D
Death, Overview
Bryan Reuther
Center for Psychological Studies, Nova
Southeastern University, Davie, FL, USA
Introduction
Death, most generally, indicates some type of
“ending.” Commonly, it refers to the end of life
itself. As such, death is something that all human
beings, as living, biological organisms, inevita-
bly must face. Indeed, our unique awareness of
death embeds our experience with a temporal
dimension, which implicitly and explicitly
shapes our lives across the developmental life
span (see Kastenbaum, 1992, 2012; Yalom,
1980, and Mauer 1966) for concepts of death in
early development). Death terminates a person’s
life and subjective narrative - resulting in noth-
ingness and nonbeing. This terrifying realization
often conjures immense anxiety, and people have
historically looked for ways to cope with the
ontological and existential issues surrounding
death. Included are religious and cultural notions
of the afterlife and even quests for immortality.
However, despite the significance death has on
humanity, most of us experience day-to-day life
with little immediate awareness of death.
Consequently, the topic of how to understand
and handle our mortal being has been extensively
addressed in religion (especially through
ritualized practices), philosophy, literature, and
T. Teo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7,
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
medicine. The formal study of death and the
personal, social, cultural, ethical, and legal issues
that surround it is called thanatology, named after
the Greek god of death, Thanatos.
Definition
Death is defined as a state of being, the termina-
tion of life, or the ending or passing of something.
Death is most commonly viewed as the cessation
of biological function from a living organism. For
the former, a precise definition is hard to deter-
mine because of the complexity relationship
between human consciousness and brain/body
function as well as the close boundary between
life and death. In the United States, the Uniform
Determination of Death Act (National Confer-
ence of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws,
1981) defines death as “either (1) irreversible
cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions,
or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the
entire brain, including the brain stem.” These
criteria are determined by medical professionals.
“Brain death,” at least as it relates to modern
materialist-based brain function, results in the
loss of human subjective life as consciousness,
mental life, and thought also terminate. Death
also refers to the ending or passing of something,
such as a relationship or cultural movement. The
impact can be great on a person, especially if the
person derived part of his or her self-concept on
whatever ended. In a way, we can see how the
ending of a cultural movement or relationship can
D 368
alter the way a person interacts with the world,
resulting in the possible disruption of meaning
systems and fragmentation of the self.
Keywords
Dying; existentialism; anxiety; fear; psychopa-
thology; grief; loss; bereavement; thanatos;
near-death experiences; meaninglessness
Traditional Debates
In the pursuit of understanding death and human
experience, two main theoretical perspectives
have emerged: one based upon Freud’s psycho-
analytic theory and the other addressed by exis-
tentialist writers. Sigmund Freud (1913/1953)
wrote the fear of death was not a primary
human concern and was manifest of a much
deeper fear. For example, castration anxiety was
considered a “deeper” concern than death. Later,
Freud expanded his ideas of death to explain the
atrocities and destruction that occurred during
World War I (which could not be accounted for
by Eros, otherwise known as the “life drive”).
Consequently, Freud theorized that an opposing
instinctual “death drive,” which he called Than-
atos, also must exist. Both drives are intertwined
and in constant conflict, resulting in the person
always being subject to the manifest expression
of one of these forces.
According to existentialist thought, death is
one of the main and, in contrast with Freud, pri-
mary human concerns. Martin Heidegger (1962)
emphasized the temporal dimension death brings
to existence through being-towards-death. Each
person, which Heidegger calls Dasein (being-
there), is being-towards-death. This structure
situates every action as part of a larger contextual
pathway, which is directed towards and finalized
by death (Heidegger, 1962). Death is thusly the
end of Dasein’s possibilities. Moreover, death – at
the same time that it threatens a person with
nonexistence – thrusts a person into a fuller
and more authentic apprehension of life. Death
presents us with the rather peculiar paradox of
Death, Overview
knowing it is inevitable while simultaneously
not knowing when or how it will occur. It is to
this extent that death remains a strong threat to
a person’s ontological security (Giddens, 1991;
Mellor, & Shilling, 1993).
The anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973/
1997) in The Denial of Death engaged both
Freud and existentialist thinkers (particularly
Søren Kierkegaard and Otto Rank) to make it
clear that human beings use civilization for
death denying purposes. He argued that cultures,
religions, and social groups offer ready-made
value systems that help people avoid death anxi-
ety. Similarly, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton
(1979) introduced the concept of “symbolic
immortality” which he defined as our ongoing
seeking out of different biological and sociocul-
tural ways to ensure that we leave a mark on the
world that survives our own physical deaths.
More recently, Becker’s and Lifton’s writings
(among others) have inspired an experimental-
experimental paradigm in social psychology
called terror management theory that investigates
human mortality in relation to human behavior
and cognition (Solomon, Greenberg, &
Pyszczynski, 2004). Numerous studies suggest
that people tend to uphold and enforce the mean-
ing laden symbols of their cultural and religious
norms/values and rely on intimate attachment
relationships when death (death reminders)
becomes salient.
In the context of dying, there is a general
debate over whether or not there are universal
stages. Elisabeth K€ubler-Ross (1969) in her
book On Death and Dying presents a stage
theory, which includes (1) Denial and Isolation,
(2) Anger, (3) Bargaining, (4) Depression,
and (5) Acceptance. Conversely, research has
demonstrated that these stages are not universal.
For example, George Bonanno, one of the
biggest critics of the K€ubler-Ross’s stages,
rejects these stages as “universal” to the dying
process and contends that there may not be
any depression/grief due to general resiliency,
positive social support, and sociocultural
variables.
What occurs to human consciousness after
physical death? Most religions and cultural
Death, Overview
groups have a conception of the afterlife that
involves consciousness or the soul transcending
corporeal life. Reports of near-death experiences
(NDEs) have supported some notion of con-
sciousness extending beyond physical life. How-
ever, naturalistic and neurobiological alternatives
have been identified to explain the phenomena of
NDEs (see Blackmore, 1993), casting further sci-
entific doubt of an afterlife.
Critical Debates
Death anxiety is one of the core concerns of
existential thought and is specifically analyzed
in existential psychotherapy. In this view,
neurotic/psychotic or psychopathological presen-
tations are viewed as compensatory expressions
of coping with the precarious and often
destabilizing deeper mortality issues. Trauma,
for instance, in an experience that may confront
a person with death firsthand (or vicariously).
Many psychotherapists do not focus on death
anxiety, claiming that it does not arise or is irrel-
evant to address in psychotherapy. However,
Irvin Yalom (1980) disagrees, claiming that it is
an underlying theme, and even if not explicitly
spoken about, it remains embedded in everyday
life, manifest in our everyday choices, fears, and
sense of responsibility. Notably, one area where it
may more or less explicitly arise is in the context
of grief counseling. In the case, not only is the
person’s dealing with the loss, but the loss itself
may also bring up his or her own death and
mortality issues.
Albert Camus (1955/1991) said many years
ago the only real (philosophical) question is
whether or not to die. Today, the right to die (or
elective death), and the surrounding moral, legal,
and social issues, is an ongoing debate. The cen-
tral issue centers on passive versus active means
of dying, that is, the moral and ethical distinctions
between intentionally allowing a disease process
to result in death and intentionally causing death
by using outside means, such as pharmaceuticals
(Mowery, 2007). In the context of medical care,
each person has the general right to refuse or
cease medical treatment and, similarly, based
369 D
upon the argument of self-determination, ought
to have the right to be assisted in suicide and to
voluntary euthanasia (Prado, 2003). It is further
argued that the power of elective death and life
sustainment is controlled by “public” medicine,
politics, and society, which strips the individual
person of the deeply private and personal aspect
of death (Prado, 2003; Salem, 1999). Specifi-
cally, in the United States, elective death other- D
wise known as physician-assisted suicide (PAS)
is a states-rights issue, with three states, Oregon,
Montana, and Washington, having legislature
legalizing PAS in some form or another. The
legality of elective death, PAS, and voluntary
euthanasia in other countries varies around the
world.
Phillip Mellor and Chris Shelling (1993)
contend that modernity has stripped people of
meaningful structures garnered through ritual
practices. This is mostly due to the lack of
plausibility science casts on the notion of an
afterlife. As such, without viable replacement
meaning structures, people are naked in the face
of death. However, it is not the dismissal of
religious rituals that is problematic per se but
rather the “reflexive deconstruction of public
value-systems, including ritualistic and bodily
referents and practices (p. 428).” In this view,
people are alone to construct meanings and
answer questions associated with life and death,
which brings to the surface many existential
issues, including alienation, isolation, meaning-
lessness, anxiety, and despair.
The pushing away of death concerns has been
associated not only with de-emphasis of ritual and
the stripping away of public value systems but
also the emergence of an aging-phobic society.
Lee (2004) mentions how modern society, in an
attempt to avoid death, relies on social institutions
to handle most of the stages of the dying process
through hospitals, funeral parlors, undertakers,
life insurance policies, etc. Indeed, the avoidance
of death (or the signs that one is progressing
towards death) also manifests in westernized
cultures through antiaging creams and plastic
surgery procedures. Still, as Paul T.P. Wong
(2010) states, inasmuch as we are repelled by
death, we also remain fascinated by it: take
D 370
for example, violent and war-related video games.
From this, a seemingly passive acceptance and
even enjoyment comes from death. Also, the pri-
vatization of the manufacturing of weapons and
war machines has major implications of the way
death is held in society, such that death – as it
pertains to war – is an industry. Consequently,
whether though human denial, fascination, or
exploiting human conflict, death, at the very
least, is pushed off onto specialized social
institutions and, at the worst, is seemingly
commercialized for the purpose of profit and
economic gain.
References
Becker, E. (1973). Denial of death. New York: Free Press.
Blackmore, S. (1993). Dying to live: Near-death experi-
ences. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Camus, A. (1955/1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other
essays (trans: O’Brien, J.). New York: Vintage Books
International.
Freud, S. (1913/1953). Thoughts for the times of war and
death. In J. Ernest (Ed.), Collected works, Vol. IV
(pp. 299-317). London: Hogarth.
Giddens, A. (1991). The consequneces of modernity. Palo
Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962/2008). Being and time. New York:
Harper and Row.
Kastenbaum, R. (1992). The psychology of death
(2nd ed.). New York: Springer.
Kastenbaum, R. (2012). Death, society and human
experience (11th ed.). New York: Pearson.
Kubler-Ross, E. (1969/1997). On death and dying.
New York: Scribner.
Lee, R. L. M. (2004). The deconstruction of death:
Postmodern and near-death. Journal of Near – Death
Studies, 22(3), 179–194.
Lifton, R. J. (1979). The broken connection: On life and
the continuity of death. Arlington, VA: American Psy-
chiatric Publishing.
Maurer, A. (1966). Maturation of concepts of death. The
British Journal of Medical Psychology, 39(1), 35–41.
Mellor, P. A., & Shilling, C. (1993). Modernity,
self-identity, and the sequestration of death. Sociology,
27(3), 411–431.
Mowery, R. L. (2007). The family, larger systems, and
end-of-life decision making. In D. Balk, C. Wogrin,
G. Thorton, & D. Meagher (Eds.), Handbook of than-
atology: The essential body of knowledge for the study
of death, dying, and bereavement (pp. 93–101).
New York: Routledge.
National conference of commissioners on uniform
state laws. (1981). Uniform determination of
Deception
death act. Washington, DC. Accessed from
http://pntb.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Uniform-
Determination-of-Death-1980_5c.pdf
Prado, C. G. (2003). Foucauldian ethics and elective
death. Journal of Medical Ethics, 24(3/4), 203–211.
Salem, T. (1999). Physician-assisted suicide: Promoting
autonomy-or medicalizating suicide. The Hastings
Center Report, 29(3), 30–36.
Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The
cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management
theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, &
T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental
existential psychology (pp. 13–24). New York:
Guilford Press.
Wong, P. T. P. (2010). Meaning making and positive
psychology of death acceptance. International Journal
of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy, 3(2).
Accessed from http://journal.existentialpsychology.
org/index.php?journal¼ExPsy&page¼article&op¼view
Article&path%5B%5D¼163&path%5B%5D¼wong-
mm-html
Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York:
Basic Books.
Online Resources
Death, Faith, and Existentialism. http://philosophynow.
org/issues/27/Death_Faith_and_Existentialism
American psychological association – death and dying.
http://www.apa.org/topics/death/index.aspx
Thinkquest.org emotional stages of dying. http://library.
thinkquest.org/C0122781/psychology/stages.htm
Death–Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.
stanford.edu/entries/death/
Deception
Michael Pettit
Department of Psychology, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
Introduction
Definition
Deception involves the use of words or actions to
induce false beliefs. Psychologists tend to distin-
guish between the intentional deception of other
individuals and various forms of self-deception.
Deception is a common – although controversial –
means through which psychologists seek to
increase the ecological validity of their studies.
To counteract the influence of social desirability
Deception
and other biases, psychologists often want to
disguise the purpose of the study from the
participants.
Keywords
Deception; ethics; social psychology;
experimentation
Traditional Debates
As initially conceptualized by Wilhelm Wundt,
experimental psychology excluded the use of
deception from its research design. Wundt
insisted that reliable experiments required a
highly trained and informed observer carefully
reporting on the introspective content of their
consciousness under the controlled conditions
provided by the experimenter. Indeed, the role
of experimenter and participant (most frequently
the laboratory head and his graduate students)
were exchanged during the course of the experi-
ment (Danziger, 1990). During this period, the
use of deception was reserved for the investiga-
tion of phenomena on the margins of psychology
and for persons marked as socially other from the
scientist. This use of deception can be traced back
at least to the Franklin Commission’s famed
exposé of Mesmeric phenomena (Kaptchuk,
1998). Between 1870 and 1920, notable physi-
cians (George Beard) and psychologists (Hugo
M€ unsterberg and Joseph Jastrow) championed
the deployment of deception in their exposés of
paranormal phenomena. They justified deceit on
the scientist’s part because they assumed that the
participants were inherently deceptive and could
not be trusted to offer reliable responses. They
understood the spirit medium as a fraud in both
a scientific and legal sense (Pettit, 2013).
Another site where deception featured promi-
nently was in the early validation of the lie detec-
tor. Deception was both the mental state under
investigation, but crucial to the test’s success.
Experiments conducted by William Moulton
Marston at Harvard University in the 1910s
involved mock trials where participants faked
371 D
deceptive responses in the name of saving
a fictional friend. When the lie detector moved
into a policing context, John Larson and
Leonarde Keeler did much to convince suspects
of the machine’s infallibility. They intentionally
deceived suspects about the test’s accuracy. This
was because the lie detector did not actual mea-
sure deception itself, but worked to reveal the
individual’s convictions about the truthfulness D
of their own statements (Pettit, 2013).
Deception became a routine aspect of psycho-
logical research during the1920s as psychologists
began to study moral character and personality
under experimental conditions. The work of the
Character Education Inquiry, under the direction
of Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May, is emblem-
atic of this shift. Hartshorne and May wanted to
understand under what conditions would ordi-
nary school children would lie, cheat, and steal.
Hartshorne and May’s Studies in Deceit
(1928) laid out some of their concerns about
relying on deception to secure reliable results.
On the one hand, as religiously minded scientists
seeking to encourage youthful morality, they
wanted to be as honest with their participants as
possible. On the other hand, they realized that
studying dishonest behavior (rather than opinions
or attitudes) required low visibility on the psy-
chologist’s part. These pragmatic concerns won
out. What one sees in the Character Education
Inquiry’s methodological is an approach towards
participants formerly reserved for individuals
marked as deviant if not criminal. This completed
the refutation of Wundtian conception of the
active participant (Pettit, 2013).
The experimental deployment of deception
became even more prevalent in the postwar
years with the rise of a social psychology
influenced by Kurt Lewin. He contended that it
was necessary to recreate within the laboratory
the same dynamic system which governed life
outside its walls. An experiment was an ideal
situation – a carefully defined one whose varying
conditions were well controlled by the scientist –
but which contained crucial elements of real sit-
uations. After Lewin’s death in 1947, his student
Leon Festinger became the widely acknowledge
leader of American social psychology and an
D 372
ardent champion of the use of deception in
research design (Korn, 1997).
Stanley Milgram represents the most contro-
versial use of deception within psychology and
his famous obedience experiments feature prom-
inently in research ethics classes. In a decade
shaped by nascent concerns over a wide range
of civil rights, Milgram’s experiments and decep-
tion more broadly came under sustained scrutiny.
Baumrind (1964) argued that the distressing sit-
uation in which Milgram placed his participants
may induce long-term psychological harm,
which the concrete benefits obtained (the tenta-
tive knowledge of the behavioral sciences) did
not justify. Kelman (1967) raised concerns that
the widespread reliance on deception within psy-
chology not only risked harming the participants
but damaging the quality of the relationship
between experimenters and subjects. He worried
that this would compromise the objectivity of
future experiments as it might lead to decreasing
naiveté among potential recruits. Drawing on
archival evidence, Nicholson (2011b) suggests
that these 1960s critics may have actually
underestimated the harm done to Milgram’s
participants.
In 1953, the American Psychological Associ-
ation established its first code of ethics. The result
of postwar attempts to demarcate psychology as
a recognized helping profession; the code
focused on the proper treatment of clients in
a clinical setting. It mentioned the importance
of not subjecting humans to emotional stress,
but did not mention deception specifically. In
1966, the American Psychological Association
commissioned a second committee chaired by
social psychologist Stuart Cook to craft a set of
guidelines for the treatment of human subjects.
The second committee was not a response to the
Milgram experiments, but to the US surgeon gen-
eral’s announcement that year that all scientists
needed to get prior approval if their research
involved human subjects. Targeting specifically
medical research, the announcement included the
social and behavioral sciences. As part of its
efforts, the Ad Hoc Committee on Ethical Stan-
dards in Psychological Research took an empiri-
cal approach to ethics – sending surveys to
Deception
18,000 psychologists about their opinions and
soliciting examples of egregious behavior. In
1971, the Committee published a heavily criti-
cized set of ethical principles in the APA Monitor.
A revised set of ethics was published in 1973
(Stark, 2010).
Critical Debates
In a critical survey of medical ethics, Cooter
(1995) contends that this field tends to represent
already existing vested interests rather than chal-
lenge medical authority. Bioethicists routinely
fail to consider alternative socioeconomic or
political alternatives to the existing order. Similar
criticisms have been raised about how psycholo-
gists manage the ethics of deception. At the heart
of debates about deception in psychology resides
the tension between a conviction in the essential
manipulability of people under the right circum-
stances and a picture of human nature which
stresses the wilful participant’s defiance of the
scientist’s intentions (Derksen, 2010). In criticiz-
ing deception, Kelman (1967) did suggest that
psychologists were unwittingly contributing to
the wider historical trend of subjecting formerly
autonomous individuals to systematic manipula-
tion, which he saw as characteristic of “mass
societies.” Harris (1988) has documented how
the psychologist’s preferred term for revealing
experimental deception – debriefing – has mili-
tary origins and speaks to the actual lack of
autonomy that the process bestows upon partici-
pants. The current (2002) Ethical Principles leave
the decision of whether deception is appropriate
in the hands of the individual most likely to
benefit from the research, the designer of the
experiment (Ortmann & Hertwig, 1997).
In analyzing the responses to the Cook Com-
mission’s survey and the resulting code, Stark
(2010) suggests that the social psychologists
who crafted the ethical guidelines championed
a view of human nature she calls “the resilient
self.” Responses to the 1971 draft split along
disciplinary lines with clinical and counseling
psychologists emphasizing the potential long-
term ill effects of deception on a person’s mental
health. This “fragile self” was opposed by
neobehaviorist social psychologists who drew
Decolonization, Overview
upon their own experimental findings to docu-
ment people’s resilience to momentary influ-
ences. The code approved in 1973 reflected
these neobehaviorist convictions rather than
those of their “humanistic” critics (Stark, 2010).
Nicholson (2011a) has subjected these debates to
gender analysis, documenting how Milgram’s
graduate students cast his critics as emasculating,
coddling mothers seeking to undermine their
tough-minded science.
Debates over psychology’s reliance on decep-
tion have been most acrimonious when they have
occurred at the juncture with other disciplines.
The once advocated therapeutic benefits of
deceiving of children in cases of adoption and
sex reassignment have been questioned by advo-
cates since the 1970s (Fausto-Sterling, 2000;
Herman, 2008). The rise of behavioral economics
has demonstrated differing disciplinary standards
for the acceptability of deception. Economists
are much more wary about the use of investiga-
tive deception than psychologists, fearing the
damaging effects rumored deceit would have on
their discipline (Hertwig & Ortmann, 2001).
References
Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of
research: After reading Milgram’s “behavioral study
of obedience. American Psychologist, 19(6), 421–423.
Cooter, R. (1995). The resistible rise of medical ethics.
Social History of Medicine, 8(2), 257–270.
doi:10.1093/shm/8.2.257.
Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Cam-
bridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press.
Derksen, M. (2010). People as scientific instruments.
Spontaneous Generations, 4, 21–29.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender
and the construction of sexuality. New York: Basic
Books.
Harris, B. (1988). Key words: A history of debriefing in
social psychology. In J. Morawski (Ed.), The rise of
experimentation in American psychology
(pp. 188–212). New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Herman, E. (2008). Kinship by design: A history of adop-
tion in the modern united states. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Hertwig, R., & Ortmann, A. (2001). Experimental prac-
tices in economics: A methodological challenge for
psychologists? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
24, 383–451.
373 D
Kaptchuk, T. J. (1998). Intentional ignorance: A history of
blind assessment and placebo controls in medicine.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 72(3), 389–433.
Kelman, H. C. (1967). Human use of human subjects: The
problem of deception in social psychological experi-
ments. Psychological Bulletin, 67, 1–11.
Korn, J. H. (1997). Illusions of reality: a history of decep-
tion in social psychology. New York: State University
of New York Press.
Nicholson, I. (2011a). “Shocking” masculinity: Stanley
milgram, “obedience to authority”, and the crisis of D
manhood in cold war America. ISIS, 102, 238–268.
Nicholson, I. (2011b). “Torture at Yale”: Experimental
subjects, laboratory torment and the “rehabilitation”
of Milgram’s’Obedience to authority. Theory and Psy-
chology, 21(6), 737–761.
Ortmann, A., & Hertwig, R. (1997). Is deception accept-
able? American Psychologist, 52, 746–747.
Pettit, M. (2013). The science of deception: Psychology
and commerce in America. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Stark, L. (2010). The science of ethics: Deception, the
resilient self, and the APA code of ethics,
1966–1973. Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, 46, 337–370.
Decolonization, Overview
Jeffrey Paul Ansloos
Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller
Theological Seminary, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Introduction
In the wake of diverse criticism of the colonialist
paradigm emerging in multiple disciplines over
the last century, including that of the social sci-
ences, the discourse of decolonization has
recently gained significant attention. It is
a concept that has a strong relationship to the
discourse of postcolonialism; however, it can
also be constructed as a distinct discourse due to
some its differing foundational assumptions.
Literature on decolonization draws from a wide
range, including Western and Indigenous
philosophical discourses, historical analyses of
sociopolitical movements, and some qualitative
and quantitative social science inquiry. In defini-
tion, decolonization is operationalized in
a variety of ways depending on the particular
D 374
discipline employing the term. Despite the plu-
rality of semantic associations, there remain
some unifying elements that promote some
coherence as a critical discourse.
Definition
Any discussion of the unifying elements of
decolonial discourse must first assert some work-
ing definitions of the terms colonialism and
postcolonialism. Unfortunately, both concepts
are equally difficult to define due to their wide
and varying usage in contemporary social and
political theory. Taking a multidimensional
approach and synthesizing the language of
a variety of perspectives, colonialism can be gen-
erally defined as a sociopolitical agenda, action,
posture, or project of imperialist oppression and
domination. In contemporary philosophy and
social science, colonial movements are com-
monly identified within European and Western
imperialism, situated between the sixteenth and
twentieth century (Kohn, 2012). Postcolonialism
can be generally defined as a discursive approach
which analyzes (a) the structure and impact of
colonialism and (b) the subsequent struggles
against sociopolitical domination by those
oppressed in colonization, or as they are fre-
quently referred to in postcolonialist literature,
the colonized. For some, decolonization is then
a descriptive feature of postcolonial theory,
mainly concerned with a critical analysis of
the distribution of power within a colonial
social construction, and further, how that power
is constructed and functions to legitimate, and
employ aspects of culture, or more specifically
knowledge (Fanon, 1968; Memmi, 1965;
Said, 1979; Spivak, 1988, 1996, 2010). Within
contemporary critical Indigenous social sciences,
the term decolonization can also be understood
as distinct discourse reflected as a paradigm
of sociopolitical resistance. As a paradigm,
decolonization is an active assertion of
self-determined sociopolitical and cultural rights
to Indigenous frames of reference for identity and
worldview. It challenges the rhetorically latent
myth of a postcolonial age, and asserts that
Decolonization, Overview
neocolonialism is active throughout the world,
and must be met with an active resistance. Kohn
(2012) makes the distinction that where
postcolonialism is interested in “hybridity, dias-
pora, representation, narrative, and knowledge/
power,” decolonization is interested in “revolu-
tion, economic inequality, violence, and political
identity.” As a paradigm it mainly addresses
questions of methodology and ethics of Indige-
nous resistance.
Keywords
Decolonization; decolonialism; anticolonization;
postcolonialism; indigenization; indigenous;
identity politics
History
The history of the discourse of decolonization
is situated in the broader movement of
postcolonialism, of which the most significant
cannon of research emerged in between 1960
and 2000. The contextual emergence of these
critical works is situated within the political
movements of the international community
between 1940 and 2012. The United Nations
has been significantly involved in propelling
this discourse into the international political
sphere, by aligning international legal mandates
in favor of a decolonizing agenda. Eighty nations
have been formally decolonized since the forma-
tion of the United Nations in 1945, 11 of which
are a direct result of the General Assembly
resolutions. In the 1940s, upwards of one-third
of the International community was considered to
be “non-self-governing, dependent on colonial
powers” (UN, 2012). Within two decades,
these colonial structures were being powerfully
delegitimized with the increased role of
postcolonial theory and decolonial methods. In
1960, the United Nations formed the Special
Committee on Decolonization, which gave
oversight to multiple resolutions that were passed
in the General Assembly, becoming internation-
ally binding law, further setting the stage for
Decolonization, Overview
contemporary discussions and charters of cultural
rights, human rights, and the self-determined
rights of Indigenous peoples.
Traditional Debates
The early debates surrounding decolonization
were situated mainly as a feature of postcolonial
theory developed by Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire,
Albert Memmi, Edward Said, and Gayatri
Spivak. Fanon, a psychiatrist, in his work entitled
The Wretched of the Earth (1961), analyzed the
psychological impact of colonialism on the colo-
nized. Fanon concluded that the psychological
health of colonized communities was sacrificed
as their own cultures were undermined in being
subjugated to the sociopolitical and economic
interests of colonial oppressors. Fanon’s alterna-
tive was to engage the notion of decolonial resis-
tance through violence which he believed
functioned to cleanse the colonized psyche. Sim-
ilarly, contemporaries of Fanon, Aimé Césaire
(1955) and Albert Memmi (1965), wrote multiple
works analyzing the nature of colonial oppres-
sion, adding emphases on the construction of race
as a definitive technology of colonial endeavors,
as well as calls for liberation rooted within Marx-
ist conceptions of reinvention and redistribution
of social and economic power. In the 1970s,
Edward Said (1979) furthered the discussion of
colonial deconstruction through a critical analy-
sis of the field of Orientalism. In this work he
argued that Orientalism was structured in terms
of a reductive binary relationship between the
colonizer and a racial and/or cultural other. It
was in the context of this relationship where the
colonizer asserted claims of knowledge of the
other’s culture. In doing so, the colonizer formu-
lated not only the reductive categories of the
other (such as Oriental) but also gained the thin
coherence of a colonialist identity. Said’s work
proved to be foundational for the later develop-
ment of critical decolonial and Indigenous psy-
chology. Finally, Gayatri Spivak (1988, 1996,
2010) advocated for what she coined the Subal-
tern voice, which for her is particular category of
the colonially oppressed. Her most profound
375 D
contribution to the discourse of decolonization
concerns the topic of epistemic violence. From
Spivak’s vantage point, decolonization can only
occur when the Subaltern voice can be heard on
her or his own terms, within the epistemological
frame of reference flowing from the Indigenous
culture. The solution to the problem from her
vantage point is through the process of resistance
by the subaltern and through decolonizing the D
colonizer. These traditional postcolonial cri-
tiques set the frame for the contemporary emer-
gence of critical decolonial social science.
Critical Debates
Contemporary decolonial debates tend to be
centered on what constitutes a decolonial
paradigm. Most paradigms that have been
suggested are characterized by two main features:
methodology and axiology. In terms of method-
ology, a variety of scholars and practitioners are
advancing decolonial methods (Alfred, 2005;
Chilisa, 2012; Smith, 1999; Turner, 2006;
Wilson, 2008). Probably the most significant
contribution to decolonization as a contemporary
methodology in Indigenous studies comes
from Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) in her work,
Decolonizing Methodologies. Smith describes
decolonial methodologies as both a deconstruc-
tive and reconstructive. She advances the
idea that there are diverse decolonial processes
whereby dominant paradigms are politically,
socially, spiritually, and psychologically
delegitimized within the Indigenous context by
the assertion of Indigenous paradigms. Smith
articulates seven critical strategies for decoloni-
zation including deconstruction and reconstruc-
tion, self-determination and social justice, ethics,
language, internationalization of Indigenous
experiences, history, and critique. In contrast
to her colleagues, Smith differs from the
traditional tasks of postcolonialists in that her
understanding of decolonial method is not
as rooted in the rhetoric of resistance. Her
understanding of decolonial methods emphasizes
Indigenous affirmative actions. Chilisa (2012)
similarly articulates decolonial methodology as
D 376
“a process of centering the concerns and world-
views of the colonized Other so that they under-
stand themselves through their own assumptions
and perspectives” (p. 13).
Indigenous critical theorist, Dale Turner
(2006) describes decolonization as a form of
rhetorical warfare whereby Indigenous people
through the assertion of their own philosophies
and traditions make a claim of sociocultural
legitimacy. His work echoes that of Spivak
in some senses; however, he envisions
a multidimensional approach to the articulation
of Indigenous philosophy, which is influenced
significantly by Wittgenstein’s theory of
language. For Turner, there are multiple types
of word warriors – who in their respective roles
in academia – contextualize and reinterpret
Indigeneity in a multilingual approach that is
constitutive of Indigenous reality. The work of
political theorist, Taiaiake Alfred (2005) simi-
larly asserts that a rejection of colonial domina-
tion occurs through an alignment with an
Indigenist agenda shaped by an Indigenous
sociopolitical, cultural, and spiritual identity.
For these various theorists, if colonialism is
understood to the deconstruction, delegitimiza-
tion, and domination of culture, decolonization
is understood to be the active reconstruction,
legitimization, and liberation of Indigenous iden-
tity, knowledge, and worldviews. When exam-
ined through historical analyses, decolonial
enterprises have also taken the form of active
armed resistance, as well as nonviolent active
resistance. Both Turner and Alfred’s perspectives
of decolonial resistance are essentially nonvio-
lent; however, they remain committed to the
employment of traditional Indigenous concep-
tions of cultural warfare. An emerging contingent
of Indigenous and critical researchers committed
to various nonviolent paradigms are also
asserting a decolonial method rooted in more
explicit nonviolent traditions (Martı́n-Baró in
Ansloos, 2012; Aron & Corne, 1996; Dueck &
Reimer, 2009).
Finally, decolonial paradigms are also casting
the frame of axiological concerns. Decolonial
axiology emphasizes (a) an affirmation of the
dignity and legitimacy of Indigenous people and
Decolonization, Overview
their perspectives; (b) the imperative of cultural
preservation, revitalization, reconstitution, and
evolution; and (c) the protection and flourishing
of Indigenous culture and communities
(Alfred, 2005; Sinclair, Hart, & Bruyere, 2009;
Wilson, 2008).
International Relevance
The decolonial paradigm continues to have
a profound impact internationally. The
decolonial discourse has resulted in the prolifer-
ation of movements of decolonization on multi-
ple levels of the international community, no
more significantly than in the United Nations
(UN). With the legal clout of the international
community, decolonizing efforts within colonial,
neocolonial, and postcolonial settings continue
on a variety of societal structures, systems,
and academic disciplines. The contemporary
relevance of the decolonization methodology,
within the international community, as it relates
to the social sciences, remains strong. Within
the social science, especially that of emerging
Indigenous paradigms of social science,
decolonization is seen as a foundational step
towards self-determinism, cultural revitalization,
and indigenization (Smith, 1999). According to
the UN’s categories of colonial states, there
remain 16 non-self-governing territories in the
world (UN, 2012). Many supposed postcolonial
continents have ongoing Indigenous sociopolitical
oppression characteristic of neocolonial struggles.
The decolonial methodology articulates within
these contexts the ongoing structures which
promote dependencies, while promoting Indige-
nous resistance, on multiple levels including
political, social, economic, and cultural.
Practice Relevance
One of the main criticisms of decolonization –
mainly by Indigenous researchers – is the lack of
concreteness in decolonial practice (Smith, 1999;
Wilson, 2008). With some exceptions, decoloni-
zation has remained abstracted and isolated
Decolonization, Overview
within academic and sociopolitical discourse and
inaccessible to the lives of the majority of Indig-
enous peoples. The response of this disconnec-
tion has been the promotion of concrete
Indigenous methods of Indigenization, which
are consistent with the goals and aims of
Indigenist agendas. Some critical figures do
stand out as offering concrete practice recommen-
dations within the social sciences: (a) Linda Smith,
Dale Turner, and Taiaiake Alfred, and their respec-
tive criterions of decolonial research tasks; (b) the
American Psychological Association’s Task Force
on Indigenous Psychology, especially the work of
members who articulate best and promising prac-
tices including Louise Sundararajan, Alvin Dueck,
Joseph Gone, Eduardo and Bonnie Duran,
Anthony Marsella, and Laurence Kirmayer; and
(c) the indigenous social workers, such as Raven
Sinclair, Michael Anthony Hart, and Gord
Bruyere, articulating practices of decolonial and
indigenous social work.
Future Directions
Along with decolonization aiding in the increased
self-determinism of sociopolitical and cultural
rights of Indigenous peoples and the delegitimi-
zation of various colonial dependencies, the
future direction in the field of decolonization is
largely rooted in the work of Indigenization. As
a partner to the decolonial method, Indigeniza-
tion seeks to revitalize Indigenous cultures. The
decolonial discourse has prompted the revitaliza-
tion and development of Indigenous paradigms,
shaped by Indigenist sociopolitical agendas and
which are oriented by Indigenous methodology.
All these methods are intrinsically foundational
to the process of Indigenization, making it
a corollary partner of decolonial discourse. This
progression need not be interpreted as the historic
retirement of the discourse of decolonization.
Even as legally defined postcolonial contexts
gain independence, the reaches of colonization
are far reaching in almost every stratum of Indig-
enous identity and culture, and therefore, as
a method, decolonization is the ongoing task of
many generations, that will through diligent
377 D
analysis of the oppression of Indigenous cultures,
understand the intergenerational legacy of colo-
nialism, and will be evermore equipped to assert
a self-determined critical-Indigenous response.
References
Alfred, T. (2005). Wasâse: Indigenous pathways of action D
and freedom. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of
Toronto Press, Higher Education Division.
Ansloos, J. P. (2012, June). Towards critical yet peaceable
indigenous psychologies. Poster presented at the 73rd
annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological
Association, Halifax, NB, Canada.
Aron, A., & Corne, S. (Eds.). (1996). Ignacio
Martı́n-Baró: Writings for a liberation psychology.
New York, NY: Harvard University Press.
Cesaire, A. (1955). Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris,
France: Présence Africaine.
Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies.
London, England: Sage.
Dueck, A., & Reimer, K. (2009). A peaceable psychology:
Christian therapy in a world of many cultures. Grand
Rapids, MI: Brazo Press.
Fanon, F. (1968). Black skin, white masks (C. Markmann,
Trans.). New York, NY: Grove Press.
Guha, R., & Spivak, G. C. (1988). Selected subaltern
studies. New York, NY: Oxford UniversityPress.
Kohn, M. (2012). Colonialism, overview. In E. Zalta
(Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Sum-
mer 2012 ed.). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.
edu/archives/sum2012/entries/colonialism/
Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized.
New York, NY: Orion Press.
Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage.
Sinclair, R., Hart, M. A., & Bruyere, G. (2009).
Wı́cihitowin: Aboriginal social work in Canada.
Halifax, NB, Canada: Fernwood Publishing.
Spivak, G. C., Landry, D., & MacLean, G. M. (1996). The
Spivak reader: Selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak. New York, NY: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C., & Morris, R. C. (2010). Can the subaltern
speak?: Reflections on the history of an idea.
New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies:
Research and indigenous peoples. New York, NY:
Zed Books.
Turner, D. A. (2006). This is not a peace pipe: Towards
a critical indigenous philosophy. Toronto, ON,
Canada: University of Toronto Press.
United Nations. (2012). The United Nations and
decolonization, history. New York, NY: Author.
Accessed from http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/
history.shtml
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous
research methods. Halifax, NB, Canada: Fernwood
Publishing.
D 378
Online Resources
Overview of Colonialism through Stanford University.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/
Overview of Identity Politics through Stanford University.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/#6
American Psychological Association, Division 32, Task
Force on Indigenous Psychology. http://www.
indigenouspsych.org/
The United Nations and Decolonization. http://www.un.
org/en/decolonization/
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. http://
decolonization.org/index.php/des
Defense Mechanisms
Wendy Hollway
Department of Psychology, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, UK
Introduction
While the idea of defensive behavior, as in
“defensive-aggressive,” stems from animal and
comparative psychology, the term “defense
mechanism” was coined by Sigmund Freud.
Defenses are set in motion by anxiety. Depending
on theoretical emphasis, they are regarded more
as a sign of neurotic or psychotic anxiety and/or
playing a part in normal development. The idea
of defense mechanism reflects the conflictual,
part-hidden, non-unitary, and dynamic basis
of subjectivity that is the hallmark of all
versions of psychoanalysis, emphases which
make it a vital conceptual resource for critical
psychology.
Definition
Sigmund Freud defined “defense mechanism” as
“a general designation for all the techniques
which the ego makes use of in conflicts which
may lead to neurosis” (Freud, 1926[1925],
p. 153). Anna Freud (1937) listed nine defenses,
some of which have fallen out of use: regression,
repression, reaction-formation, isolation, undo-
ing, projection, introjection, turning against the
Defense Mechanisms
self, and reversal. A tenth, sublimation, “pertains
rather to the study of the normal than to neurosis.”
Splitting and denial are usually treated as
defenses too.
Keywords
Anxiety; dualisms; projective identification;
social defense; defended subject
History
If the concept of defense mechanism is to be of
use to critical psychology (including psychoso-
cial studies), it must demonstrate its extension
beyond the individual and beyond intrapsychic
processes into unconscious intersubjectivity.
This has been achieved through the concept of
projective identification, developed in the
Kleinian and post-Kleinian tradition (Hinshel-
wood, 1991, p. 432). Projective identification is
a defense against anxiety involving a “phantasy
remote from consciousness” (Klein, 1946) – the
“ph” spelling of phantasy designates an uncon-
scious process – whereby unacceptable parts of
the self are forced (projected) into external
objects. In paranoid-schizoid modes of organiz-
ing experience, it is coupled with defensive
splitting of experience into good and bad and
projecting out split parts to protect the self from
unbearable states of mind. The ability to bear the
coexistence of good and bad in the same object
(especially an object on which one depends) is
a hallmark of the depressive position, which in
Kleinian theory involves emotional development.
Oscillation between these positions or modes is
increasingly seen as characteristic of all states of
mind over time, depending on external and inter-
nal, current, and biographical experience of
threats to the self and valued objects.
Wilfred Bion (1959) was influential in
developing a notion of normal projective identi-
fication, which could function as the basis of
unconscious communication of a person’s state
of mind, paradigmatically between a preverbal
infant and its mother. This became the basis of
Defense Mechanisms
his theory of thinking, which defies two impor-
tant dualisms that critical psychology has been
concerned to critique and transcend: that between
cognition and emotion and that between
a separate autonomous individual and a related
connected one. An infant, faced with unbearable
and at that stage necessarily meaningless emo-
tional experiences, communicates, through pro-
jective identification, a state of mind hopefully
received by a mother, not so much through con-
scious thought but through a state of reverie that
enables her to metabolize that state of mind into
thinking, act as a container and return it detoxi-
fied. Over time those relations are introjected,
along with a capacity for containment and thus
the ability to turn raw emotional experience into
thinking. This emphasis on unconscious intersub-
jective communication provides a radical
opening out of psychoanalytic theory into other
levels of analysis: group, organizational, and
societal. The idea that a person contains parts
of others provides an intersubjective account of
subjectivity and a psychoanalytic account of that
contact, inside and outside the clinic.
According to Bob Hinshelwood (1991, p. 432)
there were “three major attempts to develop
a psychoanalytic theory of society based on
Kleinian concepts,” all relying on the concept of
projective identification. For present purposes the
first, social defense systems, is most relevant.
In 1940s Britain, as part of a social mobiliza-
tion for war, some analysts became interested in
social psychological issues such as group psy-
chology and used Kleinian psychoanalysis to go
beyond theories of groups as an aggregation of
individuals, for example,
Individuals may put their internal conflicts
into persons in the external world, may
unconsciously follow the course of the conflict
by means of projective identification [and
reinternalize it by means of introjective
identification]. (Jaques, 1953, p. 21 cited in
Hinshelwood, 1991, p. 430).
In an extension of this idea, Elliott Jacques
(1953) described how institutions could become
forms of collective defense, incorporated into
routine institutional life, and expressed as
a subculture that has unconscious origins and
379 D
affects the way tasks are carried out. The social
defense system was famously demonstrated by
Isabel Menzies Lyth (1960) in her account of
a consultancy in a London teaching hospital that
started out addressing a problem of serious drop-
out rates of trainee nurses. She noted that the
nature of the nurses’ work played an objective
part in stimulating early anxieties and thus
contributed in large part to the gravity of their D
anxieties. She showed how specific defensive
techniques were learned by new recruits and
reproduced in nursing routines. For example,
breaking up the care of patients between several
nurses and frequent moving between wards
meant that little emotional closeness could
develop between nurse and patient, thus avoiding
conscious anxiety about suffering and death but
also reproducing denial and depersonalization.
Splitting and projection were seen to occur
between senior and junior staff (e.g., harsh
discipline and irresponsibility, respectively).
Critical Debates
The crucial point regarding the social level of
analysis is that projective processes do not remain
at the individual psychic level, but become an
objective feature of the way organizations are
structured and divisions of labor specified, so
that people come to act objectively on the basis
of inherited effects of unconscious defenses
(Trist, 1950/1990). This is an example of projec-
tive identification. A continuing tradition of psy-
chosocial analysis in healthcare institutions (see
Hinshelwood & Skogstad, 2000) treats “culture”
as a psychosocial process that includes uncon-
scious elements and sees attitudes and beliefs as
often a rationalizing expression of defenses and
the splitting of objects into good and bad.
This way of conceptualizing a dynamic
interplay between social life and emotional expe-
rience places the idea of a social defense as “a
mediating term, occupying the hyphen, the
transitional space between the psycho and the
social” in a psychosocial approach (Hoggett,
2010a). Paul Hoggett uses the “perverse social
defense” to outline an analysis of neoliberal
D 380
capitalist denial split off from its consequences in
social suffering (Hoggett, 2010b).
The idea of defenses against anxiety has been
taken up in empirical psychosocial research
exploring the implications of a “defended sub-
ject” (participant) and a “defended researcher”
for methodology and reflexivity (Hollway &
Jefferson, 2013). In traditional psychology, for
example, questionnaire and psychometric test
responses, based on self-report, respondents are
assumed to be transparent to themselves. In in-
depth interviewing, especially in the case of anx-
iety provoking topics, a psychoanalytic episte-
mology requires interpretation of the potential
defenses of the interviewee, manifest in hesita-
tions, changes of emotional tone, indirect refer-
ences, etc. (Clarke & Hoggett, 2009). It also
requires that researchers attend to the emotional
atmosphere of the research encounter, and not
proceed on the assumption of a “transparent
subject.” Likewise, a critique of the idea that
subjectivity is describable in discursive and
narrative terms suggests a shift from talk-based
research methods to forms of observation that
pay attention to the language of bodies, affects,
and practices (Urwin 2007; Hinshelwood &
Skogstad, 2000, Chap. 2). A debate about
the consequences of using psychoanalytically
informed methodology in empirical psychosocial
studies, for example, on power relations, ethics,
and interpretation continues (see Frosh & Baraitser,
2008 and replies; Hollway & Jefferson, 2013).
References
Bion, W.R. (1959) Attacks on linking, Int. J. Psycho-
Analysis 40: 308-15; republished in (1967) Second
Thoughts, pp110-119.
Clarke, S., & Hoggett, P. (Eds.). (2009). Researching
beneath the surface. London: Karnac.
Freud, A. (1937). The ego and the mechanisms of defence.
London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1926[1925]). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxi-
ety. Standard edition of the complete psychological
works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XX. London:
Hogarth Press.
Frosh, S., & Baraitser, L. (2008). Psychoanalysis and
psychosocial studies. Psychoanalysis, Culture and
Society, 13(4), 346–365.
Delinquency
Hinshelwood, R. D. (1991). A dictionary of kleinian
thought. London: Free Association Books.
Hinshelwood, R. D., & Skogstad, W. (Eds.). (2000).
Observing organisations: Anxiety, defence and culture
in health care. London: Routledge.
Hoggett, P. (2010a). Perverse social structures. Journal of
Psycho-social Studies, 4(1). www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/
research/cpss/Journal_Psycho-Social_Studies/v4-1/
Paul%20Hoggett%20Perverse%20Social%20Struc-
tures.pdf. Accessed 27 June 2012.
Hoggett, P. (2010b). Government and the perverse social
defence. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 26(2),
202–212.
Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2013). Doing qualitative
research differently: Free association, narrative and
the interview method (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Jaques, E. (1953). On the dynamics of social structure.
Human Relations, 6, 10–23.
Klein, M. (1946) Notes on some schizoid mechanisms,
Envy and Gratitude and other works 1946-1963, pp.
1–24. London: Virago.
Menzies Lyth, I. (1960). Social systems as a defence
against anxiety. Human Relations, 13, 95–121.
Trist, E. L (1950/1990). Culture as a psychosocial process.
In E. L. Trist & H. Murray (Eds.), The social engage-
ment of science. London: Free Assocation Books,
pp. 1–34.
Urwin, C. (2007). Doing infant observation differently?
Researching the formation of mothering identities in
an inner London borough. International Journal of
Infant Observation and Its Applications, 10, 239–252.
Online Resources
http://nosubject.com/index.php?title¼Defense_mechanism.
Accessed 27 June 2012.
Delinquency
Lorenz Huck
Independent Scholar, Berlin, Germany
Introduction
Just as “childhood” (Ariès, 1962), “youth” is at
least in some aspects a social construction: It
takes specific social conditions to release young
people from work for a certain period of time,
allowing and obliging them to educate them-
selves (Gillis, 1975).
Wherever and whenever “youth” as a separate
phase of life exists, problematizing juvenile
Delinquency
behavior seems to be a common theme. Ancient
Egypt Papyri testify to teachers’ concerns about
their pupils’ tendency to love beer more than
books, and Senecas dictum “Juvenile vitium
regere non posse impetum” (“It is the fault of
youth that it cannot govern its own impulses”)
shows that similar concerns were raised in
ancient Rome.
In modern societies, young people are without
dispute consistently overrepresented in criminal
statistics (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990, p. 124).
There are, however, two conflicting tendencies in
dealing with juvenile misconduct: On the one
hand, there is a widespread readiness in the gen-
eral public to excuse it (especially in its less
severe forms), showing a “boys will be boys”
attitude. Moreover, it is widely accepted in
psychology and the social sciences that minor
and sporadic delinquent behavior is normal,
ubiquitous, and transitional. Many contributors
to the field even believe that delinquent
behavior is to a certain extent a functional way
of working on important developmental tasks
(e.g., Hurrelmann, 2004). Correspondingly, a
separate juvenile criminal law has been
developed in most modern societies, which aims
at the moral education of young people rather
than at retribution.
On the other hand, juvenile crime is often
sensationalized and exaggerated by news
media, instilling fear among the public and
inspiring a call for tough action. Correspond-
ingly, in the last decades, criminologists, leg-
islators, and prosecutors started to define
groups of juvenile offenders, who are seen to
be particularly aggressive and dangerous, and
label them, e.g., as “chronic offenders.” Since
these youths are thought to be unimpressed by
traditional means aiming at education, their
incapacitation by long-term imprisonment
seems legitimate.
By showing which life circumstances make
criminal behavior necessary from the point of
view of juvenile offenders, critical psychologists
and critical criminologists turn against the
sensationalization of juvenile delinquency and
against special treatments applied to certain
groups of juvenile delinquents.
381 D
Definition
“Delinquency” is commonly understood as
a minor offense or misdeed, often committed by
young people. Hence, the term is often used with
the epithet “juvenile.”
Keywords D
Youth; Sociology; Criminal career; Adoles-
cence-limited offenders; Chronic offenders;
Criminality; Youth; Center for contemporary cul-
tural studies; Desistance; Life course approach;
Life-course-persistent offenders; Psychopathy;
Subcultural theory; Techniques of neutralization
Traditional Debates
Scholarly occupation with juvenile delinquency
dates back at least to the Enlightenment era – as
shown, e.g., by John Locke’s “Some Thougths
Concerning Education” (1693) or Rousseaus
“Émile” (1762).
However, most theories, which are currently
discussed, can be traced back to developments of
twentieth century US American mainstream
criminology. As can be said about criminological
research in general (> criminality), traditional
debate on delinquency focuses on the question of
which biological, psychological, or social causes
yield delinquent behavior as an effect. Thereby,
human beings are reduced to objects, and their
actions are reduced to blind reactions.
This traditional approach is based on a posi-
tivist paradigm and accordingly researchers mea-
sure variables drawn from various disciplines and
research traditions in a multifactor research
design without caring for their theoretical
integration.
A classic example for this approach is
Glueck’s and Glueck’s famous longitudinal
study (1950). Starting in 1939 Glueck and Glueck
followed the career trajectories of 500 delinquent
and 500 nondelinquent boys until 1964. Initially,
they assessed more than 250 (medical, anthropo-
logical, psychological, sociological, and other)
D 382
variables. Based on their research they developed
prediction tables (including five factors like “dis-
cipline of boy by father,” “affection for boy by
mother,” and “family cohesiveness”), which
overall failed to come up to expectations. None-
theless, Glueck’s and Glueck’s theoretical eclec-
ticism proved to be a successful model for
modern research on juvenile delinquency like
the Dunedin study (see below) or the British
National Child Development Study show.
Using data from the Philadelphia cohort study,
Wolfgang, Figlio and Sellin (1972) confirmed the
long held belief that a minority of juvenile
offenders is responsible for the overwhelming
majority of offenses. They showed that 6 % of
the Philadelphian 1945 birth cohort committed
60 % of the registered criminal acts and labeled
this group as “chronic offenders.” In essence,
these results have since been confirmed by sev-
eral studies in various contexts, seemingly legit-
imating the search for differentiating features of
the minority group in question.
Supported by data from the Cambridge Study
in Delinquent Development, Farrington (2003)
argues that the most important childhood risk
factors at age 8–10 for later offending were mea-
sures of family criminality, daring or risk taking,
low school attainment, poverty, and poor parent-
ing. According to him, the average conviction
career lasted from age 19 to 28 and included
five convictions.
The view that criminal careers tend to be lim-
ited to youth and early adulthood is shared by
Sampson’s and Laub’s “age-graded theory of
social control” (1993) and Gottfredson’s and
Hirschi’s “General Theory of Crime” (1990; >
“criminality”).
Drawing upon data from the Dunedin
Multidisciplinary Health and Development
Study, Moffitt identified two types of juvenile
delinquents (1993): According to her, “adoles-
cence-limited” offenders commit crime to solve
problems all youths must face, specifically to
bridge the gap between their relatively high
level of biological maturity and cognitive ability
and their relatively low status in modern socie-
ties. Accordingly, they desist from their short-
lived criminal careers once they reach adulthood.
Delinquency
“Life-course-persistent” offenders, on the con-
trary, show a stable pattern of criminal behavior
crime throughout their lives. Moffitt identified
several personal (e.g., “reading difficulties,”
“low intellectual abilities,” “hyperactivity”) and
social (e.g., “poor parenting,” “much family
conflict,” “low SES”) risk factors associated
with this trajectory. Data did not fully support
her taxonomy which lead to several revisions
(Moffitt, 2003).
Hare, the main proponent of the concept of
“psychopathy” (> criminality), claims that it
is possible to identify even adolescents and chil-
dren as “psychopaths.” For this purpose, he
developed a youth version of his “Psychopathy
Checklist” (PCL-Y, Forth, Kossen, & Hare,
2003). Research shows that the checklist has
some prognostic validity concerning recidivism.
But this association seems to be explained only
by behavioral variables, not by trait variables,
which are essential to Hare’s theory (e.g.,
Corrado, Vincent, Hart, & Cohen, 2004).
Critical Debates
In the 1950s, several subcultural theories of juve-
nile delinquency were developed in the frame-
work of a genuinely sociological approach and
inspired by the social disorganization theory of
the Chicago School and Sellin’s conflict theory:
A.K. Cohen, e.g., strove to explain the criminal
behavior of working class boys, which seemed to
be “non-utilitarian, malicious, and negativistic”
(Cohen, 1955, p. 25), particularly certain forms of
vandalism and theft. Cohen argues that working
class boys share middle classes goals and values.
Concurrently though, they are unable to meet
middle classes standards because of their work-
ing class socialization. As a result, they experi-
ence status frustration, which leads to
resentments against middle class values and to
corresponding destructive acts.
Walter B. Miller criticized Cohen and his fol-
lowers for “taking the middle class community
and its institutions as an implicit point of refer-
ence” (1958, p. 19). He argues that lower class
boys do not react to middle class culture but to the
Delinquency
demands of their very own class: “Following
cultural practices which comprise essential
elements of the total life pattern of lower
class culture [e.g. “toughness,” “smartness,” or
“excitement”] automatically violates certain
legal norms” (ibid., p. 18).
Sykes and Matza also criticized Cohen’s
assumption that delinquent boys oppose general
society’s norms. According to their own studies
(Sykes & Matza, 1957), delinquent boys agree
with society’s values. To rationalize their mis-
deeds after the fact, delinquent boys use several
techniques of neutralization, e.g., denying their
responsibility or dehumanizing their victims.
Around the end of the 1960s, several critical
criminological movements started to gain
momentum (> criminality). One approach of
particular relevance was developed in Great Brit-
ain at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Stud-
ies in the context of the National Deviancy
Council. Drawing upon Gramscian theory,
a group of young researchers (i.e., Clarke, Hall,
Jefferson, & Roberts, 2006) put its focus on youth
culture and juvenile delinquency, interpreting the
behavior of “teds,” “mods,” “skinheads,” and
“punks” as a way of coping with problems they
had to face as members of their class: “In
addressing the ‘class problematic’ of the particu-
lar strata from which they were drawn, the differ-
ent subcultures provided for a section of working
class youth (mainly boys) one strategy for nego-
tiating their collective existence. But their highly
ritualised and stylised form suggests that they
were also attempts at a solution to that problem-
atic experience: a resolution which, because
pitched largely at the symbolic level, was fated
to fail” (Clarke et al., 2006 [1975], p. 35).
One of the most important recent contribu-
tions to the critical debate on delinquency is
Laub’s and Sampson’s “life course approach.”
Laub and Sampson use data from Glueck’s and
Glueck’s aforementioned study to show with the
help of statistical methods that trajectories of
desistance from criminal activity in the middle
adult years cannot be identified based on typo-
logical accounts rooted in childhood and individ-
ual differences (2006, p. 110). Moreover, by
interviewing a large subgroup of Glueck’s and
383 D
Glueck’s former subjects, they are able to specify
under which specific conditions life circum-
stances like marriage or work relationships lead
to desistance – and which role human agency
plays in the process.
