CPCEA2020  PRESENTATIONS & BIOGRAPHIES

 

Andrea Precht and Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz  (Chile) 2

Angélick Schweizer  (Switzerland) 3

Anup Gampa (China/USA) 4

Brett Scholz  (Australia) 5

*David Fryer   (Australia) 6

Fu Wai  (Hong Kong) 7

*Hidekazu Sasaki  (Japan) 8

Karolina Lamtiur Dalimunthe & Noer Fauzi Rachman  (Indonesia) 9

Martin Dege and Irene Strasser  (France / Egypt) 10

Masahiro Masuda (Japan) 11

Michiko Tsuge (Japan) 12

Robert K. Beshara  (USA) 13

*Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu (Turkey) 14

Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz and Andrea Precht  (Chile) 15

*Sonia Soans  (India) 16

Syifa Adilla  (Indonesia) 17

Takehiko Ito (Japan) 18

Teguh Wijaya Mulya  (Indonesia) 19

Tomoaki Imamichi (USA) 20

V. Didik Suryo Hartoko and A. Harimurti  (Indonesia) 21

Yasuhiro Igarashi (Japan) 22

 

Andrea Precht and Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz  (Chile)

 

“Dysfunctional families are the norm”. The discursive use of pseudo-psychological terms as a way of legitimisation/de-legitimization of parental participation in schools

 

The Chilean educational system is strongly framed by neoliberal policies that tend toward the privatization of care. In that respect, schools and parents are expected to manage risk using an individualistic approach. This generates expectations about parental participation at school. There is a tendency toward hyper-responsibility among parents, which makes them responsible for their children’s academic achievement. It’s the ultimate privatization of care. Using a critical discourse analysis perspective, this presentation inquiries into the way that teachers legitimize and de-legitimize family involvement at schools through their language. It further addresses the ways in which ideas that have been borrowed from the language of psychology are used to legitimize or de-legitimize forms of parental involvement. We conducted three discussion groups. A provisional coding framework was first developed by identifying broad issues. A second coding approach was interpretive, identifying the actors, actions, and purposes of the relationship between the school and the family. Legitimization and de-legitimization guidelines for these actions were sought and codified based on Van Leeuwen’s criteria: authority, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoiesis. Results show a teleological-grounded argument in order to define school authority in family-school relationships using psychological terms. School is described as a bulwark, protecting children abandoned by their parents. Teachers’ actions rest in the authority given them, both by their professional knowledge and their personal capacity to compensate for bad parenting. The implications of these findings for community-based work are discussed.

 

Ph.D. Andrea Precht

Professor Andrea Precht is a faculty member of Universidad Católica del Maule, where she is a researcher in cultural studies in education and is currently leading the Fondecyt Project No. 1181925 Mothers’ Ways of Agency Within the School. She is a member of Centro de Investigación en Educación para la Justicia Social (CIEJUS). She is a faculty member of both the psychology and education doctorate programs at UCM and a former head of the doctorate program in UCM education at the same university.

 

Msc. Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz

Psychologist, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción Chile.

She is currently PhD candidate in Psychology, mention in Education from the Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. Her doctoral thesis work has been developed within the framework of Critical Psychology based on Michel Foucault's post-structural epistemology, with emphasis on Foucauldian discursive analysis and critical analysis of discourse. She is currently participating in the Fondecyt Regular Project No. 1181925 “Mothers’ Ways of Agency Within the School” leading by Ph.D. Andrea Precht.

During 2019, she presented at the International Critical Psychology Praxis Congress, at Northern New Mexico College, in the United States, with the paper "Critical Analysis of the Press Release Comments on the New Law Relating to Repeating School in Chile".

Angélick Schweizer  (Switzerland)

 

When sexuality is a matter of health: a critical health psychology study on psychosexual experiences of women diagnosed with HPV

 

The attention given to sexuality as a health issue is increasingly important in the fields of research and therapy. In this context, Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most frequent sexually transmitted infection with 80% of adults infected once in their life. However, little research has focused on the psychosexual experiences of such a diagnosis in women.

