This is a question I posed to my critical psychology professor a few years ago, hoping to find a simple answer. Three years later I stand corrected.
Critical psychology does not criticise and no it doesn’t offer a blanket solution to all the problems of the world (it creates a few of its own though).
So now that this has been cleared lets proceed to what I think of the question and its possible answer.
Critical psychology is often engaged in activism of the unheard kind, it asks patients what they expect of the system, it gets them involved and thinks of them as being capable of being an expert on their condition. It attacks most things conventional in psychology and does not provide a simple solution or a one solution to every problem, sometimes it the solution is up to you if you want one that is. The goal isn’t to provide a quick answer that can be applied everywhere as conventional psychology does, it keeps looking for answers and basks in its own dissent.
Perhaps I was so used to a solution or to see clinical psychology being practised (in the most conventional sense of the term) that I didn’t see what lies at the heart of ‘curing people’. that critical psychology is engaed in activism maybe enough for a few people is sometimes impossible to imagine. Why would activism be enough? Is there anything else to it then a few nosiy protestors? These are some of the questions I had. However a protest is neeed not be a means to an end it maybe the end or if I may use the term ‘therapeutic’.
The assumption of treating, counselling has been with us for so long that I am afraid that it takes a huge leap to think beyond the language of therapy. Perhaps some people don’t need or want therapy and protesting about it makes perfect sense to them. Perhaps its is not for me to decide what to replace conventional therapy with. That would be a real shame- replacing an oppressive syatem with a new improved version of itself.
The answer if one can call it that is not to fall into the old ways of complacency and rhetoric but to invent and reinvent and dissent.
Disclaimer: This article only represents my view of things and isn’t everyone’s view of how the ideas of critical psychology can be put into clinical practice or help change what exists.