Laub’s and Sampson’s commitment to
subject-oriented methods might mark a trend in
critical criminological research concerning
delinquency. D
References
Ariès, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood. New York:
Vintage.
Clarke, J., Hall, St., Jefferson, T., & Roberts, Br. (2006
[1975]). Subcultures, cultures and class. In St. Hall &
T. Jefferson (Eds.), Resistance through rituals. Youth
subcultures in post war Britain (2nd ed., pp. 3–59).
Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Cohen, A. K. (1955). Delinquent boys. New York: Free
Press.
Corrado, R. R., Vincent, G. M., Hart, S. D., & Cohen, I. M.
(2004). Predictive validity of psychopathy
checklist: Youth version for general and violent
recidivism. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 22(1),
5–22.
Farrington, D. P. (2003). Key results from the first 40 years
of the Cambridge study in delinquent development. In
T. P. Thornberry & M. D. Krohn (Eds.), Taking stock
of delinquency: An overview of findings from contem-
porary longitudinal studies (pp. 137–183). New York:
Kluwer/Plenum.
Forth, A., Kossen, D., & Hare, R. (2003). Psychopathy
checklist – Youth version. Toronto, Canada: Multi-
Health Systems.
Gillis, J. (1975). Youth and history: Tradition and change
in European age relations, 1750–present. New York:
Academic Press.
Glueck, S., & Glueck, E. (1950). Unraveling juvenile
delinquency. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.
Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory
of crime. Stanford, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Hurrelmann, K. (2004). Lebensphase Jugend. Eine
Einf€ uhrung in die sozialwissenschaftliche
Jugendforschung (7th ed.). Weinheim, Germany:
Juventa.
Laub, J., & Sampson, R. (2006). Shared beginnings, diver-
gent lives: Delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge,
MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Miller, W. B. (1958). Lower class culture as a generating
milieu of gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues,
14, 5–19.
Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-
course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmen-
tal taxonomy. Psychological Revue, 100(4), 674–701.
D 384
Moffitt, T. E. (2003). Life-course-persistent and adoles-
cence-limited antisocial behavior: A 10-year research
review and a research agenda. In B. Lahey, T. Moffitt,
& A. Caspi (Eds.), Causes of conduct disorder and
juvenile delinquency (pp. 49–75). New York:
Guilford.
Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sykes, G., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutraliza-
tion: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological
Review, 22, 664–670.
Wolfgang, M., Figlio, R., & Sellin, T. (1972). Delin-
quency in a birth cohort. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Depersonalization, Overview
Laura K. Kerr
Mental Health Scholar and Psychotherapist,
San Francisco, CA, USA
Introduction
One of the first clinical recordings of depersonal-
ization occurred obliquely through the diagnosis
of “shell shock” to soldiers during the First World
War. Soldiers found wandering from battle, with
no memory of their names or what had happened
to them, were originally thought to have
sustained organic injuries due to proximity to
exploding shells (Vermetten, Dorahy, & Spiegel,
2007). Only later was depersonalization seen as
a relatively common response to extreme stress
and traumatizing conditions. More recently,
depersonalization has been associated with child-
hood interpersonal trauma, particularly chronic
emotional abuse and neglect. Depersonalization
disorder has also been linked with recreational
drug use, including cannabis, Ecstacy, and hallu-
cinogens (Simeon & Abugel, 2008).
The experience of depersonalization is typi-
cally described as ubiquitous across cultures and
is associated with prosaic life events as well as
mental disorders. When understood as a mental
disorder, depersonalization is thought to arise
with extreme fatigue or stress, emotional turmoil,
and intense fear. However, it can occur during
Depersonalization, Overview
meditation and other hypnagogic states. Further-
more, depersonalization is associated with some
illnesses, including migraines, and can be caused
by seizures correlated with changes in the
temporal cortex, a region of the brain that plays
a role in integrating sensory information with
internal representation of the self (Vermetten
et al., 2007).
In Western clinical settings, after anxiety and
depression, depersonalization is identified as the
third most common psychiatric complaint.
Depersonalization can accompany anxiety disor-
ders, borderline personality disorder, panic disor-
ders, mood disorders, posttraumatic stress
disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and
schizophrenia (Van Der Hart, Nijenhuis, &
Steele, 2006). When chronic or prolonged, deper-
sonalization is thought to become a disorder in
itself and is identified as a type of dissociative
disorder by the Diagnostic and Statistical Man-
ual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and an anxiety
disorder by the International Classification of
Diseases (ICD-10).
Definition
Generally understood, depersonalization is
the experience of feeling detached from one’s
self and body. Depersonalization can take
many forms, including, distorted self-perceptions,
being dissociated from emotions, feeling unreal,
feeling like a robot, or feeling split into both
participant and observer of one’s actions. Deper-
sonalization has been described as a dreamlike
state of observing oneself, and it has been associ-
ated with out-of-body experiences. Depersonali-
zation has also been identified with reduced
feelings of empathy for others. When chronic,
depersonalization can take the form of internal
conversations with an imaginary person. There
may be a sense of lack of control, including of
speech acts, although the capacity for reality
testing remains intact. Few find the experience
of depersonalization a pleasant one; however,
some deliberately induce it through recreational
drug use (Steinberg & Schnall, 2000).
Depersonalization, Overview
Depersonalization is also characterized as
a psychological defense that emerges when the
sense of being detached from one’s self or one’s
body is useful for coping with traumatizing cir-
cumstances. As such, it is not unlike other disso-
ciative defenses that protect against the potential
psychological impact of threat. Like all responses
to traumatic stress, depersonalization can become
a habitual coping defense when it has been
repeatedly activated in response to chronic trau-
matization (Sierra, 2009).
In John Turner’s self-categorization theory,
the term depersonalization is used to identify the
process of constructing personal identities
through identification with properties of the
group. According to self-categorization theory,
depersonalization occurs when the self is seen as
interchangeable with other members of a group
based on self-identified stereotypical behaviors
and beliefs associated with stereotypes of group
members (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, &
Wetherell, 1987).
Keywords
Anxiety disorders; depersonalization disorder;
dissociative disorders; media; out-of-body
experiences; panopticon; postmodernity; western
society; self-categorization theory
Traditional Debates
Western culture (and the conditions of late mod-
ern/postmodern societies) has been accused of
contributing to increased likelihood of instances
of depersonalization. Some point to the trauma-
tizing conditions of modern society as causing
depersonalization, such as wars, genocides, and
the stressful conditions of urban environments in
which most of the world’s population currently
lives (Simeon & Abugel, 2008). Others identify
the media as culprit, particularly its influential
role in identity construction in the postmodern
world. For example, psychologist Kenneth J.
Gergen has argued a person whose identity is
385 D
constructed predominantly from interactions
with media and technology has less opportunities
to mediate self-representations through relation-
ships, which historically have influenced the
meaning and value given to ideas about the self.
Gergen claimed media-based identity construc-
tion leads to a “spectacular solipsism” in which
there is difficulty distinguishing internal states
from the external world, which is much like the D
experience of depersonalization (See Fee, 2000).
Simon Gottschalk has also examined the impact
of media on postmodern identity. He concluded
an outcome of media-saturated identities is
fragmentation, in which the self is as torn apart
as the often contradictory, multiple images
displayed on screens. Central to Gottshalk’s
observations is the role of perception and how
the ways we perceive our environments ulti-
mately determine how we also perceive ourselves
(See Fee).
The competitive nature of capitalism, as well
as enlightenment notions of the self, have been
described as contributing to the widespread com-
partmentalization of emotions, which has also
been associated with states of depersonalization.
The modern practice of multitasking – or func-
tioning “polyphasically” – has also been
described as potentially contributing to the type
of split awareness seen in depersonalization
and other dissociative disorders (Steinberg &
Schnall, 2000).
Critical Debates
In some respects, Michel Foucault’s interpreta-
tion of Jeremy Bentham’s panoptic prison
structure, in which prison wardens can observe
inmates without their ability to determine if they
are being watched, resonates with the experience
of depersonalization. Foucault described the
panoptic gaze as the internalization of the expe-
rience of being watched, in which a person sees
her- or himself as if viewed by another. Institu-
tions, including their discursive practices, can
contribute to depersonalization and panoptic
vision. This form of self observation is laden
D 386
with the power dynamics associated with the
institutions and practices from which it is
derived. According to Foucault, “He who is
subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows
it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of
power; he makes them play spontaneously upon
himself; he inscribes in himself the power rela-
tion in which he simultaneously plays both roles;
he becomes the principle of his own subjugation”
(1979, pp. 202–203).
Dana Crowley Jack (1991) made a similar
observation about the experience of women and
depression. According to Crowley Jack, the per-
spective of the self from the viewpoint of the
other – what she calls the “over-eye” – conforms
to outer imperatives and perceived expectations
in order to gain approval from others and protect
the “authentic” self (p. 94). It is the presence of
the “over-eye” which she claims leads to
a woman’s depression because it obscures her
authentic experiences.
The extent to which depersonalization can be
witnessed as a culturally determined practice can
also be seen in Western scientific representations
of the body. Western representations often ignore
or omit presumably irrelevant contextual depen-
dencies of the object represented, such as its size,
its relationship to objects that are typically coex-
istent with it, its color, or the relationship with the
object that the perceiver of the representation
commonly has. Thus, the Western practice of
abstracting objects from their context rests on
the assumption of an internal invariance and the
premise that there exists an underlying causal
structure that transcends contextual dependency.
Representations of the body are expected to relay
true essences, which presumably require shed-
ding contextual dependencies.
In a cross-cultural analysis of Mayan tradi-
tional birth attendants (TBA) being schooled in
Western approaches of viewing the body, Brigitte
Jordon (1987) observed the limitations of West-
ern visual practices that both depersonalize and
disembody. For the TBAs Western representa-
tions of the body were often viewed as nonsensi-
cal. The TBAs did not grasp the utility of x-rays
or diagrams used to represent invisible parts of
the body such as the uterus. Jordon hypothesized
Depersonalization, Overview
that underlying their attitudes was the Mayan
practice of vision, which is embodied and
experientially based. As Jordan wrote, “A
disembodied uterus on the screen is, for them,
a disembodied uterus on a screen” (p. 8). Jordon
observed that when Western representations of
the body entered the Yucatan where the Mayan
TBAs worked, there was little or no effect on
their practices as midwives or on their
understanding of the biomedical model of dis-
ease. At most, these representations provided
a more prestigious way for TBAs to speak, as
well as being useful for communicating with
Western health-care workers.
References
Crowley Jack, D. (1991). Silencing the self: Women and
depression. HarperCollins: New York.
Fee, D. (Ed.). (2000). Pathology and the postmodern:
Mental illness as discourse and experience. London:
Sage.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline & punish (A. Sheridan,
Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Jordon, B. (1987). Modes of teaching and learning: Ques-
tions raised by the training of traditional birth atten-
dants. Institute for Research on Learning. Report No.
IRL87-0004.
Sierra, M. (2009). Depersonalization: A new look at
a neglected syndrome. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Simeon, D., & Abugel, J. (2008). Feeling unreal: Deper-
sonalization disorder and the loss of self. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Steinberg, M., & Schnall, M. (2000). The stranger in the
mirror: Dissociation – the hidden epidemic. New
York: HarperCollins.
Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., &
Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social
group: A self-categorization theory. Cambridge, MA:
Basil Blackwell.
Van Der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006).
The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the treat-
ment of chronic traumatization. New York: WW
Norton.
Vermetten, E., Dorahy, M. J., & Spiegel, D. (Eds.). (2007).
Traumatic dissociation: Neurobiology and treatment.
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
Publishing.
Online Resources
Depersonalization Research Unit, King’s College London
(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iop/depts/ps/research/neurobio-
logialmechanisms/depersonalisationresearchunit.aspx)
Depression
Depression
Jane Ussher
University of Western Sydney, Centre for Health
Research, Penrith, NSW, Australia
Introduction and Definition
Depression is deemed to be the most prevalent
mental health condition affecting individuals
worldwide and expected to become the second
most significant cause of disease and disability by
2020. In medical and psychiatric discourse,
depression is defined through an array of symp-
toms that last for more than 2 weeks, including
moodiness that is out of character; increased irri-
tability and frustration; finding it hard to take
minor personal criticisms; spending less time
with friends and family; loss of interest in food,
sex, exercise, or other pleasurable activities;
being awake throughout the night; increased
alcohol and drug use; staying home from work
or school; increased physical health complaints,
such as fatigue or pain; being reckless or taking
unnecessary risks; and slowing down of thoughts
and actions.
Epidemiological researchers have reported
that women outnumber men in lifetime preva-
lence of depression at a ratio that ranges from
2:1 to 4:1. At the same time, studies examining
incidence in the previous 1–12 months report that
women are between 1.2 and 2.7 times more likely
to have experienced depression than men and
women significantly outnumber men in first
admission rates for hospital treatment and in reg-
ister studies where incidence is calculated by
contact with services. Women are also estimated
to be twice as likely as men to be prescribed
psychotropic medication for depression, in par-
ticular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs). It has been argued that if we can under-
stand why women are more likely to be diagnosed
with depression than men, we will understand the
cause of depression itself. In this account, I will
therefore examine the historical development of
current Western definitions of depression,
387 D
followed by an examination of theories of gender
differences in diagnosis and treatment.
Keywords
Depression; gender differences in diagnosis;
medicalization; critical realism; material-
discursive-intrapsychic D
History and Critical Debates
In mainstream psychological and biomedical
accounts, a discourse of “medical naturalism”
positions depression as a naturally occurring
pathology existing within the sufferer, which
can be objectively defined and measured.
Within a realist epistemological framework,
standardized diagnostic criteria, such as those as
laid out in the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion), are used to ensure uniformity in the
application of diagnosis, with assessment of
individual symptoms conducted through stan-
dardized questionnaires or clinical interviews.
In contrast, critical psychologists have conceptu-
alized “depression” as a social category created
by a process of expert definition which serves to
medicalize the whole continuum of mild to
severe misery as a unitary psychiatric disorder
(Kirk & Kutchins, 1992; Littlewood & Lipsedge,
1982; Stoppard, 2000). Described as
a “disjunctive concept” which is deemed appli-
cable to individuals with no symptoms in com-
mon, a “professional reification about human
misery, not a fact” (Pilgrim & Bentall, 1999,
p. 271), this raises questions about estimates
of prevalence in the community, as well as
the reported higher rates of “depression” in
women.
The framework of medical naturalism that led
to the establishment of depression as a real entity
which exists independent of perception, lan-
guage, or culture has its origins in psychiatric
nosology first promoted by Kraeplin in the late
nineteenth century. Three now-defunct separate
diagnoses – melancholia, neurasthenia, and
D 388
mopishness – stand as the precursors of “mental
depression,” a diagnosis that first appeared in the
mid-nineteenth century. “Depression” became
a widely used term only at the beginning of the
twentieth century, translated into “major depres-
sive disorder,” and positioned as scientific truth
in the DSM (Kirk & Kutchins, 1992).
However, this is very much a Western cultural
concept, as there is no word for “depression” in
many non-Western cultures. Indeed, many so-
called “symptoms” of Western depression are
not expressed, or positioned as signs of distress,
in non-Western contexts. Rather, suffering is sig-
nified by bodily or psychological complaints as
varied as chest pains (China), burning on the
soles of the feet (Sri Lanka), semen loss (India),
ants crawling inside the head (Nigeria), or
soul loss (Hmong) (Marecek, 2006). The
influence of Western psychiatry in establishing
and maintaining the legitimacy of the concept
of depression, and at the same time reinforcing
a bio-determinist perspective, cannot be under-
estimated. Since the mid-nineteenth century, psy-
chiatry has claimed authority over the mad and
melancholic, subjecting “patients” to myriad
physical “treatments” which included isolation,
restraint, enforced bed rest, and immersion in
freezing water while shrouded in wet sheets.
The first half of the twentieth century saw the
emergence of psychosurgery and electroconvul-
sive therapy, as well as psychotropic medication.
However, between the 1940s and mid-1960s,
psychiatric theory was dominated by psychoanal-
ysis, with hysteria and “neurotic disorders” being
diagnoses applied to women and oedipal notions
of gender development underlying explanations
of distress. This was reflected in the diagnostic
classifications outlined in the first version of the
DSM, published in 1954, where “mental disor-
ders” were considered to result from early expe-
riences with parents that become internalized
through unconscious processes. In the early
1970s, a backlash against psychoanalytic think-
ing occurred in psychiatry, with proponents of
“evidence-based treatment” and a biological
model of madness taking control of the disci-
pline, resulting in depression being firmly posi-
tioned as an illness within the brain, to be
Depression
primarily managed by psychotropic medication
(Ussher, 2011).
Public health campaigns are also active in
promoting depression literacy in everyday life,
resulting in a continual widening of the bound-
aries of mental illness categories (Busfield,
2002). At the same time, the pharmaceutical
industry and its allies have been accused of “dis-
ease mongering” in their active encouragement
of the medicalization of “ordinary ailments.”
They are deemed to act in conjunction with psy-
chiatry to legitimate medical intervention for
“common personal and social problems,” through
direct-to-consumer advertising, promotion of
self-diagnosis, and the funding of national edu-
cational campaigns on how to “beat depression.”
Japan is a case in point, where there wasn’t
even a term for mild depression, before SSRIs
were promoted by a pharmaceutical company in
1999. Experiences such as melancholia, sensitiv-
ity, and fragility were accepted as part of life, not
deemed to be pathological conditions to be alle-
viated. However, after vigorous “public educa-
tion campaigns” promoted by the drug company,
a new “disease,” kokoro no kaze, was established,
with a message that it “can be cured by medi-
cine.” As a result, sales of SSRIs in Japan quin-
tupled between 1998 and 2003. This creation and
expansion of a market for drugs through
extending the boundaries of diagnosis to encap-
sulate all forms of sadness, misery, or dysphoria
is not confined to Japan. As Shorter (1997) has
argued, the boundaries of depression have been
extending relentlessly outward since the 1960s,
now encompassing mild levels of mood change,
as well as major intractable depression, with the
result that diagnoses of depression have increased
exponentially. This “diagnostic bracket creep” is
applauded by proponents of SSRIs, who want the
boundaries of mental illness to be continuously
expanded to match the drugs that are developed
to treat “conditions.”
Prescriptions for psychotropic medication,
primarily SSRIs, have also dramatically
increased, because they are viewed as “chemical
cures” that treat a “deficiency disease.” However,
there is no evidence of specific imbalances in
serotonin in individuals reporting depression,
Depression
and no evidence that making serotonin nerves
more active, the aim of SSRIs, can help people
overcome emotional problems. Scientists them-
selves readily admit they are unsure how antide-
pressants work, and the efficacy of placebos in
comparison to SSRIs is so strong that the phar-
macological rationale for the treatment is
undermined. Diet and exercise can be as effective
as SSRIs in treating depression, as can psycho-
logical therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral
therapy (CBT). As SSRIs have also been associ-
ated with serious side effects, including suicide,
aggression, harm to relationships, akathisia, and
“out of character” behavior, their widespread use
raises many serious concerns.
Medicalizing Women’s Misery: Feminist
Critiques
Feminist critics also have a long history of cri-
tiquing the medicalization of women’s misery
and of seeing psychiatry as a profession that
acts to regulate women (Penfold & Walker,
1984; Stoppard, 2000; Ussher, 1991). As Phyllis
Chesler commented, in her oft-quoted book
“Women and Madness”:
Most twentieth century women who are psychiat-
rically labelled, privately treated and publically
hospitalised are not mad. . .they may be deeply
unhappy, self-destructive, economically power-
less, and sexually impotent – but as women they’re
supposed to be. (Chesler, 1972, p. 25).
More recently, Jeanne Marecek (2006) argued
“depression is not something people have, but
a set of practices authorized by the culture
through which people express to others that they
are suffering” (p. 303). Biomedical theories of
women’s depression have come under particular
feminist scrutiny (Ussher, 1989). From
a biomedical perspective, the primary explana-
tion put forward for reports of women’s higher
rates of depression is reproductive hormones, in
particular estrogen, linked to premenstrual, post-
natal, and menopausal stages of the reproductive
life cycle. Justification for this “raging hor-
mones” approach is deemed to be found in reports
that women’s greater propensity to report
389 D
depression emerges at puberty and is no longer
present postmenopause.
However, the evidence that “times of great
hormonal fluctuation” across the life-span are
causally linked to women’s distress is weak. Pre-
menstrual distress has been found to be strongly
associated with women’s social and relationship
context, in particular, with over-responsibility,
relationship dissatisfaction, and communication D
problems. Depression in the postnatal period has
been conceptualized as an understandable reac-
tion to the strains of early motherhood, linked to
high and unrealistic expectations, combined with
low social support. Finally, community studies
report that the majority of perimenopausal and
menopausal women are happy and satisfied with
their lives, rather than depressed. Social and rela-
tional context and women’s negotiation of mid-
life change have been reported to be factors
associated with distress (or happiness) at midlife –
rather than hormonal changes in the menopausal
body (Ussher, 2006).
In contrast to this realist biomedical view-
point, many feminists have adopted a social con-
structionist standpoint, arguing that psychiatric
diagnosis is a gendered practice that pathologizes
femininity (Chesler, 1972; Stoppard, 2000;
Ussher, 1991). Gender role stereotypes used by
medical practitioners and gender bias in psycho-
metric instruments which categorize normative
aspects of feminine behavior (such as crying or
loss of interest in sex) as “symptoms” have been
deemed to result in medical practitioners diag-
nosing depression in women at higher rates than
men. It has also been argued that many women
only label their unhappiness as “depression” and
as a result take up a biomedical model to explain
their “symptoms,” after receiving medical diag-
nosis and treatment (LaFrance, 2009). The dis-
cursive construction of women’s unhappiness as
depression in health policy, medical journals,
self-help books, drug company literature,
women’s magazines, and other mass circulated
literature also plays a significant role in women
increasingly positioning their distress as an
illness, “depression.”
Psychology offers an alternative perspective
to biomedicine in relation to the etiology and
D 390
treatment of depression, but has not escaped
feminist scrutiny. In recent years, cognitive-
behavioral approaches, in particular, have made
some inroad into medical dominance of interven-
tion, with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
now being recommended by many governments
(including Australia and the UK) as a first-line
treatment for depression. However, feminist
critics have argued that there is little evidence
of gender differences in the majority of cognitive
“deficits” deemed to underlie depression from
a cognitive-behavioral perspective, which under-
mines the utility of such theories for explaining
women’s higher rate of depression (Stoppard,
2000). Psychological theories of depression
have been dismissed for being overgeneralized
and oversimplified or for being based on
a positivist epistemology which positions
women’s distress as symptoms of an underlying
disorder. Indeed, feminist critics have argued
that both biomedical and psychological theories
of depression decontextualize what is often
a social problem, simply acting to legitimize
expert intervention, while negating the political,
economic, and discursive aspects of women’s
experience (LaFrance, 2009; Stoppard, 2000;
Ussher, 2011). Psychological treatment has also
been the subject of criticism by some feminists.
This is because the solution to depression is still
positioned within the individual, with women
entreated to engage in therapy that is seen to
ignore social context or to engage in self-
management strategies. This has been seen to
simply maintain the status quo and produce
more productive citizens, as well as ensure that
social and political inequalities which lead to
distress in the first place remain unchallenged.
International and Practice Relevance:
A Critical Realist Analysis
There are limitations, however, to adopting
a radical social constructionist analysis of
depression. Social constructionism has been
criticized for negating the “real” and in its denial
of realism, leading to an “abyss of relativism. . .
in a world where ‘truth’ is all but abandoned”
Depression
(Williams, 2003, p. 50). The act of positioning
depression as a discursive construct could also
appear to negate the existence or magnitude of
the misery experienced by many women and
men, as well as the social, environmental and
relational concomitants of distress. Critical psy-
chologists and feminists who dismiss medicaliza-
tion are also left with the dilemma that at an
individual level, the diagnosis of depression can
serve to validate that there is a “real” problem,
isolating prolonged misery from the character of
the sufferer.
However, if we take a critical realist episte-
mological standpoint, we can acknowledge criti-
cal psychological and feminist critiques of the
medicalization of misery, as well as the findings
of a range of research studies which document
distress across cultures – even if it is not always
categorized as “depression.” Critical realism rec-
ognizes the materiality of somatic, psychological,
and social experience but conceptualizes this
materiality as mediated by culture, language,
and politics (Bhaskar, 1989). A critical realist
analysis thus allows us to acknowledge the “real”
of psychological and somatic distress, whether this
distress is mild or severe, yet to conceptualize it as
a complex phenomenon which is only discursively
constructed as “depression” within a specific
historical and cultural context. Equally, we
can acknowledge that an individual living in a
particular historical and cultural context, with a
particular set of life circumstances, and a particu-
lar set of beliefs and coping strategies, may come
to experience psychological and somatic distress,
to label it as depression, and then seek treatment,
because of the complex interaction of these
different factors within their life. We can also
acknowledge the materiality of embodied distress
and biological concomitants of the phenomenon
positioned as “depression.” However, within
a critical realist framework, none of these material,
discursive, or intrapsychic levels of analysis is
privileged above the other (Ussher, 2011).
Within a critical realist approach, both quali-
tative and quantitative research, ranging from
large-scale epidemiological studies to single
case designs, can be used to provide insight into
experiences that come to be positioned as
Depression
“depression” – without seeking universal
answers or universal solutions, which deny the
experiences of women and men across different
social, cultural, or relational contexts. This allows
us to develop programs of prevention and inter-
vention at a political, social, familial, and individ-
ual level. Interventions which focus on one level
alone – whether this is biomedical, sociocultural,
psychological, or discursive – will not address the
totality of the experiences of individuals who
come to be categorized as depressed.
Future Directions
We need to question the increasing medicaliza-
tion of misery in the West, in particular the way in
which individuals (more often women) who
experience mild distress or understandable prob-
lems with everyday life are defined as having
a mental disorder “depression” and told that the
optimum treatment is medication, most fre-
quently an SSRI. The term “depression” may
function to communicate the extent of an individ-
ual’s distress and validate subjective experience;
however, it needs to be conceptualized outside of
a medical model which positions it as pathology
within the person. Critical psychologists and
feminists need to be wary of reinforcing medical
naturalism through discursively positioning our
research focus or our participant’s experiences as
“depression” and instead use terms such as
“severe distress,” “prolonged misery,” or “con-
tinuum of depressive experiences” to make the
point that depression is not a unitary, global,
transhistorical pathology.
There is also a need for social and political
change so that women and men are not living in
a context of inequality, violence, and abuse –
factors associated with distress. We need to crit-
ically examine the gendered socialization of girls
and women, which may act to increase their
likelihood of rumination, self-silencing, self-
objectification, and the internal attribution of
problems, all of which have been linked to
women’s distress. However, this does not
mean that distress is ignored. It is possible to
offer therapeutic support which acknowledges
391 D
individual life experience, as well as the cultural
context within which distress is constructed and
lived, as many feminist therapists have demon-
strated (Brown, 2010). The task for critical and
feminist psychology is to recognize the reality of
prolonged misery, to understand the multiple fac-
tors associated with its development, and to avoid
the pathologization of the individual who experi-
ences and expresses such problems. D
References
Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming reality: A critical intro-
duction to contemporary philosophy. London: Verso.
Brown, L. S. (2010). Feminist therapy. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Busfield, J. (2002). Rethinking the sociology of mental
illness. London: Blackwell.
Chesler, P. (1972). Women and madness. New York:
Doubleday.
Kirk, S., & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The
rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: A. de
Gruyter.
LaFrance, M. N. (2009). Women and depression: Recov-
ery and resistance. London: Routledge.
Littlewood, R., & Lipsedge, M. (1982). Aliens and alienists:
Ethnic minorities and psychiatry. London: Penguin.
Marecek, J. (2006). Social suffering, gender, and women’s
depression. In C. L. Keyes & S. H. Goodman (Eds.),
Women and depression: A handbook for the social,
behavioural and biomedical sciences (pp. 283–308).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Penfold, S., & Walker, G. (1984). Women and the psychi-
atric paradox. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University
Press.
Pilgrim, D., & Bentall, R. P. (1999). The medicalisation of
misery: A critical realist analysis of the concept of
depression. Journal of Mental Health, 8(3), 261–274.
Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry. New York:
Wiley.
Stoppard, J. (2000). Understanding depression: Feminist
social constructionist approaches, London. London:
Routledge.
Ussher, J. M. (1989). The psychology of the female body.
London: Routledge.
Ussher, J. M. (1991). Women’s madness: Misogyny or
mental illness? Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Ussher, J. M. (2006). Managing the monstrous feminine:
Regulating the reproductive body. London: Routledge.
Ussher, J. M. (2011). The madness of women: Myth and
experience. London: Routledge.
Williams, S. (2003). Beyond meaning, discourse and the
empirical World: Critical realist reflections on health.
Social Theory & Health, 1, 42–47.
D 392
Deprivation, Overview
Frank Gruba-McCallister
Clinical Psychology Program, Chicago School of
Professional Psychology, Chicago, IL, USA
Introduction
Deprivation has been a subject of theory and
research in psychology principally in the following
forms: sensory, sleep, maternal, and social. Tradi-
tional psychology has focused on examining the
physiological and psychological consequences of
sensory and sleep deprivation. Another area of
extensive study in psychoanalytic literature has
been maternal deprivation (Bowlby, 1982). This
understanding of deprivation has tended to focus
on the role of biological and individual factors in
understanding the adverse impact of failing to
meet basic, innate needs. Many of the applications
of this research have been aimed at removing risks
posed by deprivation to individual well-being.
However, the often acontextual nature of
such investigation and presumption of value-free
science (Prilleltensky 1997; Sarason 1981)
has increased the risk of abusive uses of this
knowledge. One example is the use of sensory
deprivation in torture (McCoy, 2007).
The study of social deprivation or the depriva-
tion of basic capabilities due to factors such as
low social economic status or marginalization is
a concern of critical psychology. A significant
example is poverty. The definition of deprivation
as the inability of individuals to attain minimal
standards of consumption to meet basic physical
needs is used to define absolute poverty. Rank
(2004) describes deprivation or doing without as
the essential defining characteristic of the human
experience of poverty. The poor must make sig-
nificant compromises regarding daily necessities
in life, such as food, housing, health care, and
transportation. As a result of being deprived of
the resources necessary to fulfill basic needs, the
poor experience a host of adverse impacts on
their quality of life, including chronic elevated
levels of stress and higher rates of morbidity and
Deprivation, Overview
mortality. The cumulative impact of deprivation
leads to a stunting of development across a range
of areas.
Definition
Prilleltensky and Nelson (2002) describe depri-
vation in material terms as failure to provide
conditions, resources, and opportunities neces-
sary to fulfill fundamental human needs. This
definition provides a framework for understand-
ing sleep, sensory, maternal, and social depriva-
tion. The impact of deprivation can be viewed in
terms of failure to meet material and social needs.
For example, Bowlby’s (1982) view of maternal
deprivation was informed by evolutionary and
ethnological theory in which attachment behav-
iors were instinctive in both infants and mothers.
Physiological mechanisms have likewise been
identified to understand the consequences of fail-
ing to meet the basic needs for sleep and sensory
input. At its most basic level, social deprivation
translates into doing without the basic material
necessities necessary to allow for optimal devel-
opment of human beings (Rank, 2004). Poverty is
the clearest example of such deprivation of basic
material needs. The deleterious effect of depriva-
tion as a consequence of childhood poverty has
been substantiated by multiple research findings
(Evans, 2004; Evans & Kim, 2007).
The impact of deprivation extends beyond
material. Research on attachment documents
cognitive, social, and emotional difficulties
related to deprivation. Extended sensory depriva-
tion gives rise to anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre
thoughts, and delusions. Likewise, poverty has
wide-ranging effects. Rogers and Pilgrim (2003)
write, “Poverty is not merely about one moment
of material deprivation. . .It also signifies
a chronic cumulative process of subjective disaf-
fection with life. The latter entails a common
experience in poor people of anomie and a lack
of personal control. These subjective experiences
are then compounded by a lack of social oppor-
tunities to leave poverty by legal means, as well
as the direct impact of financial poverty.
These direct economic variables increase the
Deprivation, Overview
probability of all forms of ill health and mediate
the negative health impact of poor diet and the
comforts of drugs and alcohol. Thus, poverty has
a double effect—one related to external stressors
which affect well-being and another to do with
the hopelessness and fatalism created by chronic
deprivation” (pp. 157–158).
The interdependent relationship between indi-
vidual factors (biological, psychological) and the
multiple contexts within which individuals are
embedded is necessary to any understanding of
deprivation. This underlines the importance of
analyzing deprivation from both a political and
psychological perspective (Prilleltensky, 2008).
Keywords
Deprivation; poverty; capabilities approach
Traditional Debates
Traditional debates have been framed within
a more individual-focused view of deprivation.
This is illustrated in contrasting views held by
Bowlby (van der Horst & van der Veer, 2010) and
Harlow (Vicedo, 2009) on the need for maternal
love in human infants. Harlow’ studies in which
he reared monkeys using different surrogate
mothers drew significant attention among psy-
chologists as well as the general press at the
time. His initial findings on the importance of
providing a haven of safety and source of security
fostering closeness and togetherness were seen
by Bowlby as validation for maternal love as
a biological need and the exclusivity of the mater-
nal relationship. However, as he continued with
his research, Harlow took exception with
a number of Bowlby’s assumptions. Later studies
found that the mother’s role in encouraging play
and establishing social relations with peers
influenced later adult behavior in monkeys.
Looking at the totality of Harlow’s findings, bio-
logical and environmental factors reveal a pattern
of greater complexity and plasticity. The work of
Bowlby and Harlow also provide a cogent exam-
ple of how scientific findings are not restricted to
393 D
academic circles, but extended to the applications
of competing views to parenting and societal
beliefs on gender roles (Vicedo).
Critical Debates
Viewed from the perspective of critical psychol-
ogy, theory and research on deprivation must be D
understood from both and psychological and
political perspective. This can be illustrated
using the example of sensory deprivation which
has been studied as a means of producing thera-
peutic results (David, 1993), but also has a darker
side when used as part of psychological torture.
This is documented in an article by McCoy
(2007). He writes, “At the dawn of the Cold
War, the human mind became a covert battle-
ground for the deployment of new weapons for
mass persuasion and individual interrogation.
From 1950 to 1962, the CIA lead a massive, secret
research effort to crack the code of human con-
sciousness, a veritable Manhattan Project of the
mind with costs for psychological research and
operations that reach, at peak, a billion dollars
a year” (p. 402). He further documents the
involvement of one of the most eminent cognitive
psychologists of the time in this work D. O. Hebb
and his work on sensory deprivation.
Different views of how to define and measure
the impact of social deprivation suggest different
ways redress the adverse impact of poverty (Sen,
1999). Defining deprivation in solely material
terms, the commodity approach identifies certain
goods as intrinsically good. Deprivation is mea-
sured based on a lack of access to such goods or
commodities. Sen criticizes this approach as
overemphasizing goods to the neglect of people
for whom they are intended and as transforming
the means for attaining well-being into the ends
themselves. The focus is mistakenly placed on
goods rather than what goods can do for people
or people can do with goods. Some goods can
harm some people while benefiting others, and
goods can become bad if there is too much of
them. Sen concludes that commodities are not
good in themselves, but only by virtue of what
they can do for human beings.
D 394
To address social deprivation, Sen advances
what he calls the capabilities approach based
on his conclusion that poverty cannot be
primarily understood in economic terms. Instead
it is the deprivation of power and control or
the inability to exercise freedom that poses
the greatest obstacle to human development.
He (1999) writes, “What the capability approach
does in poverty analysis is to enhance the
understanding of the nature and causes of poverty
and deprivation by shifting primary attention
away from means to ends that people have
reason to pursue, and, correspondingly, to
the freedoms to be able to satisfy these ends”
(p. 90, italics in the original). This more holistic
view accords well with the interdependence of
individual, relational, and collective well-being
(Prilleltensky, 2008).
References
Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss, vol. 1: Attach-
ment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books. (Original
work published 1969).
David, B. (1993). An overview of research regarding the
effectiveness of restricted environmental stimulation
therapy as a complementary treatment for a range of
behavioral disorders. Neurobehavioral Health Ser-
vices, 1, 1–3.
Evans, G. W. (2004). The environment of childhood pov-
erty. American Psychologist, 59, 77–92.
Evans, G. W., & Kim, P. (2007). Childhood poverty and
health: Cumulative risk exposure and stress
dysregulation. Psychological Science, 18, 953–957.
McCoy, A. W. (2007). Science in Dachau’s shadow:
Hebb, Beecher, and the development of CIA psycho-
logical torture and modern medical ethics. Journal of
the History of Behavioral Sciences, 43(4), 401–417.
Prilleltensky, I. (1997). Values, assumptions, and prac-
tices: Assessing the moral implications of psycholog-
ical discourse and action. American Psychologist,
52(5), 517–535.
Prilleltensky, I. (2008). The role of power in wellness,
oppression, and liberation: The promise of
psychopolitical validity. Journal of Community Psy-
chology, 36, 116–136.
Prilleltensky, I., & Nelson, G. (2002). Doing psychology
critically: Making a difference in diverse settings.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rank, M. R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why
American poverty affects us all. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Desire
Rogers, A., & Pilgrim, D. (2003). Mental health and
inequality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sarason, S. B. (1981). An asocial psychology and
a misdirected clinical psychology. American Psychol-
ogist, 36, 827–836.
Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York:
Anchor Books.
van der Horst, F. C. P., & van der Veer, R. (2010). The
ontogeny of an idea: John Bowlby and contemporaries
on mother-child separation. History of Psychology,
13(1), 25–45.
Vicedo, M. (2009). Mothers, machines, and morals: Harry
Harlow’s work on primate love from lab to legend.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
45(3), 193–218.
Desire
Mario Orozco Guzman1 and Jeannet Quiroz2
1
Universidad Michoacana de San Nicola’s de
Hidalgo, Morelia, Michoaca’n, Mexico
2
School of Psychology, UMSNH, Morelia,
Mexico
Introduction
The concept of desire has been used in both
philosophy and psychology to refer to an inner
force that gives human beings vitality. As both
foundation and motor of the psyche, this concept
was developed and established on the basis of the
work of Freud. Lacan later reworked the concept
and transferred it to the external determinant of
language, while the philosophical modernity of
Descartes and Spinoza provided a relevant prior
context for development of the concept. For
Freud, desire is the cornerstone of the uncon-
scious formation of dreams, symptoms,
parapraxis, and jokes. As part of the pleasure
principle, it represents the demands of sexuality
in opposition to the reality principle and the strict
moral demands of the superego.
Definition
It is a formative process of the subject that pushes
it towards experiences of satisfaction and recogni-
tion in a fundamentally symbolic sense. As
Desire
a result, it is home to the dimension of truth to
which the subject must be ethically consistent.
Keywords
Psychoanalysis; lack; other; Freud; Lacan;
Martin Baro; Derek Hook; Martiza Montero;
Rogers
Traditional Debates
For Descartes, desire is a passion without contra-
dictions that violently wrenches the heart, yet is
not entirely dependent on the individual since as
it implies to the future and implies a relationship
built on knowledge. For Spinoza, it is inherent to
the human, an appetite with self-awareness. For
Freud, desire implies contradiction, conflict, and
therefore a dynamics of the psyche. Freud (1900)
comes close to the reflection of Spinoza when he
proposes a fundamental role for desire in the
formation of the psyche and goes so far as to
suggest that desire is the core of our existence.
In terms of what it represents, desire is the force
of the human psyche. For Freud, desire points
towards the reconstruction of a previously expe-
rienced satisfaction, and in contrast to Spinoza,
he also proposes that desire is unconscious; thus
unknowable.
For Freud, desire is formed in the meeting
between an unprotected being without sufficient
resources to deal with survival and a being that
offers outside help. Desire therefore appears
when an appeal is made to another in the search
for satisfaction and is awoken because the
Other cannot consistently provide this help.
For this reason, satisfaction is recreated as
a hallucination. Desire is also part of the precon-
scious that participates in the formation of
dreams as well as a symptom of hysteria. In
both cases, the participation of the desire to
punish, to repress, should also be taken into
account. This other desire, which is precisely
the intervention of repression, is what makes
the pleasure anticipated by unconscious desire
unpleasant. Lacan (1964) proposes that when
395 D
pleasure reaches a limit, such as repression,
desire remains limited although aleays pushing
over board.
In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920),
Freud subordinates desire to the repetition com-
pulsion for in this case, the unpleasant, the unde-
sirable, is repeated and desire operates with
a logic beyond the pleasure principle. Lacanian
thought has identified this logic with the symbolic D
order of language that inserts desire into the circle
of repetition.
This is why there is no desire without
a subject or without implying an Other. How-
ever, as proposed by Lacan (1953/1954), desire
also appears before language in the dialectic of
the imaginary, of the seen, the projected, and the
alienated in the Other. That is, in this primary
stage of mirror-stage tension, the Other appears
to sustain the desire of the subject, the Other
appears as aggressive desire. This is where we
find the Lacanian apothegm relating to how
human desire is the desire of the Other. There
is no otherness without desire or desire without
otherness, so alienation is fundamental to the
formation of the subject. Desire makes of
humans beings no adaptable animals because it
subverts the field of need articulated in the
demand formulated by reference to the Other,
as a symbolic space and a treasure trove of
signifiers. Roudinesco and Plon (1998) highlight
the fact that Lacan proposes a “link between
desire founded on recognition (desire of the
desire of the Other) and unconscious desire
(actualization in the Freudian sense)” (p. 216).
Desire appears to the extent that demand does
not articulate everything it wants; it is a search
not only for satisfaction but basically for
recognition.
Critical Debates
The central discussions concerning desire in rela-
tion to critical psychology can be grouped in 4
main perspectives.
1. On the basis of what Derek Hook (2004) terms
psychopolitics, influenced by on the work of
Frantz Fanon, desire is not considered
D 396
“transhistoric” or “universal,” but “is an out-
come of a specific configuration of power, of
real material, economic, cultural and sociopo-
litical conditions. . .” (Hook, p. 116). It also
establishes how desire not only emerges from
intrapsychic motivations but also intersected
by the social and historical order. This idea
runs parallel to Adorno’s correlation among
pleasure and prohibition. In this way, desire is
located ab initio in the sociocultural sphere.
2. The second position can be seen in the work of
Martin-Baró and Maritza Montero. Baró does
not deal with the concept of desire as such but
does discuss the idea of individual desire in
opposition to collective needs. Baró (1982)
proposes that desires should be “adjusted” to
suit needs: “subjective, group and individual
aspirations are oriented towards the satisfac-
tion of true needs” (p. 70). Montero (1997)
refers to the research process at the commu-
nity level, problematizing how individual
desires bias research work and understanding
this as a lack of commitment to the require-
ments of community work. For psychoanaly-
sis, it makes no sense to speak of individual
desire because desire implies a subject
ascribed to the Other which is in turn subject
to sociohistorical and cultural transforma-
tions. Granting that desire is the same thing
as prohibition; then, it is structure and compo-
sition include the marks of the symbolic order
and collective demands. Although it is
constructed from outside the subject, it builds
this subject and also alienates it, so any affir-
mation that the Other is an instance where the
signifier orders desire implies a political ques-
tion. The Other is, in this sense, a place of
power and a politics of liberation involves a
praxis of disalienation of the subject with
respect to the desire of the Other as a place of
power. This is what Lacan (1964) refers to as
la petite différence. In this same order of ideas,
feminist psychology predicated on social
constructivism has made it possible to “focus
attention on the critical analysis of the
established categories of psychological reason-
ing” (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1990, p. 36),
Desire
one of which is desire that, through its
self-ascription to Derrida’s deconstructive
approach, allows meanings to begin to be dis-
mantled. In this way, desire no longer pos-
sesses a closed, univocal condition. In this
sense, Butler (2007) posits that desire does
not allow itself to be regulated by hegemonic
criteria and positions of a sexual and
gender order, thus making its scope always
subversive.
3. For Zizek (2004), the dominion-power appa-
ratus of capitalist machinery interpellates to
the individual as a desiring subject,
a consumer, by offering her/him products
that will, presumably, satisfy her/his desire;
however, he fails to recognize the fact that
“the most elementary desire is the desire to
reproduce itself as desire (and not to find
satisfaction)”(2006, p. 61). Zizek thus coun-
terposes the dialectical condition of desire to
the inertia of the drive. This mobility of desire
entails metonymic displacement, for it “never
points to that which appears to be its object
but, rather, always ‘wants something else’” (p.
221). This symbolic substrate of desire sets it
apart from satisfaction and approximates it to
the search for recognition by subscribing its
constant aperture.
4. Finally, Rogers (2009), in his work on the
position of Lacan in critical psychology, dem-
onstrates how psychoanalysis and critical psy-
chology can find common ground. For Rogers,
this is to be found in the notion of “lack”
which is connected to “desire,” which is desire
of the Other, and in how recognition of this
lack opens the field of desire. He also points
out that each sphere of knowledge should be
kept open to the lack that implies recognizing
“certain discrepancies, yes – but more impor-
tantly, a gap as a place where there are no
answers, whereas simulation is not possible,
and where the questions we each raise in our
separate fields lead nevertheless to impera-
tives to act – in speech and in deeds – to
sustain our humanity through desire, against
the odds of our own destruction and implica-
tion in it” (Rogers, p. 13). The ethical status of
Determinism
desire therefore implies a compromise posi-
tion for the subject. Betraying the cause of
desire implies betrayal of the most authentic
part of your being. For this reason, Lacan
indicates that “the only thing one can be guiity
of, is having given ground one’s desire” (1960,
p. 513). Ceding to desire is to renounce the
position of subject in the face of the impera-
tives of submission to any tyrannical order
emanating from the Other as the place of the
Master.
References
Baro, M. (1990/1982). Guerra y salud mental. In
Psicologı́a social de la guerra: Trauma y terapia.
San salvador, el salvador: Uca editores.
Butler, J. (2007/1999). Gender trouble. Feminism and the
subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1900/1999). Die Traumdeutung. Gesammelte
Werke II-III. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer.
Freud, S. (1920/1999). Jenseits des Lustprinzips.
Gesammelte Werke, XIII. Frankfurt am Main,
Germany: Fischer.
Hare-Mustin, R. T., & Marecek, J. (1990). Making
a difference: Psychology and the construction of gen-
der. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lacan, J. (1953/1954). Le séminaire. Livre I. Les écrits
techniques de Freud. Paris, France: Seuil (poche),
1998.
Lacan, J. (1960). Lacan Séminaires Complets. L’éthique
de la psychanalyse. [Electronic Version].
Lacan, J. (1964/1998). Le séminaire. Livre 11. Le quatre
concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris,
France: Seuil (poche).
Montero, M. (1997). Entre el deseo indivudual y la
necesidad colectiva. AVEPSO Asociacion Venezolana
de Psicologia Social, 8, 77–85.
Roudinesco, E., & Plon, M. (1998). Diccionario de
psicoanálisis. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidos.
Zizek, S. (2004). Looking awry. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (2006). The parallax view. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Online Resources
Hook, D. (2004). Fanon and the psychoanalysis of
racism [online]. London, England: LSE Research On
line. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2567
Rogers, A. G. (2009). A place for lacan in critical psy-
chology? Four memos and a gap. Annual Review of
Critical Psychology, 7, 5–15. Retrieved from http://
www.discourseunit.com/arcp/7.htm
397 D
Determinism
Frank Richardson
Department of Educational Psychology,
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin,
TX, USA
D
Introduction
Deterministic doctrines are an issue or problem
for psychology and social theory for fairly obvi-
ous reasons. The idea that all events in the natural
world and all of human behavior and mental life
are governed by ironclad natural laws appears to
make any sort of free will, personal responsibil-
ity, or self-determination a complete illusion.
This is an especially serious concern for critical
social scientists. They are concerned not just to
preserve some sort of meaningful freedom in the
abstract or as a mainly philosophical matter. Crit-
ical social theory and psychology see freedom
and responsibility intimately linked. In this view
of its practitioners, freedom can and should be
employed to detect forms and instances of dom-
ination and injustice in the social world and to
actively undermine them in order to promote
equity, human dignity, and human welfare.
Determinism would seem to destroy this kind
moral belief and purpose. This concern links up
with the worry of many citizens looking at the
behavioral sciences from the outside that they
might lead to a frighteningly manipulative behav-
ioral technology or a harsh, depersonalizing
perspective on human life.
Definition
The doctrine of determinism typically refers to
the idea that all events and processes in both the
natural and social worlds are seen as governed
and hence determined by natural laws, many or
all of which one or another branch of natural or
D 398
social science can uncover and formulate.
“Determinism” in this sense is very much
a product of modern times. Premodern outlooks
usually saw humans as contextualized in
a meaningful cosmic order of some kind, in
which their purpose was to play their appropriate
role or part. Oversimplifying vastly, we might
say that earlier worldviews centered on the
cultivation of character, while the modern out-
look and culture focus on the achievement of
power. Critical social scientists are bound to be
suspicious of these earlier worldviews. It seems
to us that that their philosophies and religions
commonly rationalize arbitrary authority and
domination. However, we have to worry, as
well, about our own deeply held ideals of
social justice. It is not easy to explain their
place in the world or how they can be justified.
The early and middle twentieth-century critical
theorists of the Frankfurt School and J€urgen
Habermas were well aware of and struggled
with these questions.
The novel, modern scientific outlook on the
world, fashioned during the Enlightenment in
the West, radically objectifies the world or, as
Max Weber’s famously said, “disenchants” it.
This objectifying outlook leads to the convic-
tion that only those properties of nature that
can be precisely quantified are real and that
nature itself is a totality of brute material
objects in mechanistic, law-governed rela-
tions – an aggregate of physical things that
can be mastered through a cool, disengaged
methodology. A great many 20th and now
21st social scientists simply took for granted
this materialistic, deterministic picture of the
world and assumed the rigid determination of
all events in the spheres of human behavior,
mental life, emotional dynamics, and social
life by causes beyond human control (Slife &
Williams, 1995, pp. 94–126).
Keywords
Determinism; free will; efficient causality; final
causality; individualism; instrumentalism
Determinism
Traditional Debates
Dilemmas of Determinism
The result of adopting the doctrine of determinism
for social scientists, especially for psychologists,
who deal with the most personal and intimate
aspects of human life, is that they face a severe
dilemma. On the one hand, they are dedicated to
uncovering general laws of human behavior that
would permit us to freely engineer desired social
or psychological effects. On the other hand, how-
ever, this rigid picture of human life shaped by
brute causes would seem to effectively rule out the
very kind of creativity and ingenuity social scien-
tists themselves exercise in devising experiments
and articulating laws and theories of behavior.
This dilemma can be stated another way, one
that applies to all branches of social science. On
the one hand, it appears that any viable notion of
freedom requires that there be some ordered
realm of determination, causes, or influence in
which one might act and make a difference. Oth-
erwise the freedom would be impotent and mean-
ingless. On the other hand, for that freedom to be
meaningful, it has to amount to something more
than just another effect of causes that play upon
the human agent (Richardson & Bishop, 2002).
Bishop (2007) observes that among social sci-
entists, this “obvious tension between determin-
ism and freedom is rarely noticed, seldom
analyzed, and almost never viewed as something
that calls the reigning conceptions of psychology
into question” (p. 297). He suggests that there
seem to be two main ways this dilemma has
been coped with in modern psychology. One is
to assume a fairly strict and conventional deter-
minism while sidestepping the issue that this
either (1) inconsistently presupposes an implicit
notion of real freedom or else (2) undermines
some of its own important values and purposes,
such as the creative activity of psychologists
themselves or the responsible application of
their findings to human problems. The other
approach, adopted by a smaller, diverse group
of humanist, phenomenological, or existentialist
thinkers, is to vigorously defend ideals of free-
dom of choice and self-actualization. However,
they usually fail to note that pursuing these ideals
Determinism
requires some kind of connectedness and influ-
ence among events in human experience and do
not provide a plausible alternative account, an
alternative ontology, of this connectedness. This
leaves them somewhat at the mercy of the deter-
ministic and mechanistic view of the world that
undermines freedom. The dilemmas posed by
determinism turn out to be deep seated, confus-
ing, and seemingly intractable.
Free Will Debates in Philosophy
One might hope to turn to philosophy for guid-
ance in dealing the determinism and free will
question. It has received a lot of attention in
philosophy circles over the last 50–70 years.
But there is much disagreement there about how
to analyze or deal with these issues, with no easy
answers in sight. (For an overview of this debate
see Kane, 1996).
A relatively small number of philosophers
hold to a strict determinist view that makes free
will an illusion. Many feel this position is ren-
dered less plausible given the difficulties of
maintaining strict determinism even in physics
(Bishop, 2007).
Most other philosophers are either
incompatibilists or compatibilists. Incompa-
tibilists argue that we must have some form of
ultimate responsibility for our purposes, deci-
sions, and actions that escape determinism. Oth-
erwise, notions like praise, blame, desert,
creativity, and any claims to human dignity or
moral responsibility do not make any sense. In
contrast, compatibilists think that meaningful
free will can be seen as quite compatible with
determinism in the human realm. They argue that
all the ordinary freedoms we experience and
desire, such as freedom from coercion, con-
straint, and oppression, actually require deter-
minism. Self-determinism actually represents
a kind of determinism without constraint or
oppression, they feel. If we are free to do what
we want, then it is our will that is causally
efficacious, not outside obstacles or influences.
Compatibilism may give reflective social sci-
entists who worry about this problem an approach
that seems to honor freedom while maintaining
their scientific credentials. However, it is a very
399 D
difficult position to defend. First of all, freedom
from restraint and coercion are certainly valuable
in both a practical and ethical sense. But they
represent a quite limited view of human freedom.
Over half a century ago, Erich Fromm (1941/
1969) identified something he thought was
a major source of emotional and interpersonal
problems in living in modern times, namely, the
“ambiguity of freedom” in our kind of society. He D
argues that we have a well-developed sense of
“freedom from” arbitrary authority and dogmatic
or irrational impediments to freedom and to
exercising greater control over nature and our-
selves. However, we sorely lack a corresponding
sense of “freedom to” or “freedom for” that
would give some context, direction, or deeper
purpose to our increased freedom and opportu-
nity. The result, he feels, is that we tend to
become interchangeable cogs in the social
machinery, to become directionless and empty,
and to be led by the nose by whatever “sells” in
the marketplace, including a widespread “person-
ality market” in which even personal qualities
must be revised to accommodate the impulses
or preferences of others. As a result, we tend to
treat others and ourselves as depersonalized
objects. Hungry for substance but unable to find
it, in Fromm’s view, we tend to sell out our
freedom to fascism, fanaticism, the illusion of
total fulfillment in romantic love, craving and
seeking the approval of others at all costs, numer-
ous escapisms, or just going shopping.
This limited notion of freedom seems to be
associated with or even the cause of other
problems with compatibilism. For example,
incompatibilists argue that just freedom from
restraint is insufficient to guarantee that a person
is the ultimate source of his or her own values and
desires. Where do these values and desires come
from? Why are they not also ultimately the product
of forces and influences that play upon us rather
than in any sense freely chosen? In the end, isn’t
the contrast between self-determination and deter-
mination by outside forces a distinction without
a difference? If so, then “freedom from” is
not enough. Compatibilists think that the
incompatibilist’s search for freedoms over and
above the “ordinary everyday freedoms” they
D 400
champion is misguided or a mystification, like
a search for an illusory soul in the body or
a “ghost in the machine.” Incompatibilists argue
that compatibilist freedom is simply an illusion
and does not capture the idea of freedom (from
constraint or interference) we most desire and
value.
Common sense might suggest there are some
truths on both sides of this argument.
Compatibilists are surely right that without
some ordered realm of causes and influences in
which to act and make a difference, and therefore
some form of determination, there is no viable
sense of freedom. And incompatibilists are con-
vincing on the point that meaningful freedom
cannot amount to just another chain of causes
and effects. Nevertheless, the debate seems to
remain irresolvable in the terms in which it is
cast. There may be a way of getting past these
dilemmas and conceiving how a credible kind of
human freedom might exist in an ordered world
rather than disappearing into cause-effect pro-
cesses or remaining there as a kind of alien pres-
ence in their midst. But that will take identifying
and rethinking both assumptions about how the
world works and certain cultural ideals that are
widespread in modern culture and rather naively
and uncritically adopted by much social science
theory and research.
