented psychology. Two main streams of thought diverge from this point of origin: the naturalistic, natural science-oriented stream and subject-oriented stream. Today’s subject-oriented approaches crystallized during the 20th century. Symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and humanities-based psychology provided worthy contributions. Following the Second World War, the concept of subject experienced new implementation due to existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Through these theories, the emotionally idealistic moment was pushed back. According to the existentialist Sartre, the individual is damned to freedom; in Freudian psychoanalysis, because of the subject’s unconscious, he/she no longer rules the roost; and in Marxism, the subject is isolated and set ‘free’. The differences in these theories led to critical aspects of the subject-oriented approaches. Various attempts were made to connect Marxism and psychoanalysis, and thereby connect the individual and society. Humanistic psychology (e.g., Fromm) still continues this tradition (Bühler and Allen 1973). It has ‘propagated the positive self-representation of the autonomous, capable human being: the human as knowing, intentional figure in a cultural context marked by the freedom to vote, the power to make decisions, and life-long development’ (Erb 1997, p. 188).

Thus it is clear that while subject-oriented approaches share the Enlightenment and German idealism as sources, they have also developed in vastly different ways, especially during the 20th century. There is no single, overarching paradigm to speak of. At the same time, one can look at the philosophical roots of the psychological approaches in the German-speaking community and determine why these approaches did not develop elsewhere.

5. The Consequent Organization of the Subject-Scientific Approach

The so-called ‘subject-scientific’ approach, which developed in Berlin after the 1960s, should be described here in detail because the approach lay claim to a new foundation for psychology in the most consequential and scientific manner. Despite sharing some similarities to the approaches discussed above, the subject-scientific approach developed in a unique direction. The starting point of this approach is the previously mentioned socio-cultural school, which crystallized after the Russian Revolution and strove to develop a psychology based on Marxist theory. Besides Marxism, the school’s founder Lew Vygotskij also relied on new directions in psychology in the German-speaking community that emerged in the 20th century. The school’s objective was to form a connection between the German tradition’s strong emphasis on the subject and the Marxist tradition’s reliance on societal context. Today, this fruitful approach is experiencing a rebirth.

Critical psychology (that with a small ‘k’), an approach that developed in Berlin in the 1960s, utilized the socio-cultural school as a jumping-off point, but its central motive lay in two other areas: criticism of the leading experimental psychological approach and criticism of the societal relations that can cause mental difficulties for those to which they are exposed. The group of critical psychologists led by Klaus Holzkamp, on the other side, did not stick with criticism; rather it sought to develop a scientific basis for psychology. The methodological approach of the Marxist tradition is elucidated in the Foundation of Psychology (Holzkamp 1983). Its starting point is historical, materialistic, and dialectic. Categories meant to form the

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basis of psychology are developed in a historical analysis that includes a history of pre-human evolution.

An emphasis on the importance of scientific categories that form the basis for empirical research refers to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The same goes for the strong emphasis on the individual subject and the closely connected, emancipatory aim to free the individual from his ‘self-inflicted immaturity’ through scientific means. Whereas Kant’s primary point of reference was the cosmos, that of critical psychology can only be the concrete world. For critical psychology, the psychic or mental is ‘imparted by society.’

The basic categories contain a subject model that is in many regards similar to the illustrated subject-oriented approaches, yet at the same time seeks to overcome scientifically the arbitrariness of norms.

Consideration of the subject’s status also has methodological consequences for empirical research. Thus it is not possible to render the subject as the object of research without damaging the subject’s status. Psychology must be driven according to the standpoint of the subject. The former subject (Versuchsperson or Vp) is now involved in and an active participant in the research, not just an object of it.

‘The subject’s standpoint includes, when looked at phenomenologically, a perspective, that is, a special ‘view of/on the world (including his/her own person)’ (Holzkamp 1993, p. 21). In this sense, individuals involved in research are in a relationship of intersubjectivity. The ultimate goal of this type of research is always the ‘enlargement of one’s control over one’s own living conditions’ (ibid. 23).

