Being Critical in a Globalised World MERVYN F. BENDLE

James Cook University

ritical psychology in Australia must realise its intellec- tual promise as a critical discourse within psychology C and the human sciences generally. This task is made

imperative by the rise of globalisation and the social and political challenges it is producing, and by the genetic deter- minism associated with the Human Genome Project. Critical psychology must also analyse and critique the recent sharp turn towards scientism and the increasing reliance on American taxonomies of psychological “illness” represented by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It must also engage with the rise of identity politics and the emergence of new forms of subjectivity under the impact of globalisation.

The following remarks reflect seven and a half years of experience as a member of a school of psychology and sociology and some eight years teaching students taking psychology degrees, in various areas of sociology, including deviance, identity, health, religion, social theory, and intro- ductory sociology. They are meant to be general remarks made from a close but external perspective and are concerned with psychology generally where it engages with people and society. They are not directed at the former school or its members, some of whom are only too aware of the problems of the discipline. Moreover, similar comments could be made about other disciplines, including my own. These remarks are informed by various higher degrees, including a Masters in Psychoanalytic Studies, by broad research interests, and by decades of interest in critical psychology and its predecessors. These remarks are also less concerned with areas of experimental psychology that lack any direct or significant social involvement.

A key task for critical psychology in Australia is to realise its intellectual promise as a critical discourse within psychology and the human sciences generally. This in itself would contribute greatly to the ongoing development of psychology in Australia, which requires the presence of reflexive theorists, researchers, educationalists, and practi- tioners if it is to avoid any further decline into scientism and ultimate social irrelevancy. Indeed, psychology as a whole is under challenge from the right, represented by the genetic

determinism associated with the Human Genome Roject. As it exists, critical psychology is a pluralist and open endeavour that can be defined in various ways, and there is no intention here to suggest that it should be sharply delim- ited or should follow a set of prescribed principles. However, it can be distinguished from both mainstream and radical psychology by its commitment to the great tradition of critical thought that has come down to us from Kant and which elevates its perspective above the mundane pursuit of lower order data and knowledge to encompass the critique of the entire conceptual and discursive apparatus within which psychology is pursued as both an academic and professional discipline.

For example, an entire research program could be pursued through an analysis and critique of the rise to hegemony of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Association), as has been demonstrated by Kutchins and Kirk in Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (1997). In Australia, a key issue would be the extent to which the influence of the DSM involves the importation into this country of fashionable American constructions of mental disorders and moral panics. Such critiques would be enhanced by their location within broader social, cultural, and political analyses of the contemporary world, such as those developed by various important scholars who have worked or are working still in the critical tradition of analytical thought, a tradition that has always sought to interrogate conditions of oppression, injustice, and inequity.

In pursuing this task of critique, critical psychology must be rigorous and severe both with itself and with mainstream psychology. This rigour is required not only because the highest scholarly standards should always be pursued in any field, but also because it must resist the regrettable “physics envy” that Leahey identified in his History of Modem Psychology (1994) as a common afflic- tion within mainstream psychology. This scientistic outlook believes that “in the modem world, science and technology are revered, and whatever does not fit their mould is deemed eccentric - interesting, perhaps, but decidedly second-rate” (p. 359). The dominance of this pre-critical scientism sometimes expresses a fragile pretence to methodological

Address for correspondence: Dr Mervyn Bendle, Department of Sociology, James Cook University, Townsville QLD 481 1, Australia. Email: Mervyn.BendleBjcu.edu.au

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superiority that is almost pathetic in its desperation to be associated with the “machismo” of “real” scientists and their funding opportunities.

In addition to resisting scientism, critical psychology must also resist the closely related antipathy towards theory exhibited by mainstream psychology. As Slife and Williams (1 997) put it:

It is as if the discipline is content to believe that all the possible, or at least all the necessary, overarching perspec- tives from which human behaviour can be understood have all been discovered; [and] there is no further need to question our understandings or to push the frontiers of our understandings in search of new ones (p. 118).

In fact, critical psychology is in the vanguard of a process that has seen a major increase in theoretical work in psychology, particularly with approaches such as phenome- nology, humanist and existentialist psychology, social constructionism, feminist, gay and lesbian theory, applied in areas such as personality studies, concepts of the self, cogni- tive psychology, artificial intelligence, schizophrenia, psychoanalysis, minority groups, and the study of narrative and human agency. As these examples indicate, critical psychology should also continue to be a major vehicle through which the previously subjugated knowledge from the margins is introduced into psychological research and analysis.

An uncritical belief in science, coupled with an antipa- thy to theory sometimes appears to involve a complacent ignorance of the historical, cultural, social, and economic forces that are continuing to revolutionise the world, most notably, of course, through globalisation and the informa- tion revolution. In contrast, critical psychology should continue to be resolutely open and interdisciplinary in its approach to knowledge and the education of students. At present, opportunities for psychology students to be exposed to broader analyses of these vital sociocultural dynamics are frequently limited to first year. After that, psychology degree structures often seem to adopt the closed “North Korean” model: “There is no outside world. You receive the best of everything here!”.

This deliberate restriction of vision raises the question of credentialism, which is both the life-blood and the curse of psychology. Credentialism confers status on psychology and its forms of professional knowledge, thus increasing student demand and underwriting academic positions and careers. It also controls competition within the profession. More generally, credentialism mandates psychology as an expert-system within what Nikolas Rose (1985, 1999) and others term the psy-complex of state-corporate social control and governance, a situation that should continue to be subject to analysis and critique by critical psychology.