Critical Debates
Rethinking Individualism and
Instrumentalism
The unexamined assumptions that generate the
dilemmas of determinism, succinctly put, are
individualism and instrumentalism. Many cul-
tural critics and from Tocqueville to the present
day have identified and critiqued a one-sided
individualism in modern culture that they feel
promotes liberty and personal independence at
the price of a great deal of debilitating alienation
and emotional isolation. Recently, for example,
Cushman (1990, p. 604) contends that both our
society generally and much theory and research
in psychology in the twentieth century forward
presuppose the mature or ideal individual to be a
Determinism
“bounded, masterful self” that is expected to
“function in a highly autonomous, isolated way”
and “to be self-soothing, self-loving, and self-
sufficient.” Unfortunately, Cushman thinks there
is evidence that this inflated, would-be autono-
mous self almost inevitably collapses into an
“empty self,” whose characteristics of fragility,
sense of emptiness, and proneness to fluctuation
between feelings of worthlessness and grandios-
ity are often said to be the hallmarks of neurotic
psychopathology in our day (Kohut, 1977).
Cushman (1990, p. 604) defines emptiness as,
“in part, an absence of communal forms and
beliefs” which leaves individuals quite vulnera-
ble to influence from cultural forms such as
advertising and psychology, both professional
and “pop,” which emanate authority and
certainty. So it is telling that the goals of
psychotherapy are usually rendered in terms of
more effective individual behavior, enhanced
self-realization, or personal authenticity. Little
is said about ethical qualities of character or
commitment that many feel are essential to a
worthwhile or fulfilled life.
First and foremost, such individualism
decontextualizes the knowing subject from the
ongoing flow of practical life and human relation-
ships. Charles Taylor (1995) points out that this
view fits well with the widespread modern picture
of the self as disengaged, disembodied, and atom-
istic or “punctual.” This self is “distingui-
shed. . .from [the] natural and social worlds, so
that [its] identity is no longer to be defined in
terms of what lies outside. . . in these worlds”
and, when mature, is ready to freely and ratio-
nally treat both itself and the outside world instru-
mentally, in order to advance desired individual
or “social ends.” Taylor suggests that the modern
notion of a “punctual self” confronting a natural
and social world to which it has no essential ties is
as much a moral as a scientific ideal. It “connects
with. . .central moral and spiritual ideas of the
modern age,” especially the modern ideal of
“freedom as self-autonomy. . .to be self-responsi-
ble, to rely on your own judgment, to find your
purpose in yourself” (p. 7).
Taylor’s analysis intimates how closely this
kind of individualism is tied to instrumentalism,
Determinism
i.e., to a narrowly pragmatic or instrumental view
of mature human action. Fowers (2005) docu-
ments the extent to which this influential cultural
ideal pervades the field of psychology. He
describes the instrumental view as one that
imposes the idea of a sharp separation between
means and ends in human activity, with ends or
goals in living chosen subjectively and most
human action portrayed in terms of “strategies,
methods, or techniques that are directed toward
reaching a goal.” He identifies two key features of
the instrumental account. One is that there is “no
necessary connection between one’s goal and the
means one adopts” to reach it, so the means can
be discarded at no cost if another strategy turns
out to be more effective or efficient. The other is
that an individual or group’s “strategic expertise
in reaching their goals” is strictly “independent of
the kinds of persons they are,” of their ethical
quality or character (p. 56).
Individualism and instrumentalism incorpo-
rate some values that most of us rightly prize.
But they also contain some profound internal
contradictions that compel them to be rethought
(Richardson, 2012). Individualism insists that
while individuals have the right to choose their
own conception of the good life so long as they
respect the rights of others to do the same, these
notions of the good life are subjective or relative
to the choosing individual and cannot be imposed
as authoritative on other people. However, indi-
vidualism’s own conception of individual rights
and dignity and of the good society, defined in
this way, are not considered merely subjective or
relative but taken to be universally valid or true.
The instrumental perspective has appealed to
social scientists and professional psychothera-
pists because – in synch with the cultural status
quo rather than challenging it – it seems to leave
questions of goods and values to the individual,
thus freeing researchers and therapists to focus on
value-neutral causal connections and strategies.
But we may question that such austere value
neutrality is either possible or desirable. For one
thing, it seems plain that instrumentalism is itself
an ethical framework because it dictates that
choices of values and goals should be left to
individuals.
401 D
Instrumentalism and Free Will
Despite these problems, the conception of mature
human action as essentially instrumental allows
compatibilist philosophers and many social sci-
entists at least to give the appearance of reconcil-
ing determinism and free will. Usually views of
physical or psychological determinism assume
that the kind of causality operating in the world
is efficient causality or brute cause and effect D
relations that are governed by inviolable laws.
The instrumental picture of action appears to fit
well within a physical world of efficient causal
interactions. This might seem like exactly the
kind of world we need to serve as an arena of
instrumental action conceived of as manipulating
efficient causes in order to produce desired
effects. Moreover, this action looks like just the
sort of autonomous, self-determining activity that
our heavily antiauthoritarian individualistic ethi-
cal outlook and celebrates!
However, this appearance of reconciliation
disappears upon close scrutiny. This view
assumes the reality of some kind of freedom but
presents a picture of things in which the agent
really cannot be anything more than a link in the
efficient causal chain of events, one that does not
really have any power or leverage to manipulate
that chain. The dilemmas of determinism remain
in force.
Beyond the Dilemmas
Here is a possible way to move beyond these
dilemmas, one that would seem hospitable to
the kind of critical social science inquiry that
not only is committed to discerning forces in the
social world that undermine human liberty and
justice but also presupposes a meaningful mea-
sure of human freedom to diagnose these forces
and instigate social change. A version of this
approach is sketched in Robert Bishop’s (2007,
pp. 309–312) The Philosophy of the Social Sci-
ences. Bishop argues we need to develop a notion
of what Taylor (1975, p. 148ff.) calls “situated
freedom.” According to Taylor, the modern
understanding of freedom focuses on “negative
liberty,” which is largely what From meant by
“freedom from,” which can encourage an attitude
of “anything goes” or simply “doing what feels
D 402
good.” Needed is a conception of “positive lib-
erty” or a positive sense of the freedom to do
things deemed worthwhile by one’s community
and oneself. From this perspective, people are
always situated or embedded in cultural and his-
torical context that greatly defines their identity
and outlook. This context provides meaningful
objectives and guidelines in terms of which we
can deliberate about our aims and possible
courses of action. Being situated like this means
that we cannot escape having some convictions
about the good life, including such things as
justice, compassion, courage, humility, and for-
giveness. But it also means that we cannot avoid
questioning and revising those values and virtues
in the face of new experiences, including their
being challenged by others who look at things
from different points of view. Sensitive, chal-
lenging dialogue is at the heart of this picture of
human agency in a life world.
In this life world there are, generally speaking,
two kinds of human practices. Aims in living in
the instrumental view are largely restricted to
what might be termed “external goods,” such as
wealth, power, prestige, or various pleasures,
comforts, and satisfactions, which are the sepa-
rate outcome or payoff of some activity, usually
held as possessions by individuals. Typically,
their supply is limited and they are objects of
competition. What instrumentalism misses is
“internal goods” that are qualitatively different
and have a certain primacy in human life. They
are an omnipresent and prominent part of human
behavior. In fact, they provide the infrastructure
for and orient, and direct our instrumental activ-
ity. They reflect a different kind of purpose and
are found meaningful in a different way than
external goods. One can attain internal goods
only by acting in the ways that embody those
goods. Be it spending unstructured time with
a child or friend, acting courageously without
certainty about the outcome, creative intellectual
or artistic endeavor, cultivating a friendship
(which from time to time will involve one friend
correcting or challenging the other in a way that
puts the friendship temporarily at risk), or prac-
ticing meditation or contemplative prayer, the
Determinism
activity is felt to be good and is enjoyed for its
own sake, not undertaken primarily to reach any
other outcome or product.
No one should deny or depreciate everyday
instrumental activity as a normal and positive
aspect of human life. Such activity can be reward-
ing and beneficial and plays a role in most human
undertakings. The problem arises when instru-
mental prowess becomes an end in itself,
decoupled from the cultivation of internal goods.
In this view, there are broadly two basic kinds
of human practice, which Guignon (1993) terms
“means–end” and “constituent–end” practices.
This is not something preferred or ideal, but
simply a fact of how human behavior and social
life are constituted and work. Means–end
practices are celebrated by instrumentalism. In
constituent–end practices, means cannot be sep-
arated from ends because they are “experienced
as central to constituting a particular way of life.”
The whole activity “is undertaken for the sake of
being such and such: I run as a part of being
a healthy person, or I help someone for the sake
of being a good friend” (p. 230).
What kind of causality is involved in this kind
of life world, where constituent–end practices
and the cultivation of internal goods are promi-
nent? Clearly, it is not exclusively efficient cau-
sality, the sort of means–end connections among
events whose discernment makes successful
instrumental action possible. In this view, what
is sometimes called “linear determinism across
time” is not the exclusive or main form of cau-
sality in the human realm. Rather, “final causal-
ity” plays a central role in the shaping of human
psychology and social life. Final causality
involves the goal, purpose, or end of
something. . .subjects of inquiry are caused by
the telos, or purpose, they have. The entity
under consideration “behaves for the sake of”
(Slife & Williams, 1995, p. 115) a purpose or
goal and is therefore determined by it. This is
often the commonsense understanding of
humans, that they behave for the sake of their
intentions or goals, which shape their action. If
humans change their goals, their actions change
along with this change in aim or purpose. This
Determinism
causal process has a profound social or relational
dimension. Intentions and aims are refined and
modified through dialogue and often quite inti-
mate processes of mutual influence with others,
to the extent that we might even want to speak of
a “shared agency” (Taylor, 1991, p. 311).
Slife and Williams (1995) insist that it is
a “misunderstanding of final causality that such
intentions are caused by past events. . .by prior
conditioning from one’s environment” rather
than “the causes of the actions that accompany
them” (p. 115). In that case, of course, they would
not be intentions or purposes of the sort we all
think we have and that we appraise, rethink, and
modify often in everyday life. Many social scien-
tists and others do insist such intentions must be
reduced to simply the brute effects of preceding
efficient causes. But this view is riddled with
difficulties. Richardson and Bishop (2002) argue
that determinisms of this kind seem quite arbi-
trarily to assume an exclusively instrumental
view of human action, in part for ideological
reasons based in some variety of modern individ-
ualism. Such determinism projects a natural and
social world of efficient cause and effect relations
as a field suited for the operation of the kind of
purposeful instrumental activity they prize,
where one can choose to manipulate known
causes in order to produce desired effects. How-
ever, in such a world, any leverage or capacity for
exercising effective instrumental action either
disappears completely, swallowed up by deter-
minism, or else remains there as an alien, entirely
inexplicable presence.
It is not necessary to posit prior efficient
causes that “really” cause intentions and purpose-
ful action to account for the high degree of con-
formity, continuity, and coordination in social
and cultural life. Human action is deeply social
and consists greatly in cooperative activities
motivated and guided by common meanings and
shared values. Individuals must follow many of
the same detailed rules and customs to survive
and participate at all successfully in their society.
From this perspective, human activities are
governed by changing periodically reinterpreted
social rules or conventions rather than by natural
403 D
law. These usually slowly evolving meanings and
conventions shape both their outward practices
and institutions and their most inward beliefs and
feelings. Indeed, to a great extent they shape their
very identity as persons.
In this view, there is no need to assume chains
of causality that are somehow interrupted or
altered by other causal forces impinging from else-
where. Some degree of spontaneous, playful, or D
deliberate reinterpretation of meanings and goals
occurs constantly as an inherent feature of social
and psychological life. Usually things change only
slowly, but they never remain the same.
Streams of efficient causes and their effects
play only a subordinate role in the everyday
human life world. Law-governed processes in the
natural world, including the human body and
brain, clearly cannot be directly violated by an
act of will. They impose unalterable constraints
on human activity. We may cooperate with these
processes and sometimes instrumentally manipu-
late states of affairs. But the purposes and values
that guide both instrumental reasoning and our
other culturally meaningful pursuits, including
the cultivation of internal goods, are hammered
out through mutual influence and conversation
among the participants in an intersubjective life
world. In this human realm, “determinism” can be
thought of as referring to processes of influence,
dialogue, and constraint that shape human iden-
tity, personality, and cultural life. These processes
of mutual shaping are more profound and intimate
than brute efficient causal forces. In this world,
“freedom” can be understood in terms of our par-
ticipation in the ongoing, creative reinterpretation
of our norms and practices.
The exercise of this kind of freedom can entail
a very demanding kind of personal responsibility
even though it is able to anticipate and control the
course of events only to a limited degree. It means
living creatively and responsibly down a path that
is full of surprises and unexpected turns of events.
From this perspective, freedom and determinism
mesh smoothly rather than determinism ultimately
quashing freedom or human freedom remaining
an undeniable but inexplicable reality. There is no
freedom without context.
D 404
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Fromm, E. (1969). Escape from freedom. New York:
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minism in social science. In H. Atmanspacher &
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MA: Harvard University Press.
Developmental Psychology,
Overview
Stephanie M. Reich and Alejandra S. Albarran
School of Education, University of California,
Irvine, CA, USA
Introduction
The field of developmental psychology has
experienced much growth and change over the
last century. Expanding from the study of
individual psyche and perception, research in
this area now includes the study of all aspects of
the developing organism from cellular develop-
ment of gametes to the last breath of the elderly.
Developmental psychologists explore social,
Developmental Psychology, Overview
emotional, physical, and cognitive development
for individuals as well as collectives across the
life span. Heated debates of how individuals and
groups develop have emerged over the years,
however, few developmental psychologists
embrace the extremes of these discourses. While
the field has not reached consensus on definitive
explanations of development, findings from
developmental psychology research have signif-
icant implications for parenting, education, and
policy.
Definition
There have been many definitions of develop-
mental psychology over the years. However
different, they all concur that developmental psy-
chology is the study of change over time. This
change includes psychological, perceptual, and
emotional changes that can impact physical, cog-
nitive, language, and social processes. According
to some theoretical perspectives, these changes in
turn can be influenced by social, biological,
cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. The field
of developmental psychology began with a
focus on childhood but over time has expanded
to include the period from conception to
death, with newer research including gene
replication prior to conception. Most develop-
mental psychologists would describe the field as
spanning from the womb to the tomb.
Keywords
Development; infant, child, and/or adolescent
development; human development; life-span
development; developmental science
Historical Background
The history of the field of developmental
psychology is relatively brief, and the focus of
the discipline has shifted as more is understood
about individual and group differences. While the
underpinnings of developmental psychology can
Developmental Psychology, Overview
be seen in the writings of the ancient Greeks,
Shakespeare, and Enlightenment theorists, it
was not until the late nineteenth century that
developmental psychology was formalized as
a field. G. Stanley Hall is most frequently
credited with the establishment of the discipline
with the creation of the American Journal of
Psychology in 1887 and his two-volume text on
Adolescence (1904). Hall also collaborated with
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in their efforts to
understand the human psyche. Freud’s work
proposed that there were distinct stages in
development from infancy to adolescence. Hall
stressed the importance of the transition to
maturity (adolescence), and Jung theorized
about the conscious and unconscious mind, pav-
ing the way for the study of personality.
Drawing from the stage theories proposed by
Freud, Erik Erikson expanded the notion of
development from childhood through adulthood.
This life-span perspective identified different
developmental demands from the first years
through old age. Interestingly, these early
developmental psychologists did not focus on
change over time but rather on how early experi-
ences could be predictive of later-life outcomes
(Hunt, 1994).
Shortly after the start of the twentieth century,
there was a clear understanding of the importance
of studying individual and group differences in
development, as demonstrated by Arnold
Gesell’s creation of growth charts documenting
normative development and Théodore Simon and
Alfred Binet’s efforts to test intelligence. While
further establishing the discipline of develop-
mental psychology, many of these efforts had
negative consequences, such as providing
theories and measurement tools that became
ammunition for the eugenics movement.
By the 1920s, behaviorism and the work of
John B. Watson, in particular, flourished,
drawing attention to the role of the environment
in development and providing legitimacy for
research in developmental psychology to inform
parenting and education. Over subsequent
decades, behaviorism expanded with the works
of such theorists as B.F. Skinner and Albert
Bandura, spawning social learning theories that
405 D
included individuals as active contributors to
their own development.
Jean Piaget’s work was also integral to the
notion that individuals are active constructors of
their knowledge. A stage theorist, Piaget,
highlighted the importance of the biological as
well as the environmental aspects of children’s
lives. Specifically, he noted children’s active role
in their own cognitive maturity and thus gave rise D
to constructivist theories of development.
In exploring emotional development, John
Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, while working
with children after World War II, identified the
importance of relationships between children and
their caregivers (most frequently mothers). This
work on attachment conflicted with Watson’s
explicit instructions for mothers to withhold
affection from children and gave rise to another
realm of research in developmental psychology
interested in socio-emotional growth.
Further expanding the scope of developmental
research was Lev Vygotsky’s focus on the
sociocultural milieu of development. Although
written in the Soviet Union in the 1920s–1930s,
Vygotsky’s work was not translated into English
until the 1970s. This delay may have helped
Vygotsky’s theories gain traction given the era’s
increasing focus on context. Over the next two
decades, Urie Bronfenbrenner developed the eco-
logical (later expanded to bioecological) model
of human development. This systems theory
posited that humans are embedded in nested
reciprocal systems with proximal and distal
influences.
Since the end of the last century, the field of
developmental psychology has become more
expansive with a focus on individuals and groups
and the impacts of numerous contributors to
development, from genes to cultural settings.
Childhood, rather than remaining a monolithic
category, has been divided into specific age
brackets, including a space between adolescence
and adulthood (emerging adults), and increased
attention has been paid to aging, especially old
age. There is also a greater awareness of how
development is affected by structural or social
contexts and factors such as poverty, race,
and ethnicity.
D 406
Traditional Debates
Nature Versus Nurture
One of the most heated and long-running debates
in developmental psychology has been the role of
nature versus nurture in development. Biological
maturational views of development (nature) posit
that development is the natural unfolding of
genetic programming. While some theorists in
this camp ignore any contribution of environ-
ment, most acknowledge the influence that envi-
ronments can have on genotypic expression, with
some asserting that genes, actively and passively,
select the environments people experience
(Scarr & McCartney, 1983). On the other side,
supporters of the role of the environment
(nurture) have ranged from ignoring any genetic
underpinnings of development to focusing on
how environments drive the bulk of develop-
ment, with some variation attributed to biological
processes. While this debate harkens back even to
the writings of Aristotle, Locke, and Rousseau,
most developmental scientists acknowledge that
there is no way to disentangle the biological from
the environmental, and more recent research has
focused on the interplay between nature and nur-
ture in human development. Psychologist Donald
Hebb summarized this idea well when he
suggested that deciding if nature or nurture con-
tributes more to development is like asking
whether length or width contributes more to the
area of a rectangle. Like-minded developmental
psychologists now appreciate that human
development is a product of an interaction
between both genes and environments, and new
approaches to research address this growing
awareness (e.g., dynamic systems theories,
bioecological perspectives, gene x environment
fit theory, epigenetics). Further, with increasing
methods for studying genes, newer research has
found that environmental influences can turn
genes on and off and that these changes can be
passed on over multiple generations of offspring.
Thus, the nature/nurture debate is further
complicated by the notion that environmental
influences are not necessarily confined to the
individuals’ lifetime.
Developmental Psychology, Overview
Continuous Versus Discontinuous Change
While the role of nature and nurture is probably
the most debated issue in the field, question of
whether development is continuous or discontin-
uous provides another source of disagreement.
Much of the early work in developmental
psychology used stage theories to describe devel-
opment (e.g., Freud, Erikson, Kohlberg, Piaget).
The idea that individuals go through qualitative
changes over time has been influential in both
research and theory. Others, however, have
argued that development is a process of gradual
quantitative, rather than radical, change (e.g.,
Vygotsky, Watson). Proponents of theories of
continuous change argue that measurement
insensitivity might lead to the impression of
qualitative change when the gradual process
cannot be observed well. Still others question
whether different aspects of development
undergo different patterns of change, with some
aspects being continuous and others discontinu-
ous (e.g., Siegler).
Universal Versus Sociocultural Influences
Another important debate relates to the role of
culture in development and whether there are
universal processes or if all development is con-
text dependent. This debate connects to the
nature/nurture dispute but is not synonymous.
Appreciation of cultural influences can be biolog-
ically based, such as the notion of experience-
dependent brain plasticity, or can be grounded on
the belief that individuals are blank slates waiting
for culture to shape them. The writings of Piaget
and Vygotsky are illustrative of these opposing
perspectives, with Piaget viewing developmental
processes as universal with culture contributing
to variations in timing and complexity and
Vygotsky arguing that development is a social
process that is driven through cultural exchanges
(Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1978). More recently,
efforts have been made to synthesize these views
by exploring cultural pathways for universal
development in which cultural values, ecological
contexts, and socialization processes are inte-
grated in addressing developmental needs
(Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003).
Developmental Psychology, Overview
Critical Debates
Research Precision Versus Ecological Validity
Theories of psychological development are
heavily influenced by the methods used to study
humans (or in some cases animals). Laboratory
settings allow for more control over the research
situation but are often artificial, generating find-
ings that may not be applicable to real-world
settings. As Bronfenbrenner (1977) aptly noted,
“much of developmental psychology is the sci-
ence of the strange behavior of children in strange
situations with strange adults for the briefest pos-
sible periods of time” (p. 513) and therefore may
not be ecologically valid. Additionally, many
developmental questions are not amenable to lab-
oratory research. Therefore, naturally occurring
experiments, correlational studies, and longitudi-
nal observational research are highly prevalent in
the field. While more sensitive to the social and
physical context of development, these studies
provide challenges in identifying causal relation-
ships and understanding mechanisms of change,
especially if they are reciprocal in nature.
Ethical Issues
Ethical issues have plagued the field of develop-
mental psychology since its inception. Guidelines
for principled procedures of informing partici-
pants about research, obtaining assent, and utiliz-
ing active, rather than passive, consenting
procedures exist; however, ethical quandaries
still remain. These issues often arise in the design
of interventions with unknown consequences, the
decision of whether intervention is warranted at
all, and the choices to observe, rather than inter-
vene, in developmental processes (Fisher &
Tyron, 1990). Further, the interpretation and dis-
semination of research findings with and without
awareness of how these results might be used to
inform policy is another ethical concern.
Throughout the field’s history, research in
developmental psychology has been used to sup-
port established and often inequitable practices
(e.g., racial and gender segregation), promote dis-
criminatory policies (e.g., eugenics), and facilitate
social change (e.g., integration, compensatory
407 D
education). Efforts to use developmental findings
to inform sociopolitical practices and policies can
be seen throughout the field, from Watson’s
Psychological Care of the Infant and Child to
Zigler’s Project Head Start to Shonkoff and
Phillips’ From Neurons to Neighborhoods.
Deficit Model Versus Strength-Based
Perspectives D
Derived from general psychology, it is not sur-
prising that developmental psychology has often
used a deficit model to study development, focus-
ing on what hinders or challenges growth. This
deficit approach has been used for understanding
the effects of trauma and deprivation to assessing
the additive impact of risk factors. Only recently
has developmental psychology embraced a more
strength-based approach, with an appreciation of
resilience and a greater focus on what helps indi-
viduals excel. As Seligman and Csikszentrnihalyi
(2000) point out, “Psychology should be able to
help document what kinds of families result in
children who flourish, what work settings support
the greatest satisfaction among workers, what
policies result in the strongest civic engagement,
and how people’s lives can be most worth living”
(p. 5). While identifying risks and ways to fix
problems is still the norm within developmental
research, the newer focus on strengths is seen
most clearly in the area of positive youth
development.
Direct Effects, Reciprocal Influences, and
Transactional Relationships
As mentioned above, developmental psychology
has struggled with how to measure both context
and relationships between individuals and their
environments. Many traditional methods in
developmental research are limited to direct
effects and interactions, with little ability to
understand reciprocal and transactional relation-
ships. This limitation is especially striking when
using quantitative methods that do not allow for
nonindependence or reciprocal causation.
Conceptually, the field struggles with what to
include as the environment of the developing
person. While context clearly matters, there is
D 408
much debate about how these factors should be
included in the study of development. Findings
that discrepancy in wealth within a country can
be a greater determinant of health and well-being
than between-country wealth or that one’s sense
of agency and civic engagement contribute
meaningfully to health (Marmot, 2006) demon-
strate the challenges of identifying context. This
debate is particularly heated around topics such
as how to consider (e.g., include in studies,
measure) socioeconomic status and its persistent
impact on development.
“Normal” Development and Power
Historically, developmental psychology has used
the white, middle class as the standard for mea-
suring typical development (Guthrie, 2003).
Since much of the work was done in university
settings and because people with higher income
and education are more likely to volunteer, these
types of participants became overrepresented in
research and therefore, their behavior is seen as
normative. However, these behaviors do not nec-
essarily represent the diversity of people possi-
ble. Using such homogeneous samples ensures the
perpetuation of the status quo, by making the
dominant group the standard by which to compare
others. This pattern is evident in early psycholog-
ical research in which males were studied and
findings were generalized to all others. Some of
the most famous and often cited research utilized
exclusively male samples such as Milgram’s stud-
ies of obedience, Festinger’s cognitive dissonance
theory, Zimbardo’s prison study, Sherif’s Robbers
Cave study, and Kohlberg’s study of moral devel-
opment. As Carol Gilligan (1993) argued about
moral development research, the studies of
development using males as a marker of normative
development place female development as inferior
to males rather than as different processes.
These uses of homogeneous, dominant groups
then can contribute to the power structures that
are rarely acknowledged in psychological
research (Foucault, 1989). Nonetheless, they are
of paramount importance, given that develop-
ment occurs in a culturally mediated and socially
constructed context. As such, development is not
just an individual act but a product and
Developmental Psychology, Overview
contributor of societal structures (Parker, 1999).
Issues of power are also seldom addressed in
developmental psychology, and this is especially
true when considering differential levels of
power within families (e.g., parents and children,
men and women), between social roles (e.g.,
social workers and elderly, teachers and stu-
dents), across social settings (e.g., low-income
communities, orphanages), and through the
research process (e.g., researchers and partici-
pants). This lack of acknowledgement of power
and the determination of what is normative are
not commonly discussed, although some theorists
have raised some of these questions (e.g.,
Burman, 2008). While greater effort is being
placed on exploring the impacts of such things
as racism, discrimination, oppression, sexism,
and poverty on developmental trajectories of
children (Garcı́a Coll, 1990), issues of power
are not often at the forefront of developmental
psychology research.
International Relevance
There is a difference between what the field of
developmental psychology knows is beneficial
for health and well-being and what is done with
people to support their development, especially
on a global level. While debates may persist
about the impacts of culture and the nature of
development, the field has some definitive
answers about what is detrimental to growth and
what helps individuals to thrive. Nonetheless,
little of this knowledge is put into practice.
Almost one billion people starve each year, with
85 % of those under 5 years. Preventable injury
and illness are the leading cause of death for
children, yet limited efforts are made to promote
safer environments. Research has repetitively
demonstrated the detrimental impact of not
having stable caregivers, stimulating environ-
ments, or emotional and physical contact,
especially for children. Yet countless people
experience extreme deprivation around the
globe. Thus, while the field’s international
relevance is high, findings are not adequately
used to improve human development.
Developmental Psychology, Overview
Practice Relevance
The discipline of developmental psychology has
implications for many fields, especially those
involving practice. In particular, the study of
developmental psychology has practical rele-
vance for parents and other primary caregivers
as they investigate ways to care for children that
will promote positive developmental trajectories.
The field of education draws heavily from devel-
opmental psychology to support best practices for
working with infants, children, adolescents,
emerging adults, adults, and seniors. Work on
typical development has been helpful in under-
standing atypical development and when and
how to provide interventions and supports. Social
workers and community practitioners benefit
from developmental research when designing
universal prevention programs and primary and
secondary interventions. In addition to the many
fields of practice, developmental psychology has
significantly informed policy and hopefully,
more of the findings related to what helps indi-
viduals to thrive will be used to inform future
policy and practice.
Future Directions
The field of developmental psychology has
grown over that past century, but there remains
room for continued growth in our understand-
ing of human development. One promising tra-
jectory for this growth may be through
developmental psychologists collaborating
with researchers in other disciplines (e.g., soci-
ology, anthropology, medicine, biology, educa-
tion, economics) and moving toward a larger
field of developmental science. While these
interdisciplinary perspectives might engender
further dispute in the aforementioned areas as
well as introduce new debates, these discourses
could broaden thinking in the field. By opening
communication between researchers and prac-
titioners of many disciplines, we may better
achieve holistic understandings of what con-
tributes to healthy development and put that
knowledge to better use.
409 D
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecol-
ogy of human development. The American Psycholo-
gist, 32, 515–531. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.32.7.513.
Burman, E. (2008). Deconstructing developmental
psychology. New York: Routledge.
Fisher, C. B., & Tyron, W. W. (Eds.). (1990). Ethics in
applied developmental psychology: Emerging issues
in an emerging field (advances in applied developmen- D
tal psychology). New York: Ablex Publishing.
Foucault, M. (1989). The history of sexuality: The will to
knowledge. London: Penguin.
Garcı́a Coll, C. (1990). Developmental outcome of minor-
ity infants: A process oriented look into our begin-
nings. Child Development, 61, 270–289. doi:10.1111/
j.1467-8624.1990.tb02779.x.
Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice: Psychological
theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Greenfield, P. M., Keller, H., Fuligni, A., & Maynard, A.
(2003). Cultural pathways through universal develop-
ment. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 461–490.
doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145221.
Guthrie, R. V. (2003). Even the rat was white: A historical
view of psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Allyn &
Bacon.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its
relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex,
crime, religion, and education (Vol. 2). New York:
Appleton.
Hunt, M. (1994). The story of psychology. Harpswell, ME:
Anchor.
Marmot, M. (2006). Health in an unequal world. Lancet,
368(9552), 2081–2094. doi:10.1016/S0140- 6736(06)
69746-8.
Parker, I. (1999). Critical psychology: Critical links.
Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 1, 3-18.
Retrieved, from http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/
parker1.htm
Piaget, J. P. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children.
New York: International Universities Press.
Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make
their own environments: A theory of genotype envi-
ronment effects. Child Development, 54(2), 424–435.
Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/1129703.
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ogist, 55(1), 5–14. doi:10.1037//0003·066X.55.1.5.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development
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edu/
D 410
Developmental psychology. http://www.apa.org/about/
division/div7.aspx
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www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01933973
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homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/SRHD/
Deviance
Christopher Williams
Criminal Justice Studies, Bradley University,
Peoria, IL, USA
Introduction and Definition
The notion of deviance as a descriptive label for
varieties of human thought, feeling, and behavior
emerged and evolved specifically within the field
of sociology beginning in the mid-twentieth cen-
tury. The “attitudes,” “behaviors,” and “condi-
tions” (Adler & Adler, 2006) that would come
to be classified and studied as “deviant” had
theretofore been subject of a variety of descrip-
tive terms and associated theoretical content from
within a variety of disciplines (e.g., “moral insan-
ity,” “degeneracy,” “feeblemindedness,” and
more inclusive terms such as “psychopathol-
ogy”). From its origins, the concept of deviance
promised organizational clarity. Forms and pat-
terns of thinking, feeling, and behaving as diverse
as mental illness, illicit drug use, violent crime,
and atypical sexual behavior could be studied and
digested more systematically with their shared
features delineated and placed within a coherent
framework (e.g., Best, 2004). While the term
“deviance” itself derives from a statistical appre-
ciation for the ways in which individual cases can
vary from an overall mean or average within
a population, it has come to refer more directly
(and meaningfully) to violations of social norms.
The conceptualization of deviance, however, has
historically been and remains a critical point of
contention within the social sciences.
Deviance
Keywords
Deviance; Deviant; Interactionism; Positivism;
Social Control; Social Norms
Conceptualization and Debate
The first and perhaps most essential question one
might ask about deviance is also the source of
conflict and controversy amongst those who
study the subject, namely, what is it that is
being studied? As suggested by Erich Goode
(2010), there are two general approaches to the
study of deviance. The first is variously
described as and typically incorporates the
underlying philosophical assumptions of, objec-
tivism, positivism, determinism, absolutism,
and essentialism. It assumes that deviance is
inherently different from convention and, by
extension, that deviants have qualities or char-
acteristics that make them categorically differ-
ent from nondeviants. Rooted in religious
traditions and/or naturalistic models of human
behavior, what is being studied are violations of
social norms, and the purpose of that study is
most often to discover generalities and pose
explanations of deviance from which policy
implications directed toward preventing and
controlling deviance and deterring, sanctioning,
or treating deviants can be derived. Problemati-
cally, this paradigm uncritically accepts that
norms are a matter of consensus or widespread
agreement, discounts the relativistic nature of
those norms, and largely fails to consider the
ways in which conflict, power, and social
processes shape definitions of and reactions to
deviance.
Although many social scientists working from
within the positivist paradigm will define devi-
ance straightforwardly as a rule violation, con-
structionist and critical sociologists (sometimes
grouped as interactionism) are more likely to
regard deviance as a concept, without essential
and objective properties, whose meaning is
socially constructed. Thus, there is nothing abso-
lute and unchanging about deviance. Meanings
are constructed and reconstructed, applied
Deviance
differentially in different social contexts, and
subject to interpretational and situational varia-
tions. The either/or logic of objectivist epistemol-
ogy gives way to an understanding of human
cognition, emotion, and behavior as potentially
both deviant and not deviant simultaneously. The
same belief, act, or condition can mean different
things to different people in different social set-
tings and, consequently, be reacted to or judged
variously.
By this logic, it is the application of such
a construction to a particular act or person that
makes it deviant – not something inherent in the
act or person. In the oft-repeated words of How-
ard Becker (1963: 9), “social groups create devi-
ance by making the rules whose infraction
constitutes deviance, and by applying those
rules to particular people. . .deviant behavior is
behavior that people so label” [italics in original].
More specifically for the interactionist, deviance
is more than a rule violation – it entails and
arguably requires the presence of four features:
(1) a violation (or perceived violation) of a social
norm or rule; (2) a person to whom that violation
can be attached or attributed; (3) an audience to
perceive the violation and judge it to be deviant;
and (4) a likelihood of negative reaction from that
audience followed, perhaps, by formal or infor-
mal intervention or sanction (see Goode, 2010).
Deviance may not, for instance, involve the
actual violation of a social norm; people can be
falsely accused of deviant acts or falsely diag-
nosed as mentally ill and subsequently labeled
and treated as deviant. By contrast, those who
overtly violate social norms may do so in secrecy
and therefore avoid being perceived and reacted
to as deviants (e.g., Goffman, 1986).
It is also crucial to recognize that, just as there
exists a wide assortment of social norms that
inform virtually all elements of human existence,
there is an equally wide variety of specific forms
that norm violations can assume. While some
sociologists favor defining deviance to include
only overt acts, many incorporate cognitive, emo-
tional, and physical attributes, traits, and fea-
tures – some over which individuals have little,
if any, control. Attitudes or belief systems (e.g.,
politics, religious or supernatural views, mental
411 D
illness), overt behaviors (e.g., crime, drug use,
alternative sexual practices), and conditions
such as socioeconomic status, physical appear-
ance, or disease can all attract negative reaction
from audiences and thus be sources of deviant
labels and corresponding censure, condemnation,
and/or control. By this logic, persons who are
involuntarily poor, mentally retarded, and even
“ugly” can be deviant in the sense that they attract D
negative social reactions (e.g., pity, contempt,
rejection, and avoidance).
From an interactionist perspective, then, the
way in which deviance is defined, how and by
whom it is defined, how those definitions are
maintained, and the nature of the negative reac-
tions to which norms violators are subjected (e.g.,
institutional processing) are often more signifi-
cant than deviant acts or persons themselves.
Laws and social norms, as well as perceptions
of and reactions to their violation, are fluid. In
other words, they can and do vary significantly by
time, place, and audience. Additionally, law-
makers and agents of social control such as police
officers, psychologists and psychiatrists are of
interest for their roles in the definitional process,
the application of deviant labels, and the
processing of persons who violate social norms
(e.g., Pfhol, 2009; Schur, 1980). Political author-
ities, “moral entrepreneurs” and interest groups,
the media, and religion are common sources of
critical investigation into the construction,
retention, and evolution of deviant categories
(see, e.g., Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).
References
Adler, P., & Adler, P. (2006). Constructions of Deviance:
Social Power, Context, and Interaction (5th.). Bel-
mont, CA: Wadsworth.
Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
Deviance. New York: Free Press.
Best, J. (2004). Deviance: Career of a Concept. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth.
Goffman, E. (1986). Stigma: Notes on the Management of
Spoiled Identity. New York: Touchstone.
Goode, E. (2010). Deviant behavior (9th.). Englewood
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D 412
Pfhol, S. (2009). Images of Deviance and Social
Control: A Sociological History (2nd.). New York:
McGraw-Hill.
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id¼g9781405124331_yr2012_chunk_g978140512433
110_ss1-41
Diagnosis, Overview
Stijn Vanheule
Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical
Consulting, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Introduction
In psychology, diagnosis refers to the process of
determining and identifying psychological prob-
lems and/or mental disorders. Diagnosis aims at
naming aspects of an individual’s functioning or
designating the functioning of a group, such as
a family or a corporation. Depending on the the-
oretical framework (psychotherapeutic school of
thought, specialist areas in psychology), different
interpretations have been given to the term.
A major discussion in the field is whether diag-
nosis should classify psychological problems in
terms of standard categories and labels or should
aim at describing problems in tailor-made clini-
cal case formulations.
Definition
Diagnosis is the process of determining, identify-
ing, and naming psychological problems and/or
mental disorders in an individual or in a group.
Keywords
Mental disorder; psychical suffering; classifica-
tion; DSM; medical model; psychotherapy
Diagnosis, Overview
psychoanalysis; David Cooper; Michel Foucault;
Sigmund Freud; Wilhelm Griesinger; Emil
Kraepelin; Jacques Lacan; Ronald Laing;
Philippe Pinel; Thomas Szasz
History
Etymologically, the word “diagnosis” stems from
the Greek verb “diagignoskein,” which means “to
discern” or “to distinguish,” as well as “to know
thoroughly” (Harper, 2011). The idea of diagno-
sis came to psychology via medicine, where
diagnosis refers to the process of determining,
identifying, and naming diseases. Medical
diagnosis is part of a cyclical process, whereby
symptoms and complaints are seen as potential
signs of illness: a diagnostician compares symp-
toms and complaints with expert knowledge on
diseases, such that in a next step, a decision can
be made on the nature of the illness a patient is
presenting with. Crucial to this process is the
observing stance or the medical gaze of the diag-
nostician (Foucault, 2005) and the evaluation of
case-specific symptoms and complaints in terms
of established illness and disease categories.
Characteristically, medical expert knowledge
covers the areas of etiology, course of illness,
outcome, and treatment options. Medical diagno-
sis builds on a semiological approach to distress:
the patient is seen as the sender of illness signals
that the diagnostician needs to decode.
Starting from a systematic observation of
cases, Philippe Pinel (1798) was the first to
develop a comprehensive classification, or nosol-
ogy, of psychiatric diseases. This nosology fol-
lows a medical semiological model. Subsequent
authors that followed a similar semiological
approach but developed their own classification
systems include Wilhelm Griesinger and Emil
Kraepelin. The work of these authors is largely
characterized by their presentation of symptoms,
their onset and offset, course, outcome, preva-
lence, predisposing factors, familial illness his-
tory, and risk factors. This approach typically
aims at describing disease-specific illness pat-
terns. While some of these authors believed that
diverse etiological factors might trigger mental
Diagnosis, Overview
disease, others had more precise assumptions.
For example, Pinel believed that physical causes,
heritability, and so-called moral causes, which
refer to the impact of a variety of stressors and
emotional factors, might produce mental illness.
Kraepelin in his turn exclusively favored
a biomedical model: “The principle requisite in
the knowledge of mental diseases is an accurate
definition of the separate disease processes. In
the solution of this problem one must have, on
the one hand knowledge of the physical changes
in the cerebral cortex, and on the other of
the mental symptoms associated with them”
(Kraepelin, 1907, p. 115).
With the work of Sigmund Freud, an alterna-
tive approach to diagnosis took shape, an
approach that doesn’t build on the detection and
description of disease entities, but on theory-
based descriptions of patterns and dynamics of
dysfunction. In most psychotherapeutic and psy-
choanalytic schools of thought, diagnoses aim at
grasping modes of psychological and social func-
tioning rather than illness entities. For example,
in Jacques Lacan’s work, the distinction between
neurosis and psychosis refers to different modes
of dealing with discourse, experiencing uncon-
scious phenomena, and dealing with existential
issues (Lacan, (2006 [1959]). No presumptions
on problem-specific biological processes are
thereby made. In competing psychotherapeutic
schools of thought, a similar focus on theory-
specific modes of psychological and social func-
tioning can be found. For example, in behavior
therapy, behavioral analysis is usually considered
as an alternative to diagnostic classification. All
attention thereby goes to a theory-specific study
of “the circumstances of the patient’s life pattern,
relationships among his behaviours, and control-
ling stimuli in his social and his private
experience” (Kanfer & Saslow, 1965, p. 533).
Standardized diagnostic classification is thereby
thought of as pragmatically not useful.
Nowadays, diagnosis increasingly takes shape
in terms of the diagnostic system of the American
Psychiatric Association: the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
The first edition of this handbook was published
in 1952 and contained 106 disorder categories.
413 D
In 2013 the fifth edition will be published, which
will probably contain more than 300 disorder
categories (APA, 2011). While this text is being
written, the revised fourth edition (DSM-IV-TR)
is currently being used (American Psychiatric
Association [APA], 2000). This edition aims at
multiaxial diagnosis on five axes of dysfunction
(clinical disorders, personality disorders and intel-
lectual disabilities, acute medical conditions and D
physical disorders, psychosocial and environmen-
tal factors contributing to the disorder, and global
assessment of functioning). It discerns 264 clinical
disorders and ten personality disorders as well as
a number of “not otherwise specified” categories.
All categories make up classes whereby the prob-
lems a person is presenting with can be named. For
each disorder, inclusion and exclusion criteria are
defined, based on which a professional can decide
on which disorder a person is suffering: problems
are situated relative to a taxonomic list of possible
disorders and identified in terms of criteria that
make up classes of disorders.
The DSM-I was developed starting from clas-
sification schemes that were introduced by US
military psychiatrists, and contained influences of
both biomedical and psychodynamic models of
mental disorder. Against the background of critical
studies on the unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis
in the late 1960s and 1970s, the committee that
developed the DSM-III aimed to create a more
standardized system of categorization. Since then,
the DSM claimed to be atheoretical but actually
favored a biomedical approach to mental disorders.
In the DSM-5, this biomedical approach will be
explicitly confirmed. Neurobiological determi-
nants are (again) believed to be at the basis of
psychiatric disorders. A major goal for developing
each revision of the DSM has been that the stan-
dardized classification of disorders would ensure
good inter-rater reliability. This goal proved utterly
elusive (Kirk & Kutchins, 1994).
Traditional Debates
Debates in the field of diagnosis are multiple.
Throughout history, medically inspired authors
have argued over what disorder categories should
D 414
be included in the classification system, the inclu-
sion and exclusion criteria for disorders, and,
more basically, how symptoms should be defined
(Berrios, 1996). More fundamentally, debate and
disagreement persist between medically inspired
and psychotherapeutically inspired authors
regarding the foundation and rationale of diag-
nostic practices. Such debates are not hard to
come by in the evolution of the DSM: the transi-
tion from the DSM-I and II to the DSM-III bears
witness of a confrontation between biomedical
and psychotherapeutic thinking; the subsequent
transition from the DSM-III to later editions of
the handbook is pervaded by discussions that
remain within the boundaries of the biomedical
model (Strand, 2011).
Critical Debates
In the 1960s and 1970s, dominant diagnostic
practices were criticized by many authors associ-
ated with the anti-psychiatry movement, includ-
ing Ronald Laing, David Cooper, and Thomas
Szasz. These authors radically rejected the
medical approach to mental disorders and formu-
lated alternative viewpoints. Ronald Laing’s
(1960) central thesis was that the experiences of
patients should be studied phenomenologically
with a focus on how a person is embedded in
relationships and in the world. Special attention
was thereby paid to how psychopathology
reflects existential problems. David Cooper
stressed that psychopathology is an expression
of micro-social problems, situations in which
the acts and experiences of a certain person are
invalidated by others: “Madness is not in a person
but in a system of relationships in which
the labeled patient participates” (Cooper, 1967,
p. 43). Thomas Szasz (1961) in his turn argued
that we should not think of psychiatric diagnoses
in terms of substantives. He aimed to elaborate an
alternative approach to distress, whereby behav-
iors and symptoms are analyzed in terms of their
communicative value. Similar critiques against
the medical model in psychiatry continue to be
articulated by critical psychiatrists and psychol-
ogists (e.g., Timimi & Leo, 2009).
Diagnosis, Overview
Another author associated with the anti-
psychiatry movement, Michel Foucault, formu-
lated a historical and philosophical critique of
diagnostic practices in psychiatry. Starting from
a detailed examination of historical sources, he
suggested that giving diagnoses serves as a first
step in the deployment of disciplinary societal
practices. Persons receiving psychiatric diagno-
ses are subjected to power regimes via which they
are coerced to comply with dominant modes of
behavior (Foucault, 2005).
While the criticisms outlined above remain
valid with respect to DSM-based diagnostics,
further problems with the use of this handbook
should be mentioned. Here, we will discuss four
such problems.
First, the DSM can be criticized for its poor
epistemological basis. Whereas scientists usually
agree that theoretical definitions and operational
descriptions of concepts should be thought of as
two sides of a coin, the DSM neglects theoretical
definitions. As a consequence, the system makes
an appeal to users’ intuitive interpretations of
concepts like depression or schizophrenia. The
same is true for the descriptive basis on which
diagnoses are made. Most criteria are vague and
appeal to the diagnostician’s idea of normality.
The DSM bears witness to a naive realist and
post-positivist view of science, whereby mental
disorders are presumed to be natural entities that
can be observed unambiguously in the world.
Second, it has been noted that the process via
which the DSM is constructed diminishes the
transparency of scientific decision making and
is highly influenced by economic stakes.
Whereas the term “statistical” in the title of the
DSM suggests that research lies at the basis of its
construction, this is by no means the case. All
versions of the DSM have been constructed based
on votes by the members of the disorder-specific
subcommittees in the DSM task forces of the
American Psychiatric Association. Based on
negotiation and preference, it is decided which
categories should be discerned, which diagnostic
criteria are used, and how these criteria are
defined. A critical study demonstrated that 56 %
of the members who made up the DSM-IV and
DSM-IV-TR committees had substantial
Diagnosis, Overview
financial ties with the pharmaceutical industry
(Cosgrove, Krimsky, Vijayaraghavan, &
Schneider, 2006). In the committees for mood
disorders, schizophrenia, and related psychotic
disorders, which are the most frequently diag-
nosed DSM categories, all members had financial
ties with the pharmaceutical industry. In the task
force that is developing the DSM-5, the
intermingling with economic forces is even
more remarkable, in that 70 % of the members
have financial ties with drug companies (Collier,
2010). An effect of these direct links between the
DSM committee members and the pharmaceuti-
cal industry is that voting is most likely biased
towards pharmaceutical models of mental disor-
ders. Indications of such bias can be found in the
problem of false-positive diagnoses that the DSM
is currently marked by. A diagnosis is false-
positive when a label is given to someone, while
in reality no diagnosis should have been given.
False-positive diagnoses are typically given
when diagnostic criteria are overly inclusive and
when their definition is vague. They give rise to
unnecessary treatment, like the use of drugs. The
DSM-IV categories for which problems with
false-positive diagnoses have been indicated
include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
autistic disorder, childhood bipolar disorders,
minor depressive disorder, primary insomnia,
and social phobia. These are conditions for
which profitable pharmaceutical and health-care
markets are thought to exist. A further problem
with the DSM-5 is that all committee members
had to sign a confidentiality agreement and
minutes of committee meetings are kept secret.
Such secrecy precludes any verification of deci-
sion-making processes and actually undermines
the validity of the DSM qua system. As stakes
and decision-making processes based on which
categories and diagnostic criteria take shape are
hidden away, the rationale for making up diag-
nostic categories becomes obfuscated.
Third, the DSM has frequently been criticized
for its all-encompassing impact on the organiza-
tion of health care and for the fact that the
position that the DSM has obtained in society
does not so much depend on its inherent qualities,
but on heteronomous factors (Strand, 2011).
415 D
Indeed, whereas earlier diagnostic systems
served the purpose of organizing treatment and
guidance for labeled patients, the DSM functions
as a management and decision-making tool in
diverse settings: the pharmaceutical industry
uses it as a basis for randomized controlled drug
trials and for marketing drugs; public and private
health insurers employ it as a basis for financing
mental health intervention in terms of disorder D
severity; policy makers in education draw on it as
a basis for differentiating between types of
pupils; in legal contexts, it is frequently used for
assessing the penalty and for determining dam-
ages; and in academia, it serves as a basis for
project funding and publishing. These societal
practices have reinforced the DSM and given
rise to the reification of diagnoses. Reification
means that diagnoses are not merely used as
disorder-specific descriptions of symptoms and
behaviors, which is what the DSM aimed to
provide, but are interpreted as stable internal
states in an individual and are turned into social
realities via which a multitude of decisions are
made.
Fourth, it has been noted that in line with the
problem of reification, the DSM engenders stig-
matization. Characteristics attributed to individ-
uals with labels are usually negative and provoke
public stigma as well as self-stigma. Public
stigma means that large groups endorse stereo-
types about and act against people with diagnoses
of mental disorders. Self-stigma means that
people’s self-esteem is affected negatively due
to public stigma or due to identification with
negative attributes presumed to be typical of
a disorder (Ben-Zeev, Young, & Corrigan, 2010).
International Relevance
DSM-based thinking on mental distress has been
exported successfully to non-Western cultures
where it has given rise to new forms of coloniza-
tion: Western disease categories are promoted as
superior to traditional approaches, disrupt local
practices for dealing with mental distress, and
paved the way for the lucrative sale of
psychopharmaca (Watters, 2010).
D 416
Efforts are done to harmonize DSM-5-based
classification with the International Classifi-
cation of Diseases of the World Health
Organization. This might further propagate
medical classification-based approaches of men-
tal distress.
Practice Relevance
While in the context of the DSM diagnosis is
often considered to be atheoretical and value-
free, diverse choices and stakes can be discerned
behind all diagnostic systems. Critical thinking in
psychology requires that these choices are made
explicit, and urges practitioners to deal ethically
with these choices.
Future Directions
Challenges for future research include close crit-
ical examination of decision-making processes
around the DSM-5, critical examination of the
scientific claims made by different diagnostic
systems, and an exploration of alternative
approaches for determining, identifying, and
naming psychological problems.
References
APA. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.
APA. (2011). DSM-5 development. Retrieved September
13, 2011, from http://www.dsm5.org
Ben-Zeev, D., Young, M. A., & Corrigan, P. W. (2010).
DSM-V and the stigma of mental illness. Journal of
Mental Health, 19, 318–327.
Berrios, G. E. (1996). The history of mental symptoms.
Descriptive psychopathology since the nineteenth
century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Collier, R. (2010). DSM revision surrounded by
controversy. Canadian Medical Association Journal,
182, 16–17.
Cooper, D. (1967). Psychiatry and anti-psychiatry.
London, England: Tavistock.
Cosgrove, L., Krimsky, S., Vijayaraghavan, M., &
Schneider, L. (2006). Financial ties between DSM-IV
panel members and the pharmaceutical industry.
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 75, 154–160.
Dialectical Materialism
Foucault, M. (2005). Psychiatric power. Lectures at the
collège de France 1973–1974. New York, NY:
Picador.
Harper, D. (2011). Online etymological dictionary.
Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.
etymonline.com/index.php?search¼diagnosis
Kanfer, F. H., & Saslow, G. (1965). Behavioral analysis –
An alternative to diagnostic classification. Archives of
General Psychiatry, 12, 529–538.
Kirk, S., & Kutchins, H. (1994). The myth of the reliability
of DSM. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 15, 71–86.
Kraepelin, E. (1907/1981). Clinical psychiatry. Delmar,
NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints.
Lacan, J. (2006 [1959]). On a question prior to any possi-
ble treatment of psychosis. In J. Lacan & J. A. Miller
(Eds.), E´crits (pp. 445–488). New York, NY: W. W.
Norton.
Laing, R. (1960). The divided self – An existential study in
sanity and madness. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Pinel, P. (1798). Nosographie philosophique, ou la mé
thode de l’analyse appliquée à la médecine (2 Vols.).
Paris, France: Crapelet.
Strand, M. (2011). Where do classifications come from?
The DSM-III, the transformation of American psychi-
atry, and the problem of origins in the sociology of
knowledge. Theory and Society, 40, 273–313.
Szasz, T. S. (1961). The myth of mental illness. Founda-
tions of a theory of personal conduct. New York, NY:
Delta.
Timimi, S., & Leo, J. (2009). Rethinking ADHD – From
brain to culture. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watters, E. (2010). Crazy like us: The globalization of the
American psyche. New York, NY: Free Press.
Online Resources
www.criticalpsychiatry.net
www.criticalpsychiatry.co.uk
Dialectical Materialism
Jeremy Ridenour1 and Richard Ruth2
1
Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, MA, USA
2
Center for Professional Psychology,
The George Washington University,
Washington, DC, USA
Introduction
Both mainstream and, to a lesser extent, critical
psychologies follow other social and natural
sciences in generally failing to engage with
Dialectical Materialism
dialectical materialism as a philosophical system
contending to define scientific method and
thought; at best, dialectical materialism is
consigned to a category of historical relic. But
even this is problematic: Standard histories of
psychology devote space to alchemy and phre-
nology, but do not mention dialectical material-
ism. Yet much psychological thought pays
particular attention to what goes unmentioned in
conscious discourse, recognizing that what is
present but unrecognized – as Freud named it,
the unconscious; as Lacan put it, the Other – often
has particular weight, role, and power. So per-
haps psychology, and critical psychology, can
benefit from considering how dialectical materi-
alism considers psychological realities and the
ways, explicit and covert, dialectical materialism
has contributed to diverse areas of psychology.
Definition
To properly understand dialectical materialism in
the context of critical psychology, we first need to
define both dialecticism and materialism.
Hegel felt that to study things in their essence
meant to study them in their movement, recog-
nizing that understandings were inherently partial
and incomplete. Thus, as against notions of New-
tonian physics and Renaissance materialism,
interpreters of Hegel have summarized his notion
of the dialectic as universality of the movement
from thesis to antithesis to synthesis to philosoph-
ical understanding, which he located in the activ-
ity of mind. (For a comprehensive contemporary
critical treatment of Hegel’s notion of dialectics,
see Rosen, 1982).
Marx and Engels saw Hegel’s view of dialec-
tics as an advance over previous systems of phil-
osophical understanding, but fundamentally
idealistic and therefore wrong. In several texts,
they relocated the center of action of the dialectic
from mind to world – reality, history – and insisted
that economic, social, political, and psychological
phenomena be seen not just as they were, but as
their negation, that is, what they could become
through struggle. Thus, they reframed Hegel’s
dialectic as dialectical materialism.
417 D
In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin (1965/
1914) provides perhaps the most clearly
articulated conception of dialectics in the
dialectical materialist framing. Lenin argues that
the dialectician – working inherently in
a framework of commitment to transformative
(primarily societal) change – should begin with
the objectivity of the phenomenon-in-itself. Next,
the dialectician should investigate the phenome- D
non’s relations to other forces and to the evolu-
tion of the life of the phenomenon. The
phenomenon is to be understood not only as com-
posed of internal – by nature, contradictory –
forces; in fact, every phenomenon is seen as
comprised of the unity and contention of oppo-
sites, in interaction with their context. Dialectics
was defined as also needing to study how each
phenomenon is inextricably connected to every
other phenomenon. Lenin argued that dialectics
is not simply restricted to the union of the oppo-
sites, but by obligation also examines the changes
and movements of all properties of a given
phenomenon. Dialectics therefore concerns itself
with the process of analyzing how internal
contradictions give rise to new forms and change.
