Critical psychology

Critical psychology is both a critique of "mainstream" psychology and an attempt to apply psychology in more progressive ways (based, for example, on Marxist or feminist analyses) and contexts than have thusfar been the case. There are a number of textbooks of critical psychology and at least two critical psychology institutes, in Manchester and Sydney. Compare: critical theory.

Critical psychology around the world

Germany

Critical psychology started in the 1970s in Berlin at the Freie Universität Berlin, and the German branch of critical psychology predates and has developed largely separately from the rest of the field. Critical psychology here is not really seen as a division of psychology; it follows its own methodology. It tries to reformulate traditional psychology on an unorthodox Marxist base. The appeal of critical psychology to socialists is that it is an attempt to come to grips with the social and the historical "conditionality" of human beings. One of the most important books in the field is the Grundlegung der Psychologie (Foundations of Psychology) by transpersonal psychology. Critical psychology and related work has also sometimes been labelled radical psychology and