The aim of our study, based on a mixed method design, is to examine the psychosexual experiences of patients who have been recently diagnosed with HPV related lesions. A validated questionnaire (N=96), followed by two focus groups (N=10) and four semi-structured interviews with patients were conducted. Although quantitative results showed no sexual dysfunction for patients who have been diagnosed, the qualitative part pointed out several changes on women’s psychosexual experiences, depending on their relationship status. Lack of knowledge about HPV and fear of cancer were common after being diagnosed with HPV. Moreover, sense of shame and guilt leading single women to social isolation were identified. Finally, the avoidance of certain sexual practices and difficulties to disclose their diagnosis to a new partner were reported.

In a context where sexuality is surrounded by numerous socioeconomical stakes and given its importance in women’s health, a definition limited to the physical dimension of sexuality is not neutral. This is why our research highlights the need for a reflective approach to values underpinning widespread theoretical models and tools used in research and professional practice. Finally, it offers alternative approaches towards a better consideration of patients’ experiences.

 

Angélick Schweizer, is Junior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, at the Research Group in Critical and Qualitative Health Psychology as well as the PHASE research centre (www.unil.ch/phase). After having obtained her PhD in health psychology in 2014, she worked as senior researcher at the University Hospital in Lausanne. She is the editor of the first book of mixed research in psychology written in French (publication, January 2020). Her main areas of research are sexual health (cancer & sexualities, gynaecological issues & sexualities) and mixed methods research.

 

 

Anup Gampa (China/USA)

 

Transforming Neoliberal Social Psychology into an Emancipatory Science

 

In hegemonic social psychology, race and racism are stripped of their structural and institutional underpinnings. Instead, the focus is explicitly on the individual and interpersonal level, and we are led to believe that the origins of racism are in ordinary people, or “from below”, and thus “everyone's a little bit racist.” This hegemonic understanding has become the basis for policy interventions in a number of arenas, especially in reforming policing in the US. We argue that under neoliberalism, the current form of global capitalism, such an approach to anti-racism research actually serves the interests of the capitalist class. Thus we “diagnose” police with racial bias and then offer “therapeutic” trainings and institutional workshops to address these issues. Instead, researchers should place racism and policing within the context of the structural needs of capitalism, highlighting both the need for systemic transformation and the limits of anti-discriminatory policy changes within the current capitalist state. Psychological research, therefore, should incorporate an explicit Marxist analysis and should contribute to our understanding of and learning from social movements. To illustrate this approach, we offer a study on the connection between Black Lives Matter and its progressive impact on societal-scale implicit and explicit racial attitudes in the U.S. This inquiry subverts the usual neoliberal individualization and depoliticization of racism and points to social struggles and political changes targeting structural racism as the keys to transforming societal attitudes. We compare our approach to competing theories that are critical of hegemonic psychology, such as cultural-psychological theory.

 

Anup Gampa is an educator-scholar focusing on the relationship between an individual’s psychology and the social, particularly social movements, racism, and capitalism. For example, his research links The Movement for Black Lives with a decrease in White individuals’ negative implicit attitudes towards Black people. In one line of research, he is interrogating the relationship between social psychology and capitalism, especially in the way social psychology studies and attempts to fight racism. In another line, Anup is investigating one’s willingness to justify the U.S economic system given one’s knowledge about wealth inequality in that system.  He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Virginia (2018), where he was awarded the Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award in the Social Sciences.

 

Brett Scholz  (Australia)

 

Critical approaches to co-production: Challenges and opportunities in East Asian contexts and beyond

 

Psychology has historically done research ‘on’ or ‘to’ individuals or groups, rather than conducting research in partnership with them. This can create or reproduce power imbalances in social structures across contexts. Recent moves to ‘involve’ stakeholders in research seems too often to be a rhetorical rather than practical turn.

One of the focal points of critical psychology is how psychology privileges its own knowledge over others’. Experiential expertise is often not valued in psychology research other than in terms of research participation. One way in which power imbalances in whose knowledge is valued might be redressed is through co-production to ensure stakeholders have decision-making and agenda-setting power in research programs. Collaborative work with stakeholders is only considered ‘co-production’ when all stages of research (from conceptualisation, through design and conducting, to disseminating and beyond) are led by or done in collaboration with stakeholders.