Reading Lenin’s definition, one readily appre-
ciates its developmental and behavioral dimen-
sions; it not only lends itself to psychological
application, but it is inherently psychological.
Whether or not one agrees with the understand-
ings of history Marxists have developed, or how
Marxists have applied their understanding of
dialectical materialist principles historically, it
is this psychological understanding of dialectical
materialism that grounds our discussion.
Keywords
Dialectics; materialism; dialectical materialism;
Marxism; epistemology; metatheory
Critical Debates
Theory and Metatheory
Wozniak (1975) outlines three laws of dialectical
materialism relevant to psychological
D 418
understanding and practice. First, the law of
transformation of quantitative into qualitative
change implies that an object can undergo an
essential change only if the inherent qualities of
an object are changed quantitatively. Next,
Wozniak articulates the law of the unity and
struggle of opposites – that all phenomena have
as their essence innate, antagonistic tendencies;
the struggle between these competing forces is
seen as the motor of change and development.
Finally, the law of the negation of the negation is
defined as the “replacement of the old by the new
(negation) and the re-replacement of the new by
a newer still (negation of the negation) which
serves to reinstate aspects of the old but at
a higher level than that at which they existed in
the old” (Wozniak, 1975, p. 22).
Tolman (1987) provides a philosophical
definition of materialism for psychological
application. He describes materialism as positing
that all that exist in the world are matter, that
matter exists independent of the mind’s appre-
hension of it, and that the laws that govern the
world are objectively knowable. Materialists
disagree with the philosophy of idealism because
idealism does not assume the independent
existence of objects outside of the mind’s con-
ception of these objects. Materialism also
opposes positivism’s narrow conception of
objectivity and knowledge and argues that, for
psychology to be objective, it has to account for
the subjective influence of the knower.
(An extrapolation of Tolman’s thinking would
be that materialism sees clinical psychology as
not fundamentally hermeneutic, agreeing, for
example, with the fundamental Kleinian stance
(O’Shaughnessy, 1994)).
Luria (2002) suggests that dialectical materi-
alism is based on two premises: Dialectical mate-
rialism is the study of the material relationships
between events as the primary determinant of
consciousness; and dialectical materialism
assumes that the material conditions of reality
are in flux, always in motion. Thus, change is
not linear, and its process is not constant. This
fundamental understanding inextricably links
psychology to the social – it becomes impossible
Dialectical Materialism
to simply accept social reality at face value
because social phenomena are a product of socio-
economic realities. Perception of social reality
then becomes mediated through human under-
standing and linked to action, a view in sharp
contrast with much contemporary social cogni-
tion theory. While Marxism has been criticized as
negating and annihilating the psychological,
Luria argued that, to the contrary, dialectical
materialism centers on an essential human, and
thus psychological, role in social life.
Methodology
Dialectical materialism provides a unique foun-
dation for conceptualizing psychological
methods. First, let us analyze how a dialectical
materialist psychology differs from other
approaches methodologically. Vygotsky (Van
der Veer & Valsiner, 1994) criticized two com-
peting psychologies (Packer, 2008) – behavior-
ism, focused on uncritical bondage to material
reality, and introspectionism, which he also iden-
tified as idealistic and saw as mental activity
delinked from material reality. Vygotsky under-
stood both approaches as fundamentally flawed
because they separate wholes from their parts and
incorrectly assume that this is the best way to
understand psychological phenomena (Bickley,
1977). Vygotsky also criticized behaviorism for
jettisoning consciousness from the study of psy-
chology and believed introspectionism was ide-
alistic and flawed for isolating the functions of
consciousness and studying them independently
of one another (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994).
Vygotsky believed the way beyond these com-
peting psychologies was to unite practical and
academic psychology in the project of individual
and collective transformation. Related to this,
Vygotsky believed that dialectical materialism,
as a scientific method, needed a strong historical
foundation, recognizing the various social forces
that contribute to the science of psychology
(Packer, 2008).
Similarly, Wallon (1972) argued that dialec-
tics allows psychology to be simultaneously
a human and natural science. Like Vygotsky, he
distinguished dialectical materialism from
Dialectical Materialism
idealism and behaviorism (Wallon). Wallon
argued that psychology erred when it attempted
to derive immutable, timeless laws governing
psychological phenomena or when it subordi-
nated matter to consciousness. Wallon noted
that both behaviorism and idealism/introspec-
tionism assume that the world is identical to
itself, while dialectical materialism assumes that
the world is constantly changing because of the
various social forces struggling and opposing one
another.
Wallon rejected behaviorist theory because he
recognized the unavoidable impact of the
researcher’s subjectivity on empirical research
(Van der Veer, 1996). On the other hand, Wallon
(1972) was suspicious of Lewin and the gestalt
psychologists, whom he saw as failing to
acknowledge the impact of history and develop-
ment on consciousness. For Wallon, dialectical
materialism incorporates both higher mental pro-
cesses (which idealism/introspectionism
reductionistically claimed as its domain) and the
material influences behaviorism claimed as its
territory but then distorted by decontextualizing
and viewing them as static rather than in constant
struggle and motion. Ultimately, Wallon argued,
dialectical materialism provides psychology the
tools to understand the subject and its reciprocal
relationship with the environment (Wallon).
Riegel (1979) argued that a dialectical psy-
chology offers a superior philosophical and meth-
odological approach to research. Rejecting the
conventional focus on stability, equilibrium, and
balance emphasized in dominant psychology,
Riegel suggested that individuals develop along
four dimensions: inner-biological, individual-
psychological, cultural-sociological, and outer-
physical; whenever these dimensions are not
advancing at the same pace, crisis emerges. This
asynchrony can be regressive, or it can provide
the very conditions of possibility for growth and
progress. For Riegel (1979), dialectical psychol-
ogy conceptualizes change as arising from the
conflicting antagonisms (crises) amongst these
dimensions.
Riegel (1979) went on to outline a “manifesto”
for dialectical psychology. He felt dialectical
419 D
psychology must focus on activity and change,
encompassing what he called primitive and
scientific dialectics. The study of primitive
dialectics included the investigation of the
mutual interaction between caretaker and child.
Scientific dialectics required analysis of the
antagonistic debates between competing scien-
tific theories. Dialectical psychology would
analyze how individuals evolve through interac- D
tions with others, and it would recognize that the
individual comes in contact with others who are
likewise in the process of evolving and changing.
Riegel (1979) distinguished a dialectical mate-
rialist psychology from other approaches in three
ways. First, he felt, although the dominant psy-
chology gains knowledge through experimenta-
tion, it fails to take into account the cultural and
historical factors that invariably impact research.
Second, while dialectical psychologists welcome
the developmental approach of some psycholo-
gists, they question developmental psychologists’
lack of appreciation for historical social influ-
ences. Finally, dialectical psychology was seen
as needing to consider both developmental and
historical influences as the proper domain of study.
Consciousness
Dialectical materialist approaches to psychology
privilege the role of consciousness. Vygotsky
understood consciousness as the proper locus of
study for a dialectical materialist psychology
(Bickley, 1977). A dialectical approach necessar-
ily would analyze the intersections and interac-
tions of the functions of consciousness with social
realities. Vygotsky (Van der Veer & Valsiner,
1994) understood that meaning is established
through the communication of individuals. The
intersection between thought and language is
inherently social because the major purpose of
language is social communication; this then
contextualizes psychological phenomena as such.
The study of higher mental functions, as
a concrete praxis, examines how the mind is
impacted by the historical, social, and economic
forces (Elhammoumi, 2009). Dialectical materi-
alism offers psychology a perspective that
emphasizes how the deep structures of society
D 420
(labor, social power, and capital) give form to the
mental functioning of the individual. This van-
tage point offers a complex and comprehensive
view of the totality of the reality that produces
consciousness.
A dialectical materialist account of conscious-
ness does not understand consciousness to be
a simple reflection of the values, ideals, and mate-
rial conditions of society (Bickley, 1977). For
example, Bickley offers the example of why
certain individuals in a society prefer a movie.
Dialectical materialist psychology has to account
for the reasons why some individuals accept and
other individuals reject the implicit ideology of
a particular movie.
Leontiev (1978) and Luria (1979) recognized
that both interpersonal relationships and material
forces impact consciousness. They saw factors
mediating the relationship between conscious-
ness and society as including family, friends,
institutions of learning, and work. While material
forces were seen as shaping these various institu-
tions, individuals were seen not only as passive
recipients impacted by these forces but also giv-
ing shape to and part of the development of social
and systemic forces. This dialectical materialist
emphasis understands that the reciprocal interac-
tions between consciousness and social forces
shape and influence one another.
Wozniak (1975), suggesting that psychology
must always be developmental in focus, empha-
sizes the grounding assumption in dialectical
materialist psychology that every individual has
the capacity to change. Internal struggle allows
individuals to use competing forces as a vehicle
to become self-determined, efficacious agents. In
this view, the action of an individual is mediated
by human consciousness. Although conscious-
ness arises from processes located in the brain,
it is not reducible to neural activity. Wozniak
(1975) argues that this conclusion is in line with
the law of the transformation of quantity into
quality, which is contingent on a belief that mat-
ter is hierarchical in organization. Wozniak
argued that development does not occur through
a linear process. The law of the negation of the
negation suggests that development happens in
nonlinear spirals, influenced by consciousness.
Dialectical Materialism
Applications
While standard psychological treatments
discount dialectical materialist contributions,
Google, evidently, does not. “Dialectics +
psychology” yields more than 15,000,000 results,
“dialectical materialism + psychology” more
than a million. We will mention briefly three
lines of application.
Zaporozec (1980) discusses Soviet psycholo-
gists’ application of dialectical materialism to
empirical psychological research. Luria (1979,
2002), Leontiev (1978), Vygotsky (Van der
Veer & Valsiner, 1994), and generations of
others studied psychology and psychological
topics from a dialectical materialist perspective.
Luria and Vygotsky described the social origins
of different psychological functions, viewing
psychological functions as developing via labor
and through the thinking of individual subjects.
For example, they argued, verbal signs evolve
as means of communications between people; as
subjects develop mastery of these signs, they
employ them as means to exercise power over
their labor. As subjects’ use of tools increases
physical strength, prolonged use of these signs
builds up mental functions. Luria also conducted
studies in various cultures to analyze the dialec-
tical and historical materialist notion that con-
sciousness is mediated through social forces. He
studied the people of Uzbekistan (Luria) and
analyzed how socioeconomic and historical
forces shaped the consciousness and praxis of
individuals. Zaporozec observes that this dialec-
tical materialist orientation to research dispels
racist notions that various ethnic groups are
defined by inherent, decontextualized, fixed
properties. Rather, individual characteristics
emerge as determined by external factors that
act upon and then become acted upon by sub-
jects in their environment. Beyond this research,
various Soviet psychologists applied dialectical
materialism to a vast range of psychological
topics.
Where dialectical materialism is not acknowl-
edged as a dominant influence in US psychology,
it widely guides psychological practice through-
out the Third World and in some European circles
(Buss, 1979).
Dialectics
References
Bickley, R. (1977). Vygotsky’s contributions to
a dialectical materialist psychology. Science and
Society, 41, 191–207.
Buss, A. R. (1979). A dialectical psychology. New York:
Irvington.
Elhammoumi, M. (2009). Vygotsky’s scientific psychol-
ogy: Terra incognita. Cultural-Historical Psychology,
3, 49–54.
Lenin, V. I. (1965/1914). Collected works (Vol. 38,
pp. 220–222). Moscow: Progress.
Leontiev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and per-
sonality. New York: Prentice Hall.
Luria, A. R. (1979). The making of mind. Cambridge:
Harvard.
Luria, A. R. (2002). Psychoanalysis as a system of monis-
tic psychology. Journal of Russian and East European
Psychology, 40, 26–53.
O’Shaughnessy, E. (1994). What is a clinical fact? Inter-
national Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75, 409–432.
Packer, M. J. (2008). Is Vygotsky relevant? Vygotsky’s
Marxist psychology. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 15,
8–31.
Riegel, K. F. (1979). Foundations of dialectical psychol-
ogy. New York: Academic Press.
Rosen, M. (1982). Hegel’s dialectic and its criticism.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tolman, C. W. (1987). Dialectical materialism as
psychological metatheory. In H. J. Stam, T. B. Rogers,
& K. J. Gergen (Eds.), The analysis of psychological
theory: Metapsychological perspectives (pp. 211–229).
Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing.
Van der Veer, R. (1996). Henri Wallon’s theory of early
child development: The role of emotions. Develop-
mental Review, 16, 364–390.
Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1994). The Vygotsky
reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Wallon, H. (1972). Psychology and dialectical material-
ism. International Journal of Mental Health, 1, 75–79.
Wozniak, R. H. (1975). A dialectical paradigm for
psychological research: Implications drawn from the
history of psychology in the Soviet Union. Human
Development, 18, 18–34.
Zaporožec, A. V. (1980). A. R. Luria’s role in the
development of Soviet psychology. Psychological
Research, 41, 103–112.
Online Resources
Alexander Luria. http://marxists.org/archive/luria/index.
htm
A.N. Leont’ev. http://www.marxists.org/archive/leontev/
index.htm
Definitions of Dialectics. http://www.marxists.org/refer-
ence/archive/hegel/help/sampler.htm
Lev Vygotsky Archive. http://www.marxists.org/subject/
psychology/index.htm
Psychology and Marxism. http://www.marxists.org/sub-
ject/psychology/index.htm
421 D
Dialectics
Juan Pascual-Leone
Department of Psychology, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
D
Introduction
The splitting of a single whole [a totality, JPL]
and the cognition of its contradictory parts [. . .] is the
essence [. . .] of dialectics. This is precisely how Hegel,
too, puts the matter (Lenin, 1915/1977, p. 381).
Totality is the idea that a phenomenon can be
comprehended only by first inserting it in the
broader structure of which it is a part and in
which it has a function, the latter being its
objective meaning independently of whether or
not the men acting and creating it are conscious of
it. It is the category of meaningful structure
(Goldmann, 1970, quoted by Jay, 1984, p. 325,
from the essay “The dialectics today”).
For Hegel [. . .] the power of the spirit lies in
synthesis as the mediation of all contradictions
(Gadamer, 1971, p.105).
Dialectic (or dialectics) was originally the art
of dialogue and problem-solving method based
on argumentation. This is what we find in Plato
and Socrates. Later, with Hegel and Marx, it
became a method for investigating competing
processes (or conceptual views) that are comple-
mentary or related, bearing on distinct aspects of
the same evolving whole or totality. Dialectics is
a method for rationalist learning that leads to
cognitive development via dialectical syntheses
that generate progressively refined and differen-
tiated stages or levels of analysis. These are
the syntheses that Piaget called in developmental
psychology optimizing equilibration (Piaget,
1975/1985; Pascual-Leone, 2012), which cause
new levels of reflective abstraction.
Definition
Coaction (in the sense of dynamic interaction)
and competition among processes are major
D 422
parts of dialectics, placing dialectics as precursor
of dynamic systems. In ancient Greek, “dia”
means “going between” and “legein” means “to
speak”: Dialectics stands for dynamic coactions
among/between at least two sources of process
(in life or discourse) intertwined and often in
competition (mutual “contradiction”), which
may complement one another in codetermining
outcomes (causing dialectical syntheses at
a higher level that neutralize/correct resistances –
Hegel’s “negation of the negation”). The bottle
and the table are in dialectical interaction when
their respective resistances balance each other,
allowing the bottle not to fall to the ground.
Resistances (affordances or encumbrances) are
all we can get from Reality: In any other way,
Reality is perfectly unknown – as Kant claimed.
Focusing on resistances is an effective way
to solve Kant’s appearance (what is manifest)
versus Reality (permanently unknown) antin-
omy. One should write Reality with capital
R (Pascual-Leone & Goodman, 1979; Putnam,
1987) to signify an actual source of resistances
that species of living organisms might encounter.
As the philosopher Zubiri (1989) and many
others (e.g., Hegel, Marx, Cassirer, Whitehead,
Bohm, Merleau-Ponty) suggested, Reality cannot
be characterized by beings (people, computers,
cities, etc.) and their interrelations but can be
characterized by competing processes. There
are no beings until knowledge imposes an
ontology to create reality with small “r,” that is,
the experienced world of particular species
(Pascual-Leone & Goodman, 1979).
An example illustrating characteristics of
dialectical systems was (unwittingly) provided
by Leonardo da Vinci with the architectural
arch. Leonardo says, “What is an arch? An arch
is nothing else than a strength caused by two
weaknesses [. . .] as one withstands the downfall
of the other the two weaknesses are converted
into a single strength” (Leonardo da Vinci,
1959, p. 210).
Thus, each segment of an arch, due to gravity,
exemplifies a dynamic constituent of this
functional totality (or whole). Each segment’s
normal output is to fall, but the two segments
oppose each other – are in contradiction – and
Dialectics
each in fact serves to regulate or adaptively mod-
ify the (falling) effect of the other. Together, they
cause an invariant outcome: cancellation of
gravity effects and stability of the arch. Thus
described, an arch illustrates a minimal dialecti-
cal system constituted by two subsystems
(the arch segments) in dynamic interaction. One
can say (Pascual-Leone, 2012) that two or
more dynamic systems (DS) constitute an overall
functional totality, or whole system, whenever:
(DS1) Each (sub)system is contradictory with
the others in its functional effects. (DS2) Effects
of each of them serve to regulate, compensate, or
adaptively modify the effects of the others. (DS3)
All of them are jointly needed to generate an
emergent functional invariant, which often is
a truly novel performance. Note that in this
definition five words are particularly important.
Contradictory means the two terms have effects
vis-à-vis the total system that lead to different
dynamic outcomes, which may in part cancel one
another. For instance, each segment of an arch falls
literally against the other segment. Regulate means
that each of the subsystems can in fact influence
the dynamic consequences of the other(s), setting
dynamic limits to its (or their) manifestations – the
falling of each arch segment is curtailed by the
falling of the other segment. Emergent is a
property or entity that might appear; that is, a
truly novel happening that marks existence of
a replicable probabilistic invariant – because it
reoccurs as truly novel event when opposing
dialectical subsystems coact in appropriate cir-
cumstances. These emergent functional invariants
of dialectical systems explain why and how in the
course of change, during development and/or
learning, humans and animals keep acquiring
truly novel (i.e., neither innate nor strictly
speaking learned, but dynamically synthesized)
characteristic response patterns or performances.
In humans, these patterns are synthesized by
coactive, perhaps emerging, organismic dialectical
systems; and because these dialectical systems
are modified or acquired via development/matura-
tion, or learned from the culture or individually
(via neuroplasticity), different truly novel patterns
of performance keep reemerging again and again,
under suitable circumstances, as new functional
Dialectics
invariants. Piaget’s age-dependent developmental
stages are good examples of this emergence, but
there are many others: creativity, problem-solving,
etc. Perhaps most true innovations emerge from
some sort of dialectical dynamic synthesis. This
definition of dialectic is consistent with that of
Hegel and Marx as formulated by Lenin (see first
epigraph).
Taking a dialectical constructivist perspective
(Goldmann, 1970; Pascual-Leone, 2012; Piaget,
1980; Zimmerman, 1978), Piaget called
“reflective abstraction” the dialectical process of
internalizing/modeling recurrent probabilistic
invariances emerging from experience during
praxis. In my view these invariants – Piaget’s
schemes and schematic structures – express
resistances (affordances and encumbrances)
encountered with reality. These invariants
(which Hegel called “reflection determinations”)
serve for adaptive coping and may grow into
functionally unitized systems of structures
arranged into flexible hierarchies, which consti-
tute distinct levels of processing – i.e., the spirals
of developmental stages – due to restructuring or
cognitive learning, Lenin (1976, p. 14) has
referred to this as “A development that seemingly
repeats stages that have already been passed, but
repeats them differently, on a higher basis
(“negation of negation”), a development, so to
speak, in a spiral, not in a straight line.” Some
dialectical constructivist thinkers from Lukacs to
Habermas (Jay, 1984), particularly those
influenced by Althusser (Callari & Ruccio,
1996), existentialism (Merleau-Ponty, 1973;
Sartre, 1960), or Piaget (e.g., Goldmann, 1970;
Pascual-Leone, 2012), regard these functional
totalities as structured coordinations that control
resistances to praxis in relevant contexts (the
collection of situations eliciting each such total-
ity). The structuration of these totalities (Sartre’s
totalization) generates a more or less flexible
relational coordination – a structure-of-the-
whole motivated by resistances (Pascual-Leone,
2012; Pascual-Leone & Goodman, 1979;
Pascual-Leone & Johnson, 1991), which in
human science may result from society’s institu-
tional rules and regulations (the “practico-inert”
of Sartre, 1960) and the action of others.
423 D
Keywords
Dialectic; totality; praxis; contradictions; resis-
tances; reality; structure; invariants; materialism;
constructivism; dialectical modes; sociality;
lifeworld
History D
In the Western world, one may highlight four
key moments of dialectics: Platonic, Hegelian,
Marxist, and postmodern materialist (or construc-
tivist). A simple but broader historical overview
can be found in Wikipedia.
For ancient Platonists, dialectic was the rea-
soning in dialogue and speculative discourse pur-
suing insight and deeper vision on a topic (as
Plato’s Socratic Dialogues illustrate). Hegel
goes beyond this rational speculative aspect of
Platonic dialectic. Kant earlier had concluded
that all knowledge, external as well as internal,
is made possible by organismic processes that
structure/configure experience and knowing;
using today’s language, he saw the machinery
of reason as a constructivist power in forming
cognition.
Deepening an original insight of Kant, Hegel
saw that in true knowledge there is an identity
(a transcendental affinity) between subject of
experience and object of experience. For
Hegel, true knowledge epistemologically
reflects the object’s essential structure: Objects
are not something that mind imposes but that it
discovers. As Gramsci, a Marxist thinker,
understood well (Finocchiaro, 1988), to be
useful in practical activity with objects (praxis)
the structure of knowledge must embody object-
relevant systems of relations exhibited by
reality under praxis.
Hegel was close to such idea: “The diverse is
initially exterior to the mind. For as long as we
just apprehend the experiential diversity we do
not yet think; thinking only begins with
the interrelating of this diversity” (Hegel, 1963,
p. 84, my translation from French). Just a few
lines later he adds: “The content of the represen-
tations is borrowed from experience, but the very
D 424
form of their unity and other determinations take
their sources not from what is immediately given
but from the mind” (italics in the original).
Hegel’s ontological insight is that reality as
a whole is in continuous development, changing
in time, in evolution. Such change appears in
humans as intentional action, often called praxis.
Praxis (from ancient Greek meaning “doing” or
“practice”) is a more or less conscious form of
agency – goal-directed activity addressed to the
environment in order to causally achieve some
intended (targeted) final goal. In current critical
theory, praxis is seen as part of “action theory.”
In a second ontological insight, Hegel called
contradictions the processes that oppose (as nega-
tions, such as resistances) either implicit or
explicitly chosen alternative lines of action.
These chosen action lines Hegel and others call
dialectical affirmations (Pascual-Leone, 2012).
Dialectics thus appears as dynamic processes of
contrasting and resolving contradictions often
caused by resistances of reality (Hegel’s reflec-
tion determinations) to our actions. Dialectical
syntheses (active trade-off resolutions to encoun-
tered contradictions) help to solve these conflicts.
As Gadamer (1971) emphasized, growth comes
from investigating and overcoming contradic-
tions, bringing more encompassing knowledge.
In the view of Marx, Lenin, and others,
Hegel’s dialectic was tainted by an idealist
attribution of it to a logical Spirit that is ontolog-
ically absolute and irreducible. However, this is
a controversial view: Marxist Hegelians such
as Lukacs (1978a) and other non-Marxist dialec-
tical thinkers would disagree with such charac-
terization of Hegel (e.g., Gadamer, 1971;
Overton, 2006). As interpreted by Lenin, Hegel’s
dialectic (in human personal history and nature)
might express unfolding of a mysterious dynamic
Spirit – which Hegel identifies with the concep-
tual horizon (or essential totality) towards which
thought naturally tends. One does not need to
appeal to Spirit to recognize thinking processes
as expressing operative or figurative synthetic
representations, i.e., “truthful” modeling. From
this perspective, logic and dialectics are ulti-
mately methods of thought that express reality’s
determinations (Ilyenkov, 1977; Wallace, 1975).
Dialectics
It is simpler, and empirically grounded, to say
that thought expresses internalized experiences
as probabilistic relational-structural products of
human activity (praxis). This was Marx’s empha-
sis when he said that Hegel’s dialectics must be
inverted (put upside down): The spirit does not
cause reality or experience, but instead experi-
ence of reality causes emergence (via internal/
mental modeling) of thought and spirit. Such
epistemological inversion makes a major differ-
ence for Marx’s dialectics. Another difference is
that whereas Hegel attributed wholeness (i.e.,
emergence of an essential totality) to the Spirit’s
synthetic power, which makes this totality unique
(but only when objective reality is validly
captured by the subject), Marx sees instead
multiple active wholes or totalities (Hook,
1978) – totalities that are internalized/
constructed from experience during specific
praxis and within particular concrete situations.
Totalities are, for instance, causally
related domains of social experience with affec-
tive/intersubjective aspects as well as knowledge
(educational systems, religion, economics, social
sciences, social health, politics, art, biology, etc.).
These totalities constitute society as an organiza-
tion of flexible superordinate structures of
interrelations – at least for active, intelligent par-
ticipants. Marx sees multiple concrete dialectics
related to a single generic form that Hegel’s Spirit
dialectic pioneered (Hook, 1978; Jay, 1984).
Totalities in Marx are not only active but
also differentiated. They express similarities
(identity/equivalence relations) across aspects of
experience and thought, but they also synthesize
differences across them, demarcating their
applicability. These active totalities emerge by
finding “the real identity under the apparent
differentiation and contradiction” and finding
“the substantial diversity under the apparent
identity” (Gramsci’s Notebook, quoted from
Finocchiaro, 1988, p. 157).
After Marx, many forms of dialectical think-
ing have emerged that we cannot review (e.g.,
Bachelard, 1981; Callari & Ruccio, 1996;
Habermas, 1981/1989; Jay, 1984; Sartre, 1960).
One could call them postmodern materialist
(Callari & Ruccio, 1996) or constructivist
Dialectics
dialectics (Goldmann, 1970; Pascual-Leone,
2012) without assuming that they share a view.
The term “postmodern” indicates an approach
that avoids foundationalism, essentialism, dog-
matic realism, and unidimensional theorizing,
seeking instead multidimensionality and open-
ness to multiple social, cognitive, and/or episte-
mological approaches. And it does so by trying to
capture reflective determinations in cognition,
affect, and the intersubjective. For Gramsci and
others, the term “materialist” may raise unwanted
non-relational metaphysical interpretations
(Finocchiaro, 1988). Dialectical constructivism
is the term tacitly intended by Lucien Goldmann
(1970). He does not talk of constructivism but
speaks of dialectical genetic structuralism, fol-
lowing Piaget in the 1950s and 1960s. However,
his intended meaning for genetic structuralism,
i.e., temporally evolving and coacting meaning-
ful dynamic structures (in Piaget’s sense – Piaget,
1970), is what Piaget in the 1970s and 1980s
called constructivism, i.e., dialectical processes
that generate structures as dynamic totalities
(Inhelder, Garcia, & Voneche, 1976; Piaget,
1970). This renaming of genetic structuralism
eliminates confusion with traditional “static”
structures (as found in Levi-Strauss and many
others), and it avoids twenty-first-century ambi-
guities of the term – materialism. Thus, construc-
tivist dialectics might be a better name (Pascual-
Leone, 1987, 2012).
Callari and Ruccio (1996) talk of postmodern
dialectics to encompass distinct concrete dialec-
tics, often produced by different groups or social
classes, which interact as dynamic multiplicities.
These dialectics express processes from within
what Husserl called the lifeworld (Habermas,
1989). They constitute totalities of concrete
situational contexts and human-type actions that
may cause resistances to individuals’ praxis, for
instance, society’s scarcity constraints and
sociocultural conventions/constraints imposed
by institutions and social laws (Sartre, 1960,
called “practico-inert” this sort of constraints).
The resistances determine the affordances
and encumbrances to praxis, which can be
modeled via inferred rational reconstructions
(Habermas, 1973).
425 D
Some early dialectical constructivist
positions, like Bachelard’s (1981) epistemology,
use more or less informally a postmodern concept
of dialectics. However, Bachelard is restricted to
clarifying knowledge in science. This is also
the case of Piaget’s cognitive-developmental dia-
lectics (Inhelder et al., 1976; Pascual-Leone,
2012; Piaget, 1980). Other theoreticians, how-
ever, have recognized additional complementary D
modes/dimensions of dialectics. Habermas
(1981/1989), for instance, describes three dialec-
tical modes in coaction: (1) the objective mode/
world (where a logical truth applies), (2) the
intersubjective mode/world (where personal dif-
ferences, worldviews, evaluation criteria for jus-
tice, morality, aesthetics, etc., apply), and (3) the
social and sociocultural mode/world, with its
institutions that have systems of prescribed rules
for interaction, which confront individuals with
resistances to praxis. These dialectics and their
various sources of resistances could lead to com-
plex integrative models.
Traditional Debates
A traditional objection to dialectics and
dialectical contradictions is well illustrated by
Popper (1965) who, after failing to distinguish
dialectical from formal-logical contradictions,
claimed that dialecticians’ strategy of seeking
dialectical contradictions within a given subject
matter (a totality) is misguided, because (logical
but not dialectical!) contradictions indicate only
rational errors to be discarded. Many dialectical
thinkers have shown, however, that these contra-
dictions are different from logical ones. When
investigated, they resolve into either new aspects
or dimensions of the totality under study or are
shown to be formal-logical contradictions to be
analyzed and avoided.
Unlike formal logic, which looks categorically
at reasoning and language to appraise rational
value (truth, falsity, indifference) and its condi-
tions, dialectics is driven by concrete thought,
reflection, and dialectical contradictions. It
expresses process and change (“motion”) within
the stream of thought and/or reality and can serve
D 426
as method for exploration of ideas and discovery.
When formal logic is contrasted to philosophical
logic, the latter is assumed to include dialectic as
part of it. Similarly, when dialectical thinkers
conceive dialectic as a rational discipline, they
may consider formal logic as a distinct part of
dialectics (e.g., Ilyenkov, 1977).
Critical Debates
A difficulty with Marx’s dialectics is the heavy
assumptions of dialectical materialism and
its multiple interpretations (Jay, 1984). One
meaning of the term “materialism” is appropriate,
as Gramsci emphasized (Finocchiaro, 1988): The
meaning that excludes spiritual transcendence
from the domain of pure thinking (e.g., religious
thinking is not pure because it involves acts of
faith). In an appropriate materialist interpreta-
tion, all knowledge is active, relational, reflec-
tively abstracted from experienced (cognitive,
affective, intersubjective) invariants, and driven
by processes within life situations – often inter-
nalized in the form of models. An alternative
meaning of materialism, i.e., the belief that
immediate material processes (such as basic
needs, food, security and scarcity – what we
might call the infrastructure of living) are the
only important determinants of sociopolitical
dialectics, is nowadays considered mistaken by
many (Callari & Ruccio, 1996; Goldmann, 1970;
Habermas, 1989; Jay, 1984; Merleau-Ponty,
1986; Sartre, 1960). In this materialist view, spir-
itual values, cultural preferences, social historical
knowledge, social, religious or aesthetic feelings
and beliefs, etc., which Marx and Engels called
the superstructure, are made to play a small role
in society’s dialectics. In contrast, current
approaches to dialectics claim that societal
domains considered superstructure by Marx and
Engels are driving important distinct dialectics,
and economics must consider them to be causally
comprehensive. One must recognize, however,
that Marx’s and Engels’s views are deeper
than their own emphasis on here-and-now
economic materialism; they would probably
have agreed with many liberalized interpretations
Dialectics
of dialectics (see Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach –
Goldmann, 1970; Lukacs, 1978b; Marx, Engels,
& Lenin, 1977).
Another source of critical debate is the dialec-
tical concept of totality and totalization
(totality’s integrated coordination). Contrary to
Hegel’s view, many currently think that
totalization occurs without the help of a central
agent – a totalizer (Aronson, 1987). A common
view is that dynamic syntheses in individuals
(individual praxis) are caused by a tendency of
dominant compatible processes/schemes to apply
together and jointly overdetermine thinking and/
or performance. According to this principle, all
activated processes (in a group or individual) tend
apply to codetermine processing and perfor-
mance within the situation, eventually causing
totalization. Under such overdetermination,
performance (overt or mental) would be synthe-
sized, at every moment, by the dominant (most
activated) cluster of compatible processes at
the time of synthesis. The contribution of
different dimensions of processing varies with
relative dominance in the cluster of compatible
processes generating the outcome. This principle
of overdetermination was introduced by
Freud and used by sociologists (Althusser,
1969; Callari & Ruccio, 1996) as well as
psychologists (e.g., neo-Piagetians; Pascual-
Leone, 1987, 2012). Other theoreticians appear
to use this principle implicitly (Vygotsky,
Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Goldmann, Habermas,
etc., including current neuroscience).
International Relevance
The concept of dialectics as discussed here has no
national limitations.
Practice Relevance
The concept of dialectics and its methods
have influenced analyses in terms of dynamic
systems, particularly in current social sciences
and psychology, including social-developmental
studies.
Dialectics
Future Directions
Social totalization without a totalizer is
a theoretical direction that should be clarified to
comprehend current social problems of many
nations, their social “unevenness” and unrest.
New forms of economic regulation and new
forms of activist developmental education may
then evolve. They began to evolve in some fields
(e.g., new Music and Arts educational methods
such as “El Sistema”, a child music orchestra of
Venezuela, or the National Dance Institute in
the USA). These new sorts of emancipatory
interventions implicitly use dialectical construc-
tivist principles, which rest unexplicated.
When talking of Sartre’s failure to explain
how society’s totalization can occur without
a totalizer, Aronson says that it might be attained
when the individual praxis of all members is
balanced by a shared sociality, i.e., the “conten-
tion over larger [good] social goals between
mutually interdependent social groups.” This is
Aronson’s (1987, p. 238) way of referring to
progressive dialectical action in collective pro-
jects. The hope is that Aronson’s sociality can
emerge via both intersubjective communication
and interventions. Habermas’ (1981/1989)
theory of communicative action points in this
direction. Hope is important here. McCarthy
(1982, p. 386) ends his book on Habermas’ theory
with this phrase: “reason cannot flourish without
hope. Hope cannot speak without reason.”
Acknowledgments I am grateful to Antonio Ferraz,
Janice Johnson, Sergio Morra, W.F. Overton, and David
Rennie (in alphabetic order), whose comments helped to
improve the document.
References
Althusser, L. (1969) For Marx. Peguin Books. Middlesex,
England.
Aronson, R. (1987). Sartre’s Second critique. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Bachelard, G. (1981). La philosophie du non. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
Callari, A., & Ruccio, D. F. (Eds.). (1996). Postmodern
materialism and the future of Marxist theory.
Hannover, Germany: Wesleyan University Press.
427 D
da Vinci, L. (1959). In I. A. Richter (Ed.), Selections from
notebooks. London: Oxford University Press.
Finocchiaro, M. A. (1988). Gramsci and the history of
dialectical thought. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1971). Hegel’s Dialectic. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Goldmann, L. (1970). Marxism et sciences humaines.
Paris: Gallimard.
Habermas, J. (1973). Theory and practice. Boston:
Beacon Press. D
Habermas, J. (1989). The theory of communicative action.
Vol. 2. Lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist
reason. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1963). Propedeutique philosophique.
Paris: Gonthier, Editions de Minuit.
Hook, S. (1978). From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the
development of Karl Marx. Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press.
Ilyenkov, E. V. (1977). Dialectical logic. Moscow:
Progress Publishers.
Inhelder, G., Garcia, R., & Voneche, J. (1976).
Epistemologie genetique et equilibration. Neuchatel,
Switzerland: Delachaux et Niestle.
Jay, M. (1984). Marxism and totality. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Lenin, V. I. (1976) Karl Marx. Peking, China: Foreign
Language Press.
Lenin, V. I. (1977). On the question of dialectics.
In K. Marx, F. Engels, & V. I. Lenin (Eds.),
On dialectical materialism. Moscow: Progress
Publishers.
Lukacs, G. (1978a). The ontology of social being: 1.
Hegel’s False and his genuine ontology. London: Mer-
lin Press.
Lukacs, G. (1978b). The ontology of social being: 2. Marx.
London: Merlin Press.
Marx, K., Engel, F., & Lenin, V. I. (1977). On dialectical
materialism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
McCarthy, T. (1982). The critical theory of Jurgen
Habermas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1973). The visible and the invisible.
Evarston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1986). Adventures of the dialectic.
Evarston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Overton, W. F. (2006). Developmental psychology:
Philosophy, concepts, methodology. In R. M. Lerner
& W. Damon (Eds.), Theoretical models of human
development. Vol. 1 of handbook of child psychology
(6th ed., pp. 18–88). New York: Wiley.
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neoPiagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of
cognitive development. International Journal of
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Zubiri.
Dialogical Self
Hubert Hermans
International Institute for the Dialogical Self,
Milsbeek, CA, The Netherlands
Introduction
Since its inception in the last decade of the past
century, the notion of the dialogical self has
attracted the interest from social scientists and
practitioners from different disciplines and cul-
tural origins. It weaves two concepts, self and
dialogue, together in such a way that new phe-
nomena in the functioning of the human mind
become visible. Usually, the self is conceived as
something “internal” that happens within the
mind of the individual person, while “dialogue”
is associated with something “external,” referring
to a process that takes place between people
involved in some form of exchange. The com-
posite concept “dialogical self” transcends this
Dialogical Self
dichotomy by bringing the external into the inter-
nal and, in reverse, introducing the internal into
the external. The advantage of such a composite
concept is that the dichotomy between self and
society that has plagued psychology and the
social sciences since long is surpassed. The
intrinsic self–society interconnection allows to
abandon a conception of the self as essentialized
and as having an existence separate from its
social context. Moreover, it avoids the restric-
tions of a “selfless society” that is at risk of
neglecting the richness and creativity that the
individual human mind has to offer to the inno-
vation of existing social practices. An important
implication of the intrinsic self–society intercon-
nection is that the self is not simply “surrounded”
by society, but functions itself as a “society of
mind.” It is a mini-society that functions, at the
same time, as part of the society at large
(Hermans, 2001).
Definition and Conceptualization
The dialogical self is conceived of as a dynamic
multiplicity of I-positions in the society of mind.
As a “mini-society,” the self emerges from an
intense interconnection with the social and soci-
etal context and is intrinsically bound to particu-
lar positions in time and space. As spatially
located, the embodied I moves from one position
to another in a process of positioning and
counterpositioning (e.g., as a professional I’m
confronted with people who agree or disagree
with me and I’m able to take their position and
answer to it). As a temporal process, the I is
involved in processes of positioning and
repositioning (e.g., in a social conflict, my first
impulse is to defend myself and feel myself in the
position of being accused; however later I’m able
to reposition myself as being interested in the
background of my opponent’s point of view).
As a spatiotemporal process, the I fluctuates
among different, contradictory, and opposed
positions (both within the self and between self
and perceived, remembered, or imagined others).
Moreover, like in society at large, these positions
are involved in relationships of dominance and
Dialogical Self
social power with some positions becoming
stronger and more influential in the self than
others. As part of sign-mediated social relation-
ships, I-positions can be voiced with the possibil-
ity that dialogical relations among them develop.
The voices interact like characters in a story or
movie, involved in processes of question and
answer, agreement and disagreement, conflict
and cooperation, and negotiation and integration.
Each of them has a story to tell about their own
experiences from their own specific point of view.
As different voices, the I-positions exchange
knowledge and information about themselves, cre-
ating a complex, multivoiced, narratively struc-
tured self (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
As extended to the environment, the dialogical
self consists not only of internal positions (e.g.,
I as a working mother, I as a dedicated scientist,
I as a lover of opera) but also external positions
(e.g., my parents, my always helpful colleague,
my stubborn opponent) (for extension of the self,
see also James, 1890). In order to understand the
self–other relationship in dialogical self theory, it
is relevant to emphasize that not only internal but
also external positions can have the quality of
I-positions. That is, the other is not conceived as
a purely outside entity that is separated from the
self, but as “another I.” This point of view is
consistent with Bakhtin (1929/1973), who
noticed that “For the author the hero is not ‘he,’
and not ‘I’ but a full-valued ‘thou,’ that is another
full-fledged ‘I’” (p. 51). It is also in agreement
with another dialogical theorist, Martin Buber
(1970), who referred to the notions of self and
other not as separate terms but as a word pair.
When the I is part of an I–you relationship, the
other is acknowledged as a subject with whom
a dialogical relationship can evolve. When it is
part of an I–it relationship, the other is reduced to
an object so that dialogue is reduced to mono-
logue. Indeed, we can identify with or see our-
selves, on a particular level, as identical with an
animal, a tree, or with an object (e.g., an artistic
creation in which I recognize myself) or with
nature (e.g., “I as a piece of earth that becomes
aware of itself”). The identification with an ani-
mal or object can go so far that it is experienced
as my extended I.
429 D
Keywords
Self; dialogue; dialogical self; identity; social
power; multiplicity; multivoicedness
Historical Background
Dialogical self theory emerged at the interface of D
two traditions: American Pragmatism and Rus-
sian Dialogism. As a theory about the self, it is
inspired by James’s (1890) and Mead’s (1934)
classic formulations on the workings of the
(social) self. As a dialogical theory, it elaborates
on some of the fertile insights presented by
Bakhtin (1929/1973) who has emphasized the
polyphonic nature of the human mind. Although
some of the views of these authors have signifi-
cantly contributed to insights in the social and
dialogical nature of the self, contemporary dia-
logical self theory has proposed a conception of
the self that takes the theoretical consequences of
the fact that we are facing unprecedented histor-
ical changes and challenged by the problems of
an increasingly globalizing society.
Inspired by the described forerunners, the first
psychological publication on the dialogical self
appeared in the American Psychologist (Hermans,
Kempen, & Van Loon, 1992). The subtitle of this
entry “Beyond individualism and rationalism”
indicated that the proposed concept was an
attempt to go beyond the dominance of the modern
model of the self in contemporary psychology.
Debate About Modern and Post Modern
Models of the Self
Many discussions in the social sciences contrast a
modern or “Enlightenment subject” and a post-
modern or decentered subject. The subject in the
modern model is typically seen as a unified indi-
vidual, endowed with the capacities of reason,
with a “center” as an inner core and with an
autonomous existence as separate from its social
context. The postmodern subject, on the other
hand, is described as being composed of different
parts that are highly contingent on the changes in
D 430
the environment, resulting in a self that is
decentered to a degree that it is losing its inner
core. In this view, the self consists of contradictory
identities which pull in different directions, so that
identifications are continually shifting. This far
reaching decentralization is well expressed by
the famous dictum of poet William B. Yeats,
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The central notion of dialogical self theory,
I-position, acknowledges the decentering multi-
plicity of the self, while preserving, at the same
time, its coherence and unity. Subjected to
changes in time, the self is intrinsically involved
in a process of positioning and repositioning and,
due to its location in space, to the processes of
positioning and counterpositioning. As such it is
distributed by the polyphony of existing, new,
and possible positions (decentering movements).
At the same time, the I appropriates or “owns”
some of them and rejects or disowns others. In
this way, the self is involved in a process of
organizing positions as parts of a liveable struc-
ture (centering movements). The “appropriated”
(James, 1890) parts that are experienced as
“mine” and as “belonging to me” enable the self
to find a certain degree of continuity and stability
in the highly discontinuous circumstances of
a globalizing and boundary-crossing society. By
placing I-positions in a dialogical framework and
processing them in “dialogical spaces,” both
within and between selves, they are “lifted up”
to the level of mutual enrichment and alterity
(i.e., acknowledging and respecting the fact that
the positions of other people are different from
mine and, moreover, accepting and respecting the
fact that the positions in my own self are different
from each other, in this way preventing that one
position takes all power and suppresses the other
ones). When positions receive space to express
themselves from their own specific point of view,
they are respected as dialogical partners in the
“democracy” of the self.
The basic similarity of the self and the social is
well expressed by the fact that what happens
between people may also take place within the
self. People can consult each other, make an
agreement with each other, may criticize each
other, and may be involved in a conflict with
Dialogical Self
each other. They may also consult themselves,
make an agreement with themselves, criticize
themselves, and may be engaged in a conflict
with themselves. Such relationships have the
potential to function as meaning bridges between
self and society.
Critical Debate About Social Power and
Dominance
As Callero (2003) has observed, many of the
concepts in mainstream (social) psychology
(e.g., self-consistency, self-enhancement, self-
verification, self-monitoring, self-efficacy, self-
regulation, self-presentation, self-knowledge,
self-control, self-handicapping, and self-
deception) are typically considered as containers
of individual minds, with social and societal
influences as external, determining factors. The
notion of social power, so influential in societal
structures, is conspicuously absent in these con-
cepts. In terms of Callero’s criticism:
The self that is socially constructed is never
a bounded quality of the individual or a simple
expression of psychological characteristics; it is
a fundamentally social phenomenon, where con-
cepts, images, and understandings are deeply deter-
mined by relations of power. Where these
principles are ignored or rejected, the self is often
conceptualized as a vessel for storing all the par-
ticulars of the person. (Callero, 2003, p. 127)
Indeed, many concepts of the self lack the
struggle and power games that are intrinsic to
society, including the self as a society of mind.
In fact, such concepts are typical of the modern
model of the self that, under the influence of
Enlightenment, tends to consider the self as an
entity or essence in itself and as something which
can be defined and studied in isolation of its
societal context.
The role of social power and its influence on
the organization of the self becomes very visible
in religious orthodoxy, the rise of fundamental
movements, and the phenomenon of patriotism.
Such views find their expression in collective
voices that promote a strongly hierarchical orga-
nization of the position repertoire of the self and
a reduction of the heterogeneity of positions with
Dialogical Self
a simultaneous avoidance of internal disagree-
ment, conflict, and uncertainty. For example,
some forms of religious orthodoxy provide the
self with a stabilized and indisputable religious
position that is based on a belief in a sacred past,
a social hierarchy of authority of men over
women, adults over children, and God over all
(Arnett, 2002).
International Relevance
Since the moment of the first psychological
publication on the dialogical self in 1992, an
increasing number of scholars and practitioners
have contributed to the further development
and application of the theory. Probably, the
best indication of the international relevance
of the theory is the publication of the Hand-
book of Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans &
Gieser, 2012), in which authors from 15 coun-
tries have produced 29 chapters about theory,
method (qualitative and quantitative), and
applications of the theory. The international
impact is further expressed by the biennial
International Conference on the Dialogical
Self, which is organized in different countries:
the Netherlands (2000), Belgium (2002),
Poland (2004), Portugal (2006), United King-
dom (2008), Greece (2010), USA (2012), and
The Netherlands (2014).
In 2002, the International Society for Dialog-
ical Science was established and in 2004 the
International Journal for Dialogical Science
was launched. Groups of authors collaborate on
the publication of research projects and on dis-
cussion of relevant aspects of the theory. This
resulted in a series of special issues in a variety
of psychological journals: Culture and Psychol-
ogy (2001, vol. 7, nr. 3), Theory and Psychology
(2002, vol. 12, nr 2, and 2010, vol. 20, nr. 3),
Journal of Constructivist Psychology (2003, vol.
16, nr 2; 2010, vol. 21, nr. 3; and 2013, vol. 26,
nr. 2), Identity. An international Journal of The-
ory and Research (2004, vol. 4, nr 4), Counsel-
ling Psychology Quarterly (2006, vol. 19, nr 1),
and New Directions for Child and Adolescent
Development (2012, nr. 137).
431 D
Practice Relevance
Practical applications of the dialogical self have
been realized on four areas: (a) psychotherapy
and counseling (e.g., treatment of schizophrenia
and personality disorders, “personification” as
a method of conversation with significant others
and parts of the self as I-positions), (b) coaching
(e.g., “emotional coaching” as an improvement D
of the relationship between self and emotions),
and (c) education (e.g., identity development in
a school environment and collaborative learning
in the context of developing a dialogical self). All
these applications are presented and discussed in
the third part of the Handbook of Dialogical Self
Theory (Hermans & Gieser, 2012). For practical
applications of dialogical self theory on motiva-
tion, leadership, and conflict resolution, see the
final chapter of Hermans and Hermans-Konopka
(2010).
Future Directions
In an editorial introduction to a special issue on
self and dialogue, Stam (2010) highlighted three
points of attention to be taken into account in the
future work on the dialogical self. First, the com-
plexity of the phenomenon is inevitably the result
of the preceding histories of this notion. The
insight that we know ourselves via the other is
already discussed in the works of Plotinos and
finds its more recent expression in the writings of
George Herbert Mead, William James, Mikhail
Bakhtin, and Valentin Volosinov. Although dia-
logical self theory as presented in this entry may
deviate on significant points of its forerunners,
such scholars and traditions can be once again
consulted for the creation of new ideas that may
contribute to further theoretical developments.
Second, the original conception of the dialog-
ical self has brought together a number of con-
temporary scholars who are moving in alternate
or parallel directions. The formulation of the con-
cept was sufficiently broad to invite clinical,
developmental, therapeutic, cultural, personality
psychologist, and even cultural anthropologists to
become part of a joint undertaking. However,
D 432
after some time, it becomes visible that not every-
body has the same thing in mind when talking
about “dialogue” and “dialogical self.” In order to
minimize the risk of misunderstanding and con-
ceptual confusion, collaborative initiatives, like
international conferences, handbooks, and spe-
cial issues, are helpful to develop and adapt the
original conceptions.
Third, work on the dialogical self is, almost
naturally, concerned with the speakable,
voiced considerations of subjectivity. Inevita-
bly, the emphasis on the speakable aspects of
the self evokes, as its dialectical counterpart,
a need to focus on its unspeakable and
unvoiced aspects. Future theory and research
should focus on the nonverbal and implicit
aspects of self and dialogue more than hith-
erto has been done.
References
Arnett, J. (2002). The psychology of globalization. Amer-
ican Psychologist, 57, 774–783.
Bakhtin, M. (1973). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics
(2nd edn.; trans. R. W. Rotsel). Ann Arbor, MI:
Ardis. (Original work published 1929 as Problemy
tvorchestva Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Art]).
Buber, M. (1970). I and thou: A new translation with
a prologue “I and You” and notes by Walter
Kaufmann. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Callero, P. L. (2003). The sociology of the self. Annual
Review of Sociology, 29, 115–133.
Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward
a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture
and Psychology, 7, 243–281.
Hermans, H. J. M., & Gieser, T. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook
of dialogical self theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Hermans, H. J. M., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dia-
logical self theory: Positioning and counter-
positioning in a globalizing world. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H. J. G., & Van Loon, R. J. P.
(1992). The dialogical self: Beyond individualism and
rationalism. American Psychologist, 47, 23–33.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1).
London: Macmillan.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Stam, H. (2010). Self and dialogue: Introduction. Theory
& Psychology, 20, 299–304.
Difference, Overview
Online Resources
Articles on the dialogical self. http://scholar.google.com/
scholar?hl=en&q=dialogical+self&btnG=&as_sdt=
1%2C5&as_sdtp=
Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory. http://www.cambridge.
org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6516454/Handbook-of-
Dialogical-Self-Theory/?site_locale=en_US
International Society for Dialogical Science. http://web.
lemoyne.edu/~hevern/ISDS/
International Journal for Dialogical Science. http://ijds.
lemoyne.edu/
International Institute for the Dialogical Self. http://www.
dialogicalinstitute.com/
Eighth International Conference on the Dialogical Self
(upcoming). http://sites.thehagueuniversity.com/
dialogical-self/home
Video with summary of the dialogical self. http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=TKEKWzZOC3I
Difference, Overview
Lise Bird Claiborne
Human Development and Counselling
Department; Center for Postgraduate Studies,
University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Introduction
Difference is a simple word, yet an incredibly
difficult notion to pin down. As the discipline of
psychology took shape late in the nineteenth cen-
tury, traditional empirical studies focused on
measuring differences between people in order
to predict human behavior. By the mid-twentieth
century, there were huge social upheavals glob-
ally as advocates for various human rights groups
acquired a greater political voice. Many psychol-
ogists began to question earlier accounts of
difference in various fields. This led to
a reconsideration of categories around gender,
ethnicity, age, disability, social class, and
sexualities. However, this questioning still
tended to maintain the place of the individual in
psychology – with its hidden assumptions about
the ideal rational and independent person from
a dominant cultural group. Critical psychologists
then drew from philosophical debates around
notions of difference to further question the
Difference, Overview
ontological basis for human life beyond notions
of individual identities within corporeal limits of
separate bodies. The debates also raised new
questions for the politics of change and transfor-
mation as well as for alliances across difference.
Contemporary practice continues to ask ques-
tions about the best ways to acknowledge varie-
ties of difference simultaneously and to find ways
for expression of strongly held political traditions
in a world in which there must be possibilities for
cooperation despite the differences that divide us.
Definitions
In the traditional field of differential psychology,
“difference” usually referred to variations
between groups of individuals that could be
measured in order to study why people are not
all the same. In contrast, critical psychological
approaches acknowledge differences between
peoples that are often politically charged by
oppression, domination, and violence.
There is no ultimate taxonomy of groups,
since every society is likely to construct the
group differences of particular concern in their
setting. Many critical psychologists attend
to cross- and within-society differences in order
to understand political and cultural forces that
enhance or deter survival in particular
communities.
The term “diversity” is often used to signal the
variety of differences that may exist between
people, as well as between behaviors, qualities,
and actions. Diversity is sometimes used as
a term within a humanist discourse to signal dif-
ference without acknowledging dimensions of
power and oppression between groups of people.
The term diversity is sometimes paired with the
term “manage,” a juxtaposition that suggests that
ethnic, religious, gender, and sexuality differ-
ences are a problem for which strategies of
change are necessary (Henwood, Griffin, &
Phoenix, 1998; Jones, 2004). The suggestion
that diversity is a problem also suggests that
there is an expected norm or dominant category
that contrasts to an “other” or minority category.
The term “difference,” in contrast, signals the
433 D
social categorization processes that carry
a weight of discrimination or social exclusion
linked to membership in particular groups.
Keywords
Difference; critical disability studies; differential
psychology; diversity; dualism; feminist D
psychology; queer theory; rights movements
History
The beginnings of empirical psychology were
linked to the project of measuring differences
between people. British researcher Francis
Galton (1822–1911) was innovative in using
statistics to study differences between people,
notably seeking predictors of variations in “intel-
ligence.” His belief in the inherited nature of
mental abilities was an important foundation of
his work in eugenics (a term he coined). The field
of differential psychology became a dominant
force in early twentieth-century empirical psy-
chology. Numerous studies examined differences
between individuals in two areas that could be
measured by scaled tests: intelligence and
personality (Anastasi, 1958). Behaviors of people
who had different scores on particular scales
might then be attributed to an inherent difference
in their personal tendencies. Such research relies
on an ontology of the individual person as
a separate, rational, and knowable “subject” of
enquiry in the discipline. Such studies aim to
describe group norms of behavior (“central ten-
dencies”) collated from responses of various
“individuals” under controlled circumstances.
Early critical research on difference in
psychology drew on political movements advo-
cating human rights for groups of people differ-
ing in identity by gender, disability, ethnicity, and
indigeneity. These rights movements emerged
at the end of the Second World War, as
a response to the racism of mass genocides that
had occurred. A key move was the universal
declaration of human rights of the United Nations
[UN] (1948) was followed by rights conventions
D 434
and protocols on behalf of other important polit-
ical groupings such as women, children, older
persons, disabled people, and indigenous peo-
ples. Political work by psychologists in these
areas helped to move psychology beyond its tra-
ditional empiricist beginnings.
Traditional Debates
Traditional psychological methods investigate
the impact on dependent variables from differ-
ences on one or more independent variables. Per-
sonality psychology emphasized intraindividual
factors, for example, by measuring the preva-
lence of particular personality factors in
a sample of people. Traditional social psychology
investigated interindividual differences by com-
paring responses of different groups of people.
