Practice Research: Critical Psychology in and Through Practices

Annual Review of Critical Psychology Copyright © 2000 Discourse Unit Vol. 2, pp. 145-179 (ISSN: 1464-0538) Practice research: critical psychology in and through practices Morten Nissen Abstract: In this paper, I retrace the development of ‘practice research’ as the action research methodology of the tradition of ‘Critical Psychology’, in Berlin and Copenhagen. The outset is the project of building a psychology on the foundations of Marx’s philosophy and social theory, the standpoint of which, as stated in Marx’s Feuerbach Theses, is that of human society, or socializing humanity. The resulting theory and methodological principles are outlined and critically dis- cussed. The pivotal issue is how to relate a standpoint of humanity with a standpoint of the subject in everyday life. While this original Critical Psychology can be seen to fall into the trap of a kind of cartesian modernism in its methodology, the subsequent Danish attempts to a remedy through a situated reformulation can be criticized as influenced by relativist postmodern trends. A way out of these problems is sought, finally, in the formulation of a general epistemology and methodology of practice, to which the idea of overcoming ideology is central. Keywords: Action research, practice, critical psychology, methodology, humanity The origins of practice research The term ‘practice research’, as referred to here, originates in the research tradition which since the publishing of Klaus Holzkamp’s book Sinnliche Erkenntnis in 1973 has been called Critical Psychology (in German: Die Kritische Psychologie – and it is sometimes added: with a capital K. This distinguishes the name of a proto-organization, a ‘School’, from a simple predicate of very different trends which can be said to be ‘critical’. Accord- ingly, I shall refer to the theory/movement/tradition as Critical Psycholo- gy). Due to its strong geographical center it was also known as the Berlin School or German Critical Psychology. Since Holzkamp’s Grundlegung der Psychologie (Foundation of Psychology) in 1983, the tradition aspired for the predicate Subjektwissenschaft, the ‘Science of the Subject’ (see, among others, Holzkamp, 1973, 1983, 1993; Osterkamp, 1975, 1976; good introductions in English are Tolman and Maiers, 1991; Tolman, 1994. A word of caution: the German Wissenschaft [Danish: videnskab] is perhaps ill translated into the English Science; a translation convention which was probably motivated by the ambition to redefine ‘science’ rather than turning our backs on it). Practice research (Praxisforschung), as a term, is traceable to the early 80s, Morten Nissen where systematic and deliberate attempts at a grounding of this research in the reflection of various forms of (so-called ‘psychological’) practice were undertaken, notably in the shape of a standing research conference called Theorie-Praxis-Konferenz convened twice a year between 1983 and 1995. From the beginning, the methodological notions in Critical Psychology and its practice research were much influenced by the kind of action research ideas prominent in the academic branches of the student movement and New Left in the 70s. The origins of these were the Marxist tradition of the labor movement and the communist parties. If action research, then, as it is usual among psychologists, is attributed to Kurt Lewin and his followers, it would not be accurate to say that the practice research of Critical Psychol- ogy is a branch of action research. It is more relevant to probe the ways in which Critical Psychology has interpreted its Marxist heritage in a general attempt to understand the relations of theory and practice. First of all, the epistemological references to Marx’s 1845 Theses on Feu- erbach (Marx, 1973) are in many ways the most consequential source of the development of the methodology of Critical Psychology. In the early 70s, Marx’s 6th Thesis on Feuerbach was widely received and approved in various strands of critical psychology (see, above all, Sève, 1974): that ‘the essence of humanity is no abstraction inherent in each individual’, but real- ly ‘the ensemble of social relations’ (Marx and Engels, 1977). This sen- tence expressed the impetus for a ‘Copernican revolution’ in psychology: like Copernicus’ theory of the Universe established that the solar system doesn’t revolve around the Earth, a Marxist psychology should be founded on the realization that human life isn’t centered around the individual. What was then much less widely adopted was the epistemology of practice and hence the establishment of a new materialism expressed in some of the other of Marx’s theses: The first criticizes ‘all previous materialism’ for only seeing reality ‘in the form of an object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively’ (ebd.). The second states that ‘the question of whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but is a practical question’ (ebd.). The third: ‘The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by people and that educators must themselves be educated’; ‘the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice’ (ebd.). 146 Morten Nissen The tenth: ‘The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new materialism is human society or social (or perhaps better: societalizing, vergesellschaftende, MN) humanity’ (ebd). And, finally, the 11th simply says: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it’ (ebd.). These theses were a turning point in Marx’s philosophy, and in many ways they are yet to be realized (see, e.g. Ilyenkov, 1977, or Jensen, 1999). With their strong emphasis on subjectivity as fundamental to Marx’s philosophical program, they provided Critical Psychology with ‘authoritative’ argu- ments that a psychology could, in fact, be developed from inside a Marxist world view, and with a strong emphasis of developing a ‘standpoint of humanity’. Methodologically, they also expressed, at a philosophical level, how fundamentally Critical Psychology was based on, and strove for rele- vance to, a revolutionary practice. Now, terms such as ‘practice’, and ‘revolutionary practice’, are very far from providing a stable and clear-cut point of reference. It is not only the case, and the point, that practice is inherently historical – subject to change and the origin of changes – but it is also inescapable that the concept of practice is itself variable. The emergence of ‘practice research’ in the tradition of Critical Psychology during the 80s was, on the face of it, an attempt to concretize an abstract and purely theoretical project. Its students had graduated and become professional psychologists. But what arose was, rather, a different kind of practice and, as a consequence, a different kind of reflection on practice. This is evident when one compares the literature in Critical Psychology on ‘practice’ from the 70s and the 80s. In the 70s, the institutionally defined boundaries of pedagogical or psychological practice were transgressed into a kind of political practice, understood as forms of resistance. In the 80s, prevailing institutional features were instead analyzed as factual conditions for individual professionals. In the 70s, close-to-full-time activists, alt- hough winning their bread as students or professors, engaged in alternative schools (of which the so-called ‘Pupils’ Shop Red Freedom’ [Schülerladen Rote Freiheit] was the most famous), counseling etc. to realize a Critical Psychology in practice. In the 80s, professional psychologists and other ‘practitioners’ met with researchers to reflect on and describe the conditions of ‘their’ practice. In the 70s, the practice of critical psychologists was one out of a huge variety of revolutionary practices of the strong and elaborated student and labor movements. In the 80s, the Left was on the defensive and the point of reference for reflection on practice was, increasingly, the general mainstream tendency toward local quality management. 147 Morten Nissen This recontextualization of ‘practice’ led to an array of problems, some of which I shall return to in what follows. But it also considerably sharpened the methodological awareness of the researchers in Critical Psychology. In Holzkamp’s 1983 account of Critical Psychology, rather vague formula- tions (e.g. ‘critical practice’) derived from the general epistemological backdrop are combined with very abstract conclusions drawn from the system of general theoretical categories. But in the years that followed, a number of reflections on empirical methodology, relations between theory and practice, and institutional conditions for practice appeared. The prob- lematic and somewhat alien contextualization of Critical Psychology in what the professionals knew as ‘practice’ proved a fertile ground for methodological reflections. It is these reflections which propelled the second shift in the history of practice research in Critical Psychology, a shift that is at the same time geographical in that it signals an increasingly visible difference between the Berlin- and the Copenhagen-based projects. The way I understand this difference is consistent with the growing divergence in the theoretical concep- tualization of social practice. It is above all the introduction

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