In this paper I will elaborate on key concerns about co-production and ways in which critical psychologists might overcome them, including:

-          Addressing criticisms that particular stakeholders are not ‘representative’ enough;

-          Challenging research ecosystems that do not provide time and space for co-production;

-          Taking advantage of research hierarchies to facilitate better co-production; and

-          Ensuring stakeholders are equal research partners including in terms of remuneration or recognition.

Implications of co-production and partnerships with marginalised groups will be discussed, with an emphasis on the actions that critical psychologists can take to minimise tokenism. Specifically, allyship with marginalised groups and its role in overcoming barriers will be addressed.

 

Dr Scholz is a critical health psychologist and senior research fellow from the ANU Medical School at The Australian National University. The vast majority of his 57 publications about health services and organisations are co-produced with and co-authored by stakeholders outside of psychology. His research focuses on working to embed consumer leadership into organisations and systems through three interrelated themes: a) emphasising the value of stakeholders’ experiential expertise, b) challenging barriers (such as stigma and tokenism) to a consumer-led health sector, and c) acts of allyship that psychologists can engage in to support stakeholders.

 

 

*David Fryer   (Australia)

Critical psychologies - so what?

The question ‘what is critical psychology?’ is often asked and many answers proposed. In this presentation rather than asking directly what critical psychology ‘is’ or asking directly, for example, whether Approach A is critical or not, whether Approach B is critically problematic etc., I will ask what the implications would be for various interest groups if various manifestations of the psy-complex commonly positioned as ‘critical psychology’ by critical evangelists were endorsed and acted upon. Within the critical frame of reference of this presentation, manifestations of the psy-complex, are comprised of: claims which have been constituted as ‘true’ within particular truthing regimes; ‘phenomena’ which have been ‘constituted as ‘real’ within particular metaphysical regimes; practices which have been constituted as evidence-based within particular efficacy regimes; values which have been constituted as ‘good’ within particular morality regimes and so on and so forth. Within the critical frame of reference of this presentation, the important critical questions to ask in relation to particular manifestations of the psy-complex are not ‘are its claims true?’ etc. but, rather, how have they been truthed etc. and, crucially, what would be the consequences for which interest groups if:  its claims were acted upon as if true;  its metaphysics were acted upon as if real; its practices were acted upon as if efficacious; its values were acted upon as if progressive; and so on and so forth. The presentation will, in brief, ask of critical psychologies: “in whose interests is it that these should be taken seriously and deployed?”

 

David Fryer is an Associate Fellow of The Critical Institute and an active member of the editorial board of the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. His current critical research / scholarly preoccupations are the reconstitution of the neoliberal unemployed subject and critically reappraising the work of the Austro-Marxist social psychologist, Marie Jahoda. David Fryer is a member of the academic precariat, currently contactable through the University of Queensland:   d.fryer@uq.edu.au

 

 

Fu Wai  (Hong Kong)

 

Love will tear us apart: A case of critical psychology in a place called Hong Kong

 

“The words of prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls”. Walking through the tunnel filled up with Lennon Walls, a self-identified psychologist, who has been standing outside and inside the center of turbulence, observing, receiving, and attempting to make a change in a small but overpopulated so called East-meets-West, but de facto Neoliberalism meets Post(?)-Colonialism city named Hong Kong , delivers the description of Rhizome (in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense that spread around with no direction, no end, dispersed, and unpredictability) occurring in a civic movement outburst in 9th of June, 2019. The narrative is delivered in three-parts. First, this “psychologist”, with a genre usually described as discourse analysis, recollects how mainstream profession of psychologists, from 2014 (The Umbrella Movement), to now (ongoing Anti-Extradition Movement) , on one-hand keep working on linking civic movement with mental illness by setting up a “vacuum” that ignores atrocity and oppression, on another hand providing a “psychological resolution” by suggesting unity, reconciliation, and self-help, by “communicating and sharing” and various “techniques” in “psychology” that allows a utopian “reunion”, which is the opposite to existing social evil called “social-cleavage”. In such discourse anger is a sin, sadness and grieving is unnecessary, both are “illogical and irrational” moves, which lead to “social evil” of “violence”. Second, this “psychologist” described the work of a group of people, in the “profession” or not in the “profession”, who are in the Psychological Underground, activated by de-mything, truthing by de-truthing (In Foucauldian sense), not by channeling arguments in academic journals in APA format, but actively rebuts in social media LIHKG and Lennon Walls, and keep contact with people in the movement, suggesting what tears us apart is not necessary evil, but a new awakening that “tearing us apart from Neoliberalism and Harmony myth” is necessary. Finally, this “psychologist” views critical psychology per se is not only a branch within psychology, but a revolution in the sense that it is not only criticizing the “mainstream” (which includes an agglomeration of fixed methods, APA format, books and articles, “truth and facts”, “techniques”,  “assessments”, and consumable psychological constructs), but a tear- apart from truth presented in Neo-liberalism impact factor game that acts out, not only in the sound of silence, but triggers new possibility by Rhizomizing new engagements and possibilities against the hierarchical and tree-like knowledge system.