Critical Debates
The first critical wave in psychology focused
specifically on hierarchical differences that cre-
ate forms of oppression. A key strategy was to
acknowledge the oppression of marginalized
groups by challenging dualisms that define
a group’s relative status. A dualism is a two-part
system in which one term is seen as dominant
while the secondary or minority term is seen as
lacking or “other” to the dominant term
(e.g., male/female, straight/gay, able/disabled/
normal/abnormal, black/white). The dominant
group is taken for granted as the everyday,
expected norm. Research on specific dualisms
important for difference closely followed politi-
cal debates about human rights for marginalized
peoples.
Gender Dualism
Traditional psychology was challenged by
critiques from the 1970s that pointed to the pre-
ponderance of male “subjects” in psychology
experiments; the absence of females from
research studies appeared to have gone unnoticed
for decades. When this bias was acknowledged,
researchers turned their attention to studying
Difference, Overview
differences between the sexes. The move to
research agendas that specifically recognized
women’s oppression rather than simply describ-
ing gender differences was an important critical
move (e.g., Fine, 1985). Some feminists went
further, arguing for a separate psychology of
women. Psychological studies mirrored rights
movements that lobbied for equal pay for
women’s work and for women to live without
the violence directed against them (most often
by men).
Gay/Straight Dualism
A significant critical move in psychology was the
removal of “homosexuality” as an “abnormal”
diagnosis in the third Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual (DSMIII; see Socarides, 1978). Differ-
ences in sexual orientation were initially studied
with descriptive research on group comparisons;
this was similar to studies of gender difference
that ignored the power differential within the
dualism. Rather than simply predict an ontogeny
for the development of sexual orientation
(Bell, Weinberg, & Hammersmith, 1981), more
critical work celebrated lesbian and gay psychol-
ogy without using heterosexuality as the standard
for comparison (e.g., Kitzinger, 1987).
The Able/Disabled and Normal/Abnormal
Dualisms
War veterans of the mid-twentieth century advo-
cated for greater recognition of the difficulties
faced by people with nonnormative bodies.
The disability rights movement opened a space
of political identity for all people who have been
marginalized by normative expectations of
bodily appearance or function (Oliver, 1984).
Early critics of clinical psychology of the
1980s, such as Carl Rogers and R.D. Laing,
were skeptical of the differential psychology
technique of using scaled tests to measure statis-
tically normative tendencies in emotion and per-
sonality so that people with “abnormal”
responses could be diagnosed and ultimately
altered with clinical interventions (e.g., Boyle &
Saklofske, 2004). Later, narrative therapists used
a discursive framework to move further away
from the focus on the individual’s problems
Difference, Overview
(e.g., White & Epston, 1990), while other clinical
psychologists criticized the foundations of their
own discipline (e.g., Hare-Mustin & Marecek,
1997). In community psychology there were
moves towards recognition of survivors of psy-
chiatric services as people who have successfully
overcome discrimination, rather than as people
identifiable by diagnostic labels that put them on
the negative side of the normal/abnormal
dualism. The Psychology Politics Resistance
Network (see www.discourseunit.com) was
established in 1994 as a way to connect advocacy
groups together throughout the UK and beyond.
Black/White Dualism
A huge number of political struggles are linked to
the deconstruction of the notion of “race” as
a simple category of human difference. The rise
of national independence movements around the
world started to reverse centuries of political
oppression for colonized peoples. Critical psy-
chology has taken the identification and critique
of racism – wherever it occurs in societies – as
a core goal. For example, psychologists were cru-
cial in debates around reputed differences in
“intelligence” between “races” of people. US edu-
cational psychologist Arthur Jensen’s proposal of
inherent limitations in the intelligence (as mea-
sured by IQ scores) of African Americans led to
student riots in the USA in the 1970s; the idea was
revived in the early 1990s in the USA (Herrnstein
& Murray, 1994). Work of critical psychologists
such as Kincheloe, Steinberg, and Gresson (1996)
helped to discredit this biased research.
Contemporary Critical Psychology Debates
It took some time for the various critical groups in
psychology to form a more cohesive approach
that both recognized and refused the discipline
itself. Particularly important for the project of
critical psychology was the critique of individu-
alism in psychology (Sampson, 1984); the influ-
ence of the theory of social construction, adapted
from sociological constructs (Gergen, 1985); and
the move to consider the work of Michel Foucault
for its implications in deconstructing the subject
of psychology (Henriques, Hollway, Urwin,
Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984). This changed the
435 D
focus from persons as having stable identities to
the more complex notion of subjectivities.
There have been debates about the usefulness
of a discourse of difference, given the operation
of opposing discourses of unity or assimilation
(Burbules & Rice, 2000). To gain more under-
standing of the conceptual difficulties involved in
this area, critical psychologists draw on the work
of poststructural philosophers of difference. D
Jacques Derrida’s notion of deconstruction has
been of key importance to critical psychologists
when dealing with dualisms. Derrida pointed to
the impossibility of treating dualisms as true
opposites. By defining one term (e.g., “women”)
in terms of its opposite (e.g., “men”), there
remains the trace of the original that is being
opposed or denied. So the two halves of
a dualism remain linked together, each half
implicitly reinstating the other. Derrida’s work
gave critical psychologists tools for going beyond
the dualism by attending to and unsettling false
dichotomies, for example, by introducing a third
term that unsettles the opposing pair. This is
particularly useful in the area of gender. Much
work today acknowledges that there are, even in
terms of the genome, a number of sexes or gen-
ders (Fausto-Sterling, 1993). Ethnographers
point to societies that acknowledge a greater
diversity of possible genders than are described
in most Euro-Western countries (Davies, 2010).
This shows the ways that different societies’
notions of gender are constructed from notions
of biological reproduction, sexuality, appearance,
and divisions of labor.
Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher
who went further in questioning the meaning of
difference beyond dualisms and hierarchies. Of
particular relevance for critical psychology was
his work with psychotherapist Felix Guattari
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) that put fragmenta-
tion and movement as a starting point for life
rather than the stability of knowable human bod-
ies over time. This has had implications for crit-
ical disability studies, for example, in critique of
essentializing bodies around their impairments
and arguing against a simple social model of
political change as a matter of overcoming
barriers (e.g., Goodley & Roets, 2009).
D 436
Contemporary critical gender studies have
moved beyond the female-male dualism to an
exploration of masculinity and femininity as dis-
courses offering a range of ways to live (Davies,
1989; Walkerdine, 1988). Studies of sexuality
have moved beyond the assumption that hetero-
sexuality is aligned with the gender dualism; the
field now encompasses a multiplicity of sexual
and gender orientations including bisexuality,
transgender, and transsexual lives beyond the
gay/straight dualism. The expansion of queer the-
ory (e.g., Warner, 1993) widened debates beyond
the scrutiny of sexual behaviors to an understand-
ing of discourses of heteronormativity (Braun &
Clarke, 2009).
It should also be noted that age is an important
area of difference. Unlike other dimensions of
difference, age is unusual because people change
in somewhat predictable ways over time as they
get older. Critical psychologists have questioned
the basis for notions such as developmental
“readiness” (Bird, 2006) or the assumption that
development is “progressive” (Morss, 1995).
Erica Burman (2008a) has shifted the focus
from age differences to discourses that create
positions available in societies depending on the
status accorded periods such as “childhood.”
Burman (2008b) in particular has mobilized fem-
inist and north-south political critiques in her
analyses of the limits of child-rearing advice
and uses of developmental discourses by media
that support capitalist consumption of images of
children towards economic ends for private
industry as well as nongovernmental charities.
Attention to the diversity and complexity of
culture has led to a demise in the study of differ-
ences in “race.” There is now greater engagement
with people’s own experiences and understand-
ings of their ethnicities, countries of origin,
migration and forced immigration, and religion
and cultural practices. The field of critical race
theory (e.g., Delgado & Stefancic, 2011) brings
together the tradition of critical theory and an
explicit focus on racism and white privilege in
its examination of the ongoing dynamics of
power in social institutions. While this work has
had a big impact in education and law, some have
Difference, Overview
raised questions about how far traditional psy-
chological studies have been able to implement
them (Adams & Salter, 2011), arguing against
psychological paradigms that use group catego-
ries as independent variables. In contrast, critical
psychological work recognizes the importance of
intersections between racism, sexism, heterosex-
ism, ableism, and other simplistic identity cate-
gories based on dualisms. For women of African
ethnicity living in Euro-Western countries, for
example, there is discrimination that exceeds
sexism assumed to apply to all women or racism
assumed to be directed at men of nondominant
social groups (Crenshaw, 1989).
Critical research has helped to move research
beyond single categories of identity to a more
considered analysis of intersections across
important areas of difference that occur simulta-
neously in people’s lives (e.g., Cole, 2009) and
point to more complex (and sometimes unstable)
positionings of power. Critical social psycholo-
gists have made considerable moves towards
redefining earlier studies of “prejudice” towards
more direct confrontation with the ubiquity of
racism (e.g., Tuffin, 2005). In addition, world-
wide movements to recognize rights of indige-
nous peoples have had their impact on critical
psychology, particularly in the questioning of
traditional research methods that objectify groups
of people in ways that can be viewed as coloniz-
ing (Smith, 2012).
International Relevance
The field of difference is characterized by its
contributions from a huge range of psychologists
based in varying geographical and cultural sites
throughout the world. While the creation of the
rights movement can be seen as originally
stemming from European traditions, each coun-
try has embraced different perspectives and
political concerns of immediate relevance
(e.g., An-naim, 1994). Contemporary critical
psychology, influenced by philosophers of differ-
ence, looks at intersections of difference beyond
simple rights-based dualisms.
Difference, Overview
Practice Relevance
Critical research on difference has become
important in community work that seeks
change for marginalized groups defined by
a particular difference. Critical psychologists
contribute to community initiatives that seek
strategies to challenge racist, sexist, homopho-
bic, ableist, ageist, and classist social practices.
This knowledge is important in a variety of
fields including clinical psychology, education,
nursing, medicine, social work, and
counselling.
Though educational psychology was slow to
respond to critiques from difference philoso-
phers (Bird, 1999), contemporary work draws
on difference philosophers and a critical
engagement with race, class, and gender/sexu-
alized subjectivities (Youdell, 2006). Critically
discursive psychological work, influenced by
philosophers of difference, has helped educa-
tors working for social justice to alter practices
in inclusive education (see Graham & Slee,
2008).
Critical psychologists can make an impact
with work that questions taken-for-granted
notions about marginalized groups. For example,
John Money’s traditional work with parents of
intersexual children (born with both female and
male genitalia) supported surgical recreation of
each child into the normative body of a girl or boy
by removing or reshaping the “extra” parts.
Critique of this approach that combines the social
history of medicine, queer theory, and media
studies has helped to support a rights movement
for intersex people (see Reis, 2009).
Similarly, critical health psychology (Lyons &
Chamberlain, 2006) uses questions about the
body and subjectivity to reexamine simple dual-
isms about healthy versus sick people. Critiques
of the narrow definitions of masculinity help to
suggest better ways to get health information and
support to men even when their willingness to
seek help for physical and mental health concerns
poses a conflict with traditional masculine
subjectivity (Addis & Mahalik, 2003; Noone &
Stephens, 2008).
437 D
Future Directions
The project of critical psychology continues to
explore possibilities for transforming lives
beyond using simple dualistic categories to dis-
criminate between people. (At the same time, it is
important to recognize that some political groups
use difference strategically in order to claim par-
ticular identities for political goals). The study of D
difference in critical psychology goes further
than traditional differential psychology by con-
sidering the importance of power relationships in
understanding social experience.
To conceptualize the complexities around dif-
ference further, there is increasing interest in
drawing from critical debates in philosophy in
order to question the grounds for difference.
Philosophers of difference (mentioned above)
offer possible ways to acknowledge social differ-
ences while at the same time acknowledging the
paradox that any attention to difference has the
potential to recreate division. Some crucial work
at present considers the intersections among
various dimensions of difference rather than
focussing on one difference alone. Critical psy-
chologists seek to respect differences important
to groups of people while also supporting moves
towards politically fruitful alliances among peo-
ples at particular times in history.
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udhr/
Disability
Akemi Nishida
Department of Critical Social Psychology,
The City University of New York,
New York, NY, USA
Introduction
This entry traces how psychology has defined
disability as well as normalcy since the beginning
of the twentieth century in the context of the
United States. First, it examines roles played by
psychologists in constructing, enforcing, and
maintaining social norms and ideals. Secondly,
this entry explores how disabled people have
fought against disability’s pathologization by
developing the social and post-social models as
critical contestations of the medical model of
deficit. Third, this entry asks how psychology
can contribute to the emancipation of disabled
people and communities by challenging the
ableist approaches psychology often takes.
While there are diverse subfields within
psychology, psychologists must acknowledge
439 D
and take accountability for the discipline’s
collective privilege and power in shaping and
limiting disabled people’s lives.
In this entry, I will primarily use terms “dis-
abled people” and “nondisabled people” in order
to challenge the power dynamics between the
two populations by situating disabled people at
the center and nondisabled at peripheral
(Linton, 1998). Also, I use words such as D
mental disability and psychiatric disabilities
interchangeably to include those who may,
otherwise, identify with experiences based in
mental illness, mental health, or stress (Prise,
2011). Needless to say, psychologists, in various
ways, contributed positively to many disabled
people’s lives. This “fact” underlies this entry.
Definition
The general definition of disability used in the
USA is based on the Americans with Disabilities
Act of (1990):
(a) A physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life
activities of such individual
(b) A record of such an impairment
(c) Being regarded as having such an impairment
In the realm of psychology, disability is often
understood in a medical framework when the
disabled individual becomes the object of psy-
chological treatment, study, and individual cure.
The notions of normalcy and disability have
a long and tangled codependence, beginning
most prominently within the medical model.
Medical Model
Historically and even today, disability is often
understood in the framework of the medical
model. This model defines disability as a biomed-
ical deficit that originates and resides in individ-
ual’s body and/or mind (Fritsch, 2009). Under
this model, disability is seen as a negative thing,
a lack, a transgression, or a disfigurement needing
to be prevented or cured in order for a person to
assimilate or mimic the social norm. If this assim-
ilation cannot happen, disabled people are
assumed “better off” if they are segregated
D 440
through institutionalization, incarceration, or
special education; treated through over-medical-
ization; or worse eliminated through sterilization
or euthanasia. As a result, disabled people are
individualized and discouraged to identify with
one another.
Social Model
As disability rights movements gained momen-
tum throughout the 1970s and on, particularly in
the USA and the UK, the social model of disabil-
ity was developed as “something imposed on top
of our impairments by the way we are unneces-
sarily isolated and excluded from full participa-
tion in society. Disabled people are therefore an
oppressed group in society (UPIAS, 1976, cited
in Thomas, 2004, p. 572).” Developed by dis-
abled people through the reality of their experi-
ences, the social model approaches disability as
sociopolitically and culturally constructed. In
other words, disability is recognized as a social
experience produced by ableism; this is distinct
from impairment which represents an actual
difference in body and mind. By blaming ableist
society (e.g., inaccessible built environments,
narrowly defined social norms, and stigmatiza-
tion based on exclusionary social norms) as the
cause of disablement, disability rights activists
shifted the responsibility and the problem from
individuals’ bodies and minds onto social and
political structures, policies, and interpersonal
stereotypes and prejudices. By shifting disability
to a political and minority identity, many disabled
people developed a sense of pride around their
disabilities, building solidarity based on shared
struggles.
Reassessing of Social Model: Post-social
Model
In more recent years, there has been reassessment
of the social model. In this post-social model,
people approach disability as constructed both
by social experiences as well as bodily and
through the mind (Clare, 2001). Thus, scholars
and activists articulate limitation of the social
model such as inability to accommodate diverse
experiences of disabled people including chronic
illness, pain, or fatigue or psycho-emotional
Disability
impact of ableism (e.g., Watermeyer, 2012).
The post-social model analyzes how disability is
constructed and experienced in relation to other
social identities and injustices (e.g., how race and
disability are interwoven). This intersectional
analysis focuses on the social distribution of
power that constructs and shapes disabling expe-
riences and the value attached to disability
(Nishida, manuscript). The post-social model
also problematizes “normalcy,” challenging the
construction of this invented standard against
which others are defined. This model shifts the
conversation away from the dichotomy of biolog-
ical and social toward an intersectional under-
standing of bodies and minds in both political
and phenomenological contexts. It offers a criti-
cal analysis of what constitutes norms, health, and
cultural anxieties about autonomy, independence,
and immortality. The critique of the social model
expands to how it is used; such as how the social
model has been exported to the Global South from
the Global North without an examination of con-
textual differences (Grech, 2009).
Psychologists’ Role in the Defining of
Disability
The field of psychology plays a critical part in
defining disability and in constructing and
enforcing social norms. Psychologists become
gatekeepers to what is “normal” through the
implementation of measurements and standards
such as intelligence tests and the DSM. Indeed,
psychologists’ livelihoods depend on disabled
people as well as on these standards and measure-
ments and on their treatment.
Keywords
The medical model; The social model; Disability
rights movement; Disability justice movement;
Ableism; Normalization
History
Despite the diversity of experience within the
category of disability (e.g., the history of
Disability
cognitive and learning disabilities as well as
mental/psychiatric disabilities), writings on the
history of psychological studies of disability in
North America often start in the 1950s and 1960s
with the emergence of rehabilitation psychology
(Gill, 2001). This emergence which attends to
physical disabilities, in particular, is also attrib-
uted to the return of veterans from WW2 (Serlin,
2004). Publications by Wright (e.g., 1959) on
rehabilitation psychology, as well as the publica-
tion of “Stigma” by Goffman in (1963), directed
many psychologists’ attention toward attitudes
toward disabled people as well as how disabled
people adjusted to their disabilities and to
a disabling society (e.g., value adjustment). The
first official rehabilitation psychology journal
was published in 1972. Nonetheless, it was not
until the 1980s that disabled psychologists’ work
emerged in mainstream psychology and disabled
people’s perspectives started to be integrated.
Many special editions on disability were
published by psychological journals in the
1980s; some had progressive views, while others
stayed within the framework of “how to control
and manage disabled people.” This increasing
integration of disabled psychologists can be
seen as an effect of the larger US disability rights
movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The slogan
“nothing about us without us” heralded the emer-
gence of a collective struggle for independence,
de-institutionalization, and de-medicalization,
and many disabled people entered various public
spaces. As disabled psychologists, especially
female disabled psychologists (e.g., Asch,
Linton, or Rousso), entered the field, studies on
intersectionality emerged as well (e.g., Fine &
Asch, 1988a). With this influx, we start seeing
more psychological studies that integrate princi-
ples of disability studies and center disabled
people’s firsthand experiences and knowledge in
the 1990s (Olkin & Pledger, 2003).
Even with these progressive developments
within the field, one of the common threads of
psychological approaches to “difference” is
a negative valuation of disability that focuses on
the management, segregation, and cure of the
disabled as well as the search for causes that is
often directed to genetic inheritability as well as
441 D
the mother’s prenatal behaviors. These
psychological studies of disabilities not only
pathologized and medicalized the disability (or
certain differences) but also criminalized them
too (e.g., Graubard, 1967). Also this mainstream
history of psychological studies of disability
often exclusively focuses on physical disabilities
and overlooks how cognitive and psychiatric/
mental disabilities have been studied and D
mistreated by psychologists.
Traditional Debates
While psychology drew on the medical model to
define disability, the medical model, in turn,
depended on scholarship in psychology to
legitimate and maintain itself. This feedback
loop influenced psychological studies and clini-
cal practice over disabled people through the
methods discussed so far (i.e., psychologization).
The interdependence of psychology and the
medical model also resulted in a particular
distribution of expertise within this closed loop,
undervaluing disabled people’s own knowledge
of their bodies and minds. There are significant
debates, therefore, about how disabled bodies and
minds have been essentialized, how “stigma” has
been assumed to be internalized, and how
nondisabled researchers have been considered
“objective” scientists of the disability experience.
Within the research process, disabled people’s
experiences are often overgeneralized and
essentialized or taken out of the context – as if
disability and disability identity are independent
of other identities, contexts, or interpersonal
relationships. Moreover, researchers’ subjectiv-
ities and the internalized ableism that influences
the theorization of disability experiences are
often unexamined with the premise that any
scientific discipline is objective, neutral, or
apolitical. Frank (1988), for example, articulated
how Goffman’s concept of stigma management is
not universal and does not apply to all. Certainly,
living during and after the era of the disability
rights movement, the disabled people in
Frank’s study (1988) expose their disabilities,
instead of hiding them as Goffman suggests.
D 442
The participants also let nondisabled people deal
with their own internalized ableism, instead of
engaging in stigma management. Others have
pointed out that traditional psychological studies
of disability failed to capture the intertwining of
disability experience with one’s other identities,
experiences, and other social in/justices (e.g.,
how race, gender, class, and/or sexuality influ-
ence disability diagnosis as well as acquirement)
(Erevelles, 2011; Nishida, manuscript). Hahn
(1988) argues that nondisabled researchers’ anx-
ieties toward disability affect their work. Operat-
ing from researchers’ assumptions about
disability experience and based on a small sample
of people with certain disabilities (e.g., acquired
physical disabilities), many studies failed to
acknowledge the diversity within the disability
community, for example, through intersec-
tionality with other identities and/or different
types of disability. Moreover, approaching from
the medical model, disabled people are depicted
and treated as an agentless patients in the field
where psychology is practiced. For these reasons,
many disabled people remain skeptical of
psychology’s mode, methods, and material
effects (Goodley & Lawthom, 2005).
Critical Debates
If psychology’s traditional approach toward
disability is a medicalized model of management
and expertise over disabled bodies and minds, the
critical debates build from the social model of
political reclamation.
Olkin and Pledger (2003) summarize this
“new” critical approach as one based on a social
model: taking a lifespan approach, valuing
disability history and culture, focusing on fixing
ableist policy and social norms, and researching
with disabled people not on them by centering
disabled people’s firsthand experiences. Fine
and Asch (1988b) developed a minority model of
disability within which disabled people are recog-
nized as a socially oppressed minority group.
Equally crucial for the field of psychology is the
process of examining internalized ableism –
discrimination against disabled people or those
Disability
who are perceived as disabled, and the assumption
of disability as inherently negative. Rather than
giving a flat account of disabled people’s lives as
full of oppression, the discipline of psychology can
strive to be aware and explicit about the complex
power dynamics within society as well as within
the research relationship. For example, working
with disabled people is certainly not the only way
to study ableism in this society. This is beginning
to take shape as ideas of intersectionality are inte-
grated into psychological analysis (Cole, 2009).
However, intersectionality must not become
another way to simply frame complex identity
and experiences, thus making it important to con-
tinue challenging rigid categories and frameworks
of “multiple oppressions.” Disability brings
various experiences; privilege and oppression
operate together as they intersect or create contin-
uum of experience.
Practice Relevance
Needless to say, these psychological practices
benefited and improved disabled people’s lives
in some ways. It is crucial for disabled people to
practice self-determination as well as indepen-
dent and interdependent living. To do so we
need the help of these professionals. Now, as
psychology works toward the emancipation of
disabled people from ableism, building alliances
and solidarity, it is important to expand our
notions of psychological contribution beyond
the realm of treatment. For example, within the
study of care, the burden on the caregiver is most
often emphasized without considering how psy-
chology might contribute to increasing the qual-
ity of care for disabled care recipients as well as
their caregivers by understanding care dynamics
at macro (state) and micro (interpersonal) levels
and by considering the increasing privatization of
care and corresponding neglect of disabled peo-
ple and their families. Some might argue that
a cultural dissociation from our bodies and
minds, from aging and frailty of health, and
from the high rates of disability allows policy
makers to keep insisting that health and care are
“individual” responsibilities.
Disability
Second, as discussed elsewhere, it is important
for those who work in the treatment and
rehabilitation spheres to learn principles of
disability studies and integrate the principles of
the social model into their work. Pledger (2003),
for example, discusses how rehabilitation psy-
chology can take the social model approach to
work with disabled people. Some of the ways to
integrate the social model approach in this work
might be to center disabled people’s experiences
and knowledge or to be an advocate and chal-
lenge the ableism in and outside of the field of
psychology.
Third, it is critical to make our psychological
conferences and educational curriculums more
accessible to disabled people. The disability
task force of the APA has worked on this matter,
educating the psychology community on how to
make our curriculum and conferences more
accessible. Indeed, the APA website offers
“Guidelines of Assessment of and Intervention
with Persons with Disabilities” beyond
accessibility.
Fourth, while many people often focus exclu-
sively on physical disabilities, one needs to be
aware of disability as a diverse category. How,
for example, can one think about access beyond
the structural? What would full participation
for people with all disabilities look like? What
is “just” consent? How can we create consent
forms that do not diminish self-determination,
but do acknowledge the history of abuse and
mis-consent by psychologists toward the disabil-
ity community? Do we need to transform the idea
of consent in fundamental ways?
Future Directions
While there are many approaches to psychology,
a common linkage is that we all are given certain
privileges through our identities as psychologists.
As we begin to approach disability in various
ways, it is critical to be flexible and creative as
we imagine how to be accountable for our
privileges. Below are some common future
hopes that have been articulated by disability
communities and disability studies scholars.
443 D
Emancipation of Disabled People and
Disability Communities
While many are eager to learn what disability
studies and community can teach psychology,
Goodley and Lawthom (2005) shift the conversa-
tion by asking: how can psychology contribute to
the emancipation of disabled people? One
strategy may involve being an advocate for
disabled clients. Another strategy entails self- D
and community education around disability
politics, as well as self-examination and reflec-
tion about how we engage in diagnosis or label-
ing. A third strategy can be to participate in
disability social movements as allies and com-
rades. Fourth, we may utilize liberating method-
ologies, such as participatory action research, to
do research with disability communities for their
emancipation. Also, as disability studies move to
reassess the social model, some argue for the
importance of reintroducing the embodied expe-
rience of impairment as well as disablement into
a social model of disability.
How can the discipline of psychology, which
created and enforced rigid concepts of normalcy,
resist these standards and participate in bringing
about radical change? How can psychology
respond to disabled people’s yearning and need
for communities and community living, for
quality education, for quality jobs, for quality
relationships, and for safety by drawing on
psychological knowledge? How can we begin to
understand psychology’s participation in the
social construction of ableism, and how can
psychologists be part of the change? What can
discipline contribute to the process of unlearning
internalized ableism? While many critical psy-
chologists have been engaged in activist practices
around the anti-pharmaceutical and anti-
overmedicalization movement, we need more
action, self-reflection, and critical engagement.
Solidarity Within and Across Disability
Community (Taking Complicated Matter as
Complicated)
One of the outcomes of the disability rights
movement was the emergence of solidarity and
community based on shared struggles or similar
disabilities. As a result, many people with mental
D 444
disabilities (including cognitive and psychiatric),
as well as minority people with disabilities, were
marginalized within many disability rights
movements (Goodley, 2001). Because these
movements were often represented by
a physically disabled majority (e.g., Caucasian,
heterosexual, cis-gender, US citizen), issues most
urgent to these constituencies were prioritized
within psychological studies of disability as
well (Nishida, manuscript). For example, an
exclusive focus on disability identities, coupled
by an ignorance of how multiple identities weave
together, as well as a narrow focus on accessibil-
ity, leaves out people with mental, cognitive, and
emotional disabilities and minority people with
disabilities. As the disability community, espe-
cially the disability justice movement, moves
toward cross-disability solidarity, prioritizing
the opinions and voices of currently marginalized
community members within the community, how
can we reflect the move? How can the discipline
of psychology support and practice cross-
disability solidarities? How can we honor and
support the complicated and diverse nature of
life with a disability and life within a disability
community? How do especially those with cog-
nitive disabilities, traditionally excluded from
academia and knowledge production, fit in to
the push by (mostly physically and sensory)
disabled psychologists to bring more disabled
people into psychology?
Practicing Sustainable and Accessible
Psychology
As Bensel and Davies (2005), among others,
argue, we live in a globalized neoliberal society
that surveys and manages our time and
productivity. As participants in higher education
or other facilities, we are forced to perform
hyper-productivity, producing speedy and mass
production/outcome (e.g., publication) in order to
survive economic crises and contribute to the
national economic growth. This state of affairs
excludes many people, particularly those who are
disabled and chronically ill and makes many dis-
abled and ill (Prise, 2011; Nishida, 2012). In light
of these realities, we need to reexamine the pro-
cesses and practices of our academic and
Disability
professional work. An unresolved question
remains: who are we excluding and oppressing
even as we work toward critical social justice?
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assessment of and intervention with persons with
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ity/resources/assessment-disabilities.aspx?item¼2
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Clare, E. (2001). Stolen bodies, reclaimed bodies: Disabil-
ity and queerness. Public Culture, 13(3), 359–365.
Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in
psychology. American Psychologist, 64(3), 170–180.
Erevelles, N. (2011). Disability and difference in global
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Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Fine, M., & Asch, A. (1988b). Disability beyond stigma:
Social interaction, discrimination, and activism.
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Frank, G. (1988). Beyond stigma: Visibility and self-
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UPIAS (The Union of the Physically Impaired Against
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Fritsch, K. (2009). Interview: Resisting easy answers:
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Disasters, Overview
Gavin Sullivan
School of Social, Psychological and
Communication Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan
University, Leeds, UK
Introduction
Disasters are man-made and natural events
(e.g., nuclear accidents, typhoons, tsunamis,
445 D
earthquakes) that overwhelm the coping abilities
and response capabilities of individuals and com-
munities. Where disasters have elements that can
be monitored and predicted, the identification,
management, and reduction of risk has emerged
as a prominent stance. The effects of disasters can
vary widely according to the resources of the
communities and countries affected. For exam-
ple, the discourse of disasters in developing or D
“low income” countries tends to be mixed with
notions of development and development
opportunities, although many developed nations
often require specialized and widespread external
help. In these contexts, the contribution of
psychology is often represented as understanding
the individual and community effects of disas-
ters, examining and promoting positive forms of
coping, resilience, and recovery, researching
ways of promoting and implementing risk think-
ing, and providing a range of individual
and community psychosocial interventions. The
psychological focus is seen as one part of
a multidimensional, interdisciplinary approach
that can include economic, sociological, political,
material, and spiritual dimensions.
Definition
Disasters can be divided into three main types:
conflicts that are catastrophic for a given group or
groups due to loss of life and cultural capital (e.g.,
valued community objects and resources),
widespread damage and mass casualties that are
intentional (e.g., the consequences of terrorist
actions) or accidental (e.g., failure of a nuclear
power plant or other technology), and loss of life
as well as social and material damage that is
attributed largely to unexpected or overwhelming
environmental causes (e.g., tsunami, earthquake).
Disasters often focus people’s attention on real
events that have a slow onset (e.g., droughts) or
occur rapidly and give rise to anxiety, shock, and
disbelief in many members of a community, and,
as such, disaster preparation is clearly distin-
guishable from fears and fantasies about
apocalyptic scenarios (e.g., about the end of the
world, human “extinction events”). Disasters are
D 446
often described as having specific phases of
preparation and preparedness, response, and
recovery. A variation on this model is
a depiction of disasters phases that change over
time (x-axis) according to emotional highs and
low (y-axis): pre-disaster, impact, heroic, honey-
moon, disillusionment, reconstruction, and
recovery phases (Zunin & Meyers, 2000).
Keywords
Disaster; catastrophes; accidents; natural
disasters; international aid; psychosocial support;
risk management; risk theory; coping; suffering;
trauma; post-traumatic stress disorder; disaster
phases
Traditional Debates
For psychologists who seek to understand and act
in disaster situations, a consistent focus has been
on the prevention of trauma through the provision
of a range of individual and community interven-
tions (Hobfall, Walter, & Horsey, 2008).
The increasing popularity and widespread use of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) for
mental illnesses and disorders by psychiatrists,
clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, and
counselors has extended from concepts and prac-
tices developed in response to “shell shock” in
war veterans to cultures and communities in
which the reliable and valid identification of this
particular form of anxiety-related suffering is not
emphasized. In western countries, the identifica-
tion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
was combined with the emergence of the practice
of critical incident stress debriefing (CISD). In
early versions of CISD, individual or group
sessions were used post-disaster in the belief
(now discredited) that the likelihood of individuals
(or groups) developing PTSD could be diminished
by encouraging a form of controlled reliving of
the experience with an appropriately credentialed
counselor or critical incident stress debriefer
(Rose, Bisson, Churchill, & Wessely, 2002).
Disasters, Overview
While the normalization of features of PTSD
(such as flashbacks, avoidance of similar situa-
tions, anxious feelings) that may not go on to
manifest the full PTSD syndrome appears to be
useful for people without any previous experience
of situations that overwhelm their usual coping
abilities, the development of psychosocial
support has now replaced the potential harm of
early PTSD prevention interventions through
debriefing. Accordingly, the Inter-Agency
Standing Committee (2007) published guidelines
for psychological support and mental health ser-
vices in disaster and emergency situations that
emphasized community-centered practices.
While stress and ongoing difficulties with
coping are acknowledged – including issues such
as grief and loss of sense of place (Prewitt Diaz,
2008), adjusting to injuries, and other ways in
which ways in a disaster affect existing
health and mental health vulnerabilities – the
work of psychologists and other agents in disaster
contexts is also built upon concepts derived from
positive psychology. For example, notions such as
resilience and post-traumatic growth are now
being used to understand how some individuals
and communities cope better with the demands of
disasters than others. Although developed coun-
tries appear to be well resourced and less vulner-
able to disasters than developing countries, such
generalizations do not always hold. Bankoff
(2007), for example, has noted how vulnerability
to several forms of natural disaster in the
Philippines has led to the development of
a culture of disaster. In practice, this means that
communities appear to be better prepared than
nations such as the United States to cope with
the material aspects of disaster (e.g., through
housing designs) as well as the social and
economic effects of dealing with large numbers
of mutual assistance organizations because of
their existing community-based social networks.
Campbell (2004) gives a general description of
types of bonding “within group” social capital
and bridging “between group” social capital
which creates links across diverse social groups.
In the case of disasters such as earthquakes,
there are aspects of social capital that might also
Disasters, Overview
be called emotional capital. These can include
forms of trust and reciprocity that are strength-
ened by giving and receiving aid on equal terms,
pride in existing social practices to respond to
the emergency situation, and experiences of
successful activity which “enables people to
simultaneously change themselves, their local
communities, and the wider societies in which
they live” (p. 213). At a community level, trust
and agency may be undermined, for example, by
needing to accept aid as a type of development
“gift” (Stirrat & Henkel, 1997).
Critical Debates
Contemporary definitions and conceptualizations
of disasters are a matter of central critical con-
cern. Oliver-Smith (1999) notes: “Like few other
phenomena the internal complexity of disasters
forces us to confront the many and shifting
faces of socially constructed reality(ies). The
complexity is embodied in the multiplicity of
perspectives as varied as the individual and
groups impacted or participating in the event
and process” (p. 21). The meanings of disaster
are contested depending on the perspective or
discipline used to designate, make sense of, or
explain a given instance. Oliver-Smith points out
that disasters are “nonroutine” although even
if the disaster event is not predictable, it is impor-
tant to be aware that “the forms and structures of
ordinary life, particularly those associated
with the disadvantages suffered by third-world
societies, accentuate the risk and the resulting
disaster impact” (p. 23). A further critical issue
is what Oliver-Smith describes as the “location
problem,” that is, the limitations of thinking that
natural disasters originate in an uncontrollable
natural environment. On this view, the reality of
hazards and risks takes precedence over vulnera-
bilities that are material and social. The alterna-
tive perspective is to think that disasters “are as
deeply embedded in the social structure and cul-
ture of a society as they are in an environment”
(p. 25). Thus, hazards are not necessarily located
only in the environment, and vulnerabilities to
447 D
them are “exacerbated by political, economic
and social forces” (p. 27).
As noted above, a variety of descriptive
schemes are used to highlight expected reactions
to disasters. An important feature of critical work
on responses to disasters, whether this is internal
to a society or is combined with external help, is
to understand the context and meanings of all
types of responses. For example, even though D
initial priorities appear to be about distribution
of material aid in the form of immediate medical
assistance and food as well as access to appropri-
ate technology to effect rescue efforts, the initial
phase of a disaster still occurs in a cultural con-
text. In sociological and psychological accounts,
making sense of a disaster occurs through
a variety of means. For example, use of local
knowledge is often described as a way in which
communities in such different locations as
Christchurch (New Zealand), New Orleans
(United States), or Yogyakarta (Indonesia)
respond to disasters. There are similarities that
can be described in very general terms. For exam-
ple, although Oliver-Smith (2001) notes that the
“reconstruction phase is the longest, most expen-
sive, most complex and politically volatile of the
disaster” (p. 112), it should not be assumed that
the unfolding of a disaster in phases is a universal
process. In situations in which external aid comes
from a country with different cultural assump-
tions and practices, it is important that a critical
awareness is fostered because there are widely
varying practices in relation to death and grief,
ways of working with government and commu-
nity groups, and differences in how to observe
anniversaries of disasters. Without an appropriate
critical cultural psychology of disaster, it is pos-
sible that external aid and psychological inter-
ventions may further reduce the variety of
resources that seek to conserve in order to cope
effectively (Hobfall et al., 2008).
The types of advice and interventions that
psychologists are likely to be involved in,
and which they might theorize about and
research, include psychosocial support and
psychoeducation (Hobfall et al., 2008). Both of
these approaches use notions of partnership and
D 448
negotiation to tailor information to complement
the forms of meaning-making that are demon-
strated in cognitive, narrative, and ritual practice
forms in disaster contexts. This often includes
recommendations and guidelines to incorporate
local knowledge, beliefs, and ideologies (e.g.,
beliefs about risks and shared views of appropri-
ate community responses that often have
complex, ambivalent relationships to external
help). Such partnerships and dialogue may be
difficult to deliver due to inequities of education,
knowledge, resources, expertise, and social
capital between external or local actors and
affected communities. With regard to research
on these matters, qualitative research that exam-
ines individual, family and community-level
forms of suffering and healing after disasters
(rather than trauma and recovery; Priya, 2002,
2012) and psychosocial methods (Frosh &
Young, 2008) may be particularly appropriate
for understanding the emotions or affects that
emerge in post-disaster situations as a result of
changes in identity, roles (e.g., women adopting
male leadership positions), material damage (i.e.,
loss of landmarks and a sense of place), mass
casualties (i.e., grief and loss), perceptions of
vulnerabilities (e.g., leading to panic about fur-
ther disasters such as tsunamis or eruptions after
earthquakes), and widespread changes to the
political and economic context (e.g., feelings of
anger and injustice, feelings of apathy while
waiting for aid or reconstruction). Psychoanalyt-
ically informed qualitative and ethnographic
work may help to identify affects that circulate
between people and in communities which may
not be easily articulated (i.e., due to norms about
avoiding conflict or maintaining individual emo-
tional autonomy) or are experiences that are
beyond words (i.e., due to trauma). As Zaumseil,
Prawitasari-Hadiyono, Sullivan, Schwarz and
von Vacano (in press) show with a post-earth-
quake case study from Java in Indonesia, multiple
dimensions of the impact of a disaster need to be
examined in order to have an appropriately full
and critical understanding of the impact of a
disaster in a given context.
Disasters, Overview
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(pp. 203–221). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
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approaches to qualitative psychology. In C. Willig &
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Qualitative Research in Psychology (pp. 109–126).
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Oliver-Smith & S. Hoffman (Eds.), The angry earth:
Disaster in anthropological perspective (pp. 18–34).
London, England: Routledge.
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Discourse Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Stephanie Taylor
Department of Psychology, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, UK
Introduction
The term “discourse analysis” is mostly associ-
ated with developments in social psychology in
the late twentieth century (e.g., Potter &
Wetherell, 1987). It gave rise to the area or
subdiscipline now described as discursive
psychology (see entry), but the original term is
still widely used to refer to a research method.
Discourse analysis is relevant to critical psychol-
ogists for its association with two significant
challenges. The first is methodological and
concerns, broadly, the status of talk data as evi-
dence. The second is ontological and concerns
the nature and site of phenomena which were
conventionally considered internal to the person,
including attitudes, emotions, memories, and
identities. Together and separately, these put in
question many of psychology’s established
premises and claims.
Definition
The simplest definition of discourse is as some
form of language use, such as talk or writing. The
analysis of discourse may initially be technical,
involving close examination of details, for
example, of word use, grammar, or other features,
like pauses or overlaps in people’s talk, possibly
drawing on sociolinguistics and conversation
analysis. Alternatively, discourse analysis may
follow a more hermeneutic tradition like that
associated with literature studies, involving the
exploration of images and word associations.
In either case, the discourse is of interest as
a practice which is social, because it involves
more than one person, for example, as speaker
449 D
and hearer, writer and audience, or the parties to
a conversation or other interaction, and because it
is necessarily governed and shaped by shared
language, conventions, and expectations.
A second, somewhat different, definition is
that a discourse refers to an aggregate of mean-
ings and conventions, such as the established
language and ideas for talking about a topic or
problem like illness. Because language and D
knowledge are inevitably broad ranging, such
discourses are discussed in the plural (e.g., cancer
discourses, discourses of ill health). An analysis
following this definition is likely to look across
sources for evidence of the discourse and its
practical implications. Discourses are assumed
to govern and constrain what can be said and
written or otherwise communicated, and hence
understood, in a continuum from language
use (discourse in the first definition) to society,
linked to formal and informal institutions. Other
forms of data may be incorporated in the analysis
as evidence of the continuum.
It is worth noting a common misinterpretation
of discourse analysis as being “just about words,”
ignoring other meaningful practices and/or
nonlinguistic features of the world, such as
bodies. A discourse analyst focuses on language
use either as a particular, socially important, and
meaningful practice worthy of study in its own
right or because language, as already noted, is
part of a continuum of meanings which make up
a social context and also a means of accessing
them. The misinterpretation perhaps follows
from another feature of discourse analysis, that
is, the shift of focus away from the language user
or person. Talk or writing is not explained in
terms of the thoughts, intentions, experience, or
personality of an individual. This point is
discussed in more detail below.
Keywords
Discourse; context; subject position; language;
practice; discursive work; resource; dilemma;
rhetoric; transcription
D 450
Traditional Debates
Discourse analysis is a relatively unusual
approach within psychology in that it privileges
the social and rejects conceptualizations of the
individual as an agentic actor. It is associated
with theorizations of society and social contexts
as preexisting and shaping the lives and actions of
the people within them. Although such a context
is assumed to be contoured by power, it is
envisaged as neither hierarchical nor static; its
nature is emergent, given by the ongoing flows
of historical and cultural change and social
interaction. The influence of context is therefore
never wholly predictable or reducible to the dis-
crete factors which are explored in the conven-
tional cause-effect models of nomothetic
scientific research. Discourse analysts explore
situated phenomena and meanings rather than
making the universal claims associated with
science, and most would challenge the status of
scientific findings as truth.
Discourse analysis was originally associated
with a minimally conceptualized person,
reduced, for example, to the “subject position”
given by a social context. Although some of the
major theoretical sources for discourse analysis
(notably, the work of Michel Foucault) are linked
to determinism, psychologists who adopt discur-
sive approaches have tended to sidestep the issue
of agency, for instance, by declaring themselves
“agnostic” about the kind of awareness and
intentional activity discussed by cognitive
psychologists (and others), or else by theorizing
a social subject who, though produced by the
social situation in which she or he is located, is
also to some extent active and reflective. One
strand of work in discursive psychology (see
entry) has developed more complex theorizations
of such a subject.
Methodologically, discourse analysis is firmly
associated with qualitative, not quantitative,
approaches. Social contexts and social life are
discussed and analyzed in terms of situated mean-
ings, including the accrued associations which
are attached to roles and even objects, and the
practices through which such meanings are
established, co-constructed, and contested,
Discourse Analysis
including within interactions, especially conver-
sations. Discourse analysis is therefore largely an
interpretive approach and its findings are
presented as situationally specific rather than
universal. However, psychologists in the conver-
sation analytic tradition claim a technical
approach in which a participant’s situated
response can provide confirmation of an analyst’s
observation, thereby reestablishing findings as
facts rather than interpretations.
Critical Debates
A key tenet of discourse analysis is that talk data
(since recorded and transcribed talk is probably
its most common form of language data) is
considered as talk and not as evidence of some-
thing else, such as what it purports to be about
(e.g., what it reports or describes) or of the
thoughts or intentions or emotions of the speaker.
This apparently simple point involves several
significant challenges to established psychology
theory and practice.
First, discourse analysis challenges a model of
the person which is widespread in psychology,
that of a universal agentic “container” individual,
explainable in terms of internal processes and
events which are the source of her or his talk
and other actions. Talk is analyzed in terms of
its functions in context and its social sources, but
not as evidence of personality or psyche or any
other entity “internal” to the individual speaker.
(Perhaps unsurprisingly, subsequent work
informed by discourse analysis has to some
extent reinstated the individual, for example, in
terms of “personal order,” Wetherell, 2003;
“local resources,” Taylor, 2011; or with reference
to psychodynamic processes and investment,
Hollway & Jefferson, 2000).
A second challenge is that discourse analysis
shifts the source of a social problem, like preju-
dice (see entry) or racism, from the pathological
individual to society as a whole or to a particular
context within it. Racist talk is analyzed not as the
intentional expression of one speaker’s wrong
ideas but as an exemplification of a society’s
everyday practices, such as accepted ways of
Discrimination
talking about and representing others (the first
definition of discourse above), and of the histor-
ically based understandings, versions of history,
and rationalizations (the second meaning of dis-
course above) which shape such practices. Other
phenomena are similarly studied as features of
a wider social context constituted by established
practices or commonsense knowledge. A speaker
is of interest as a means of access to these features
rather than as a biographically and psychologi-
cally unique individual.
A third challenge presented by discourse
analysis concerns the status of researcher. Pro-
ponents of a technical analysis (e.g., Schegloff,
1997) would claim the conventional position
of the researcher as a detached observer,
noting participants’ own interpretations of other
people’s discursive actions. However, even in
this limited role, the researcher will inevitably
be drawing on knowledge acquired as a member
of the social context under study, if only to
the extent of recognizing its language and
everyday practices. Discourse analysts closer to
a Foucauldian or social constructionist tradition
regard the researcher as an insider and reflexive
interpreter, acknowledging her or his own posi-
tion within the context under study (Wetherell,
1998; Wetherell, 2001).
For critical psychologists, discourse analysis
is important for its emphasis on social context,
and its explorations of how the workings of
power are implicated with social processes,
practices, and knowledges (Edley, 2001).
It avoids reductive explanations in terms of path-
ological individuals and admits of change and
variation across sociohistoric circumstances.
This has been particularly relevant to the study
of persistent inequalities and the subtle and
changing language use which may reinforce
them (e.g., Wetherell & Potter, 1992).
References
Edley, N. (2001). Analysing masculinity: Interpretative
repertoires, subject positions and ideological
dilemmas. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. Yates
(Eds.), Discourse as data. London: Sage.
451 D
Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2000). Doing qualitative
research differently: Free association, narrative and
the interview method. London: Sage.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social
psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London:
Sage.
Schegloff, E. (1997). Whose text? Whose context?
Discourse & Society, 8, 165–87.
Taylor, S. (2011). Negotiating oppositions and uncer-
tainties: Gendered conflicts in creative identity work.
Feminism & Psychology, 21, 354–371. D
Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative
repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-
structuralism in dialogue. Discourse & Society, 9,
387–412.
Wetherell, M. (2001). Debates in discourse research. In
M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. Yates (Eds.), Discourse
theory and practice: A reader. London: Sage.
Wetherell, M. (2003). Paranoia, ambivalence and discur-
sive practices: Concepts of position and positioning in
psychoanalysis and discursive psychology. In R. Harré
& F. Moghaddam (Eds.), The self and others:
Positioning individuals and groups in personal, polit-
ical and cultural contexts (pp. 99–120). Westport, CT:
Praegar.
Wetherell, M., & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language
of racism. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Online Resources
Discourse analysis: A bibliographic guide. http://
discourseanalysis.bokee.com/inc/2005012023155556
3641.pdf
What is discourse analysis? http://www.restore.ac.uk/
lboro/resources/links/da.php
Discrimination
Heather E. Bullock1 and Bernice Lott2
1
Department of Psychology, University of
California – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
2
University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
Introduction
Many of the greatest societal blights – war,
genocide, poverty, social inequality, and oppres-
sion – are rooted in discrimination. Social science
research investigates a broad range of questions
related to discrimination: How are stereotypes
and other legitimizing beliefs related to discrim-
inatory behaviors? How pervasive is ageism,
D 452
heterosexism, racism, classism, and other forms
of discrimination? How can discrimination be
reduced? How do individual and contextual
factors interact to increase or decrease the
likelihood of discriminatory treatment? What
are the personal and societal consequences of
discrimination? Answers to these questions have
important implications for improving intergroup
relations, reducing bias, and alleviating
inequality.
Definition
Discrimination, the behavioral component of
prejudice, refers to unjust or unfair treatment
based on group membership (e.g., race, ethnicity,
class, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation,
physical appearance). Discriminatory behaviors
are acts of exclusion, distancing, and degrada-
tion. They can occur independently or in conjunc-
tion with prejudicial attitudes (negative feelings
toward a particular group) and stereotypes
(widely held, socially sanctioned and reinforced
beliefs about group members). Discrimination,
along with prejudicial attitudes and beliefs, create
and maintain social, economic, and political
inequities.
Although the concept of “reverse discrimina-
tion” (i.e., the mistreatment of higher status
groups by less powerful groups) has grown in
popularity, the term discrimination is typically
reserved for the unfair negative treatment of
low-status groups. A long list of “isms” – racism,
ethnocentrism, sexism, ableism, classism,
heterosexism, and lookism – describes discrimi-
nation against specific low-power target groups
(e.g., people of color, women, the poor, and
working class) by those with greater power
(e.g., whites, men, elites). Traditionally, the prev-
alence and effects of racism, sexism, and other
forms of discrimination were examined indepen-
dently, but researchers are increasingly focusing
on the intersections of different forms of discrim-
ination with each other (Choo & Ferree, 2010).
Discrimination occurs along a continuum of
severity ranging from verbal put-downs and
Discrimination
insults to avoidance and exclusion to physical
attacks and violence. It can be covert (subtle) or
overt (obvious). Discrimination takes place in
a wide range of social settings – at both the
institutional and interpersonal levels. Institu-
tional discrimination refers to the normative
exclusion of low-status groups from mainstream
institutions (e.g., education, government, politics,
health care, workplace, legal), whereas interper-
sonal discrimination describes actual or symbolic
face-to-face interactions and behaviors that dero-
gate, avoid, or exclude (Lott, 2010; Lott &
Maluso, 1995). Institutional discrimination can
be illustrated in the USA by federal or state poli-
cies that restrict marginalized groups from voting
(e.g., people convicted of felony crimes) or impose
economic or other barriers to voting (e.g., requir-
ing new forms of identification) and that make it
difficult or impossible to receive public assistance
(e.g., immigrants). Interpersonal discrimination
has received less empirical attention than institu-
tional discrimination but is equally devastating
(Lott & Maluso, 1995), with the internet and
social networks providing new opportunities to
bully and harass.
Keywords
Discrimination; prejudice; inequality; racism;
sexism; classism; heterosexism; ableism; ageism
History
Throughout psychology’s history, discrimination
has been a focal area of interest, occupying
a central place in studies of intergroup relations
(Allport, 1954). In the face of continued bias and
conflict, historical analyses trace conceptual
and methodological innovations in studying
discrimination and psychologists’ ongoing
attempts to get at the roots, antecedents, and
bases of bias. Readers are referred to comprehen-
sive reviews by Yzerbyt and Demoulin (2010)
and Dovidio and Gaertner (2010).
Discrimination
Traditional Debates
Mainstream psychologists have used a wide
range of methodologies and measures to study
discrimination, with disagreement about the
“best” measurement techniques. Mainstream
social psychological research is largely labora-
tory based with common measures including
verbal hostility (e.g., negative evaluation of
work, pejorative feedback), tone of voice, non-
verbal indicators (e.g., coding of overt facial
expressions, seating distance), avoidance (e.g.,
selecting not to work with an out-group member),
and aggression against out-group members (e.g.,
delivery of aversive noise, low levels of shock, or
exposure to other unpleasant stimuli; Blank,
Dabady, & Citro, 2004). In Lott’s (1987) labora-
tory study of interpersonal sexism, men distanced
themselves from women partners by turning their
faces or bodies away, making negative
comments, disregarding advice, and moving
objects closer to themselves. Distancing by men
from women was also observed in a sample of
primetime TV shows (Lott, 1989). Audit studies
of discrimination are more common in the socio-
logical than psychological literature. These field-
based quasi-experiments typically compare how
matched testers/confederates fare in the job or
housing market (for an in-depth discussion, see
Blank et al., 2004; Quillian, 2006). Testers vary
only in terms of core characteristics of interest
(e.g., race, gender), with differential treatment
(e.g., being passed over for a job, denial of
a rental application) indicative of discrimination.
Researchers also analyze national data to assess
the prevalence of discrimination. For example,
wage inequities can be documented by statisti-
cally holding variables such as educational
attainment and years in the workforce constant
to draw inferences about the relationship of gen-
der and race to earnings (Quillian, 2006).
Additionally, numerous self-report scales have
been constructed to assess support for racist and
sexist beliefs, practices, and policies, as well as
experiences of discriminatory treatment.
Contemporary social norms discourage open
disclosure of bias and, as a consequence, survey
453 D
research and other self-report measures may
underestimate the prevalence of discrimination.
To combat this problem, indirect techniques such
as priming and response time are used to assess
implicit prejudice and discrimination. These
techniques seek to minimize the ability to give
socially desirable responses by examining
associations between positively and negatively
charged words with racial stimuli, for example. D
In priming studies, participants are shown
racially loaded words or images too quickly for
conscious recognition and then asked to make
a judgment (Quillian, 2006). Racially primed
participants have been found to make more racist
judgments than those not exposed to racial primes
(Quillian, 2006). Response time methods assess
the speed at which words and images are
categorized or paired (e.g. Black and lazy);
quicker response times are treated as indicative
of prejudice (visit https://implicit.harvard.edu/
implicit/backgroundinformation.html to review
the Implicit Association Test). Implicit tech-
niques are widely used, but questions remain
about what is actually being measured. Critics
contend that these measures fail to capture nega-
tive affect and instead merely assess stereotype
recognition (see Arkes & Tetlock, 2004).
A controversy surrounds the distinction drawn
between “old-fashioned” and “new” racism.
“Old-fashioned” racism refers to discrimination
that is direct, overt, and blatant, whereas “new
racism” is conceptualized as indirect, covert,
subtle, and symbolic (Leach, 2005; Nier &
Gaertner, 2012). Proponents of this distinction
believe “there was a marked change in the formal
expression of racism after the 1970s, when de
jure equality was achieved in most societies. It
is argued that the formal expression of racism had
to change to jive with the new reality of de jure
equality” (Leach, 2005, p. 433). Declining public
support for overtly racist beliefs (e.g., genetic
inferiority of people of color) and policies (e.g.,
segregation) is cited as evidence of the demise of
“old-fashioned” racism, whereas covert deroga-
tory slurs about cultural difference and opposi-
tion to policies that promote equality may be
indicative of “new” racism (Leach, 2005;
D 454
Quillian, 2006). Critics of “new racism” question
whether, in fact, there is really anything “new”
about it. Leach argues that the denial of societal
discrimination, often identified as an important
aspect of “new racism,” was common in demo-
cratic societies long before de jure equality.
Leach (2005) also contends that “old-fashioned”
racism was not particularly popular before de jure
racial equality and that formal expressions
of racial inferiority are not so different today
than during the first half of the twentieth century.
He warns that “the notion of a ‘new racism’
serves to obscure the important historical conti-
nuities in formal expressions of racism. . . .[and]
may actually work to prevent a much needed
critical social psychological conceptualization
of racism” (Leach, 2005, p. 434). Similarly,
researchers have recently introduced the concept
of “benevolent sexism” (e.g., Glick & Fiske,
1997). In contrast to hostile or negative
sexism, the new term refers to attitudes, beliefs,
and behavior relevant to women that are
interpreted as positive and beneficial (e.g., ideal-
izing women as morally superior, pure, as need-
ing protection). This insidious type of sexism
may well reinforce patriarchy and women’s
subordinate status.