There are, of course, eminently sensible reasons for ensuring that professionals who are mandated to intervene in people’s lives should be properly trained, if this in fact is achieved through credentialism. However, it is not as clear that the price paid is not too high, especially in terms of academic and social isolation and the broader education that seems to be foregone. Also, one must be suspicious of any vocational course that does not have a substantial compo- nent involving placements in work situations at undergradu- ate level, as is found, for example, in both education and social work. Some would see this as a deplorable failure of responsibility in an area such as psychology. It would be a major contribution of critical psychology to help overcome this situation, by ensuring that students have substantial placements that expose them to the life-worlds of those with whom they will be dealing. A critique of credentialism and of the political role of psychology, together with a focus on

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practical experience for students, can be areas of particular strength for critical psychology in its institutional settings.

Such placements might bring students into closer contact with young people like those described by Kevin McDonald in his recent book, Struggles for Subjectivity: Identity, Action and Youth Experience (1999). This book well illustrates many of the points made above, and we shall spend a moment upon it. Drawing upon three years of field- work amongst 150 young people in the inner western suburbs of Melbourne, Struggles for Subjectivity explores the relationship between the social and economic situation of these young people and the new modes of selfhood that they are experiencing. Drawn from different ethnic, class, and gender backgrounds, and variously homeless, unemployed, anorexic, graffiti artists, and on the margins of criminality, they represent “the new urban poor” (p. 18) confronting the major social and cultural transformations brought about by globalisation. Driven by forces they often cannot understand, they struggle to make sense of their subjectivity, establish a coherent identity, and develop constructive relationships with others. Within this turbulent world, “youth” is no longer a predictable transitional stage between childhood dependency and adult independence. Rather than a project directed towards an attractive and accessible future, youth becomes a twilight condition in which one can become stalled, perhaps indefinitely, facing major problems of identity, subjectivity, and self-esteem.

For many of these young people, and others caught in the backwash of globalisation, their future seems problem- atic in the extreme. Equally problematic would be many traditional psychological approaches that might be brought to bear on an analysis of their difficulties. Critical psychol- ogy, on the other hand, is well fitted to the task of bridging the disciplinary borders to mobilise the conceptual and theoretical resources that such an analysis requires. The need for such work can be expected to become acute in the years ahead.

This brings us to another area where critical psychology has a significant contribution to make - the politics of identity. This is a new type of politics that is overwhelming earlier forms based on class and economic issues in its capacity to mobilise political passion and even violence. By its very nature, the politics of identity directly implicates psychology and calls clearly for a response from a critical and analytical perspective. Western and global societies generally are characterised by a pervasive sense that the acquisition and maintenance of identity are both vital and problematic in this period of high modernity. This aware- ness has been intensified by the information revolution, as the psychoanalyst and sociologist Sherry Turkle makes clear in her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1997).

A recognition of the importance of identity is reflected in some work in psychology, such as Baumeister’s work Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (1986). However, it is not presently a prominent concern (signifi- cantly, Baumeister’s most recent book (1999) is Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty - an ominous sign of chang- ing times?). And this lack of attention exists despite (or because of?) the parlous state of the field where, despite the centrality of the concept, accounts of identity vary widely and are often inconsistent with each other. They are also frequently undertheorised and generally unable to bear the analytical load required if the contemporary situation is to be properly understood. Indeed, as my own work reveals, the field exhibits an inherent contradiction between, on one hand, a view of identity as something so fundamental that it is crucial and even essential to a sense of personal self-

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worth, to political activism, commitment to social movements, and involvement in legal action; and, on the other hand, a theorisation of “identity” that sees it as something constructed, almost infinitely malleable, plastic, fluid, multiple, impermanent, and fragmentary. The contem- porary crisis of identity thus expresses itself as both a crisis of personality and society, and a crisis in the theorisation of the central concept of identity itself. This is another very important and fertile field where critical psychology, with its sensitivity to the many issues and debates involved, has much to offer.

These remarks have been offered with one primary thought in mind: to add another voice to those that are already insisting that the rate of economic, social, and cultural change is both increasing and becoming more unpredictable in its effects, and that this raises major issues for psychology, which has a very responsible role to play within Australian society. It is simply untenable to suggest that traditional approaches will suffice either now or in the near future, and that there is no need to overhaul conven- tional wisdom within psychology or the human sciences generally. In such a context, many challenges are emerging, and some of them have been touched on here. It is the task of critical psychology to continue to realise its potential as a vanguard movement within the discipline as a whole, forcing the pace if necessary, but committed always to the

primary values of critical intelligence, social justice, and avant-garde thought.

References American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical

manual of mental disorders. Washington, DC: Author. Baumeister, R.F. (1986). Identity: Cultural change and the struggle

for self. New York Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R.F. (1999). Evil: Inside human cruelty and violence.

New York: W.H. Freeman. Kutchins, H., & Kirk, S . (1997). Making us crazy: DSM: The

psychiatric bible and the creation of mental disorders. New York: Free Press.

Leahey, T.H.H. (1994). History of modem psychology. New York: Prentice Hall.

McDonald, K. (1999). Srruggles for subjectivity: Identity, action and youth experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, N. (1985). The psychological complex: Psychology, politics and society in England 186S1939. London: Routledge.

Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private seF London: Free Association Books.

Slife, B., & Williams, R.N. (1997). Towards a theoretical psychol- ogy. American Psychologist, 52, 117-129.

Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York Touchstone.

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