The objects of analysis are experiences from the subject’s standpoint that are articulated and communicated in the language of the subjective rationale for action. As such, reasons are always ‘my’ reasons (and different from causes, conditions, results) and therefore somewhat ‘first person.’ The issue at hand, therefore, is justified action from the subject’s standpoint. External events form part of the rationale for action, not in terms of causality (direct influence and effect), but as ‘premises.’ ‘The rationale has no relation of empirical contingency to the premise, rather it has a discursive conclusiveness: it results, while taking consideration of my interests (as I understand them), as a ‘reasonable’ consequence of the premise’ (ibid. 29). Thus the research deals on the one hand with direct experiences and on the other with societal conditions and meanings. ‘The relationship between directness and the subjective experiences of world and self (is) our central premise’ (Holzkamp 1986, p. 30).

Since subjectivity and the view of the subject is complex, qualitative methods appear most appropriate. Still, quantitative methods are not rejected outright because the subject-scientific approach does not define itself according to a specific methodology.

This approach’s objective is not for a researcher to put him/herself in the place of the subject and draw conclusions only from this person’s standpoint. To place oneself so fully on the side of the research volunteer would mean that everything the subject said would be taken at face value and unquestioningly accepted. Because the researcher can err, the results would be questionable. Moreover, the issue at hand is the ‘generalized subject standpoint,’ that is, a psychology in the medium of the justification of discourse, not the conditions of discourse (Holzkamp 1991). The narrowness and narrow-mindedness of direct experience can be

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overcome through reflection of one’s connectedness to the social and societal context. In this way, a practical and scientific accumulation of knowledge can be achieved in research.

The generalized subject standpoint also implies that in general, subjects are plural. ‘The world in which we live and function mentally is inevitably negotiated for us by others’ (Tolman 1994, p. 104). Vygotskij, the first point of origin for critical psychology, expanded the term to indicate respective social unity. Here he overcame Cartesian individualism (Tolman 1994). In the subject-scientific approach, the subject must be understood as part of his/her social context and seen according to his/her relationship to the structure enveloping all of society. This form of psychology is not only analogous to the social sciences; it is a part of them. The goal of this research for all involved subjects is the extension of its unique developmental possibilities and the overcoming of social and societal hindrances to its development.

The importance of socio-critical structural analyses in psychology

All of the subject-oriented approaches discussed in this paper keep a critical distance from experimental-statistic mainstream psychology and can therefore be considered critical psychologies. A few of these approaches focus their criticism on the societal conditions that generate mental suffering. For the most part, the psyche’s social arbitration through the use of concrete societal relationships is completely ignored. This connection is most clearly and consequentially recognized in the Berlin-based critical psychology (spelled with a capital K). In this approach, the capitalist society is viewed as a medium in which mental characteristics develop. Since this is an approach that seeks to develop general categories upon whose basis more concrete research can emerge, it seldom transcends the central tenets of Marxist theory. Building historically specific psychological theories based on general psychological categories, however, is not adequate for concrete research. Critical psychology research also calls for up-to-date analysis of society. Otherwise, the postulate of ‘societal mediation of the psyche’ remains abstract. In this sense, a socio-critical structural analysis, that is, a critical analysis of concrete societal conditions becomes a fundamental prerequisite for a truly critical psychology. ‘This analysis is not the task of psychology, rather it is performed on a socio-theoretical level by other scientific fields. The results of such an analysis, though, are of utmost relevance to critical psychology. If we think of ourselves as existing within the process of societal change and not outside it, the results of this analysis are fundamental to our understanding of ourselves, our actions, and our research and theoretical development’ (Christina Kaindl 1998, p. 79). This seems to be an indispensable precondition for taking a critical stance and utilizing practical criticism with regard to societally arbitrated, concrete problems.

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