Critical Debates
Critical scholars question how discrimination is
conceptualized and operationalized in main-
stream psychological research, particularly in
experimental and laboratory studies. Laboratory
investigations of discrimination frequently
employ a minimal group paradigm in which par-
ticipants are assigned to arbitrary groups (e.g.,
shirt color) to compete for valued resources.
Collectively, these studies document how easily
intergroup hostility and discrimination can be
elicited, but in stripping these interactions of
real world power dynamics and history, the
benefits that dominant groups accrue from
discriminatory practices and institutions are min-
imized. Critical scholars call for contextualized
analyses that focus on how discrimination serves
the interests of dominant groups. Focusing
Discrimination
exclusively on the targets of discrimination
obscures these material and other benefits, and
in doing so, researchers may inadvertently per-
petuate the inequalities they seek to expose. By
ignoring the ways in which high-status groups
benefit from discriminating against low-status
minorities, how they maintain and increase their
power by denying or restricting others from
access to resources, mainstream social science
ignores vital economic and political contexts
and consequences.
Critical psychologists believe that discrimina-
tion and inequality are interconnected and apply
radical theories of inequality to understanding the
functions that discrimination serves. This moves
a focus on individual behaviors to broader socio-
logical analyses of power, intergroup relations,
institutions, and the distribution of resources.
Critical psychology also maintains that research
findings must be used to drive institutional
change, and psychologists must be willing to
play an active role in fighting for social and
economic justice. There is ample evidence of
discrimination’s detrimental consequences for
human welfare, and lack of action is more
a matter of political will than lack of powerful
evidence. For example, the deadly consequences
of discrimination on low-income groups and peo-
ple of color are well documented by health dis-
parities research (e.g., Smedley, Stith, & Nelson,
2003). Negative effects of discrimination can be
relatively immediate as with spikes in blood pres-
sure or can accumulate across the lifespan, con-
tributing to the development of chronic health
problems (Smedley et al., 2003). Multiple
sources of discrimination contribute to health
disparities including stereotyping and distancing
by health-care providers (e.g., lack of eye con-
tact, “talking down” to patients), cultural and
linguistic barriers (e.g., lack of translation ser-
vices), lack of affordable health care, and finan-
cial incentives to limit services (Smedley et al.,
2003). Smedley and his colleagues (2003) have
proposed a comprehensive set of policy and prac-
tice recommendations to reduce health dispar-
ities. Advancing these and other structural
changes will require sustained research and advo-
cacy efforts.
Discrimination
Critical and feminist scholars also call for
greater attention to the intersections of racism,
sexism, classism, and other forms of discrimina-
tion (Choo & Ferree, 2010). Individuals have
multiple social identities (e.g., gender, social
class, age) and occupy multiple social locations.
Discrimination is typically treated as a unitary
phenomenon, focusing exclusively, for example,
on racism or sexism and, more recently, additive
approaches focus on so-called multiple jeopardy
of multiple marginalized identities. Critical
scholars advocate against reductionist and addi-
tive approaches, calling instead for intersectional
conceptualizations of group memberships and
discriminatory treatment. The necessary research
agenda to investigate intersectionality is complex
and will require far more attention to whole-
person variables (Lott, 2010; Shields, 2008).
International Relevance
Most of the discussion here has focused on
research in the United States and North America,
but discrimination is a worldwide phenomenon,
taking many varied forms, and it has been inves-
tigated and amply documented worldwide (e.g.,
Badgett & Frank, 2007; Landis & Albert, 2012).
Studies of colonialism, wars, and within-nation
rivalries that include political exclusion, segrega-
tion, oppression, and murder inevitably reveal
roots in prejudice, stereotypes, and institutional
discrimination.
Practice Relevance
A large body of social psychological literature
examines strategies for reducing prejudice and
discrimination, with theories of intergroup con-
tact receiving the most attention (Pettigrew,
Tropp, Wagner, & Christ, 2011). According to
this theory, carefully constructed intergroup con-
tact can reduce prejudice and conflict if certain
conditions are met. Optimal conditions for con-
tact include equal status between the groups,
a common intergroup goal, a context that sup-
ports cooperation, and supportive laws or
455 D
customs (Pettigrew et al., 2011). A meta-analysis
by Pettigrew and his colleagues (2011) of 515
studies found that these conditions facilitated
prejudice reduction but, even in their absence,
intergroup contact reduced prejudice albeit to
a lesser extent. The positive effects of intergroup
contact have been used to advocate for school
desegregation and affirmative action.
Researchers and practitioners are not immune D
to bias. Low-income clients may be stereotyped
as too overwhelmed or culturally “different” to
benefit from therapy; some clinicians may refuse
to work with low-income communities, and US
educators often view low-income parents as
uncaring and incompetent (Smith, 2005).
Biases related to gender, race, social class, age,
physical disability, and sexual orientation have
been found to influence psychiatric diagnoses
(Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004). Multicultural train-
ing seeks to raise awareness of power and status
in therapeutic relationships and increase sensitiv-
ity to diverse life experiences and the effects of
discrimination.
Future Directions
Much remains to be known about the effects of
discrimination and factors that may influence its
reduction. Laboratory research dominates the
psychological literature, in part, due to conve-
nience and the relative ease with which greater
control can be achieved. Field experiments,
although labor intensive, provide much needed
insight into discrimination in real world contexts
and the outcome of competition among multiple
marginalized groups for scarce resources. In
a field study by Pager, Western, and Bonkiowski
(2009), a team of White, Latino, and Black men
were matched on a set of personal characteristics
(e.g., physical attractiveness, accent) and trained
to apply for entry-level positions. The men
presented equivalent resumes (e.g., education,
experience) and were similar in terms of back-
ground except for prison time served for a drug
felony conviction. Compared to equally qualified
whites, Black applicants were half as likely to be
called back or offered a job, and Black and Latino
D 456
applicants with “clear” backgrounds fared no
better than a White applicant just released from
prison. Pager and her colleagues (2010) conclude
that these findings are indicative of a “racial
hierarchy among young men favoring whites,
then Latinos, and finally blacks as the candidates
of last resort” (p. 793). Gaining further insight
into how interpersonal and institutional discrim-
ination create and maintain race, gender, and
class hierarchies in diverse settings is crucial as
are strategies for dismantling these systems.
Research that focuses explicitly on discrimi-
natory behaviors is greatly needed. Behavioral
intent and prejudicial attitudes are frequently
used as proxies for actual behavior, and while
meaningful in their own right, attitudes and
behaviors are only moderately correlated. Identi-
fying situational and individual-level factors
associated with classist, racist, sexist, ageist, het-
erosexist actions, particularly in settings that
serve marginalized groups (e.g., social services,
health care, education) is of the upmost impor-
tance. It is in these high-stakes contexts, in which
group-based power differences are especially
salient, that opportunities to discriminate and
the potential for harm are high.
Much of the psychological literature on dis-
crimination is focused on racism and sexism
while other forms of discrimination remain
understudied. Classism, ableism, heterosexism
and other underresearched areas should be prior-
itized as should analyses of intersecting or mul-
tiple oppressions. However, simply identifying
“blind spots” and gaps in our research and
methods is not sufficient. Critically examining
these neglected areas is essential to preventing
the replication of societal patterns of bias in our
research.
References
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Arkes, H. R., & Tetlock, P. E. (2004). Attributions of
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Discrimination
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conflict: International perspectives. New York, NY:
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Lott, B., & Maluso, D. (Eds.). (1995). The social psychol-
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Guilford Press.
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contemporary discrimination in the United States: The
consequences of hidden bias in real world contexts.
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Pager, D., Western, B., & Bonikowski, B. (2009). Dis-
crimination in a low-wage labor market: A field exper-
iment. American Sociological Review, 774, 777–799.
Pettigrew, T. F., Tropp, L. A., Wagner, U., & Christ, O.
(2011). Recent advances in intergroup contact theory.
International Journal of Intercultural Relationships,
35, 271–280.
Quillian, L. (2006). New approaches to understanding
racial prejudice and discrimination. Annual Review of
Sociology, 32, 299–328.
Shields, S. A. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality per-
spective. Sex Roles, 59, 301–311.
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(2003). Unequal treatment: Confronting racial and
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National Academies Press.
Discursive Configuration
Smith, L. (2005). Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor:
Conspicuous by their absence. American Psychologist,
60, 687–696.
Yzerbyt, V., & Demoulin, S. (2010). Intergroup relations.
In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.),
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Online Resources
Applied Research Center: Racial Justice through Media,
Research and Leadership Development. http://www.
arc.org
Class Action. http://www.classism.org/
Understanding Prejudice. http://www.understanding-
prejudice.org/readroom/
Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law
Center. http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/archives
Project Implicit. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
backgroundinformation.html
Discursive Configuration
Gian Piero Turchi, Romanelli Michele, Federico
Bonazza and Anna Girardi
Department of Applied Psychology, University
of Padua, Padua, Italy
Introduction
The concept of “discursive configuration”
(Turchi, 2002; Turchi & Della Torre, 2007) is
based on the assumption that which is defined
by interagents as “reality” is generated dialogi-
cally in the use of ordinary language as an instru-
ment which creates reality rather than a vehicle of
communication of the same. Within psychology,
this concept developed in line with theories
developed from the twentieth century onwards
(including: Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Bruner,
1997; Mead, 1934; Salvini, 1988, 1998; Salvini
& Galieni, 2002), which focus on the symbolic
exchange that takes shape in the interaction
between speakers through the use of language,
which is understood as the process of
constructing the meaning of social action. In the
same way as the schools of discursive psychology
(Billig, 1996; De Grada & Bonaiuto, 2002;
457 D
Harré & Gillett, 1996; Potter & Wetherell,
1987) and critical psychology (Holzkamp, 1972;
Teo 1998, 2009) have embraced the ideas of
various authors, even though they belonged
to fields outside of psychology – from the
philosopher Wittgenstein’s ostensive definition
of ordinary language to Foucault’s theories on
“discourse” as a process with its own material
reality which simultaneously allows and condi- D
tions interaction – knowledge of the “psyche,” or
in general that of any psychological construct,
abandons subjectivity to conceptualize interac-
tion as the construct of a symbolic process
which is language based and not within the indi-
vidual but found in the space of symbolic inter-
action between speakers. This is known as the
dialogical (or discursive) process (Turchi, 2009).
Definition
“Discursive configuration” is defined as the par-
ticular valency that elements of ordinary lan-
guage (the symbolic units) manifest when
generating a discursive space configured by the
interactions between the different and therefore
distinguishable constructions of the sense of
reality.
In order to grasp the significance of the
definition, we must consider how discursive
space is a theoretical space generated in the use
of ordinary language, composed of a set of
symbolic units – signs (written, verbal, gestural,
and graphic) to which a symbolic value is con-
ventionally assigned – along with a set of rules of
application to govern their use. The particular
feature of ordinary language (as opposed to
what are known as formal languages – e.g.,
those coined by disciplines such as mathematics,
physics, and chemistry) is the fact that its utiliza-
tion continually generates a different value for
the symbolic units (the ostensive definition of
language – Wittgenstein, 1953; this ostensive
definition has been formalized in use rules – see
definition of Discursive Repertory). Therefore,
the interaction of the different use rules which
characterize ordinary language permits
a continuous generation of “new discursive
D 458
configurations” (i.e., constructions of sense of
reality – see Definition).
Given the tendency for each discursive
repertory to keep the reality thus configured “sta-
ble” or make it “changeable” (a discursive reality
in theoretical terms, but pragmatic for the
interagents), each repertory is assigned
a specific dialogical weight (which is convention-
ally attributed and represents a measurement of
the dialogical capacity to generate reality config-
urations). Thus, by means of a process of analysis
of any form of the discursive process (written,
verbal, gestural, graphic) (Turchi, 2009), not only
is it possible to know the particular sense
construction, but we can also evaluate the
dialogical weight of the specific “discursive con-
figuration” (which therefore indicates its value in
terms of interaction between the dialogical
weights of the various discourse repertories
which generated it).
Keywords
Dialogical process; ordinary language; discursive
configuration; mechanistic paradigm;
interactionist paradigm; paradigmatic shift;
narrativist paradigm; effectiveness evaluation;
health promotion
History
The conceptualization of ordinary language as
a tool for the configuration of reality arises from
the overlap between various schools of
thought: from symbolic interactionism to social
constructionism, from discursive psychology to
reflections on the value of the use of ordinary
language in Wittgenstein, and from the introduc-
tion of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to the
conceptualization of the power of discourse by
Michel Foucault.
In particular, symbolic interactionism, which
was developed by George Herbert Mead and
Herbert Blumer (Blumer, 1937; Mead, 1934),
made a (theoretical and applied) contribution
addressing the centrality of discourses and the
Discursive Configuration
relevance of their pragmatic implications. In
fact, according to their theories, people act in
relation to “things” (physical objects, human
beings, institutions, ideas) on the basis of mean-
ing they attribute to them, and this is generated
through the interaction between the individuals.
Meaning therefore becomes a social product,
constructed and reconstructed by means of an
interpretive and interactive process set in motion
by a person dealing with the “things” he or she
comes across (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934;
Salvini, 1998).
Focusing primarily on the role of language as
a vehicle for interaction by means of which the
symbolic meanings of the interaction itself are
constructed, Edwards and Potter (1992) added
their theory of the “narrative identities” which
the interagents construct and develop in conver-
sation with others: therefore, language and the
relationship between the speakers which this gen-
erates becomes an ever more predominant theme
in studies in the field of psychology where there is
increasingly less focus on the reasons for human
action and more on how this action is generated in
the social and cultural fabric within which this
action takes shape. Social processes and the lan-
guage through which these take shape become
a shared tool for the attribution of meanings:
these however are not to be found either in the
individuals or their cultural setting as much as in
the encounter that takes place between partici-
pants engaged in an action (Salomon, 1993).
This led to the rise of social constructionism
(Gergen, 1999) which shifts the focus of
knowledge onto the meanings generated by indi-
viduals in the circumstances in which they inter-
act, constantly negotiating and constructing new
definitions of reality.
This, therefore, introduced the concept of
“social construction” in the field of psychology,
the concept of knowledge, that is, the belief that
reality can be continually transformed by
discursive practices of subjectivity immersed in
a “social discourse” (Harré & Gillett, 1994): the
focus is on language as a powerful constructor of
reality.
Narrations, according to Bruner (1990), must
be seen to be actual “spaces” within which
Discursive Configuration
intentions and interpretations can be negotiated
and continually reread and re-narrated by
individuals.
Another “push” towards the centrality of lan-
guage within the field of psychology was pro-
vided by the particular development within
what became known as discursive social psy-
chology, from the work of Potter and Wetherell
(1987) on interpretive repertories, from which
arose the concept of rhetorical (and thus con-
stantly changing) construction of reality. That
is, the individual is no longer merely a processor
of information but becomes a “strategist” who,
through interaction, chooses how to use lan-
guage (i.e., chooses which repertories to use)
according to the interactive context and the
communicative goal he intends to pursue
(Billig, 1996).
Critical Debates
The ideas dealt with the previous paragraph all
have a common denominator with the theories of
Foucault who, from the 1970s onwards, made the
relationship between discourse, truth, and power
the focus of philosophical study. This is a shift in
focus from the implications of discursive produc-
tions (i.e., “discursive configurations,” based on
what has been defined above). It therefore
becomes vital to examine how these configure
that which (for the interagents) becomes “real.”
For Foucault, discourse has a material reality of
its own which, through the theorization of the
concept of “discursive formation,” accounts for
how each object we speak about takes shape in
a different way depending on the utterances used
to name, explain, and delimit it (Foucault, 1971).
That is, the attention – according to Foucault’s
way of thinking – shifts to the “truth-effects”
which the production of a discourse has (Rose,
1979). These ideas gave rise to the definition of
a paradigm (as defined by Thomas Kuhn, 1962)
which places discursive productions at the center
of knowledge: the narrativist paradigm (Turchi,
2002; Turchi & Della Torre, 2007). This
paradigm assumes the cognitive presuppositions
of what became known as interactionist
459 D
paradigms which allow science to take interac-
tion as the basic principle.
Therefore, apart from what has been already
said, some aspects of the history of “discursive
configuration” can be traced back to two concepts
in scientific thought: the epistemological reflec-
tions which arose in the course of the foundation
of quantum physics (in particular thanks to
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – Heisenberg, D
1927) and the ideas on the philosophy of
language developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein –
Wittgenstein, 1953). In fact, if the contributions
described above allowed for a shift towards the
concept of interaction, by means of language as
a tool for constructing reality, some critical
studies showed how psychology was still tied to
a hypothetical realism: that is, in theorizing the
construction of symbolic meanings underlying
interaction, there remained the conviction that
there were interactive intentions to investigate.
Therefore, thanks in part to the ideas contributed
by what became known as critical psychology, an
attempt was made to make an even clearer “dis-
tinction between the sciences that, like physics,
have an ahistorical, ready-made world as the nor-
mative assertions of their research and those like
psychology, which refer to individuals who have
to a significant extent themselves created the
conditions in which they live and act and can
themselves modify them” (Holzkamp, 1972).
The reference to other sciences (like quantum
physics) becomes a central idea in the definition
of discursive configuration. Heisenberg’s uncer-
tainty principle is an epistemological dictate of
enormous importance: it states that knowledge
occurs as a matter of principle (i.e., beginning
with the instrument, whether this be theory or
something else that is used to gain knowledge)
and that reality is, by definition, uncertain, in that
it is generated by a continuous interaction
between the observed and the observer. This cog-
nitive step also allowed psychology to proceed on
the basis that the observational datum (i.e., the
object of knowledge, the psyche) is inextricably
tied to the cognitive instrument used in order to
know it (as such) and is wholly generated by it
and thus by the observation and measurement
instruments. This therefore allows for a shift
D 460
away from mechanistic paradigms towards
interactionist paradigms: there is therefore no
need for “knowing the cause and working on
restoring the conditions which existed prior to
the cause” (mechanistic presuppositions), but
intervention can take place through “the way in
which we construct a certain reality and work on
its generation process and the interactions which
subsume it” (interactionist presuppositions)
(Marhaba, 1976).
This operation is important for psychology
since it opens the way for the potential for using
interactionist paradigms which examine the
object of study by defining both of the theoretical
entities and the rules through which they interact,
shaping configurations of reality.
In addition to the epistemological contribution
of the uncertainty principle, which states that
interaction is the generator of reality, another
major contribution came from Ludwig
Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language.
For Wittgenstein, reference to discursive
production implies a central position for ordinary
language, which he considers a “form of life,”
thanks to what he himself calls “ostensive defini-
tion” (a term which first appears in “Philosophical
Investigations,” Wittgenstein, 1953). Ostensive
definition is the capacity of language which allows
us to construct the sense of reality, thanks to
language’s showing of itself, that is, by means of
the use of symbolic units. To quote Wittgenstein,
“the meaning of a word is its use in language.”
This makes it possible to observe the construction
of sense of reality, not on the basis of the meaning
of individual terms used in discursive production,
but based on how the terms are utilized (and
therefore show themselves through ostension) in
these same discursive productions.
What has been said above and as can be seen
from the history of psychology, giving discursive
productions a central position means considering
ordinary language as the subject of investigation
since it is an instrument for the configuration of
reality and not merely a vehicle for information.
That is, language is no longer an instrument for
transmitting information, meanings, and commu-
nicative intentions but rather generates these at
the same time that it is being used. This is the
Discursive Configuration
epistemic shift involved in the adoption of the
concept “discursive configuration.”
International Relevance
The concept of “discursive configuration” has
a dual relevance on an international level: the
possibility of a paradigmatic shift which concerns
the scientific foundations of psychology and the
possibility of application of the concept across
different fields in psychology (e.g., clinical,
organizational, and scholastic).
The adoption of the concept of discursive con-
figuration becomes relevant on an international
level in that it allows the different theoretical
approaches within psychology to share the same
observational data. This is because, apart from
overcoming theoretical fragmentation, the object
of the study becomes the language and not differ-
ent languages. This sharing makes it possible to
implement the rigorousness of interventions in
the psychological sphere as well as in research,
given that we can refer to a measurement value
in discursive configuration (see Dialogical
Weight), for example, as a term of comparison
for evaluating the effectiveness of any interven-
tion carried out.
Moreover, since the concept of discursive con-
figuration operates on the discursive modalities
of construction of reality rather than the contents
of said processes, it proves possible to utilize it
across all the specific fields of application in
psychology but also other disciplines. Regardless
of the context within which language is used to
configure reality, since it is itself the object of
investigation, it is possible to carry out psycho-
logical or social studies, with different objectives,
in order to satisfy the requests of various contrac-
tors or to identify particular needs of the commu-
nity (e.g., social cohesion, shared responsibility
in health promotion, public policy in general).
Practice Relevance
Moreover, in practical terms, reference to the
ostensive definition of ordinary language makes
Discursive Configuration
it possible to consider how, in the course of the
flow of discursive productions, there is always
and in any case the possibility to generate and
modify the sense of reality of the discourse itself.
This is due to the fact that ordinary language
has the capacity to modify the value of the sym-
bolic units (the words and signs with linguistic
valency in general) each and every time the lan-
guage is used.
Consequently, the application of the
narrativist paradigm in the research/intervention
stages involves considering discursive configura-
tion as a theoretical element generated by
different discursive productions, different
“voices” which, in different ways, contribute to
the construction of the reality which is the object
of the study/research. From this perspective, it is
the community of speakers, all the voices
together, that generates the specific discursive
reality. It is therefore in the network of discursive
productions that at any given moment there is the
possibility to make a change in the construction
of the sense (of reality) that focuses on the target
of the intervention. Thus the “voices” which
constitute a certain community become local
resources and may be defined as discursive
processes that have the capacity to manage/
modify what is configured as critical by the
community: that which the community itself
presents as a motivation for a request for inter-
vention. It is therefore possible to apply the
objectives of health promotion (Turchi &
Celleghin, 2010; Turchi & Della Torre, 2007),
with a view to generating a change in the
discursive configurations measured; this pros-
pect has a considerable impact on a social level
since health promotion objectives feed
a process whereby the community feels greater
responsibility for itself (as well as creating an
increase in social cohesion).
This means that it is possible to promote
a “rapprochement” among different psychologi-
cal theories since the concept of “discursive con-
figuration” refers back to what is investigated
across all the theoretical models: the psycholog-
ical dimension as a product of the discursive
process. The sharing of this concept in psychol-
ogy means it becomes possible to use a unit of
461 D
measurement of the dialogical weight in discur-
sive configurations. The use of a single unit of
measurement in all the theoretical applications
makes it possible to use this value to quantify
the effectiveness of individual interventions, by
comparing the dialogical weight of the config-
uration prior to and subsequent to the interven-
tion with reference to the declared objective. In
this way it becomes possible to develop D
a protocol for the evaluation of interventions
in the psychosocial sphere, using an analogous
system to that of randomized, double blind,
clinical trials in medicine, which is a shared
practice on an international level for the eval-
uation of the effectiveness of pharmacological
treatment.
In the same perspective, the practical rele-
vance of the adoption of the concept of “discur-
sive configuration” allows for the social and
health services of a system country to be orga-
nized on the basis of shared objectives for health
promotion of and within the community. This
must be taken as a shared social responsibility
since it is the product of a (discursive) process
which is in any case used by all members of the
community. Therefore the objectives of healing
and care – traditionally pursued by the Health
Service System – are subsumed within a general
objective of health promotion of the selfsame
community. This step can be taken by
reorganizing the services so that, independently
of the specific area in which the individual
service operates (e.g., urban security, health ser-
vices, social services), each becomes a part of
a network with the shared objective of promoting
health and increasing social cohesion by
implementing and exploiting the resources
present in the interactions in question.
Future Directions
The concept of “discursive configuration”
allows psychology as a discipline to make a
paradigmatic shift which involves abandoning
the concept of cause in favor of the notion of
interaction, coming to rest on the same cogni-
tive base upon which the development of the
D 462
disciplines was founded in the modern era. It is
therefore a significant shift from an epistemo-
logical point of view which makes it possible
to know the object of study through the
description of the process that generates con-
figurations of reality.
This shift offers psychology the chance to
effect important changes:
• Promote a rapprochement among the diverse
schools of thought by allowing them to use
a shared observational datum: discursive
configurations.
• Move from mechanism to interactionism:
remaining within the sphere of mechanistic
paradigms, the knowledge is ontological, in
that the “psyche” is known as a reality which
exists in its own right. This implies effecting
operations in order to ascertain the truthful-
ness of the hypotheses produced about the
object of study. On the contrary, adoption of
an interactionistic paradigm (like the
narrativist paradigm) involves a gnoseological
knowledge of the “psyche,” since the object of
study is regarded as the product of a process
(a configuration) which can be “described” as
it proceeds but certainly not “explained.” This
paradigmatic shift restores its epistemic status
to language as a configurer of reality, releasing
it from a hypothetical level (“what the psyche
is”) and moving it to a conceptual level (“how
the psyche is constructed”).
• The possibility of having a theory on the
measurement of discursive configurations:
this step makes it possible, as already
described, to offer an increasingly precise
intervention to meet the requests of the
community. It also provides an instrument
for evaluating the effectiveness of the inter-
vention in relation to the objective requested
by the community (or contractor). Hence,
with regard to the objective of promoting
change which is the reason why psychology
is activated in the area, it will be in
a condition to structure an architecture of
services in the area which considers as
many voices as possible and also evaluate
the effectiveness of the intervention.
Discursive Configuration
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Turchi, G. P., & Celleghin, E. (2010). Logoi: dialoghi di
e su “psicologia delle differenze culturali e clinica
della devianza” come occasione peripatetica per
un’agorà delle politiche sociali. Padova, Italy: Upsel
Domeneghini Editore.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophische Untersuchungen.
Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Online Resources
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000622
http://www.yorku.ca/tteo/Teo1998%20copy.pdf
http://www.dialogicalsciencevaluation.com/
Discursive Psychology
Stephanie Taylor
Department of Psychology, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, UK
Introduction
Discursive psychology is a relatively new field or
subdiscipline of psychology. It developed in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first century,
mainly from social constructionism and dis-
course analysis (see entries), and is strongly asso-
ciated with methodological innovation and the
analysis of language data. However, its greater
importance is theoretical, through the challenges
463 D
it has presented to conceptualizations of key psy-
chological phenomena, such as remembering,
attitudes, emotions, and to understandings of the
person. It continues to be marked by disputes
about its proper territory and practice, and also
to generate new and differently named fields of
work.
D
Definition
Discursive psychology is a field or subdiscipline
of psychology centered on the analysis of lan-
guage data, especially transcribed talk. Psycho-
logical phenomena which have more
conventionally been theorized as innate, often
with reference to cognition (e.g., attitudes,
remembering, emotion), are reinterpreted in dis-
cursive terms as constituted in ongoing language
practices and interactions, and therefore as situ-
ated, not universal, incomplete and fluid, and
social or co-constructed rather than individual.
Keywords
Discourse; talk; practice; interaction; accounts;
resources; rhetoric; discourse analysis;
conversation analysis; ethnomethodology; con-
struction; social constructionism
History
Discursive psychology developed in the late
twentieth century. It builds on previous innova-
tive work in social psychology associated with
social constructionism, especially the work of
Kenneth Gergen and John Shotter, and discourse
analysis, including the work of Jonathan Potter,
Margaret Wetherell, and Derek Edwards.
Discourse analysis itself drew together Foucaul-
dian theory and ethnomethodology into
a methodological approach which has been
widely used inside and outside the psychology
discipline. Discursive psychology continues to be
strongly associated with the analysis of language
D 464
data, particularly transcribed talk, but is probably
now less important methodologically than for
the challenges it has presented to established
psychological theorizations of many phenomena,
including identity (see entry), and for new
developments which have followed from these
challenges.
In an early article on social constructionism,
Kenneth Gergen (1985) proposed that psycholo-
gists should study the language and “human
meaning systems” (p. 270) which mediate
people’s understandings of the world and them-
selves. He challenged the claims of other
psychologists to obtain “objective knowledge”
(p. 269) and suggested social psychologists
might have more in common with academics in
the social sciences and humanities, such as
ethnomethodologists, anthropologists, literary
theorists, and historians, than with natural scien-
tists or experimental psychologists.
In 1987, Jonathan Potter and Margaret
Wetherell published a now-famous book,
Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond
Attitudes and Behaviour, which presents both
a methodological and theoretical challenge to
established psychology, particularly to cognitive
psychology. The methodological challenge con-
cerns the status of talk data. Potter and Wetherell
propose that talk should not be treated as trans-
parent, that is, as direct information about what it
purports to report or describe. Instead, the talk
should itself be analyzed, following the sociolog-
ical theory of ethnomethodology, as a form of
action or practice and also, following social
constructionism and Foucauldian theory, as con-
stitutive of what it refers to. The main theoretical
challenge of the book is to the notion of attitudes
as already existing “mental” phenomena which
are conveyed to a researcher in a participant’s
talk. Instead, Potter and Wetherell argue that
such talk is shaped both by its contextual
functions and by established ideas and ways of
speaking (interpretative repertoires) which are
representative of the wider social context rather
than particular to individual speakers. The further
radical implications of these arguments are, first,
the rejection of the conventional psychological
model of the individual as an agentic cognitive
Discursive Psychology
processor and source of action and communica-
tion and, second, a temporal shift in the focus of
research to the study of talk as ongoing process
rather than as evidence of prior events.
In the same year, Michael Billig (1987)
proposed in his book Arguing and Thinking: A
Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology that
talk and other language use is active in
a somewhat different way, as ongoing argument
and debate around choices and dilemmas. He
discussed the dilemmatic nature of both thought
and ideology, and also the rhetorical nature of
talk, drawing attention to the status of any
description or statement as one possible version
out of many, selected for its function in ongoing
dialogues and oriented to multiple potential
audiences.
Discursive psychology was subsequently
developed in influential work by these authors
and their colleagues, the term itself becoming
well known as the title of a 1992 book by Derek
Edwards and Jonathan Potter. Another ground-
breaking book, Mapping the Language of Racism
(1992), by Margaret Wetherell and Jonathan
Potter, was an important empirical study of prej-
udice and racism, an area with which discourse
analysis and discursive psychology remain
strongly associated, including in the recent work
of Susan Condor and Jackie Abell.
Rom Harré and Grant Gillett (Harré & Gillett,
1994) suggest that discursive psychology should
be seen as part of a “second cognitive revolution”
(p. 26). The challenge to cognitive psychology
was developed by Derek Edwards in his 1997
book, Discourse and Cognition, which proposes
the adoption of “a discourse based perspective on
language and cognition” (p. 19) in which emo-
tion, for example, is considered in terms of words
and categories which are resources for talk,
potentially useable to “perform social actions on
and for the occasion of their production” (p. 22).
A corollary of these ideas is that the mind itself is
no longer understood as contained and interior to
the person but envisaged as “spread out as
a distributional flow in what participants say
and do” (Herman, 2007, p. 312), located in
a range of people’s practices in the different
contexts of their lives, in “socio-communicative
Discursive Psychology
activities unfolding within richly material set-
tings” (p. 308).
Subsequent work in discursive psychology has
continued to explore and extend these arguments,
with some differences of emphasis. The main
direction follows the premises of conversation
analysis (from Harvey Sacks) and ethnomethod-
ology, for example, in the work of Jonathan Potter,
Derek Edwards, and Alexa Hepburn, which is
particularly concerned with interaction and the
sequential organization of talk, and the work of
Elizabeth Stokoe on the forms of shared social
knowledge investigated through Membership Cat-
egorization Analysis. The term “critical discursive
psychology” (CDP) was formulated by Margaret
Wetherell (1998) to describe a “synthetic”
approach followed by herself, Nigel Edley, and
others (e.g., Sarah Seymour-Smith) to investigate
the exercise and contest of power within larger
social contexts, for example, around gendered
identities, by analyzing not only interaction but
also the available discursive resources which set
possibilities and limits for discursive work.
Critical Debates
Discursive psychology is not associated with tra-
ditional debates in psychology because it
emerged relatively recently, as a critique of cog-
nitive psychology’s concepts and methodological
practices. The critique did not prompt a strong
response or engagement from cognitive psychol-
ogy or other parts of the larger psychology disci-
pline, and discursive psychology has continued to
develop separately. However, it is marked by
a number of well-rehearsed internal debates
about its own direction and practice, including
between critical and discursive psychologists.
Many of these debates are around methodol-
ogy. One concerns appropriate data and forms of
data collection (for instance, whether researchers
should study “naturally occurring talk” rather
than interview data) and another the limits of
interpretation and the status of the analyst, as
objective observer or engaged interpreter
(Schegloff, 1997; Wetherell, 1998, 2012). There
is also disagreement about the usefulness of
465 D
analyzing discursive resources, such as interpre-
tative repertoires or narratives. The diverging
trends of these disagreements are towards, on
the one hand, fine-grained analyses of naturally
occurring talk, transcribed following the Jeffer-
sonian notation associated with conversation
analysis and, on the other, larger evidence bases
which may be used by researchers to go “beyond
immediate discursive practices to consider a D
much wider range of background conditions. . .
[and] broader patterns of intelligibility dominant
in a particular culture” (Wetherell, 2012, p. 101).
These disagreements are probably less impor-
tant than discursive psychology’s continuing
challenges to established practice in other areas
of psychology and the social sciences. For exam-
ple, for critical psychologists, its relevance lies in
its questioning of many accepted ideas and its
concern with power, particularly in critical dis-
cursive psychology. In addition, the argument
that talk is a form of behavior and action in its
own right, rather than an indication of previously
formulated and fixed views, remains a useful
corrective. It potentially challenges the still wide-
spread practice, in academia and also beyond it,
of presenting short quotations from research
participants as reliable and enduring supporting
evidence for whatever the researcher is advocat-
ing. The arguments of discursive psychology also
have implications for understandings of accounts
of the past, including witness statements or client
talk in a counselling session or official histories.
Reinterpreted in terms of their functioning in the
situation of telling, such accounts acquire new
significance.
More generally, discursive psychology places
in question the whole nature and site of the
“psychological” phenomena which are com-
monly supposed to preexist their description or
expression in talk. The argument that talk about,
for example, attitudes, emotions, or remembering
is not straightforwardly referential and can be
extended to a radical reinterpretation of the
nature of the person, as in Herman’s account of
the distributed “mind,” quoted above, and,
potentially, an actor in context which accords
with traditions such as distributed cognition and
actor-network theory.
D 466
International Relevance
Discursive psychology was developed in the UK
in a small number of universities, notably
Loughborough and the Open University. However,
it has important US antecedents including in social
constructionism (the work of Kenneth Gergen,
among others, including the UK psychologist
John Shotter), ethnomethodology (Harold
Garfinkel), and conversation analysis (Harvey
Sacks, Gail Jefferson, and Emmanuel Schegloff).
Discursive psychology retains strong international
links, including Australia, the Netherlands, and
New Zealand as well as the USA.
Future Directions
One of the most important continuing directions
of work in discursive psychology concerns
prejudice, inequality, and exclusion, and the talk
and argument which naturalize and perpetuate
them. Influential discourse analytic and discur-
sive psychological research in this area has con-
sidered racism in New Zealand (e.g., Wetherell &
Potter, 1992, already mentioned) and Australia
(e.g., the work of Martha Augoustinos), national-
ism and nationality, and the nature of prejudice
(including the work of Michael Billig, e.g., Billig,
1995). It has been informed by related research in
the area of Critical Discourse Analysis, for
example, by Teun van Dijk and Ruth Wodak.
More recent foci include English and
British identities, anti-Semitism in the context of
emerging Eastern European nationalisms
(the work of Jovan Byford), and the emotional
and affective aspects of prejudice. A related
important direction concerns gender, gender
inequalities, and sexism, for example, in the work
of Susan Speer, Elizabeth Stokoe, and Celia
Kitzinger, often with a strong focus on interac-
tional research using conversational analysis.
A second direction is the continuing project
to reconsider conventional psychological con-
cerns in discursive terms, as already discussed,
and to disrupt understandings of talk about expe-
rience, feelings, and so on as the description or
expression of prior events or phenomena. For
Discursive Psychology
example, this project has been recently extended
to the investigation of learning, health, and
illness. A somewhat different direction of devel-
opment is indicated by Margaret Wetherell’s
recent work on affective practice (Wetherell,
2012) which has connections to critical psycho-
logical work informed by Deleuze, among others,
in the work of Paul Stenner and Steve Brown
(e.g., Brown & Stenner, 2009) and Johanna
Motzkau (2009).
The project of discursive reinterpretation has
also been applied to psychoanalysis as part of
a further direction, the theorization and investi-
gation of subjectivity and the subject. The
development of this third direction is perhaps
ironic, given discursive psychology’s original
challenge to psychological models or conceptu-
alizations of an agentic actor or bounded individ-
ual subject. However, the ongoing internal
debates may also have prompted the formulation
of psychosocial approaches which incorporate
psychoanalytic theory and practice, as in the
work of Wendy Hollway, Valerie Walkerdine,
and Helen Lucey. A feature of these approaches
is that the kind of de-centered subject originally
associated with discursive psychology is to
some extent re-centered and given continuity in
terms of investment and narrative (Hollway &
Jefferson, 2000), personal order (Wetherell,
2003), or narrative and local resources (Taylor,
2010). However, discursive psychology’s
emphasis on situatedness and complexity
remains a potentially useful corrective to the
completeness and coherence of the (self)-
regulated subject associated with theories of
governmentality (e.g., Rose, 1996).
Methodologically, the broader evidence bases
referred to above are likely to include “visual”
data, such as the media images discussed by
many contemporary feminist researchers, and
also the kinds of collected and created artifacts
which are increasingly used to elicit talk data.
References
Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical
approach to social psychology. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Discursive Repertory
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
Brown, S., & Stenner, P. (2009). Psychology without
foundations. London: Sage.
Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London:
Sage.
Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology.
London: Sage.
Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement
in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40(3),
266–275.
Harré, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Herman, D. (2007). Storytelling and the sciences of the
mind: Cognitive narratology, discursive psychology,
and narratives in face-to-face interaction. Narrative,
15(3), 306–334.
Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2000). Doing qualitative
research differently: Free association, narrative and
the interview method. London: Sage.
Motzkau, J. (2009). Exploring the transdisciplinary
trajectory of suggestibility. Subjectivity, 27,
172–194.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social
psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London:
Sage.
Rose, N. (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power
and personhood. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.
Schegloff, E. (1997). Whose text? Whose context?
Discourse & Society, 8, 165–187.
Taylor, S. (2010). Narratives of identity and place. Hove,
England: Routledge.
Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative rep-
ertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism
in dialogue. Discourse & Society, 9(3), 387–412.
Wetherell, M. (2003). Paranoia, ambivalence and discur-
sive practices: Concepts of position and positioning in
psychoanalysis and discursive psychology. In R. Harre
& F. Moghaddam (Eds.), The self and others:
Positioning individuals and groups in personal, polit-
ical and cultural contexts (pp. 99–120). Westport, CT:
Praegar.
Wetherell, M. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social
science understanding. London: Sage.
Wetherell, M., & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language
of racism. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Online Resources
Discursive psychology. http://www.psych-it.com.au/
Psychlopedia/article.asp?id¼211
Discursive psychology. http://www.staff.lboro.ac.uk/
ssde/Edwards-Discursive%20Psychology%20in%
20Fitch&Sanders%202004.pdf
Conversation analysis vs other approaches to
discourse. http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.
php/fqs/article/view/100/209
Discursive psychology, rhetoric and the issue of agency.
http://semen.revues.org/8930
467 D
Discursive Repertory
Gian Piero Turchi, Romanelli Michele, Federico
Bonazza and Anna Girardi
Department of Applied Psychology, University
of Padua, Padua, Italy
D
Introduction
The concept of “Discursive Repertory” (Turchi,
2002) in psychology makes it possible for the
discipline to share a single observational datum
outside of the constraints of any specific theory
and has its epistemological foundation in how
members of the human community use ordinary
language (therefore regardless of which lan-
guages they speak). Through the theorization
and definition of the concept (which, as described
below, is a continuation in evolutionary terms of
Discursive Psychology – Anolli, 2006; De Grada &
Bonaiuto, 2002; Harré & Gillett, 1996 – and also
embraces ideas and contributions from authors in
fields outside what is strictly psychology – the
philosophers Michel Foucault and Ludwig
Wittgenstein), psychology can free itself from
the quest for hypotheses to explain the construct
of “psyche” and focus instead on what people
configure and construct through the use of ordi-
nary language.
Definition
Discursive Repertory is defined as a precise and
distinct way of using ordinary language, which
(in its ostensive definition) configures a reality
(that is discursive, not “real”), which assumes
a “factual” value for the interagents. This concept
is the formalization of the use value of ordinary
language (i.e., the ostensive definition of the
symbolic units and rules of application which
compose it) in different rules of use which
conventionally represent the different construc-
tions of sense of reality. Therefore what the
interagents see as “fact” is generated by the use
of language (governed by different rules shown in
a Periodic Table of Discursive Repertories)
D 468
within a theoretical space known as the
“Discursive Space.” That which is generated dis-
cursively thus imposes itself as “reality” in terms
of its pragmatic effects.
Three different “classes” have been created to
classify each Discursive Repertory according to
how stable or, at the opposite end of the spectrum,
variable the configuration of reality it generates
actually is (see definition of Discursive
Configuration):
1. Maintenance Discursive Repertories: config-
ure a reality “the same as itself,” in that they
reduce the possibility of generating change in
relation to that which the interagents define as
“reality.”
2. Generative Discursive Repertories: configure
a reality which can be modified since they
increase the possibility for generating change
in relation to that which the interagents define
as “reality.”
3. Hybrid Discursive Repertory: the use of
language can assume either a maintenance or
generative valency, depending on the connec-
tion with other rules of use.
Each Discursive Repertory has also been
assigned a conventional numerical value which
represents the contribution of the Repertory to the
generation of a particular discursive configura-
tion (known as “Dialogical Weight,” insofar as it
express the “force” or “energy” that this
Repertory has in the generation and maintenance
of a given configuration of reality). Belonging to
one of the three classes and the allocation of
a specific Dialogical Weight has made it possible
to organize the rules of use of ordinary language
into a Periodic Table of Discursive Repertories
which are finite in number but – by means of their
interaction – can generate infinite and uncertain
(not predictable) discursive configurations (as
well as generating other Discursive Repertories
not yet contained in the Periodic Table).
Keywords
Ordinary language; discursive process; discur-
sive construction of reality; narrativist paradigm;
discursive psychology
Discursive Repertory
Traditional Debates
As already mentioned in the introduction, the con-
cept of Discursive Psychology arose within the field
of psychology also thanks to ideas from authors in
other academic fields. Among these was the con-
cept of discourse analysis from Michel Foucault,
a fundamental part of Discursive Psychology and
Social Constructionism, not to mention the ideas of
Ludwig Wittgenstein on the ostensive definition of
ordinary language. These were the foundations
upon which it became possible to shift from the
study of the multitude of constructs within psychol-
ogy to the centrality of language.
Discursive Psychology in fact promotes
a move from the study of language as an abstract
modality of symbols to that of discursive produc-
tion as a universal social tool: discursive produc-
tion is seen as a social action, and human activity
is considered to be the engine of existence, since
people produce and “narrate” both the state “of
things” and the consequences of these states.
Discourse, therefore, not only transmits informa-
tion and describes objects and events but also
constitutes a fundamental tool for constructing
both the speakers’ “point of view” about what
they are talking about, as well as “what they are
talking about.” The words chosen and the struc-
ture of the sentences in a given situation imply
a certain representation of reality (Anolli, 2006).
In line with this idea, in the theorization of the
dialogical self, the aspect of discourse refers in
particular to the dialogue between the various
parts of the self, each with its own point of view
and a particular tendency to action. This dialogue
allows individuals to attribute meanings to
relations and to move in the world in the face of
these meanings (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004;
Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Schafer, 1980).
These aspects were then dealt with in greater
depth by Social Constructionism, the contribution
of which was to draw attention to the primacy of
relational, social, and conversational practices as
a source of knowledge. The construction of knowl-
edge, in fact, is seen as a collective process, shared
by participants who take an active part in the
process. Therefore, reality is constructed, moment
by moment, through and in discourse, within
Discursive Repertory
specific contexts (Berger & Luckmann, 1966;
Mead, 1934; Salvini, 1998), and the relevance of
narration assumes the valency of an instrument for
constructing identity (Bruner, 1997). For the latter,
in fact, the capacity for narration and, therefore, to
construct a story allows us to give some sense,
some meaning to a behavior or event. This is the
origin of the narrative approach, in particular in the
context of psychotherapy, where human experi-
ence can no longer be defined as “subjective” but
is co-constructed in its meaning thanks to the
interaction between speakers.
With the change in direction brought by Social
Constructionism, psychology also embraced the
ideas of Michel Foucault on “discourse” and
“discourse formation.” The discipline felt the
need to shift attention from “how a person
knows what he does about himself” to the descrip-
tion of “how a person understands the sense of
what he does” (Mininni, 2003). This leads to
the inclusion of the ideas contributed by Michel
Foucault in “The Order of Discourse” and of two
key concepts in particular: the limits and forms of
expressibility, defined by the rules that a given
society creates for itself in a particular historical
period and which determine what it is possible to
talk about, what can be constructed as a sphere of
discourse, and what discursive practices are
allowed and actually used, and the discourses,
not as a system of signs that (symbolically) refer
to something else, but as practices which system-
atically form the objects they are speaking
about – that is, we start to reflect on how what
we talk about is generated by how we speak about
it. On this basis, Foucault developed the theory of
“discursive formation,” by means of which he
explains how each object about which we speak
is formed in a different way according to the
utterances which name it, explain it, and delimit
it (Foucault, 1971). Therefore, on the basis of the
assumptions of Social Constructionism, and
encapsulating the contribution mentioned above,
Discursive Social Psychology came into being at
the end of the 1980s (supposedly with the publi-
cation of “Discourse and Social Psychology” by
Potter & Wetherell, 1987): language takes shape
in the specific social situation in which
a communicative interaction takes place.
469 D
Language is taken to be a thought activity which
is put into practice in the specific interaction
situation. According to this theory, people use
discursive strategies to reach certain objectives
in communication. Therefore, depending on the
situation and on what they want to achieve, they
use specific interpretative repertories (linguistic
images, descriptions, metaphors, and figures of
speech, shared within a particular culture). D
Harré’s critical concept of the human being as
an information processor led to the rhetorical
approach to social psychology (Billig, 1996)
where the human being is seen as a rhetor: that
is, a person, in his or her communicative interac-
tions, is constantly acting and using rhetoric to
promote a particular world view. In fact, this
vision is also supported by opposite arguments
to those held, which, on the one hand, shield what
has been said from criticism, and, on the other,
allow for the construction of reality through con-
stant rhetorical action.
Critical Debates
The concept of Discursive Repertory shares certain
theoretical assumptions of Social Constructionism
and ideas of Foucault’s with what has been stated
in the previous section. In particular, as regards
Foucault, there are certain overlaps in relation to
the concept coined by the philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein in his “Psychological Investigations”
(Wittgenstein, 1953) “the meaning of a word is its
use in language”: this opens the door to the scien-
tific observation of the construction of sense not on
the basis of the meaning of the individual terms
used in discursive productions (contents) but
depending on the manner in which the terms are
utilized (the use that is made of them) in discursive
production (ostensive definition).
We can therefore see a “reversal” in the
relationship between language and social situa-
tion or interaction between the speakers. Whereas
Discursive Social Psychology sees the ways in
which language is used as being chosen by the
speakers according to their own communicative
goals, the Narrativist Paradigm (Turchi, 2002,
2009) – within which the concept of Discursive
D 470
Repertory is to be found – identifies ordinary
language as a foundation for knowledge (Turchi,
2002; Turchi & Celleghin, 2010): that is, it is the
use of language which constructs reality and not
reality which “conditions” its use. The construc-
tion of sense therefore takes shape not so much as
a result of the different meanings which may be
attributed to the contents narrated but rather as
a result of the discursive manner in which these
contents are narrated.
This therefore means that within the Narrativist
Paradigm, the adoption of the concept of Discur-
sive Repertory implies a cognitive and operative
distinction: psychology identifies ordinary lan-
guage as an object of knowledge and no longer
needs to search for the meaning behind human
interaction. In fact, that which historically charac-
terized knowledge in the field of psychology –
splitting it into a multitude of different schools
of thought – also gave rise to different ways of
doing basic research (e.g., in community psychol-
ogy) and also methods of operative intervention
(e.g., in clinical psychology) based on different
definitions of the reference constructs. Taking
ordinary language represented by Discursive Rep-
ertories as the object of knowledge, psychology
makes a shift in the direction of sharing a single
observational datum and of measuring it (by
means of Dialogical Weight). Not only can this
be of use for basic research, it also has applica-
tions for evaluating the effectiveness of interven-
tions in the field carried out in response to requests
by the community. It becomes possible for oper-
ators to take the “measure” of the contribution of
each Repertory to the construction of a sense of
reality both before and after intervention, thus
better satisfying those same requests.
References
Anolli, L. (Ed.). (2006). Fondamenti di psicologia della
comunicazione. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The construction of
reality. New York: Doubleday.
Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and thinking: a rhetorical
approach to social psychology, revised edition.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, J. S. (1997). A narrative model of self-construc-
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Disease, Overview
The self across psychology: Self-recognition, self-
awareness, and self concept (pp. 145–161). New
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De Grada, E., & Bonaiuto, M. (2002). Introduzione alla
psicologia sociale discorsiva. Roma: Laterza.
Foucault, M. (1971) L’Ordre du discours, Paris,
Gallimard. L’ordine del discorso: i meccanismi sociali
di controllo e di esclusione della parola (1971), trad.
it. Alessandro Fontana, Einaudi, Torino 1972.
Harré, R., & Gillett, G. (1996). La mente discorsiva.
Milano: Cortina, Milano.
Hermans, H. J. M., & Kempen, H. J. G. (1993). The
dialogical self: Meaning as movement. San Diego,
CA: Academic Press.
Hermans, H. J. M., & Dimaggio, G. (2004). The dialogical
self in psychotherapy. London: Brunner/Routledge.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mininni, G. (2003). Il discorso come forma di vita. Napoli,
Italy: Guida.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social
psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London,
England: Sage.
Salvini, A. (1998). Argomenti di psicologia clinica.
Padova, Italy: Editore Upsel.
Schafer, R. (1980). Narration in the psychoanalytic
dialogue. Critical Inquiry, 7, 29–53.
Turchi, G. P. (Ed.). (2002). Tossicodipendenza. Generare
il cambiamento tra mutamento di paradigma ed effetti
pragmatici. Padova, Italy: UPSEL.
Turchi, G. P. (2009). Dati senza numeri. Per una
metodologia di analisi dei dati informatizzati testuali:
M.A.D.I.T. Bologna, Italy: Monduzzi Editore.
Turchi, G. P., & Celleghin, E. (2010). Logoi: dialoghi di
e su “psicologia delle differenze culturali e clinica
della devianza” come occasione peripatetica per
un’agorà delle politiche sociali. Padova, Italy: Upsel
Domeneghini Editore.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophische Untersuchungen.
Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Online Resources
http://www.dialogicalsciencevaluation.com/
Disease, Overview
Frank Gruba-McCallister
Clinical Psychology Program, Chicago School of
Professional Psychology, Chicago, IL, USA
Introduction
Critical psychology offers a critique of the
construct of disease based on the positivist and
Disease, Overview
capitalist ideological assumptions that inform
dominant discourses regarding how disease is
defined and who has authority to determine the
presence of disease and the forms of intervention
appropriate for ameliorating or correcting. This
critique reveals a number of important issues that
have framed debates regarding what constitutes
disease. Among these issues are the mind-body
question (Stam, 2004); the degree to which
causes of disease are situated within the individ-
ual versus within the physical and sociocultural
environment (Barney, 1994); the extent to which
using disease to define the meaning and causes of
deviance results in prescribing the status quo,
social control, and abuse of power (Maracek &
Hare-Mustin, 2009); and the role of social and
cultural context in determining what gets labeled
as a disease (Conrad & Barker, 2010). Prevailing
social, historical, political, and economic factors
not only substantially shape the meaning of dis-
ease but also exert a powerful influence on the
specific forms which disease takes (Lasch, 1991).
The exaggerated emphasis on the individual char-
acteristic of late capitalist society results in plac-
ing blame for disease on the victim and
a mystification of the role of the wider social
and political reality. As a consequence, the
adverse impact of discrimination, poverty, and
oppression on well-being and the creation of dis-
ease are downplayed. Further, disease often
serves to stigmatize those who are labeled
(Goffman, 1963). The commodification of health
care has also exerted a profound impact on
what is defined as disease, exposing the increased
role of economic motivations in defining
diseases. A particular concern for critical psy-
chology is the adverse effects of psychologism
or psychology’s adoption of the same materialis-
tic, reductionist, and individualistic paradigm as
the medical model on those dealing with various
forms of suffering and affliction.
Definition
As observed by Engel (1977), the dominant
model used to define disease is biomedical.
Based in molecular biology, the biomedical
471 D
model “. . .assumes disease to be fully accounted
for by a deviation from the norm of measurable
biological (somatic) variables. It leaves no room
within its framework for the social, psychologi-
cal, and behavioral dimensions of illness.
The biomedical model not only requires that dis-
ease be dealt with as an entity independent of
social behavior, it also demands that behavioral
aberrations be explained on the basis of disor- D
dered somatic. . .processes. Thus the biomedical
model embraces both reductionism. . .and mind-
body dualism” (Engel, 1977, p. 130). Engel
asserts that medicine is in a state of crisis due to
its dogmatic adherence to the assumptions of the
biomedical model despite its scientific inadequa-
cies and its inability to allow physicians to fulfill
their social responsibilities. Instead, he proposes
a different view that he calls the biopsychosocial
model. This alternative view challenges the
reductionist assumption of the biomedical
model, observing that biological influences are
just one of multiple complex interacting factors
that may or may not culminate in disease. For
Engel, defining disease must also abandon mind-
body dualism and take into account the experi-
ence of patients, the social context in which
patients live, and the role of the relationship
with the physician and the health care system in
the treatment of patients. For Engel, the task of
the physician is to establish the nature of the
problem presented by patients and decide
whether the problem is best handled in
a medical framework.
The biomedical model also adheres to
a distinction between disease and illness
(Eisenberg, 1977). Disease refers to an objective
disorder of bodily functions or with an organic
cause and identifiable signs and symptoms.
In contrast, illness refers to the subjective
experience of the patient as based in both psycho-
logical and social meanings. Morris (1998)
observes that conflating disease with objective
and illness with subjective reflects positivist
biases of the biomedical model. Medical knowl-
edge is privileged because it is based on objective
measures, such as medical tests and lab reports,
and the authority of physicians, while the experi-
ence of patients is marginalized or dismissed as
D 472
unreliable and untrustworthy. The distinction
reinforces a power differential in which
authority to validate the presence of disease
rests solely with the physician while placing
patients in a submissive role. Morris observes
that this distinction is dubious as “objective”
tests must be conducted by human beings and
their findings then interpreted by them. Using
a postmodern framework, Morris argues for
a biocultural view that recognizes the role played
by biological factors while also understanding
diseases as cultural artifacts that operate through
social discourses and give rise to power
differentials.
Keywords
Disease; Illness; Biomedical model;
Biopsychosocial model; Medicalization; Disease
mongering; Embodiment
Traditional Debates
Classic debates about the nature of disease are
embedded within the historical developments
that gave rise to the biomedical model (Foucault,
1973). Understanding of the nature of human
affliction has moved from moral explanations
(sin) to legal (crime) to medical (sickness)
(Conrad & Schneider, 1992). Cartesian dualism
opened the way for dissection but also established
a troubling legacy of restricting the focus of
a scientific study of disease to organic factors
that could be observed, measured, and manipu-
lated. This was accompanied by a neglect or
outright denial of the role of psychological and
social factors (Engel, 1977). The core ontological
assumptions of the biomedical model of realism,
naturalism, reductionism, and essentialism
have all been subjects of subsequent debates
regarding the nature and treatment of disease.
For example, the separation of the body
from one’s personal identity and the treatment
of the body as if it were a machine have
been criticized as dehumanizing and having
a destructive impact on those afflicted by disease
Disease, Overview
(Foucault, 1976, 1973; Cassell, 1982). Similarly,
the presupposition that biological bases can be
established for many forms of mental disorder
has been hotly disputed (Barney, 1994; Szasz,
1974). Social constructionism rejects a strictly
positivist view that disease can be explained
solely by objective and biological factors due to
the role of social and cultural context on
the meaning of illness, the experience of those
who are ill, and medical knowledge and practice
(Conrad & Barker, 2010).
Critical Debates
Debates on the social and political meaning of
disease have built upon the traditional debates
noted earlier. One example is the concept of
medicalization first proposed by Zola (1983).
Medicalization functions principally at
a definitional level and is the process whereby
human problems and conditions are defined as
medical conditions and thus come under the
authority of physicians and other health care pro-
fessionals. Psychiatry, in particular, has been
a focus of this critique as evidenced in the exten-
sive literature on the ever-expanding number of
DSM diagnoses that transform human
experiences and issues into medical problems
(Aho, 2008). Such labels continue to valorize
biological explanations of human distress, veil
the role of sociocultural and political factors,
and advance the economic profits of the health
care industry. Stam (2004) extends this critique
by illustrating how the biopsychosocial model is
not substantively different from the biomedical
model. They share ideological assumptions
expressed in functionalism that view persons as
well-tuned machines that can be analyzed
acontextually.
Both Nye (2003) and Conrad (2005) have
described the evolution of the medicalization pro-
cess since the idea was first proposed. In the earlier
formulations, medicalization was seen as driven by
physicians and health care providers who were
reluctant to surrender their professional authority
and interested in preserving their monopoly.
An influential critic was Illich (1975) who coined
Disease, Overview
the terms “medical nemesis” and “iatrogenesis” by
which he meant the process in which medical
intervention leads to greater illness and social prob-
lems. Medical discourse was also criticized for its
reinforcing the status quo and the interests of the
rich and powerful. Conrad (2005), however, notes
three major changes that have altered what drives
medicalization: biotechnology (particularly the
growing impact of the pharmaceutical industry),
the growing commodification of health care and
transformation of patients into consumers, and
managed care. As a result, he asserts, “Medicaliza-
tion is now driven more by commercial and market
interests than by professional claims-makers”
(p. 3). Another recently coined term to describe
this trend is “disease mongering” (Payer, 1992) or
the practice of expanding the diagnostic boundaries
of illnesses and public awareness of such illnesses
in order to expand markets for those who sell
and deliver treatments. Examples are the vastly
expanded marketing of treatments for male
erectile dysfunction, attention deficit disorder, and
social anxiety disorder. This analysis highlights the
growing role that capitalist ideology plays in the
defining and treatment of disease.
Critical psychology has offered a number of
alternative ways of understanding disease that
correct for the limitations and dangers of
traditional views. Kugelmann (2004) describes
a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach
that builds on the distinction noted earlier
between illness and disease by adding sickness
as a particular status or social role that is justified
by reference to either the presence of disease or
the experience of illness. His formulation takes
into account the intersection of human subjectiv-
ity with the impact of social, cultural, and
political forces. Santiago Delefosse (2011)
proposes an embodied-socio-psychological
perspective integrating the work of Wallon on
the primacy of emotion in human development
and the work of Vygotsky on the development
of superior psychological functions. She
argues that this perspective will provide a more
adequate understanding of the impact of serious
and chronic illness in terms of alterations of
a person’s lifeworld and experience of
embodiment.
473 D
References
Aho, K. (2008). Medicalizing mental health:
A phenomenological alternative. The Journal of
Medical Humanities, 29, 243–259.
Barney, K. (1994). Limitations of the critique of the med-
ical model. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 15,
19–34.
Cassell, E. (1982). The nature of suffering and the goals of
medicine. The New England Journal of Medicine, 306, D
639–645.
Conrad, P. (2005). The shifting engines of medicalization.
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 46, 3–14.
Conrad, P., & Barker, K. K. (2010). The social construc-
tion of illness: Key insights and policy implications.
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51, 567–579.
Conrad, P., & Schneider, J. W. (1992). Deviance and
medicalization: From badness to sickness. Philadel-
phia, PA: Temple University Press.
Eisenberg, L. (1977). Disease and illness: Distinctions
between professional and popular ideas of sickness.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 9–23.
Engel, G. L. (1977). The need for a new medical model:
A challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196, 129–136.
Foucault, M. (1973). The birth of the clinic: An archaeol-
ogy of medical perception. New York, NY: Vintage
Books.
Foucault, M. (1976). Mental illness and psychology (A.
Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of
a spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall.
Illich, I. (1975). Medical nemesis. New York, NY:
Pantheon.
Kugelmann, R. (2004). Health and illness: A hermeneuti-
cal and phenomenological approach. In M. Murray
(Ed.), Critical health psychology (pp. 44–57).
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lasch, C. (1991). The culture of narcissism. New York,
NY: W. W. Norton.
Maracek, J., & Hare-Mustin, R. T. (2009). Clinical psy-
chology: The politics of madness. In D. R. Fox, I.
Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical psychology:
An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 75–92). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Morris, D. (1998). Illness and health in the postmodern
age. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 14, 237–251.
Nye, R. A. (2003). The evolution of the concept of med-
icalization in the late twentieth century. Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences, 39, 115–129.
Payer, L. (1992). Disease-mongers: How doctors, drug
companies and insurers are making you feel sick.
New York, NY: Wiley.
Santiago Delefosse, M. (2011). An embodied-socio-
psychological perspective in health psychology?
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(5),
220–230.
Stam, H. J. (2004). A sound mind in a sound body:
A critical historical analysis of health psychology. In
D 474
M. Murray (Ed.), Critical health psychology
(pp. 15–30). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Szasz, T. (1974). The myth of mental illness. New York,
NY: Harper & Row.
Zola, I. K. (1983). Socio-medical inquiries: Recollections,
reflections, and reconsiderations. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
Online Resources
Moynihan, R., & Henry, D. (2006, April 11). The fight
against disease mongering: Generating knowledge for
action [Online essay]. Retrieved from http://www.
plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%
2Fjournal.pmed.0030191
Dissociative Identity Disorder,
Overview
Laura K. Kerr
Mental Health Scholar and Psychotherapist,
San Francisco, CA, USA
Introduction
After nearly 70 years of virtually no mention in
the medical literature, multiple personality disor-
der resurfaced in the latter part of the twentieth
century, receiving a new name, dissociative iden-
tity disorder, and reaching almost epidemic pro-
portions. Between 1922 and 1972, fewer than 50
cases of multiple personality disorder were
recorded in the medical literature. By 1990,
almost 20,000 cases of dissociative identity dis-
order had been identified (Showalter, 1997).
Historian and philosopher of science Ian
Hacking associated the emergence of dissociative
identity disorder with changing interpretations of
childhood abuse (Hacking, 1991). In the 1960s
“cruelty to children” was reinterpreted as
a pathology requiring medical intervention. Dur-
ing this time, multiple personality disorder
became linked to childhood abuse. Pierre Janet’s
work on dissociation was also rekindled and
joined with psychosocial theories of child devel-
opment to explain the presence of “alter” identi-
ties. Psychiatrist Richard Kluft was the first to
theorize that overreliance on dissociative
Dissociative Identity Disorder, Overview
defenses to ward off the psychological impact of
abuse led to dissociated aspects of the self
becoming split-off from the “normal” develop-
ment processes that would otherwise lead to an
integrated and unitary self (Kluft, 1985; Hacking,
1995; Showalter, 1997).
Philosopher Stephen E. Braude (1991)
described the emergence of dissociative identity
disorder as the outcome of a gradual sea change
in psychiatric practice. Like Hacking (1991),
Braude associated the return of multiple person-
ality disorder with connections to childhood
abuse and also cited the popularity of the made-
for-television movie, Sybil, which first aired in
1973. Yet, Braude also speculated that, at least in
the USA, disenchantment with Freudian psycho-
analysis and psychological behaviorism, as well
as the likely misdiagnosis of many individuals
with Schizophrenia, led to a greater acceptance
of multiple personalities and dissociative identity
disorder as a psychiatric diagnosis.
Definition
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV) describes dissociative disor-
ders as “disruption[s] in the usually integrated
functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or
perception” (American Psychiatric Association,
2000, p. 519). Disruption in integrative functions
can lead to amnesia (dissociative amnesia), loss
of sense of place (dissociative fugue), loss of
sense of self (depersonalization), or the prolifer-
ation of multiple identities (loss of integrated
identity), which characterizes dissociative iden-
tity disorder. The etiology of dissociative identity
disorder is believed to be a childhood history of
severe physical and sexual abuse. Dissociative
identity disorder is thought to develop when
the body’s natural traumatic stress response is
repeatedly activated by conditions of extreme
threat, which over time leads to the emergence
of a coherent identity capable of organizing
split-off, trauma-related memories in ways
that allow the child to survive conditions of
chronic victimization (Van Der Hart, Nijenhuis,
& Steele, 2006). Similar to posttraumatic stress
Dissociative Identity Disorder, Overview
disorder (PTSD), dissociative identity disorder is
described as the outcome of exposure to life-
threatening or terrifying events. However, in the
case of dissociative identity disorder, repeated
activation of traumatic stress responses (e.g.,
fight, flight, flee, submit) has led to the chronic,
compartmentalization of trauma-related memo-
ries, similar to how a single episode of trauma
leads to the failure to integrate memories of
a traumatic event with otherwise normal mental
functioning.
Keywords
Childhood abuse; depersonalization; dissocia-
tion; Dissociative Amnesia; Dissociative Fugue;
Multiple Personality Disorder; Physical abuse;
PTSD; sexual abuse; traumatic stress responses
Traditional Debates
Perhaps more than any other mental disorder, dis-
sociative identity disorder – and its precursor, mul-
tiple personality disorder – has been accused of
being iatrogenic in origin, which is to say the so-
called alter identities or personalities arise as
a result of the psychiatrist’s or psychologist’s
search for their existence in highly suggestible
patients. This argument has been part of a larger
debate in the USA against the veracity of recalled
memories of childhood sexual abuse – what has
been called “Repressed Memory Syndrome” – in
which psychotherapists have been accused of
manipulating their patients into believing current
symptoms of emotional distress have their origins
in childhood experiences of sexual exploitation
(Hacking, 1995).
Related to accusations of iatrogenic influences
have been perceptions of dissociative identity
disorder as the outcome of the feminist move-
ment rather than scientific studies. The second
wave of feminism fueled concerns for the preva-
lence of violence against women, including
a focus in the mental health community on the
treatment and eradication of domestic violence.
This included exposing the frequency of incest
475 D
between a daughter and a father, or father figure,
which is thought to be common in histories of
women diagnosed with dissociate identity disor-
der. The diagnosis is overwhelmingly given to
women (nine out of ten diagnoses). Some argue
dissociative identity disorder is the outcome of
a patriarchal society that historically has given
men control over the members of a dependent,
and potentially isolated, family (Herman, 1981). D
Today, research in the neurobiology of trauma
and the model of structural dissociation supports
a view of dissociated identities arising as the result
of suppressed attempts at activating the body’s
natural response to traumatic threats. When the
body must repeatedly submit to threat rather than
fight back or flee, the physiological tendency to
split-off traumatic memories can lead to different
aspects of the self-organizing around defense
responses, which, over time, can begin to function
as alter personalities. With this description of dis-
sociated identities, alter personalities are seen as
activated defense and survival responses that have
gained complex organization as a result of
repeated activation (Van Der Hart et al., 2006).
Critical Debates
Psychiatrist Horacio Fabrega associated the mod-
ern Western conception of dissociation with
notions of trance and possession that have dom-
inated throughout human history. According to
Fabrega, trance and possession are ritualized
forms of dissociation that communicate
a person’s social-related distress (2002).
Fabrega’s hypothesis suggests dissociation is
more than just a defense against trauma and over-
whelming stress; it is also a way for members of
a social group to identify when a person has
become too overwhelmed by stress without threat
of social alienation. Possession, however, seems
to work differently, and like dissociative identity
disorder, may be a way to communicate the vic-
timhood engendered by social inequalities that
have become ingrained aspects of society, such
as gender oppression.
Dissociative identity disorder, like spirit pos-
session, may be a way for the subjugated and
D 476
oppressed to voice their realities without fear of
retribution. However, rather than religious insti-
tutions, those diagnosed with dissociative iden-
tity disorders, like hysterics before them, retreat
to the mental health system to speak of experi-
ences of hurt and humiliation. Fabrega witnessed
how trance and possession became aligned with
different social institutions, including medical
practices: “Ritualized forms of dissociation like
trance and possession are found in association
with religious and medical practices across the
world and are thus institutionalized in the society.
Indeed, one can classify societies in terms of
whether institutionalized forms of dissociation
are predominantly trance, possession, or
a combination of the two” (2002, p. 298).
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic
and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th edn.).
Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Braude, S. E. (1991). First Person Plural: Multiple
personality and the philosophy of mind. New York:
Routledge.
Hacking, I. (1991). The making and molding of child
abuse. Critical Inquiry, 17(Winter), 253–288.
Hacking, I. (1995). Rewriting the soul: Multiple person-
ality and the sciences of memory. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Herman, J. (1981). Father-daughter incest. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Kluft, R. P. (Ed.). (1985). Childhood antecedents of
multiple personality. Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric Press.
Showalter, E. (1997). Histories: Hysterical epidemics and
modern culture. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Van Der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006).
The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the
treatment of chronic traumatization. New York: WW
Norton & Company.
Online Resources
Treating dissociative disorders “101”. Retrieved 25 Oct
2012, from (http://www.isst-d.org/education/dissocia-
tion-101.htm)
What is a dissociative disorder? (2010). Retrieved 25
Oct 2012, from (http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?
contentID¼75&sectionid¼4)
Diversity
Diversity
Nida Bikmen
Department of Psychology, Denison University,
Granville, OH, USA
Introduction
Although psychology developed as a scientific
discipline that aimed to identify the universal
laws underlying human behavior, experiences of
members of different social groups have been
studied from the early days of the discipline.
Events in North American and Western European
history in the mid-twentieth century have lead
psychologists to recognize the diversity of
human experience and transform the discipline
by focusing on this diversity explicitly. Critical
psychologists with their emphasis on context,
power, and justice have been influential in this
transformation.
Study of diversity in psychology focused on
processes such as categorization, stereotyping,
prejudice and discrimination, social identity
development, intergroup relations, and more
recently on intergroup inequality and social
injustice.
Definition
Diversity, as studied by psychologists, is defined
as social difference. Individuals in a society
differ from each other in terms of the social
categories to which they belong. While categori-
zation seems to be a universal of human cognitive
functioning (Park & Judd, 2005), the bases on
which categories are formed and the meanings
attributed to the category memberships are
constructed in particular social and historical
contexts. For example, historical examinations
of the creation of the category “race” revealed
that it did not become a salient dimension of
categorization until there was need to
justify slavery and colonization (Smedley &
Smedley, 2005).
Diversity
Social categories studied by psychologists
include race/ethnicity, gender, social class, age,
disability, religion, sexual orientation, and
physical appearance. Blaine (2007) reported that
this order corresponds to the volume of research
in each social category in psychology. That is,
most of the research has been done with individ-
uals who belong to different racial/ethnic groups.
Yet, scholars working on diversity emphasize
that the term encompasses many different
categories available to individuals in a society
including the categories related to the dominant
culture, such as White, middle class, male, and
heterosexual (Trickett, Watts, & Birman, 1994).
Other dimensions of difference studied by social
scientists include place (e.g., Southerner) and
political (e.g., conservative) identities, and life-
styles (e.g., singleness) (Lott, 2009).
Keywords
Identity; categorization; culture; intergroup
relations; prejudice; inequality
History
As mentioned above, experiences of groups that
diverge from the mainstream have always been
an area of inquiry for psychologists. However,
the way these experiences have been studied
and the underlying assumptions of the research
conducted have been subject to major changes
throughout the twentieth century. Trickett and
colleagues (1994) outlined a history of diversity
studies that grew from “ethnic minority issues” to
the study of “human diversity.” They noted that
earlier research in the 1930s was characterized by
“deficit models,” that is, focusing on what mem-
bers of disadvantaged groups (e.g., women,
African Americans, disabled, nonheterosexual,
poor) lacked compared to the dominant groups.
In these studies, members of disadvantaged
groups would be compared to and evaluated
against the norms presented by the advantaged
group members (white, male, able-bodied,
heterosexual, and middle class). The deficits
477 D
were thought to be largely due to genetic
differences.
Despite several critiques within and outside of
psychology, these models remained dominant
until the social movements of the 1960s that
shifted researchers’ attention to the effects of
social inequality in the United States and Europe.
Yet Trickett et al. (1994) report that research
motivated by the civil rights movement or the D
feminist movement still conceived racial or gen-
der differences within the framework of deficit
models. This time, however, the deficits were
argued to be caused by oppression and
impoverished environments.
An important and related development at this
time was the diversification of psychologists in
North America. As more women and people of
color received graduate degrees and joined
organized psychology, they began doing research
in areas that were directly related to their experi-
ences. These groups were followed by gay/les-
bian, and disabled psychologists. In addition to
examining social inequality and the effects of
oppression, these psychologists focused on the
resilience and positive attributes of the marginal-
ized groups. The work of these researchers con-
tributed to major policy decisions such as school
desegregation in the United States, the removal of
homosexuality as pathology from the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM), and, more recently, civil rights of gays,
lesbians, and bisexuals.
Further developments that brought diversity
studies to the present include the establishment
of the field of cross-cultural psychology in the
1970s, which made “culture” a relevant and
important concept in the discipline (Lott, 2009).
More importantly, the articulation of a social con-
structionist philosophy of science (Trickett et al.,
1994), with its focus on how the identities and
worldviews of scientists shape the knowledge
they generate, laid the grounds for critical
psychology’s evaluation of research on social
groups and intergroup relations. Informed by
the social constructionist perspective, critical
psychologists identified respect for human
diversity and diverse social identities as
a major value for the discipline of psychology
D 478
(Fox & Prilleltensky, 1997). In addition to appre-
ciation of diversity, critical psychology focused
explicitly on power and social justice and shifted
the theoretical lens from understanding the dis-
advantages of subordinate groups to examining
and raising awareness of the privileges accumu-
lated and enjoyed by members of the dominant
groups (Fine, 1997; see also a special issue of
the Journal of Social Issues on “systems of
privilege,” Case & Iuzzini, 2012).
Traditional Debates
A very rich body of empirical work within the
social cognition tradition documented the conse-
quences of social categorization in terms of
stereotyping, ingroup bias, and intergroup
conflict. The implication of this research has
been that categorization almost inevitably leads
to negative emotions and relations between
members of different social categories and that,
in order to improve intergroup relations, catego-
ries should be removed (Park & Judd, 2005).
Critical psychologists have questioned the valid-
ity of this claim and suggested instead that
stereotypes and meanings attributed to social cat-
egories are consequences, rather than causes, of
unequal social relations and hierarchies (e.g.,
Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997). These views are
shared by many psychologists using traditional
approaches to the study of intergroup relations as
well (e.g., Park & Judd, 2005).
Critical Debates
One point of debate among social scientists as
well as policy makers working on diversity is
cultural beliefs about what difference means and
how intergroup relations should be structured in
a society. Plaut (2010) reviewed evidence for
two models of diversity, individualism (or
colorblindness) and multiculturalism. Individual-
ism advocates equal treatment of all individuals
regardless of social category membership. While
it is seemingly an egalitarian model, empirical
Diversity
evidence showed that individualism perpetuates
existing intergroup inequalities and reinforces
ingroup bias among members of dominant
groups. Multiculturalism, that is, the model that
promotes the recognition and valuing of different
social identities, on the other hand, has been
found to be associated not only with increased
well-being of subordinate group members but
also with reduced ingroup bias among dominant
group members. Yet, multiculturalism may
have its own drawbacks. Depending on how mul-
ticultural policies are implemented, they may
lead to reifying stereotypes and boundaries
between groups and to resentment among domi-
nant group members. Interpreting difference and
constructing intergroup relations in ways that do
not gloss over structural inequalities but at the
same time do not reinforce divisive boundaries
remains a challenge for social scientists.
Another debate within critical psychology is
about the use of traditional paradigms to do crit-
ical work. Traditional psychology has been criti-
cized for its focus on the individual as the source
of suffering and for ignoring structural causes of
oppression. This criticism has now been broadly
adopted by psychologists, both mainstream and
critical. Many psychologists doing critical work
on inequality between groups do so within the
frames of traditional psychology, using
established scientific methods. In an early text,
Kitzinger (1997) pointed to the benefits and costs
of such an approach to critical research in gay and
lesbian psychology specifically. She argued that
while providing scientific evidence that serve the
affirmation of homosexuality benefited sexual
minorities in terms of increased civil rights, the
construction of “homophobia,” for example, as
individual pathology located the source of the
oppression experienced by sexual minorities in
a few deviant individuals, the homophobes. This
focus on the “prejudiced individual” rather than
oppressive systems and institutions that perpetu-
ate inequality has been criticized more broadly by
recent work in social psychology and is suggested
to contribute to the maintenance of existing hier-
archies (Plaut, 2010). Yet, while some psycholo-
gists with a critical approach find it necessary to
Diversity
use traditional empirical methods (e.g., experi-
mentation) (Lott, 2009), others like Kitzinger
believe that these methods are ultimately
grounded on an epistemology that perpetuates
existing social orders.
International Relevance
While most psychological research on diversity
has been conducted within North American and
Western European contexts, the concept of diver-
sity gained international relevance as psycholo-
gists have increasingly become involved in
examining consequences of globalization. With
the free flow of information, international migra-
tion, and the growth of multinational corpora-
tions, globalization brings people from different
parts of the world in close contact with each
other. On the one hand, such contact and aware-
ness of cultural differences have been theorized
to facilitate the development of a global identity,
that is, self-definitions as a citizen of the world, in
addition to local identities (e.g., national identity)
and openness to diverse values especially among
youth (Jensen & Arnett, 2012). On the other
hand, these interactions have also been suggested
to trigger perceptions of threat to one’s national
security or cultural identity that may lead to ter-
rorism (Moghaddam, 2009) and wars (Marsella,
2005). Thus, consequences of globalization (i.e.,
potential for inclusion and peace versus margin-
alization, terrorism, and war) seem to be
ultimately determined by how cultural differ-
ences are construed by individuals as well as
powerful actors and groups (Marsella, 2005).
Practice Relevance
The way cultural diversity is understood has
major implications for governments’ policies
and institutions like schools and workplaces.
Some countries like Canada and the Netherlands
adopt multiculturalism as an official state policy.
Others reinforce assimilation to varying degrees,
such as the United States where the dominant
479 D
metaphor of diversity is the melting pot. The
official stances about diversity shape immigra-
tion policies (e.g., who and how many can be
admitted to the country) and, consequently, affect
the lives of immigrants (Deaux, 2006).
In the United States, the policy of affirmative
action aims to increase representation of certain
historically disadvantaged groups, mainly
women and ethnic minority groups, in educa- D
tional and occupational settings. A number of
studies revealed the benefits of increased cultural
diversity such as cognitive complexity and
increased creativity in problem solving, not only
for those who benefit directly from affirmative
action policies but for all members of the organi-
zation (Crosby, Iyer, Clayton, & Downing, 2003;
Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002). In addi-
tion, many schools and workplaces implement
diversity training programs, that is, interventions
to reduce prejudice, stereotyping, and intergroup
conflict. Often, these programs are based on
increased intergroup contact and dialogue.
However, close scrutiny of these interventions
showed that typically they are not informed by
psychological theory and lack methodologically
sound evaluations of their effectiveness (Paluck
& Green, 2009).
Finally, multicultural competence as a clinical
skill has become important in mental health
practice. Clinicians and counselors are expected
to develop interpersonal skills that are sensitive
to the backgrounds and unique needs of their
patients of different ethnicities, gender, sexual
orientation, and other cultural groups
(Lott, 2009).
Future Directions
In most psychological research, social categories
have been investigated in isolation, that is, by
focusing on one category membership at a time,
such as only race or only gender. Yet, individuals
are simultaneously members of many different
categories, some of which afford privileges to
the individual, and others are associated with
disadvantages. In the last decade, research has
D 480
focused increasingly in identifying ways of
examining the intersections of social identities.
The concept of intersectionality has been devel-
oped in the late 1980s by feminist and critical
race theorists, but psychologists have been slow
in adopting it (see Cole, 2009; Greenwood, 2012
for reviews), one reason being the difficulty of
studying the qualitatively different experiences
that result from combinations of multiple social
categories using the factorial design of psychol-
ogy experiments. Research in this area developed
from the early “additive models” in which each
disadvantaged social identity (e.g., African
American + woman + poor) meant increased
marginalization to a more complex understand-
ing of the unique advantages and disadvantages
afforded by the intersections of social identities
in different contexts. An increasing number of
psychologists are committed to research that
takes into account individuals’ simultaneous
membership in multiple social categories using
both qualitative and quantitative methods. In line
with the major premises of critical psychology,
this research promises to provide a fuller under-
standing of how subordinate group members per-
ceive inequality, develop political consciousness,
and act collectively (Greenwood, 2012).
References
Blaine, B. E. (2007). Understanding the psychology of
diversity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Case, K., & Iuzzini. (2012). Systems of privilege: Inter-
sections, awareness, and applications. Journal of
Social Issues, 68, 1–10.
Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psy-
chology. American Psychologist, 64, 170–180.
Crosby, F. J., Iyer, A., Clayton, S., & Downing, R. (2003).
Affirmative action: Psychological data and the policy
debates. American Psychologist, 58, 93–115.
Deaux, K. (2006). To be an immigrant. New York: Russell
Sage.
Fine, M. (1997). Witnessing whiteness. In M. Fine,
L. Weis, L. C. Powell, & L. M. Wong (Eds.), Off
white: Readings on race, power, and society
(pp. 163–173). New York: Routledge.
Fine, M., Weis, L. C., & Powell, L. (1997). Communities
of difference: A critical look at desegregated spaces
created for and by youth. Harvard Educational
Review, 67, 247–284.
Diversity
Fox, D., & Prilleltensky, I. (1997). Critical psychology:
An introduction. London: Sage.
Greenwood, R. M. (2012). Standing at the crossroads
of identity: An intersectional approach to women’s
social identities and political consciousness. In
S. Wiley, G. Philogene, & T. A. Revenson (Eds.),
Social categories in everyday experience
(pp. 103–129). Washington, DC: American Psycho-
logical Association.
Gurin, P., Dey, E. L., Hurtado, S., & Gurin, G. (2002).
Diversity and higher education: Theory and impact on
educational outcomes. Harvard Educational Review,
72, 330–366.
Jensen, L. A., & Arnett, J. J. (2012). Going global: New
pathways for adolescents and emerging adults in
a changing world. Journal of Social Issues, 68,
478–492.
Kitzinger, C. (1997). Lesbian and gay psychology: A
critical analysis. In D. Fox, & I. Prilleltensky (Eds.),
Critical Psychology: An introduction (pp. 202–216).
London, UK: Sage.
Lott, B. (2009). Multiculturalism and diversity:
A social psychological perspective. Oxford, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Marsella, A. (2005). Culture and conflict: Understanding,
negotiating, and reconciling conflicting constructions
of reality. International Journal of Intercultural
Relations, 29, 651–673.
Moghaddam, F. M. (2009). The new global American
dilemma and terrorism. Political Psychology, 30,
373–380.
Paluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Prejudice reduction:
What works? A review and assessment of
research practice. Annual Review of Psychology, 60,
339–367.
Park, B., & Judd, C. M. (2005). Rethinking the link
between categorization and prejudice within the
social cognition perspective. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 9, 108–130.
Plaut, V. C. (2010). Diversity science: Why and how
difference makes a difference. Psychological Inquiry,
21, 77–99.
Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2005). Race as biology
is fiction, racism as a social problem is real:
Anthropological and historical perspectives on the
social construction of race. American Psychologist,
60, 16–26.
Trickett, E. J., Watts, R. J., & Birman, D. (1994). Human
diversity: Perspectives on people in context. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Online Resources
www.psysr.org
www.understandingprejudice.org
http://www.apa.org/about/division/div45.aspx
http://www.aacu.org/resources/diversity/index.cfm
http://www.multiculturalsummit.org/
Divorce, Overview
Divorce, Overview
Barri Leslie1 and Mandy Morgan2
1
Private Practice, Relationship Coach, Auckland,
New Zealand
2
School of Psychology, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Introduction
Marriage and divorce are readily recordable legal
events with most countries and the United
Nations Organization (UNO), posting divorce
statistics online. Consequently, marriage and
divorce are the most quoted indicators of
changing patterns in relationships. Graphs for
Eurocentric countries typically show a gradual
rise in divorce rates from the mid-1800s, then
a steep rise from the 1960s, and followed by
a leveling trend in recent years, with spikes
occurring during economic downturns. Low
socioeconomic status and second and third
marriages are high risk factors for divorce,
while educated couples are the most resilient.
The contemporary relationship field is
complex as increasing diversity in heterosexual
partnerships is recognized globally, and the
possibility and reality of legal marriage for
homosexual couples gain political momentum in
the West. Therefore, marriage and divorce need
to be considered in conjunction with statistics
showing increases in cohabiting and un-partnered
lifestyles (Coontz, 2005).
Definition
Divorce is the legal dissolution of a marriage.
Keywords
Divorce; marriage; de facto; cohabiting;
security; romantic love; intimacy; compatibility;
soulmates; individualism; capitalism; feminism;
environmentalism
481 D
Traditional Debates
Legal, religious, and social prohibitions against
divorce characterize precapitalist societies.
Whenever the kinship group is the primary prop-
erty-owning institution, the group’s collective
resources provide a form of insurance for all the
members. Therefore the privilege of membership
is closely monitored. As points of entry for new D
members, marriages are likely to be arranged or
need the approval of parents or other elders.
In return for access to the kin group’s protection
and support, obligations of duty to family take
precedence over individual rights and desires. As
divorce confuses lineage, strong prohibitions
apply. However, infertility, infidelity, or failure
to consummate also threaten lineage; therefore,
they constitute justifications for occasional
annulments (Maley, 2003; Shumway, 2003).
The increase in permissive attitudes to divorce
and the rise in divorce rates in Eurocentric
countries reflect centuries of striving for greater
personal agency. Vigorous debate in capitalist
societies has privileged individualistic values,
human rights, and women’s rights to property
ownership and financial independence; education
and careers; happiness and freedom from
domination; and abuse in marriage (Maley,
2003; Shumway, 2003).
However, as divorce rates increased, extensive
research revealed high personal and social costs
for men, women, and children, while significant
benefits in health and wealth accrue in mutually
satisfying, non-abusive, long-term marriages.
Extensive research continues in the hope
of enabling more stable and fulfilling relation-
ships while also maintaining individual rights
and gendered equality (Wallerstein, Lewis, &
Blakeslee, 2000).
Critical Debates
Critical analysis offers the power to explicate the
struggles of persons as they strive for satisfaction
within the relational structure of marriage. Dis-
courses of love and marriage establish the rules,
D 482
rights, and obligations for the essential functions
of relationships: partner selection, the provision
of income and nurturance for the next generation,
the value and positions of gendered persons,
sexual practices, and divorce. The extent to
which the premises of a particular discourse are
accepted or marginalized varies according
to its function within the dominant politico-
socioeconomic discoursing in different historical
times and places (Leslie & Morgan, 2011).
The Discourse of Security is the oldest and
most ubiquitous relationship discourse because
of its functions in precapitalist societies to stabi-
lize marriage, protect lineage, and limit access to
kin-group resources. The positions available to
women are restricted. As bearers of the next
generation, their freedom to adulterate lines of
inheritance is subjected to rigid patriarchal con-
trols, ensuring “women’s place is in the home,”
and their access to public power resources of
education, employment, and property ownership
is constrained. As personal attraction has the
potential to undermine arranged marriage, love
without kin approval is marginalized with stories,
such as Romeo and Juliet, ending tragically
(Maley, 2003; Shumway, 2003).
In the Discourse of Romantic Love, the rights
of romantic lovers are enabled by the concomi-
tant emergence of individualistic capitalism.
Complementary politico-socioeconomic dis-
coursing constructs a bounded, competitive,
mobile individual. By endorsing rights to per-
sonal happiness over kinship obligations, roman-
tic love undermines kin-group rights. Romantic
lovers are obligated to “be true to love” and reject
marriage for security. Rights and responsibilities
for partner selection shift from parents to
lovers who are enabled to marry across social
barriers with the promise of happiness-ever-
after (Coontz, 2005, Maley, 2003; Shumway,
2003).
In romantic discourse, gains in status through
marriage are reconstructed as rewards for
personal qualities. Beautiful, loving women,
like Cinderella and Beauty, may attract princes
with castles, while “gold-digging” Ugly Sisters
may not. Similarly “seventh sons” may win prin-
cesses through courage and enterprise.
Divorce, Overview
Contemporary empirical evidence that well-
resourced men are more likely to marry or re-
partner, plus discursive evidence that women
view their young-family years as problematic
without a financially supportive partner, suggests
the continuing presence of a layer of security
discoursing (Leslie & Morgan, 2011).
Similarly power and agency are multilayered:
while empowered to select partners without
parental approval, lovers helplessly “fall in
love.” If “Cupid’s arrow” strikes, lovers are obli-
gated to “follow their hearts” even when that
requires divorcing the [first] “true love” and mov-
ing on to the next. Such romantic love assump-
tions are critiqued as contributors to the increase
in divorce (Coontz, 2005).
The romantic love positions offered to
women contrast strongly with security positions.
The rationale of marriage for happiness, plus
gains in education, financial independence, and
fertility control, enabled women to select their
partners, reject abuse, and construct marriage
and divorce as choices (Coontz, 2005; Maley,
2003; Shumway, 2003).
Divorce rates increased exponentially up to
WWII, then declined during the 1950s postwar
quest for stability, sanctioned by “Hollywood”
narratives implying romantic love would lead
to both security in marriage and happiness-ever-
after. By the 1960s, these assumptions were
attracting vigorous feminist critique. Comple-
mentary individualistic assumptions in capital-
ism, feminism, and post-pill permissiveness
conflicted with security assumptions about
“women’s place.” In addition, the ubiquity of
romantic fiction had raised women’s expectations
for equality and fulfillment within marriage,
and in the discursive turbulence of the 1960s,
divorce rates increased dramatically. As no
available discourse supported mutually satisfying
relationships, new discursive resources were
required (Coontz, 2005; Shumway, 2003).
Through subsequent decades three new
discourses of Intimacy, Compatibility, and
Soulmates were constructed. These discourses
privilege skillful communication for “working
through” difficulties. It is theorized that these
communicative discourses are embedded in and
Divorce, Overview
enabled by the emerging politico-socioeconomic
discourse of environmentalism. Environmental
or regulated capitalism incorporates holistic
assumptions that individual rights are valued yet
constrained by obligations to be negotiable in
consideration of the rights and well-being of
others (Leslie & Morgan, 2011).
The Discourse of Intimacy drew resources
from two areas of women’s experience with
talk: mutual support in friendship networks
and participation in the “talking therapies”
(Shumway, 2003). An assumption of intimacy is
that reciprocal disclosure of thoughts and feelings
will generate mutual understanding and close-
ness. Another assumption of intimacy is commit-
ment. While romantic love constructs passion as
the sign of “true love” and loss of passion as
justification for divorce, intimacy assumes
passion will fade and offers constructions of
long-lasting “companionate” or “consummate”
love, which can be achieved through commit-
ment, communication, and “emotional work”
(Sternberg, 1988).
Early proponents of intimacy advocated
a discursive alliance, with romantic love
performing mate selection and intimacy ensuring
relationship maintenance. Problematically, this
alliance may increase the risk of divorce as inti-
macy requires commitment, communication, and
equality, whereas romantic attraction frequently
occurs for persons who resist those practices
(Leslie & Morgan, 2011).
A Discourse of Compatibility is being
constructed to reduce the risk of divorce from
“falling for” lovers who resist commitment and
mutuality. It is assumed that satisfaction is more
likely when psychological knowledge about mate
selection and marriage resilience is incorporated.
Compatibility seekers still expect passionate
attraction but construct it as “chemistry”: just
one of numerous selection factors (Leslie &
Morgan, 2011). Increasingly compatibility
seekers are sharing their sole rights for
partner selection with dating websites that offer
computer matching for compatibility. The contri-
bution of psychologists to such websites has been
rigorously critiqued, as knowledge is still
inconsistent in the main areas of
483 D
conceptualization: similarity, difference, or
admired partner characteristics whether similar
or different (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, &
Sprecher, 2012).
The emerging Discourse of Soulmates ini-
tially drew resources from New Age spirituality
and Quantum Physics, which have introduced
conceptualizations such as karma, meditation,
and connectedness into Eurocentric cultures. D
Soulmates construct a deep mystical connection
that obligates soul partners to commit to working
through life’s challenges in order to learn to
love profoundly. Those with idealized conceptu-
alizations of their partners as soulmates are likely
to resist divorce and strive to overcome difficul-
ties, whereas subscribers to soulmate assump-
tions who do not consider their partner meets
that ideal are less likely to persist (Franiuk,
Pomerantz, & Cohen, 2004). In post-2000 con-
structions, soulmates are assumed to have
a significant compatibility score, intimacy’s com-
mitment to “work it out,” plus “chemistry”
(Finkel et al., 2012).
In these constructions, the resources of inti-
macy, compatibility, and soulmates are comple-
mentary in privileging multidimensional mate
selection over the one-dimensional sexual
passion offered by romantic love. The three
discourses also privilege gender equality,
communication, mutual support, and learning,
in order to achieve valued life tasks. For
soulmates the most significant shared task might
be raising their children in nurturing, stable fam-
ilies, with carefully chosen compatible partners,
where divorce is a legitimate but least preferred
choice, which may be skillfully resisted through
“work-it-out” practices of intimacy (Leslie &
Morgan, 2011).
References
Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to
intimacy or how love conquered marriage. New York,
NY: Viking.
Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., &
Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis
from the perspective of psychological science.
Association for Psychological Science in the Public
D 484
Interest, 13, 3–66. Retrieved from http://pspi.sagepub.
com
Franiuk, R., Pomerantz, E. M., & Cohen, D. (2004).
The causal role of theories of relationships:
Consequences for satisfaction and cognitive strategies.
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(11),
1494–1507.
Leslie, B., & Morgan, M. (2011). Soulmates, compatibil-
ity and intimacy: Allied discursive resources in the
struggle for relationship satisfaction in the new
millennium. New Ideas in Psychology, 29(1), 10–23.
Maley, B. (2003). Divorce law and the future of marriage.
St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Centre for Independent
Studies.
Shumway, D. R. (2003). Modern love: Romance, intimacy
and the marriage crisis. New York University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The triangle of love: Intimacy,
passion, commitment. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Wallerstein, J. S., Lewis, J. M., & Blakeslee, S. (2000).
The unexpected legacy of divorce: A twenty-five year
landmark study. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Online Resources
The Guardian datablog: Interactive graph of divorce
rates 1930 to 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/
datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons
The National Marriage Project, University of Virginia.
http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/
United Nations, Department of Economic & Social
Affairs, Population Division. (2009). World
Marriage Data 2008 (POP/DB/Marr/Rev2008). http://
www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WMD2008/
WP_WMD_2008/Data.html
Domestic Violence, Overview
Jamie Franco-Zamudio, Aislinn Shevlin, Nathan
Tenhundfeld and Victoria Gonzalez
Social Science, Department of Psychology,
Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL, USA
Introduction
Domestic violence is an issue that affects men,
women, and children from all backgrounds, with
over one million reported cases each year in the
United States alone (National Center for Injury
Prevention and Control, 2003). While a majority
of victims continue to primarily be heterosexual
females, no person is immune to domestic vio-
lence. The prevailing cultural notion that
Domestic Violence, Overview
domestic violence is a private or personal family
matter rather than a justice issue, along with
shame and fear often cited by victims, prevents
many from coming forward to report these
crimes. The lack of accurate statistics and the
lack of awareness regarding the complexities sur-
rounding domestic violence (in particular, the
effects of the batterer’s attempts to exert power
and control over their partners) have led to mis-
conceptions about domestic violence. This can be
detrimental, because societal perceptions of
domestic violence can have an effect on the sup-
port for social policy and services provided to
survivors of what is often termed intimate partner
violence.
Definition
The term battering has been coined by the battered
women’s movement to describe the pattern of
abuse committed against one’s partner in an
attempt to control, coerce, and intimidate (Praxis
International, 2003). Intimate partner violence can
take the form of emotional or physical abuse and
can result in psychological trauma, physical
injury, and even death (Domestic Abuse Interven-
tion Programs, n.d.). Often periods of violence are
followed by periods of calm and resolution lasting
upwards of 1 year (Walker, 1979).
There is not one agreed-upon theory
explaining the causes of domestic violence
(Hanna, 2002). One theory stems from the idea
that the act is one of displaced aggression, i.e.,
when men lack power in other areas of their lives,
they become frustrated and sometimes take it out
those that they can control (Haaken, 2010). With
this in mind, it is not surprising that we most often
hear of men from marginalized social groups,
who lack power in society, being arrested for
domestic violence. However, the higher propor-
tion of arrests made to men from marginalized
groups might be attributed to the fact that they are
already targets of police scrutiny or the fact that
the stereotypes of their social group include the
notion that they are violent men (Oliver, 2003).
Other theories blame patriarchal society and
traditional gender-role ideology for the acts of
Domestic Violence, Overview
dominance (Brownridge, 2002). For example,
traditional male gender roles are associated with
dominance, often leading both men and women
to minimize or deny the violent acts and instead
see them as normative (Fine & Weiss, 1998).
Keywords
Physical abuse; emotional abuse; battering; inti-
mate partner violence
Traditional Debates
In the past, domestic violence was only associ-
ated with physical battering. If battered persons
did not have outward physical evidence of
domestic violence (e.g., a broken arm, a black
eye), laws did not protect them. This belief car-
ried over the general public. What most failed to
realize is that emotional abuse or the threat of
physical violence in intimate relationships can
actually be more detrimental than physical vio-
lence (Domestic Violence Abuse Intervention
Project, n.d.). The World Health Organization
provides accounts of women who claim that
they can heal from a physical wound, but contin-
ued psychological abuse and subsequent internal-
ization and self-blame had more damaging and
long-lasting effects. To illustrate the typical pat-
tern of psychological and physical abuse, Lenore
Walker (1979) developed a theory of the cycle of
violence. The cycles manifest in tension building,
abusive incident, and finally a honeymoon period
in which attempts at reconciliation occur. It is
during this time that many victims question
their own role in the violence (Domestic Abuse
Intervention Programs, n.d.). Upon hearing of
battered women’s accounts of self-blame, the
Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DIAP)
developed the Duluth Model. The Duluth Model
takes the accountability off the victims and places
the blame on the perpetrator. The research and
community work of DIAP, which includes Power
and Control Wheel, has already changed the
views of domestic violence in the legal system
and among social workers. As a result, less of an
485 D
emphasis has been placed on interventions that
empower victims of abuse, with more of an
emphasis placed on changing the behaviors of
the perpetrators.
There are many different models and theories
to mediate domestic violence. Some focus on the
victim (e.g., social support theory, empowerment
theory), while other mediation focuses on the
batterer. While batterer’s intervention programs D
do exist, there is inconclusive evidence regarding
whether they are effective or not (Healy, Smith, &
O’Sullivan, 1998). These varying models, while
situationally effective, do not address the more
pertinent issues involving societal perceptions of
victims and how we can help. By confronting
societal stigmas, we can better legislate and
support abuse victims and their families.
Critical Debates
In recent years, psychologists and health officials
have called on public officials to make domestic
violence a top priority on the public health
agenda. Injecting domestic violence in the
agenda to increase awareness will inform the
public of the consequences of domestic violence
as well as the prevalence (Vine, Elliot, & Keller-
Olaman, 2010). It will also encourage the imple-
mentation of preventative programs, education
on the issue, and better resources for victims of
battering. More than one million incidents of
domestic violence are reported each year, and
surveys have suggested that between 20 % and
25 % of women are victims of physical abuse by
their partners; therefore, domestic violence can
no longer be viewed as a personal problem
(Bornstein, 2006). Domestic violence has social
and economic consequences as well. Cost esti-
mates range from two to ten billion dollars annu-
ally, but many researchers think these results
underestimate the true cost of domestic violence
(National Center for Injury Prevention and
Control, 2003). Because these reports rely on
victims coming forward, it is difficult to tell
how many cases go unnoticed. Since advocates
of domestic violence victims are often from
feminist or women’s organizations, the data
D 486
collected is often focused on female victims and
male perpetrators. WomensLaw.org states that
95 % of victims of domestic violence are
women; however, many psychologists suggest
that the disparity between the genders of victims
is much less apparent (Dutton, 2007). Some psy-
chologists are proponents of utilizing social net-
working as a resource for victims of battering as a
way to provide them with social support and
encouragement to come forward without concern
for the stigma or fear of their abuser (Goodman &
Smyth, 2011).
The World Health Organization (WHO)
reminds us that domestic violence is a global
problem. The overarching cultural values, legal
system, and interpersonal norms of each nation
effect the framing of the issue. The varying
expectations for the role of women in the family
might have an effect on whether or not women
report intimate partner violence. The WHO
reported that Latina women often work to main-
tain the family unit for what they felt was the
betterment of their children, which lends itself
to underreporting. Additionally, women might
fear that disclosing abuse will bring shame upon
their family – a particular fear in many collectiv-
ist countries. Despite the fervor with which many
nations prosecute perpetrators of domestic vio-
lence, several nations have what appears to be a
culture of tolerance. Illustration of these cultural
values is highlighted by a survey of Nicaraguan
women which suggests that nearly a third believe
it is appropriate for a husband to beat his wife if
he even suspects she is cheating on him. A com-
bination of providing resources to empower vic-
tims, intervention programs for abusers, and
education about the consequences of domestic
violence will likely be the most effective in elim-
inating the problem as a global health issue.
References
Bornstein, R. F. (2006). The complex relationship
between dependency and domestic violence: Converg-
ing psychological factors and social forces. American
Psychologist, 61(6), 595–606.
Brownridge, D. A. (2002). Cultural variation in male
partner violence against women: A comparison of
Domestic Violence, Overview
Québec with the rest of Canada. Violence Against
Women, 8(1), 87–115.
Domestic Abuse Interventions Programs. (n.d.). Stop vio-
lence in your community. Retrieved from http://www.
theduluthmodel.org/stop-violence/index.html
Dutton, D. G. (2007). The complexities of domestic vio-
lence. American Psychologist, 62(7), 708–709.
Fine, M., & Weis, L. (1998). The unknown city: The
lives of poor and working-class young adults. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Goodman, L. A., & Smyth, K. F. (2011). A call for a social
network-oriented approach to services for survivors of
intimate partner violence. Psychology of Violence,
1(2), 79–92.
Grych, J. H., & Swan, S. C. (2012). Toward a more
comprehensive understanding of interpersonal vio-
lence: Introduction to the special issue on interconnec-
tions among different types of violence. Psychology of
Violence, 2, 105–110.
Haaken, J. (2010). Hard knocks: Domestic violence and
the psychology of storytelling. London: Routledge
Hanna, C. (2002). Domestic violence. Encyclopedia of
Crime and Justice. Retrieved from http://www.ency-
clopedia.com/topic/Domestic_violence.aspx
Levendosky, A. A., Bogat, G., & Huth-Bocks, A. C.
(2011). The influence of domestic violence on the
development of the attachment relationship between
mother and young child. Psychoanalytic Psychology,
28(4), 512–527.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (2003).
Costs of intimate partner violence against women
in the United States. Atlanta, GA: Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. Available
from: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pubres/ipv_cost/
IPVBook-Final-Feb18.pdf.
Oliver, W. (2003). The structural cultural perspective: A
theory of Black male violence. In D. F. Hawkins (Ed.),
Violent crime: Assessing race & ethnic differences
(pp. 280–302). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Praxis International. (2003). Safe havens: Supervised vis-
itation and safe exchange grant program California
site program manual. Property of the author. Report
may be retrieved from http://praxisinternational.org/
praxis_publications.aspx
U.S. Department of Justice. (2011, May). Domestic vio-
lence. Retrieved from http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/
domviolence.htm
Vine, M. M., Elliot, S. J., & Keller-Olaman, S. (2010). To
disrupt and displace: Placing domestic violence on the
public health agenda. Critical Public Health, 20(3),
339–355.
Walker, L. E. (1979). The battered woman. New York:
Harper & Row.
Online Resources
Cycle of violence: http://www.hruth.org/files/library/
CycleofViolence.pdf
Drive, Overview
Domestic violence around the world: http://www.
someplacesafe.org/DV01.htm
Domestic violence resource center: http://www.dvrc-or.
org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/
The Duluth model: http://www.theduluthmodel.org/about/
index.html
National online resource center on violence against
women: http://www.vawnet.org/research/
Healy, K., Smith, C., & O’Sullivan, C. (1998). Batterer
intervention: Program approaches and criminal justice
strategies. National Institute of Justice. Retrieved Feb-
ruary 20, 2013, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/
168638.pdf
Klein, A. R. (2009). Practical implications of current
domestic violence research: For law enforcement,
prosecutors and judges. National Institute of Justice.
Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://www.nij.
gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/practical-
implications-research/welcome.htm
Drive, Overview
Markus Brunner1 and Julia K€onig2
1
Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria
2
Department of Education, Goethe University,
Frankfurt a.M., Germany
Introduction
The notion of the drive has a long history, even
though it is nowadays mostly identified as
a psychoanalytic concept. In politika Aristotle
speaks of two basic drives – one for procreation
and another aiming for self-preservation (ca. 335
BC, I 2, 1252a27–30) – to explain the order and
development of human social groups in relation
to the family/household (oikos) and to slavery.
This figure is picked up by medieval clerics in the
discussion of sexual practice and the meaning of
marriage. While sexual lust as an end in itself
would clearly lead into peril, as Thomas Aquinas
argues in Summa Theologiae, the longing for
begetting children is enrooted within a natural
human drive and therefore to be endorsed
(written 1265–1274, II-I, q. 94, a. 2). In German
Idealism the notion of the drive becomes
a contested concept: While Kant discusses deter-
minants and motives of human agency as drives
487 D
in the way of a purely natural aptitude, Hegel
reformulates the drive as “quest for reason”;
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche then again interpret
the drive towards the end of the nineteenth
century as the “dark side of human nature.”
The concept is introduced into medical discourse
by leading sexologists, whereas the conceptuali-
zation of a “sex drive” goes back to Albert Moll
(1897). D
Definition
The drive is one of the central concepts of Freud-
ian psychoanalysis. It is often – and not least
because of the false translation in the first stan-
dard edition by Strachey – mistaken for instinct.
However, the reference of the drive to the biolog-
ical is rather unclear. The drive seems to be more
of a heuristic device that accounts for both the
corporeality of human experiences and impulses
and, when focusing specific “drive fates,” their
biographical emergence. In the interweaving of
nature and life history in the drive concept, psy-
choanalytically oriented critical (social) psychol-
ogists saw the opportunity to engage with the
concrete mediation of nature and society in the
(bourgeois) subject.
Keywords
Psychoanalysis; metapsychology; Freud; sexuality
Traditional Debates
In Freud’s work the drive concept first appears in
the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(1905). In his seduction theory, developed in
Studies on Hysteria (Freud/Breuer, 1895), Freud
traced the symptoms of his patients to memories
of early childhood sexual abuse that were aroused
in puberty and, in the light of blossoming sexual-
ity, were then reinterpreted and thereby taking
up a horrifying meaning, subsequently leading
to illness. In 1897 he retracted this model of
trauma theory, not only since he doubted the
D 488
prevalence of sexual violations of children, but
moreover because he realized that in the uncon-
scious “one cannot distinguish between truth and
fiction that has been cathected with affect”
(Freud, 1985, p. 264). Thus, he developed the
conception of unconscious fantasies and wishes
(see esp. Freud, 1900), which from 1905 on he
placed in the context of his new theory of infan-
tile sexuality, inextricably linked with drive the-
ory. From then on, Freud focused on the conflicts
of drives, which arose in individual psychosexual
development and were seen as a causal force of
symptoms.
Predecessors of the drive concept are, on the
one hand, “inner stimulations” that the “psycho-
logical apparatus” has to manage or “bind” (see
Freud 1895) and, on the other hand, the
concept of unconscious wishes emphasized in
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), which func-
tion as the distinguishing “[driving] force[s] of the
dream” (p. 561). The drive is not simply a somatic
force. Rather, Freud periodically reconceptualizes
the relationship between somatic and psychic
moments of the drive: at times it is imputed to
biology and merely represented in the psychic
(1915a, p. 109); at times it is itself the psychic
representative of a somatic source of stimulus
(1905, p. 167); and ultimately it is articulated as
“a concept on the frontier between the mental and
the somatic” (1915b, 121f).
In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915b),
Freud differentiates between the drive’s source,
pressure, aim, and object. The source is
a bodily situation of tension that imposes
a “demand for work” (p. 122) on the mind,
whereby a quantitative, economic moment – or
rather a pressure – is introduced. As opposed to
the notion of instinct, for which an aim and object
are pregiven, Freud shows how variably and arbi-
trarily the choice of object proceeds. Accord-
ingly, the aim, which is sometimes articulated
statically as “the removal [or rather: sublation]
of this organic stimulus” (1905, p. 167), can
always change along with the chosen object and
the relation towards it. Thus, in his case analyses
and considerations on the emergence of symp-
toms, character structures, or slips, Freud does
not deal with the “drive” as such but rather with
Drive, Overview
the specific “drive fates” – that is, the object
relations developed during the course of life as
well as the fantasies, wishes, and fears captured
and efficacious within.
Freud’s drive theory can be divided into three
phases, each of which centers on a dualism of the
drive. At the beginning, the ego- or self-
preservation drive embodied by the reality prin-
ciple is opposed to the sexual drive. The latter is
described as “polymorphously perverse” (1905,
p. 191) – that is, it strives at unlimited forms of
pleasure – and its energy is called “libido.”
With the introduction of narcissism (1914), inex-
tricably linked to the idea of the ego-drive arising
via a libidinous “cathexis” (libidinal investment)
of the ego, the former antipode dissolves. Drive
theory in this phase tends towards monism, as the
new dualism between narcissistic and object
libido is false insofar as the two poles can
morph into one another. Ultimately, Freud estab-
lishes a new polarity between the life-drive or
Eros that strives for bonding and the death-drive
or Thanatos aiming at the destruction of bonds
(see 1920). In fact the latter turns against the ego
itself, yet it can also be led outwards and express
itself as “destructive drive.”
Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) point out that
some contradictions in the drive concept can be
resolved through the basic distinction between
the dynamics of the bodily needs Freud termed
“self-preservation drive” and the “actual” drive,
“sexual” in the broad Freudian sense, operating in
the mode of pleasure and unpleasure. The former
has a clear goal and rather corresponds to an
instinct, whereas the latter arises, according to
Freud, from “anaclisis” (attachment) on the
relief of bodily urges – so to speak, as their
“by-product” (1905, p. 233) – and is tremen-
dously variable with respect to goal and object.
All his life Freud came back to the question of
the drive’s somatic foundation, hereby often refer-
ring to physiological and biological discourses, as
the attempt to biologically root the new dualism of
drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
shows. But then, Freud himself stressed the spec-
ulative moment and depicted the theory of drives
self-critically as “our mythology”: Drives “are
mythical entities, magnificent in their
Drive, Overview
indefiniteness” (Freud, 1933, p. 94). This again
justifies a reading of the Freudian drive as
a heuristic instrument to explore the secrets of
the soul.
The development of Freudian theory and
especially the narcissism concept cannot be con-
ceived without the great conflicts with his
followers and colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl
Gustav Jung that led to factions and the founding
of new schools. While the rivals inspired Freud’s
thinking with their criticism, his new concepts
were concurrently directed decisively against
“abbreviations” and “adulteration” of Freudian
knowledge. Adler criticized Freud’s concentra-
tion on the sexual and his theory of the
unconscious. According to Adler’s ego psychol-
ogy, the sexual is a secondary phenomenon:
pivotal instead is an innate physical inferiority
of the human being that is compensated by
a drive for power, which takes the sexual into its
service. Jung goes another way. He adheres to
the concept of libido, which he extends and
desexualizes at the same time: for him, the libido
is “the psychic energy” in general and encom-
passes everything that grows out of biological
needs. As opposed to Freud’s extension of the
concept of sexuality to a general principle of
lust, Jung limits the sexual to the moment of
procreation. He rejects the idea of an infantile
sexuality, which he understands as a retrojection
of adult sexuality onto a presexual phase. This
extended libido is supported by a whole range of
“natural needs” that are ultimately founded in an
esoteric idea of the unconscious embedded in
what he called “ethnic souls” [“V€olkerseelen”]
and archetypes as part of human nature.
Critical Debates
Since Freud’s establishment of the drive concept
in psychoanalytic theory and the first schisms
following the contentions with Adler and Jung,
this pivotal concept has been criticized from sev-
eral theoretical as well as political perspectives.
In the early feminist critique of the patriarchal
bias in Freud’s concept of the bourgeois family as
in Leftist critiques of Freud’s tendency to
489 D
individualize and theoretically subjectivize social
conflicts, it is strikingly often Freud’s sophisti-
cated definition of the drive – as concept on the
frontier between the mental and the somatic – that
is dropped in favor of a simplistic endogenic or,
more often, an entirely exogenic approach to
(sexual) socialization.
One of these attacks questions Freud’s dis-
avowal of the early seduction theory that had D
exclusively built upon the assumption of early
experiences of sexual abuse and had later been
revised, as Freud was more interested in
the transformative power of infantile and adult
fantasies. In the 1920s Sandor Ferenczi deci-
sively returned to the idea of neurotic symptoms
being the outcomes of early experiences of abuse
(see esp. 1932) and implicitly accused Freud of
having underestimated these due to his focus on
drive dynamics. The consequent conflict between
Freud and Ferenczi was rediscovered half
a century later by Jeffrey Masson (1984), Alice
Miller (1981) and others, who then pled to dis-
card the theory of infantile sexuality in favor of
a pure trauma theory. Against their polemic –
Freud would have denied and thereby concealed
the reality of sexual abuse by reframing the
existing sexual violence as mere phantasy – can
be emphasized that, firstly, Freud never denied
the influence of traumatic events but rather saw
these as one moment in a complementary series
that led to symptoms. Secondly, Ferenczi saw his
own analyses as a supplement to the Freudian
knowledge of infantile fantasy activity and
certainly not as a replacement.
Another critique, brought on by the protago-
nists of Freudo-Marxism, was directed against
naturalizing and ontologizing tendencies in
Freudian theory, which, they held, should be his-
toricized. Otto Gross traced the gender-specific
inner-psychological conflicts back to repressive
bourgeois sexual morality and patriarchal family
structures. In the context of a Marxist class
analysis, Wilhelm Reich also located the nuclear
family and the individual socialized within as the
historical product of bourgeois-capitalist society.
Both proclaimed that the various forms of per-
verse, chaotic, and threatening sexual drives dis-
covered by Freud were the effects of a repressive
D 490
society, covering primordial “drives of self-devel-
opment.” Yet, via this conception of a conflict-
free, fundamentally “good” human nature, these
proponents ensnared themselves in even stronger
ontologies or biologism than Freud himself.
A development into this direction can be found
in Erich Fromm’s work, too. While he captured
the authority-bound personality structures as spe-
cific “drive fates” brought forth by authoritarian
family structure in his early work, he later turned
from drive theory and replaced it with the concep-
tion of general human needs to which a society
should adjust itself. It is this abandonment of drive
theory by Fromm and other so-called Neo-
Freudians such as Karen Horney or Harry Stack
Sullivan that led to the so-called culturism debate
between them and the representatives of critical
theory, first and foremost Theodor W. Adorno and
Herbert Marcuse.
From a feminist perspective, Horney
especially criticizes the privileging of the male
sexual development in Freudian theory and
develops a concept of an innate femininity
instead. With this she is paying a high price, as
she drops back behind Freud’s insight into human
bisexuality with its arbitrariness concerning the
sex drive’s aim and object. Nevertheless she is
shedding light upon the implicit phallocentrism
inherent on the psychoanalytic theory of feminin-
ity. Similar to tendencies observed in Freudo-
Marxist arguments, the debate around the ques-
tion: “Is woman born or made?” (Ernest Jones)
eventually slid at this early stage into biologism
by stressing innate (gender) dispositions, as Juliet
Mitchell (1974) points out. The question is later
famously addressed by Simone de Beauvoir in
The Second Sex (1949), though she gets to a most
different conclusion than the enquirer.
In the following phase of discussion on drive
theory, its biologist tendencies are
problematized. The two most prominent critics
in this regard are J€urgen Habermas and Jacques
Lacan. While the former interprets psychoanaly-
sis as reflexive methodology, thereby emptying
psychoanalytic theory of its content matter –
while still adhering to an impulsive basis on
human nature – the latter maintains the centrality
Drive, Overview
of the Freudian concept of the drive in his
Kojève-inspired Hegelian reformulation of drive
theory. Lacan philosophically reconfigures the
drive as a both cultural and symbolic construct.
In this concept the drive does not aim at its object,
which can never be reached anyway, because
it is always constituted in the mode of
“afterwardness.” Instead the desired object is end-
lessly encircled. Among the feminist philosophers
and psychoanalysts who followed Lacan in his
Hegelian reformulation of drive theory, Luce
Irigaray extrapolated the problem of Lacan still
ontologizing sex differences with special verve.
One of the most recent debates on the subject
was instigated by Axel Honneth’s effort to revive
the relation between psychoanalysis and the
Frankfurt School, which Habermas had
dismissed. But then, Honneth’s revision of psy-
choanalysis included to – again – discard drive
theory altogether by proposing a “primary inter-
subjectivity” instead of the Freudian “primary
narcissism” and by arguing that object relations
theory would be intermediated best with his
Hegelian approach of a theory of recognition.
This intersubjective turn was criticized sharply
by Joel Whitebook (2001), who insisted on the
antagonistic relation of (first) nature and social
forms of interaction.
All in all it can be observed that similar figures
have reappeared in the debates on the psychoan-
alytic concept of the drive during the last century.
Recurring arguments have been revised,
processed, and refined, while the question still
circles around the problem of how to understand
the relationship between the mental and the
somatic in Freudian drive concept. While the
first critiques of Jung and Adler took two funda-
mentally different directions (folksy esotericism
of the ontologized archetypes on the one side and
on the other an ego psychology stressing the
conscious abilities and as consequential effects
an extended social agency of the ego at cost of
the recognition of unconscious dynamics), the
following criticism is staged between the poles
of biologizing and sociologizing arguments.
Representatives of Critical Theory have instead
stressed the dialectics of nature and society,
Drive, Overview
which Adorno, Marcuse up to Whitebook see
represented within the constitutional maladjust-
ment of the human subject. As natural human
potentials never fully merge within the social
order – especially in the given one – Adorno
(1952, 1955) criticized Neo-Freudian thinkers
as Fromm, Horney, and Sullivan for taking
the critical sting from psychoanalysis by
excommunicating the drive from their neo-
conventional sociologized psychoanalysis.
At last we would like to point out two
reformulations of drive theory that seem to
address its core in a promising way for further
research: we hereby refer to the work of Alfred
Lorenzer and Jean Laplanche.
Lorenzer fully recognizes the potential of
Freud’s concept of the drive on the frontier
between the mental and the somatic and strives
to critically acknowledge the Freudian biologism
instead of leaving it aside. To decipher the con-
stitution of the drive as both social and natural, he
delineates a historic-materialist theory of social-
ization (see esp. Lorenzer, 1972, 1981) by
retracing how the experience of the infant consti-
tutes itself in a bodily mediated process of inter-
action, starting as an intrauterine interplay of two
organisms. These concrete, individual but also
culturally mediated interactions leave “memory
traces” (Freud), which Lorenzer theoretically
reformulates as “interactionforms.” They ini-
tially manifest themselves pre-symbolically,
namely, “sensual-organismically,” as body, but
also function as “concepts of life” and are even-
tually complemented by “sensual-symbolic” and
“symbolic linguistic” interactionforms, whereas
the former represent pre-linguistically symboli-
zations (e.g., the Freudian cotton reel) and the
latter signify language.
Thus, in Lorenzers theory the drive is
deciphered as structure of interactionforms,
more specifically, as “matrix” of sensual practice
always encompassing the “already realized inner
nature” of the subject, which then belongs no
more to an “historical beyond” of an archaic
nature anymore (see Lorenzer 1980, p. 332 f.).
Laplanche (1999, 2007) takes up a radical
decentering of the concept of drive in his
491 D
“General Theory of Seduction,” which is based
on the following idea: in the interaction with an
infant the adult care takers also address it with
unconscious fantasies. Thereby, they implant
“enigmatic messages” into the child, which pro-
voke a “translation,” a psychic bond, that can
only ever partially succeed, because of the infants
inadequate translation codes but also because the
messages (as compromise structures of conscious D
and unconscious wishes) are themselves contra-
dictory. The parts of the message that remain
untranslated constitute the unconscious still
aiming for further translations. New translations
continually arise in the course of psychic devel-
opment – with the aid of new translation codes.
In Laplanche’s theory the “demand for work”
on the psychical no longer comes from somatic
sources within but rather from without, as the
enigmatic message from another person. The dia-
lectic of enigmatic message and subsequent
translation/repression always already takes
place in the cultural field that forms the message
itself and above all the process of translation.
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Berlin, Germany: Fischer’s Medizinische
Buchhandlung. H. Kornfeld.
Whitebook, J. (2001). Mutual recognition and the work of
the negative. In W. Rehg & J. Bohman (Eds.), Plural-
ism and the pragmatic turn: The transformation of
critical theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011.
Drug Prevention
Drug Prevention
Daniel Sanin
Clinical Psychologist and Drug Prevention
Professional, Vienna, Austria
Introduction
“Truly meaningful prevention means building
a just society. It means reducing poverty, the
stresses of injustice, the loneliness in a society
based on consumerism,” says George Albee
(2010: 99). This is a rather radical notion of pre-
vention. The reality looks quite otherwise, alas. In
general, prevention is seen as something benign
and innocent, only wanting something good to
happen or develop. But from a critical perspective
prevention must also be seen as a regulating and
disciplining strategy that ensures that the subjects
monitor themselves and others according to
established and dominant categories.
Definition
“Prevention” means the forestalling of something
unwanted: a defined problem should not even
occur. In order to avoid the realization of the
unwanted event (e.g., addiction, accidents, dis-
eases, calamities, etc.), certain measures have to
be taken. These measures can target people or
structures (e.g., urban planning, architecture,
social services, employment). When measures
target people, they could target entire
populations, certain groups, or individuals. In
the case of drug prevention, classic measures
are the information about postulated risks of
drug use, the promotion of social skills (e.g.,
communication), and the promotion of psycho-
logical skills (e.g., empathy) (cf. EMCDDA,
2008: 24 ff).
The term “drugs” comes from the Dutch word
“droog” which means dry or dried. Originally the
word was used to refer to dried substances, which
were used as medical powders. Today, in the
Drug Prevention
English-speaking world the term “drugs” is used
predominantly in two ways: to name medicines of
all kinds and as a specific term for mind-altering
substances used in a nonmedical way which are
(among other factors) held responsible for
a certain type of problem subsumed under the
concept of “addiction.” Most of the substances
falling into the second category were once med-
icines: heroin as a pain- or cough killer, cocaine
as a local anesthetic, amphetamine for treating
asthma, etc. In a certain way we could also say
that – according to ancient Paracelsus’ dictum
that only the dose makes the poison – all of
those substances are medicines, but if their use
is not consented by official medicine, they
become “bad drugs.”
Drug prevention is not a single discipline but
a more or less systematic approach. It emerged
first in the 1960 as a reaction to the so-called drug
revolution (cf. Zinberg, 1984: 11): various move-
ments at that time (e.g., Civil Rights Movement,
Antiwar Movement, Women’s Movement), in
attacking cultural values, deep-rooted privileges,
and unjust circumstances, brought the ruling
establishment into plight. In this atmosphere of
general breakup of ingrained conditions, the
political, economical, intellectual, scientific, and
cultural leaders and the corresponding “ideolog-
ical state apparatuses” (Althusser), like schools,
mass media, religious institutions, and govern-
mental entities, reacted to the spreading drug
consumption with fear-inducing messages
(“drug scares”; cf. Reinarman, 2012). The (pos-
sible) risks of drug use were not only depicted as
imperative threats but also distorted to their
extremes: unavoidable social decay, pauperiza-
tion, and death. In this picture addiction appears
in its pseudo-mythical shape, as an always
returning, sacrifice-demanding being that has its
origins in unintelligible natural processes. Neu-
roscience owns parts of its actual success to its
implicit promise of enlightening these dark pro-
cesses of the flesh. Because this aura is still pre-
sent today, the moral model of addiction (implicit
or explicit assumption that addiction is caused
due to character weakness and the like) is not
yet fully replaced by the medical one (assumption
that addiction is a “disease,” e.g., like diabetes).
493 D
Keywords
Addiction; harm reduction; life skills; primary
prevention; secondary prevention; tertiary pre-
vention; universal prevention; selective preven-
tion; indicated prevention; safer use
Traditional Debates D
The first concepts and methods of drug prevention
came from the treatment-focused medical setting.
Primary prevention aimed to intervene before the
appearance of the “disease,” secondary prevention
wanted to place interventions when symptoms or
signs of the impending “disease” appeared, and
tertiary referred to measures that aimed to stop
the unfolding or worsening of the “disease” or
impeding a relapse after a certain person was
“healed.” In the 1990s the US-based Institute of
Medicine (IOM) proposed a new approach in dif-
ferentiating between universal, selective, and indi-
cated drug prevention (IOM, 1996: 139). While
the old distinction focuses on the “disease” and its
chronology, the new one has its concentration on
the target group and its “necessities.” The new
IOM definitions are more genuinely preventive:
the interventions and strategies are organized and
categorized before “disease” comes into play. Uni-
versal prevention makes no distinction in a given
population (e.g., all students are the target group);
selective prevention picks out a certain group of
people that are defined “at-risk” (e.g., truants);
indicated prevention finally targets the single indi-
vidual (whose behavior has been defined as “prob-
lematic”). Both sets of definitions are still in use,
although the IOM set becomes more and more
prominent.
A further system to categorize drug prevention
is the structural and the behavioral approach, with
the former aiming at the conditions in which
human lives take place (e.g., laws, social ser-
vices, town planning, employment, community
facilities, educational system, architecture) and
the latter trying to influence human behavior
directly (e.g., through information, training). In
general, behavioral approaches are more promi-
nent. On the structural level repressive measures
D 494
(e.g., strict laws, high police presence) are very
popular (cf. Sloboda & Bukoski, 2006, especially
Pentz, 217 ff.). Partly this follows the (false) logic
that if you control the supply you control the
consumption as well. Bruce Alexander (1988)
showed with his rat park experiments that mere
exposure to a drug does not suffice to develop
“addiction.” Another reason for the attractiveness
and dominance of repressive strategies is that
these allow to control and suppress certain iden-
tified groups that represent a threat to dominant
groups (cf. Reinarman).
Although their results are weak at best, most
prevention projects and programs are those of the
behavioral approach and universal character car-
ried out in schools. This is due to the simple reason
that students are easiest to reach in their “disci-
plinary institutions” (Foucault in Rabinow, 1984:
14 ff., and 258 ff.) and in general they cannot run
away. Furthermore, it is easier to get a prevention
program funded that is for (“innocent”) nonusers
than safer use or harm reduction projects for users,
although both are preventive.
Critical Debates
Since prevention has an almost magical, healing
aura, there is not much critique to be found. Most
people would argue that there cannot be much
wrong with prevention. But in the light of persis-
tent tendencies to neglect or even deny societal
responsibilities for individual pain and problems,
and to blame the individual’s morale, character
weakness, or biology, a critical view on the
underlying ideology of prevention is crucial.
While the classic welfare state is ever more in
retreat and transforming into an “enabling” one
(Gilbert & Gilbert, 1989), the obligation for fail-
ure and success (including employment, social
insurance, pension, health) is shifted more and
more onto the individual. Through the discourse
of competence (“life skills”), drug prevention
brings the moral dimension again into play: the
single individual has to train her/his skills and
a lack of important skills is her/his fault.
Consequently the drug prevention discourse
almost abandoned classic structural dimensions
Drug Prevention
(class, race, gender equality) and is concentrating
on individual- or group-focused dimensions (risk,
vulnerability, predisposition). Addiction research
is focusing its attention almost exclusively on
“finding” the origins of addiction in genetics
and biology (cf. Cohen, 2009). Accordingly, pre-
vention science and practice is centering around
so-called vulnerable groups (young offenders,
clubbers, ethnic groups, problem neighborhoods)
or the “problematic” individual (experimenting
youth, pupils with “ADHD,” etc.). A major point
of critique is that in virtually all drug prevention
projects, the goals to achieve are preset. The
person targeted by drug prevention has to become
abstemious, remain abstemious, must present
central “life skills” (empathy, communication
ability, etc.), or be a competent (unobtrusive)
drug user. From a critical psychology perspec-
tive, it is central that the person must have the
possibility of choosing if or what he/she con-
sumes. Corresponding drug prevention would
have to provide the information that is essential
for the potential drug user to make her/his deci-
sions, without pushing in one direction or the
other. On a structural level, (drug) prevention
should struggle to achieve the basics for a just
society, just like George Albee puts it in the
citation at the beginning of this entry. This
would not eliminate all problems associated
with drugs but surely most of them.
References
Albee, G. (2010). Social class, power, ecology and
prevention. In G. Nelson & I. Prilleltensky (Eds.),
Community psychology. In pursuit of liberation and
well-being (pp. 97–99). Hampshire, England: Palgrave
McMillan.
Alexander, B. (1988). Rat park chronicle. In C. Judith & P.
Erickson (Eds.), Illicit drug use in Canada. A risky
business (pp. 63–68). Scarborough, Toronto, ON,
Canada: Nelson.
Cohen, P. (2009). The naked empress. Modern neurosci-
ence and the concept of addiction. Retrieved February
17, 2012, from http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.
empress.html.
EMCDDA. (Ed.). (2008). Prevention of substance abuse.
Insights 7, prepared by Anneke B€ uhler & Christoph
Kr€oger. Lisboa, Portugal: Author.
Drugs, Overview
Gilbert, N., & Gilbert, B. (1989). The enabling state:
Modern welfare capitalism in America. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Institute of Medicine (Ed.) (1996). Pathways of addiction:
opportunities in drug abuse research. Washington,
DC: National Academy Press.
Rabinow, P. (Ed.). (1984). The Foucault reader. New
York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Reinarman, C. (2012). The social construction of drug
scares. In P. A. Adler, P. Adler, & P. O’Brien (Eds.),
Drugs and the American dream. An anthology
(pp. 40–47). West Sussex, England: Wiley & Blackwell.
Sloboda, Z., & Bukoski, W. J. (2006). Handbook of drug
abuse prevention. New York, NY: Springer.
Zinberg, N. E. (1984). Drug, set, and setting. The basis
for controlled intoxicant use. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Online Resources
Centre for Drug Research, University of Amsterdam.
http://www.cedro-uva.org/
Institute for Drug Research Bremen. http://www.bisdro.
uni-bremen.de/
The Institute of Medicine. http://www.iom.edu/
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addic-
tion. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/
National Institute on Drug Abuse. http://www.drugabuse.
gov/
Drugs, Overview
Ilana Mountian
Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Introduction
Debates around drugs and drug use are of crucial
importance for critical psychology. While most
debates are centered on pharmacological, medical,
and criminological fields, the debates incorporate
central issues for critical psychology, as well as for
sociology, anthropology, economics, anti-psychia-
try, studies on gender, sexuality, race and class, and
every other aspect of the biopolitical economy.
Definition
Contemporary definitions of drugs are primarily
derived from medical and legal fields, as well as
495 D
from religious understandings. There are a range
of different approaches to the topic that vary
according to the social function of drugs, such
as food, medicine, poison, recreational use,
social habits, and religious rituals (Courtwright,
2001; Douglas, 1987; Escohotado, 1998; South,
1999; Xiberras, 1989).
There is some controversy on the etymology
of the word drug; the most accepted is the Middle D
Dutch word droghe vate meaning “barrel of dry
goods” (Vargas, 2008), used in the context of the
early spice trade in fourteenth century between
the West and the East.
A commonly accepted medical definition of
drugs refers to any exogenous chemical sub-
stance that provokes functional and/or structural
alterations in any sector of the organic economy.
Therefore, drugs concern all the substances that
cause alteration in the body, including legal and
illegal substances, regardless of their specific
effects and whether they are used for medical or
recreational purposes.
For the World Health Organization (WHO),
drugs are: “A term of varied usage. In medicine, it
refers to any substance with the potential to
prevent or cure disease or enhance physical or
mental welfare; in pharmacology it means any
chemical agent that alters the biochemical or
physiological processes of tissues or organisms”
(in http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/termi-
nology/who_lexicon/en/ and United Nations
Office for Drug Control and Drug Prevention,
2003, p. 68).
For the UN, “in the context of international
drug control, ‘drug’ means any of the substances
in Schedule I and II of the 1961 Convention,
whether natural or synthetic” (United Nations
Office for Drug Control and Drug Prevention,
2003, pp. 68–69).
Psychotropic substance refers to “any
chemical agent affecting the mind or mental pro-
cesses (i.e., any psychoactive drug)”. In the
context of international drug control, ‘psychotro-
pic substance’ means “any substance, natural
or synthetic, or any natural material in
Schedule I, II, III or IV of the 1971 Convention”
(United Nations Office for Drug Control and
Drug Prevention, 2003, pp. 70–71).
D 496
Another term commonly used is “narcotics,”
originally from the Greek narkoun meaning to
sleep or sedate (Escohotado, 1998). Although
WHO classifies a narcotic drug as a “chemical
agent that induces stupor, coma, or insensibility
to pain (also called narcotic analgesic)” (United
Nations Office for Drug Control and Drug Pre-
vention, 2003), this term is applied for a wide
range of drugs that are not narcotics.
For the judicial fields, drugs can simply be
defined in terms of legal classifications. “In the
context of international drug control, ‘narcotic
drug’ means any drug defined as such under the
1961 Convention” (Laboratory and Scientific
Section United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, 2003, p. 77).
For religious understandings of drugs, most
Christian traditions consider drugs evil sub-
stances, impure, and to be extinguished, when
not used within specific rituals (Escohotado,
1998). For example, alcohol in Christian tradi-
tions can be understood as a “sacred substance”
or “Christ’s blood” within a religious ritual but as
a threat outside it.
In order to contextualize discussions on drugs
and drug use, it is fundamental to clarify the
notion of addiction, central to contemporary
debates on drugs.
Keywords
Drugs; psychotropic substances; narcotics; drug
addiction; habituation; drug dependence
Addiction
The concept addiction is central in this debate,
a notion largely based on medical perspectives; it
has been broadly used (not only in relation to
drugs) and widely disseminated in research,
media, public health policies, and lay discourses.
It is interesting to note that although the word
“addiction” is in widespread popular use, the
scientific world has agreed to some extent to use
the term “drug dependence” as a replacement.
The World Health Organization abandoned the
terms “addiction” and habituation in 1964 in
favor of drug dependence.
Drugs, Overview
Traditionally the word “addiction” has meant
a strong inclination towards certain kinds of con-
duct with little or no pejorative meaning attached
to it. For the Oxford English Dictionary pre-
twentieth century, it included being addicted to
civil affairs, to useful reading and also to bad
habits. Being addicted to drugs was not among
the definitions; and until quite recently, the term
“addiction” referred to a habit, good or bad
(Szasz, 1975). Addiction discursively has come
to refer “to almost any kind of illegal, immoral, or
undesirable association with certain kinds of
drugs” (Szasz, p. 6) and specific behaviors.
It was towards the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury and the beginning of the twentieth that the
association between drug, abuse, and addiction
was established. From 1897 articles started to
appear using the terms “drug habits,” “drug
addiction,” and “drug patients” (mainly in North
American and British journals) (Parascandola,
1996).
The medical approach conceives of drug
addiction primarily as a disease, focusing on the
toxicology of drugs and their neurological
effects. Contemporary UN reports define drug
addiction as a chronic multifactorial health
disorder and “largely a function of genetic
heredity” (United Nations Commission on Nar-
cotic Drugs, 2010, p. 59).
The definition of addiction by WHO is:
“Addiction refers to the repeated use of
a psychoactive substance or substances, to the
extent that the user is periodically or chronically
intoxicated, shows a compulsion to take the
preferred substance (or substances), has great
difficulty in voluntarily ceasing or modifying
substance use, and exhibits determination
to obtain psychoactive substances by
almost any means” (http://www.who.int/
substance_abuse/terminology/who_lexicon/en/
and Laboratory and Scientific Section United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2003, p. 73).
This definition contrasts with “habituation,”
which means to become accustomed to any behav-
ior or condition, which discursively it came to
imply a socially accepted use of drugs (Young,
1971). The term habit is used less frequently in
drug debates, as (Sedgwick, 1992, p. 591) noted:
Drugs, Overview
“the worldly concept of habit has dropped out
of theorized use with the superinvention in this
century of addiction and the other glamorizing
paradigms oriented around absolutes of compul-
sion/volition.”
The UN defines “drug dependence” as “a clus-
ter of physiological, behavioral and cognitive
phenomena of variable intensity, in which the
use of a psychoactive drug (or drugs) takes on
a high priority. It implies a need for repeated
doses of the drug to feel good or avoid feeling
bad.” Psychological or psychic dependence
refers to the experience of impaired control over
drug use. Physiological or physical dependence
involves the development of tolerance and
withdrawal symptoms upon cessation of use of
the drug, as a consequence of the body’s adapta-
tion to the continued presence of a drug
(Laboratory and Scientific Section United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2003, p. 74).
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American
Psychiatric Association and the Classification of
Mental and Behavioral Disorders (ICD 10),
published by WHO, define drug dependence in
relation to physical and psychological
dependence and understand drug addiction as
a mental illness.
History
Psychoactive substances have been used through-
out history and in practically all societies, with
the exception of communities based in the Arctic
zones, where the climate does not provide the
conditions for vegetation (Escohotado, 1998).
The use of psychoactive substances constitutes,
therefore, a plural phenomenon, for therapeutic,
religious-ritualistic, recreational, and habitual
use, as food, poison, medicine, and sacred sub-
stance. These uses vary according to their time,
place, and purpose, intrinsically related to
social and cultural values within specific
historical periods (Berridge & Edwards, 1987;
Escohotado, 1998; Goodman et al. 1995;
Xiberras, 1989). Three main discursive fields
are highlighted as central in this debate: the
497 D
legal, medical, and religious discourses and
their intersections.
During the nineteenth and twentieth century
the concept of addiction shifted from habit to
disease and social problem. A key element for
the understanding of this shift concerns the moral
values that underline this conception in North
American and English history, influenced by the
Protestant religion and the associated temperance D
movement (Berridge & Edwards, 1987).
The US and UK drug policies have had an
important impact on drug policies worldwide,
particularly the North American role in interna-
tional drug control and prohibition (Musto, 1999)
(the “war on drugs,” named during Nixon’s
administration is commented below, on the
section “Drug Policies”). Although the history
of drugs differs according to the country, in
many western countries they share certain
aspects, such as the moral influence, the predom-
inant medical approach, and law enforcement.
The intervention of the law has had a major
impact on modern forms of drug taking. Xiberras
(1989) suggests that the classic practice of drug
use did not lead to rejection from societies; rather
it was part of cultural traditions and everyday
social practices, while the modern forms, over
the last two centuries, have the disapproval of
authorities and a negative reaction from the
judicial power. The intervention of law draws
the distinction between legal and illegal drug
use, and discursively this has come to imply the
difference between medical and nonmedical
drugs and practices, apart from some drugs
used in everyday life that are not often regarded
as drugs, such as coffee and tea, or alcohol when
used by religious rituals.
Escohotado (1998, Vol. 2) proposes five main
features of the context of the growth of prohibi-
tion and drug control in the nineteenth and
twentieth century: the traditional religious
aspects (drugs as impurity), social tensions in
relation to the rise of the working class and indus-
trialization (drugs symbolizing the deviation of
certain groups – Chinese, Mexican, and Black
people), the development of the medical profes-
sion (like the ecclesiastics of other times), the
state assuming functions that before were
D 498
traditionally performed by civil society (welfare
state), and the Chinese-English conflict
(highlighting stereotypes and colonial relations).
I also include the role of specific discourses on
gender and sexuality here as another key aspect
(such as seen in the ideas of female susceptibility
to drug addiction) (Campbell, 2000; Mountian,
2013).
Traditional Debates
Academic debates around drugs often center on
medical and legal fields, as well as on anthropo-
logical and sociological studies (understanding
drugs according to the social context, studies on
habits, among others). Debates in psychology are
commonly seen oscillating between ‘medical
perspectives’ on drug use, e.g., understanding
addiction as a mental illness, developing studies
on the personality of the drug user, therapeutic
models for treatment; and ‘sociological perspec-
tives’ (psychological-sociological approaches),
although less frequent, attempting to also con-
sider the social context, and other issues for
drug use.
Critical Debates
A number of critical studies point out a range of
issues to be considered regarding traditional
approaches to drug use and addiction, such as
the moral aspects of debates on drugs, problems
regarding the classification of drugs as well as
addiction, the effects and problems associated
with drug prohibition, the need to develop thera-
peutic models that do not merely criminalize and
pathologize the individual who uses drugs,
awareness regarding over prescription of psychi-
atric drugs, and crucially, the importance of con-
sidering the social and cultural contexts for the
use, as well as key social categories such as
gender, sexuality, class, race, age, disability,
and others.
Regarding the classification of drugs, the clas-
sification itself highlights the association
between the medical and legal realms,
Drugs, Overview
introducing a new approach to drugs, that is, in
terms of medical regulation and drug control.
A range of critical authors consider this classifi-
cation vague, as it does not account for the spec-
ificities of drugs. In popular discourses, the term
drugs has come to be used as being synonymous
with illegal drugs (Dally, 1996; Loose, 2002),
and the effects of this discursive ambiguity have
been highlighted in research (Lenson, 1995;
Parascandola, 1996; South, 1999).
As seen, definitions of drugs are not very pre-
cise, and this problem of defining drugs has been
emphasized repeatedly (Escohotado, 1998). The
impossibility of establishing definitive chemical
or physiological criteria illustrates the problem of
the drug field. Hence the definition of drugs
appears fluid and this gives space for various
interpretations, producing particular discursive
effects. In this sense, rather than having some
inherent specific quality, what is commonly
understood as drugs consist of what are used as
drugs and stipulated as such. What is at stake
here is not the chemical composition of drugs, but
the meanings and significations towards sub-
stances, given according to the convention in
particular social contexts. In contemporary west-
ern societies, the medical and legal definitions
have become central to the understanding of
drugs and drug use, however, obscuring the
underlying social and cultural assumptions.
Critical analysis of both notions of addic-
tion and dependency highlights how these def-
initions are also not very precise, accurate
from the indeterminacy of levels of behavior
required to the specificities of substances to
constitute the experience of addiction, and
framing as a mental illness, it produces par-
ticular effects. For example, although this
classification can be applied to any individual
using any psychotropic drug for specific dis-
eases, the ill subject is often not regarded as
an addict. Critical authors argue that drug
addiction has become a matter of convention
and not of pharmacological specificities
(Szasz, 1975).
However, not all therapeutic models under-
stand addiction in the same way. Some schools
of psychoanalysis, for example, do not reduce
Drugs, Overview
addiction to pathology; rather they locate the
relationship between the subject and the object
drug within the subject’s discourse, based on
a distinct psychoanalytic ethical perspective
(Loose, 2002).
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that
dependency is typically seen as an undesirable
aspect of human behavior, conceived as less nat-
ural, less “healthy,” less satisfying, or less
legitimate. The term is also highly gendered,
with autonomy regarded as the cultural ideal of
western masculinity, and dependence is attrib-
uted to the feminized “other.” The moral conno-
tation of “drug dependence” has been highlighted
by several authors (e.g., McDonald, 1994), and
even the word “chemical” is saturated by nega-
tive connotations, contrasting it with discourses
of the body as organic and natural (Keane, 1999)
or pure.
The use of the medical terminology of addic-
tion in everyday language has become wide-
spread, and it has come to connote behaviors
that are seen as “excessive, habitually repetitive,
or problematic” (White, 2004, p. 42). Popularly
used for behaviors of a compulsive sort in relation
to a range of “objects” (e.g., psychoactive
substances, food, gym, television, computer,
internet, games, including here also sex, love,
and other types of relationships), as seen in sex
addiction, love addiction, workaholic, shopa-
holic, chocoholic, caffeine addiction, eating
addiction, gym addiction, and relationship addic-
tion. Sedgwick (1992, p. 584) commented that
“as each assertion of will has made volition itself
appear problematic in a new area, the assertion of
will itself has come to appear addictive.”
International Relevance
Debates around drugs are central for politics,
economics, law, and health and mental health
fields. Critical debates are needed in order to
advance knowledge in the area and to provide
readings that counterpart the often moral, and at
times of moral panic, approaches traditional in
the area.
499 D
Practice Relevance
Drug Policies
These debates are crucial, as they have a clear
impact into public and health policies. Public pol-
icies around drugs often oscillate between punish-
ment and treatment according to political
maneuvers and public opinion about drugs and
drug users. These policies are related to specific D
social and political contexts, where gender, class,
race, age, sexuality, and types of drugs are crucial.
The “war on drugs” (named by Nixon’s
government in the USA in the 1970s) was the
culmination of a number of acts and laws for
drug control, first lead by the USA and incorpo-
rated by the UN. This “war” has been a key
political strategy for tackling drugs. However,
a number of problems for this war have been
highlighted in critical research, such as the
increase in drug taking; the increase in the appa-
ratus of law enforcement; the growth of an illegal
market, the problems of creating a universal law
that does not account for local specificities; the
increase in associated violence, repression, invis-
ibility of illegal drug use, stigmatization, lack of
reliable information on production and consump-
tion (Hugh-Jones, 1995), lack of drug quality
control, and health hazard for users; and increase
in contamination from diseases such as HIV and
hepatitis (Dally, 1996).
The politics of the war on drugs has been
questioned by a number of authors, from the
choice of these specific drugs to the political func-
tion of the war (Chomsky, 1991; Coomber, 1998;
Dally, 1996; Goldberg, 1999; Lenson, 1995;
South, 1999). As Hugh-Jones (1995, p. 48) puts
it, “this reified emphasis on substances rather than
on people results in a shift in attention away from
the social forces that lie behind the consumption,”
and we can include here the war itself.
In relation to health policies, it is important to
point out drug policies such as harm reduction,
which gained importance in the early 1990s,
targeting the transmission of HIV by injecting
practices; it was a response to previous drug
policy campaigns on absenteeism. Harm reduc-
tion aims at decreasing drug use (including alco-
hol and cigarette) and harm related to drug use.
D 500
The main rationale is pragmatism, human rights,
public health, focus on harm, dialogue, and the
understanding of drug users as part of the larger
community (Inciardi & Harrison, 2000). It was
first developed in the UK, Holland, and the USA
during the 1980s. The UK was prominent in the
development of harm reduction centers (e.g.,
Merseyside), in a context of increasing intrave-
nous use of drugs.
Further, a number of critical authors have
highlighted the importance of considering speci-
ficities around gender and sexuality (Campbell,
2000; Ettorre & Riska, 1995; Kohn, 1992), an
attention to the overprescription of psychiatric
drugs (antidepressants) for women, the relation
between alcohol and gender violence, stigmati-
zation, and the need for development of drug
research, treatment, and policy that take into
account the intersections between gender, sexu-
ality, class, race, age, and disability.
Future Directions
It is crucial the development of critical research
in the area in order to enlarge the debate around
drugs. Critical studies are important to decon-
struct prevalent mainstream moral perspectives
on drugs and to challenge the often criminalizing,
stigmatizing, and pathologizing approaches that
permeate the area, as well as to provide important
inputs for the development of interventions that
escape the often moral view on drugs, under-
standing drug use in its broader social and cul-
tural context, considering the intersections of
gender, sexuality, class, race, age, disability,
and other structural categories.
This entry was extracted from the book Cul-
tural Ecstasies: Drugs, Gender and Social Imag-
inary (London and New York: Routledge by
Mountian, I. (2013)).
References
Berridge, V., & Edwards, G. (1987). Opium and the Peo-
ple - Opiate Use in Nineteenth Century England. Lon-
don: Yale University Press and New Haven.
Drugs, Overview
Campbell, N. (2000). Using women – Gender, drug policy
and social justice. London, England: Routledge.
Chomsky, N. (1991). Deterring democracy. London,
England: Verso.
Coomber, R. (1998). The control of drugs and drug users:
Reason or reaction? Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
Harwood.
Courtwright, D. T. (2001). Forces of habit: Drugs and the
making of the modern world. Havard, MA: Harvard
University press.
Dally, A. (1996). Anomalies and mysteries in the ‘war on
drugs’. In R. Potter & M. Teich (Eds.), Drugs and
narcotics in history (pp. 199–215). Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Douglas, M. (Ed.). (1987). Constructive drinking – Per-
spectives on drink from anthropology. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Escohotado, A. (1998). Historia de las Drogas (Vols.
1–3). Madrid, Spain: Allianza Editorial.
Ettorre, E., & Riska, E. (1995). Gendered moods – Psy-
chotropics and society. London, England: Routledge.
Goldberg, T. (1999). Demystifying drugs – A psychosocial
perspective. London, England: MacMillan Press.
Goodman, J., Lovejoy, P., & Sherratt, A. (1995). Consum-
ing Habits - Drugs in History and Anthropology. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Hugh-Jones, S. (1995). Coca, beer, cigars and yage: Meals
and anti-meals in an Amerindian community. In J.
Goodman, P. Lovejoy, & A. Sherratt (Eds.), Consum-
ing habits – Drugs in history and anthropology
(pp. 47–67). London, England: Routledge.
Inciardi, J., & Harrison, L. (2000). Harm reduction:
National and international perspectives. London,
England: Sage.
Keane, H. (1999). Adventures of the addicted brain. Aus-
tralian Feminist Studies, 14(29), 63–76.
Kohn, M. (1992). Dope girls – The birth of the British
underground. London, England: Lawrence and
Wishart.
Lenson, D. (1995). On drugs. Minneapolis, MN: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
Loose, R. (2002). The subject of addiction – Psychoanalysis
and the administration of enjoyment. London, England:
Karnac.
McDonald, M. (1994). Gender, drink and drugs. Oxford,
UK: Berg.
Mountian, I. (2013). Cultural ecstasies: Drugs, gender
and social imaginary. London, England: Routledge.
Musto, D. F. (1999). The American disease – Origins
of narcotic control. Oxford, MI: Oxford University
Press.
Parascandola, J. (1996). The drug habit: The association of
the word ‘drug’ with abuse in American history. In
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history (pp. 156–167). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Sedgwick, E. K. (1992). Epidemics of the Will. In
J. Crary & S. Kwinter (Eds.), Incorporations
(pp. 582–595). New York, NY: Zone.
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South, N. (1999). Drugs – Cultures, controls and everyday
life. London, England: Sage.
Szasz, T. (1975). Ceremonial chemistry – The ritual per-
secution of drugs, addicts, and pushers. London,
England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Economic and Social Council. Accessed in www.
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CND-53-RelatedFiles/E2010_28eV1052082.pdf
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Terminology and information on drugs. (2nd ed.).
New York, NY: Author. ISBN: 92-1-148163-5.
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entists/terminology-and-information-on-drugs.html
Vargas, E. V. (2008). Fármacos e outros objetos sócio-
técnicos: notas para uma genealogia das drogas. In B.
C. Labate, S. Goulart, M. Fiore, E. MacRae, & H.
Carneiro (Eds.), Drogas e cultura: novas perspectivas.
Salvador (pp. 41–65). Salvador, Brazil: EDUFBA.
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perspectives on the rethoric of addiction. In S. W.
Tracy & C. J. Acker (Eds.), Altering American con-
sciousness – The history of alcohol and drug abuse in
the United States, 1800-2000 (pp. 33–60). Amherst,
MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Xiberras, M. (1989). A Sociedade Intoxicada. Lisbon,
Portugal: Instituto Piaget.
Young, J. (1971). The drugtakers – The social meaning of
drug users. London, England: Granada Publishing.
DSM, Overview
Michelle N. Lafrance1 and Suzanne
McKenzie-Mohr2
1
Department of Psychology, St. Thomas
University, Fredericton, Canada
2
School of Social Work, St. Thomas University,
Fredericton, Canada
Introduction
Efforts to categorize and describe “madness” date
back to ancient Greece; however, interest in psy-
chiatric categorization has intensified since the
turn of the twentieth century (Kirk & Kutchins,
1992). One marked event in this history was the
release of the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion’s (APA) third revision of the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) in 1980. This
manual and its successive revisions have been
501 D
based on a biomedical formulation of “mental
disorders,” positioning them as equivalent to
medical conditions (Kleinman, 1988; Wilson,
1993). This approach to understanding and cate-
gorizing distress dominates mental health prac-
tice and has infiltrated popular discourse. Despite
its dominance, the DSM has been subject to
extensive critique, charged with pathologizing
everyday experiences, medicalizing distress, D
and acting as a tool for social control and
a means of maintaining professional and corpo-
rate interests.
Definition
The DSM is one of the dominant diagnostic
systems in the world for classifying “mental
disorders” (alongside the World Health Organi-
zation’s International Classification of Diseases
(ICD)) and is widely adopted by mental health
professionals. Some examples of diagnoses
outlined in the DSM include major depressive
disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,
schizophrenia, specific phobia, and anorexia
nervosa. Each psychiatric diagnosis is accompa-
nied by a list of diagnostic criteria, as well as
descriptive information such as prevalence and
course. The DSM does not include information
on treatment.
Keywords
Diagnosis; disorder; psychiatry; anti-psychiatry;
mental illness; classification; madness
History
The development of the DSM grew out of a need
in the United States to gather statistical informa-
tion on psychiatric patients (American Psychiat-
ric Association [APA], 2000). Thus, it emerged
as a means of collecting census data rather than
a tool for clinical work. Multiple approaches to
classification emerged in the early twentieth
century, variously emphasizing etiology and
D 502
phenomenology and defining characteristics
(APA, 2000). In 1949, for the first time, the ICD
(6th edition) included a section on “mental
disorders.” Three years later, the APA published
its own version, which was released as the first
edition of the DSM (APA, 2000).
DSM-I (1952). The first edition of the DSM
spanned 130 pages and contained a total of 106
diagnostic categories, each of which was briefly
described. Influenced by the prevailing psycho-
analytic and psychodynamic approaches of the
time, diagnoses were framed as “reactions”
(e.g., “schizophrenic reaction”).
DSM-II (1968). At 134 pages, the DSM-II
was negligibly longer than the first but contained
a significantly expanded set of diagnoses (182 in
total). Although the term “reaction” was elimi-
nated in an effort to avoid suggestions of
etiology, it continued to reflect a Freudian
perspective.
DSM-III (1980). The two previous editions of
the DSM had been critiqued for their alignment
with psychoanalytic and psychodynamic
approaches and for the vague and ambiguous
way in which diagnoses were defined. As
a result, inter-rater reliability was poor such that
the same individual could be given different diag-
noses by different psychiatrists. The APA aimed
to rectify these problems with the third edition by
being atheoretical with respect to etiology and
introducing explicit diagnostic criteria (APA,
2000). This extensive revision (with 265 diagnos-
tic categories across 494 pages) involved
a dramatic move away from Freudian formula-
tions and toward a scientific/biomedical approach
based on Kraepelin’s work (Bentall, 2004;
Shorter, 1997). Indeed, the “DSM-III is com-
monly declared to be the most significant factor
in promoting what has been called the ‘remedica-
lization’ of American Psychiatry” (Wilson, 1993,
p. 399). In repositioning the manual in line with
medical science, the DSM was “transformed
from an obscure desk reference – a peripheral
clinical tool – into an omnipresent, huge compen-
dium” with broad reaching influence (Kirk &
Kutchins, 1992, p. 6).
DMS-III-R (1987). According to the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association (2000), a revision of
DSM, Overview
the DSM-III was released in order to correct
inconsistencies in the system and clarify
a number of diagnostic criteria. Largely consis-
tent with the previous edition, it contained 292
diagnoses and spanned 567 pages.
DSM-IV (1994). The fourth edition
maintained the theoretical and structural orienta-
tion found in the DSM-III but involved an
expanded number of diagnostic categories. It
contained 297 diagnoses (about three times the
number found in DSM-I) across 886 pages.
DSM-IV-TR (2000). A “text revision” of the
DSM-IV was released that included no substan-
tive changes or new diagnoses. Rather, the central
revisions involved updated information such as
descriptions of prevalence, associated features,
and culture, age, and gender characteristics.
This edition spanned 943 pages, more than
seven times the length of the first edition.
DSM-5 (2013). The fifth edition of the DSM
involved extensive revisions, including a revised
organizational structure, an expanded set of diag-
nostic categories, and the introduction of some
dimentional assessment (APA, 2013). At 947
pages, it is the longest edition of the DSM to date.
Traditional Debates
Two issues recur in mainstream debates
about the DSM. The first is whether “mental
disorders” are best understood as categorical
or continuous entities. The second revolves
around the reliability and validity of diagnostic
classification.
Categorical Versus Dimensional Classification
The DSM represents a categorical approach to
classification whereby a person is deemed to
either have or not have a disorder. In contrast,
a dimensional system is based on the quantifica-
tion of attributes along a continuum (e.g., rating
depressed mood on a five-point scale). A central
debate in mainstream circles has been whether
“mental illnesses” are best understood as discrete
categories (differences in kind) or in terms of
continuous dimensions whereby health and
pathology exist at opposite ends of a spectrum
DSM, Overview
(differences in degree). While noting that
a dimensional approach is associated with
increased reliability and enhanced clinical com-
munication, the APA has traditionally adopted
a categorical approach, indicating that it is more
“familiar and vivid” and useful in clinical prac-
tice and research (2000, p. xxxii). However, the
APA is increasingly moving toward the incorpo-
ration of dimensional approaches. For example,
in the DSM-5, autistic disorder, Asperger’s dis-
order, and pervasive developmental disorder
were controversially consolidated into autism
spectrum disorder, and a hybrid dimensional-
categorical model has been proposed for the
personality disorders (APA, 2013).
Reliability and Validity
Beginning with the DSM-III, a central concern of
the APA has been improving the diagnostic reli-
ability of the DSM. The poor inter-rater reliabil-
ity of the first two editions of the DSM sparked
questions about the validity of psychiatry as
a whole, fanned by the publicity of the Rosenhan
(1973) study in which psychiatrists failed to dis-
tinguish confederates from psychiatric patients.
Thus, the release of the DSM-III has been
described as a means to reshape the nomenclature
as well as the status of the discipline (Kirk &
Kutchins, 1992). The APA has since been
devoted to the project of improving diagnostic
reliability, involving the introduction of specified
diagnostic criteria and the use of field trial
research. However, the degree to which these
efforts have been successful has been disputed.
In a thorough reanalysis of the methodology and
data of the DSM-III, Kirk and Kutchins (1992)
concluded that the APA’s claims of success “in
resolving the reliability problem were flawed,
incompletely reported, and inconsistent” (p. 15).
Moreover, they argued that the intense focus on
reliability as a technical problem that could be
addressed through research and increasingly rigid
diagnostic criteria served to distract from the
deeper issue of validity and the question “Are
the experiences described in the DSM really
‘mental disorders’?” After all, a system may be
entirely reliable and entirely invalid. Thus, they
concluded that “the DSM revolution in reliability
503 D
has been a revolution in rhetoric, not in reality”
(Kutchins & Kirk, 1997, p. 53).
Within mainstream debates, issues of validity
have been approached in terms of attempting to
identify the correct parameters around diagnostic
categories. Two issues have figured prominently
in discussions of threats to diagnostic validity.
First, comorbidity (the presence of two or more
disorders) is the rule rather than the exception D
(APA, 2012). That is, it is common for individuals
to meet criteria for multiple diagnoses. Second, it
is common practice to employ “not otherwise
specified” criteria, essentially providing
a diagnosis in the absence of the required diagnos-
tic criteria (APA, 2012). Thus, the clinical reality
is that people’s experiences of distress and chal-
lenge do not appear to fit neatly into individual
diagnostic categories, but rather overlap and fall
between them. Efforts to address these problems
have focused on refining diagnostic categories and
criteria based on research and expert consensus. In
contrast to such rather superficial treatments of
diagnostic validity, critical scholars have
questioned the fundamental validity of diagnostic
categorization and the very concept of “mental
disorders” (Bentall, 2004; Szasz, 1962).
Critical Debates
Although the DSM remains the dominant system
for articulating and understanding distress, it has
been roundly critiqued by consumers of the men-
tal health system, practitioners, scholars, and
activists. The following represent some of their
key arguments:
“Mental Illnesses” as Problems of Living
Rather Than Disease
In his classic text, The Myth of Mental Illness,
Thomas Szasz (1962) argued that “mental ill-
ness” is not the product of the objective observa-
tion of bodily signs, but rather of social
judgement. That is, “mental illnesses” are not
“things” in the same way as infections or frac-
tures, but necessarily involve the moral, ethical,
and social evaluations of people’s behavior.
While Szasz did not deny that people experience
D 504
significant distress or behave in problematic
ways, he argued that these did not reflect “dis-
eases” but “problems of living.”
Medicalizing Misery: Individualizing and
Decontextualizing Distress
In framing suffering in terms of “disorders,” the
DSM locates problems within individuals, thereby
eclipsing the interpersonal, social, and political
contexts that reliably give rise to people’s suffer-
ing, including poverty, violence, discrimination,
and oppression (Belle & Doucet, 2003; Caplan &
Cosgrove, 2004; Marecek & Hare-Mustin, 2009;
Mezzich et al., 1999). As a result, solutions are
limited to changing the individual at the cost of
redressing social injustices including sexism and
racism. Accordingly, mental health practitioners
have been charged with helping people adapt to
oppressive social conditions (Marecek & Hare-
Mustin, 2009). In keeping with this argument,
feminist scholars have been particularly critical
of the DSM, charging it with bias against
women, medicalizing and depoliticizing their mis-
ery, regulating their behavior, and constructing
women’s suffering as individual pathology rather
than a response to systemic misogyny and injus-
tice (Caplan, 1995; Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004;
Marecek & Hare-Mustin, 2009).
Psychiatric Diagnosis as a Means of Social
Control
In contrast to the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion’s positioning of the DSM as an atheoretical
document, it has been argued that psychiatry and
its “bible” are neither neutral nor value-free (Caplan,
1995; Kirk & Kutchins, 1992). Instead, it is
a product of the time and place in which it was
constructed and reflects the interests and worldviews
of the authors, who have been predominantly white,
male, and American psychiatrists with ties to phar-
maceutical companies (Caplan, 1995; Cosgrove,
Bursztajn, & Krimsky, 2009). Thus, the DSM can
be understood as a means of “social control” (Szasz,
1962), whereby those in power maintain the status
quo by deciding what is (and is not) socially accept-
able. For example, homosexuality appeared in ear-
lier editions of the DSM, thereby officially
pathologizing same-sex desire as “mental illness”
DSM, Overview
(Kutchins & Kirk, 1997; Shorter, 1997). The APA’s
referendum and subsequent decision in 1973 to
strike homosexuality from the DSM reflected the
changing social climate, as well as political pressure
from gay rights activists (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997;
Shorter, 1997). The homosexuality controversy
highlighted the political and subjective nature of
psychiatric diagnoses and their role in the social
construction of deviance (Wilson, 1993).
Maintaining Industry Interests: Psychiatry,
the APA, and Big Pharma
It has been argued that in positioning the DSM as
a scientific document, and “mental disorders” as
equivalent to medical disorders, the APA serves
to reduce psychiatry’s marginalization and
defend it as a legitimate medical specialization
(Kirk & Kutchins, 1992; Wilson, 1993). Further,
the DSM and its ever-expanding list of diagnoses
serves the interests of the pharmaceutical indus-
try by shaping which experiences are ascribed the
status of “mental illness” (Kutchins & Kirk,
1997). Notably, it has been observed that almost
70 % of the task force members for the DSM-5 are
associated with the pharmaceutical industry (an
increase of 20 % over the DSM-IV) (Cosgrove
et al., 2009). While the APA has attempted to
address this conflict of interest with transparency
measures, these have been deemed insufficient to
address this bias and restore public trust
(Cosgrove et al. 2009).
Pathologizing Everyday Experiences:
Diagnostic Bracket Creep
The number of diagnoses has risen dramatically
since the first edition of the DSM, resulting in an
ever-expanding “bracket creep” whereby every-
day experiences are increasingly labeled as forms
of pathology (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997; Shorter,
1997). Accordingly, it is increasingly “normal”
to be “abnormal,” leading to fundamental ques-
tions regarding the validity of psychiatric diag-
nosis (Caplan, 1995). Moreover, in widening the
scope of what is regarded as “disordered,” the
mental health professions extend their reach,
while the pharmaceutical industry benefits from
the rising number of diagnoses in need of
treatment (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997).
DSM, Overview
Discrimination: The Social Implications of
Diagnosis
Far from being a benign and merely descriptive
document, the DSM has very real and potentially
dangerous consequences for those diagnosed
(Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004). The application of
psychiatric diagnoses often results in individual
shame as well as social and economic costs such
as discrimination in legal proceedings for child
custody and prejudiced insurance practices.
Moreover, these implications are particularly
problematic for those on the margins of society,
who are most likely to receive more serious diag-
noses (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004; Kutchins &
Kirk, 1997).
International Relevance
A central critique of the DSM is that it implicitly
promotes a Western understanding of the self and
suffering (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004; Kleinman,
1988; Marecek & Hare-Mustin, 2009). “Mental
disorders” are presented as essential entities of
the universal human that vary only superficially
along culture, age, and gender lines (Mezzich
et al., 1999). Reflecting this assumption, the
DSM is organized such that disorders are first
defined with diagnostic criteria, and then quali-
fied through a listing of specific culture- and
gender-related issues that describe variations in
presentation. Further, a separate “Glossary of
Cultural Concepts of Distress” is presented in
the appendix of the DSM, suggesting that the
disorders in the main text are “culture-free”
(Mezzich et al., 1999). This approach has been
critiqued as ignoring the interpenetration of lan-
guage, culture, and experience and reducing the
expressions of distress in cultures outside of
white, middle class America to psychiatric exot-
ica (Mezzich et al., 1999). In exporting these
ideas, the DSM contributes to the homogeniza-
tion of expressions and understandings of dis-
tress, while its guise of scientific neutrality
conceals its ethnocentrism. As such, the DSM
can function as a form of cultural imperialism
(Bentall, 2004; Marecek & Hare-Mustin, 2009;
Watters, 2010).
505 D
Practice Relevance
The adoption of DSM diagnoses can invite an
individualized, depoliticized, and pathologized
understanding of distress and a limited scope
within which to formulate solutions. Given the
multiple individual, ethical, and political prob-
lems inherent in psychiatric diagnoses, critical
scholars have largely eschewed DSM labels in D
favor of more phenomenological and contex-
tualized framings of people’s problems and
experiences (Bentall, 2004; Caplan &
Cosgrove, 2004). Many have called for
a radical shift away from individualistic
understandings and toward more political
approaches to address human misery (Caplan
& Cosgrove 2004; Marecek & Hare-Mustin,
2009). For example, Caplan and Cosgrove
(2004) suggest labeling problems using
descriptors like “the consequences of poverty”
or “the damage done by interpersonal discrim-
ination/demeaning treatment.” In order to help
individuals in distress, therefore, change must
be social and political as well as individual
(Caplan, 1995; Marecek & Hare-Mustin,
2009). It is essential, then, that service provi-
sion (including insurance policies) be
decoupled from the requirement of a DSM
diagnosis.
Future Directions
The APA appears committed to the pursuit of
a biomedical framework for “mental disor-
ders,” with focused attention on scientific
advancements in molecular genetics, neurosci-
ence, and cognitive and behavioral science
(APA, 2012). Meanwhile, critical approaches
underscore how all knowledge reflects power
and is a product of historical and political
circumstance. As such, these contrasting intel-
lectual traditions appear to function as two
solitudes, with the latter having had rather
limited effect on the former. The challenge
for critical scholars and activists will be to
exert greater influence in professional and
popular formulations of distress.
D 506
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