 

Dr. Fu Wai is an Associate Professor at Department of Counselling and Psychology, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, and is the research coordinator for Master of Social Sciences in Counselling Psychology program. Dr. Fu Wai has developed courses in qualitative research methods, history of psychology, and psychoanalysis, in undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum of psychology, and is active in putting critical psychology in the training of counselling psychologists in Hong Kong. Dr. Fu Wai is also a consultant of Hong Kong General Union of School Counselling Professionals, and is the founder of The Signifier, which is a hub for local young philosophers that provides public  seminars on psychoanalysis, critical theory, and phenomenology.

 

 

*Hidekazu Sasaki  (Japan)

 

Who defines Self-Realization and/or Self-Actualization?: A Critical Consideration of these Concepts from a Japanese Historical Viewpoint

 

Describing a topic can become extremely abstract; I think that the question “Who defines it?” is more fundamental than the question “What is it?” and that the former might be a more crucial issue than the latter. This idea occurred to me, immediately after my research that examined how and why the context of self-realization in Japan has undergone varied drastic changes in its 120-year history. Since the ethical theory of self-realization was imported to Japan from England in the 1890s, the Japanese terms jiga-jitsugen and jiko-jitsugen, which were the original translations of self-realization, have sometimes been the concerns of a variety of people including scholars, officials, politicians, businessmen, educators, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and so on. I discovered that the social location and significance of the “ideal self” depended greatly on who was more interested in self-realization than other agents and stakeholders. For instance, before and during World War II, some nationalistic education scholars frequently encouraged young elites to realize their individual selves by enthusiastically devoting their loyalty to the Japanese state. From the late 1980s onwards, some conservative men have condemned working women for identifying the desire for self-realization with selfishness. In this presentation, I will provide a critical overview of the Japanese history of self-realization and/or self-actualization mainly in terms of who attaches meaning to them either consciously or unconsciously.

 

 

 

Karolina Lamtiur Dalimunthe & Noer Fauzi Rachman  (Indonesia)

 

Crosses the disciplinary boundaries: the way of critical psychology can understand and deal with massive crises in Indonesia

The modernization in Indonesia, in the form of implementation of technology and development, has a way to disrupt people's life almost in any aspects. The example of a technological incident of Lapindo mudflow disaster in 2006 and land concession that turn Kalimantan and Sumatra forests into palm oil plantations and mining areas have changed the environment, ecosystem and also exposed local people to harmful and oppressive relationships. There are also other changes that not so obvious but have created challenging fields that needed to be explored to get a better understanding of how this modernization has caused turbulence and crises in Indonesia. Some frontiers that can be shown as fields where Indonesia (critical) psychologists have developed a different approach in addressing the human situation and also encourage social movement namely in labors, adat communities as part of indigenous people in Indonesia, and also slum society known as Kampung Kota people who inhabitants almost every big cities in Indonesia. Application of some interesting methods such as encourage the labors to write their own stories as a way to liberate them or creating policy that could work against land grabbing and giving back the hutan adat (customary forest) to indigenous people, cannot be separated from the fact that each of psychologists has crossed their disciplinary boundaries to fully understand the situation and developed collaboration with all parties to create different approach and solution to the situation and to fight for marginalized people. Most of them have to expand their knowledge and even have to develop values against psychology itself that insisted on working at an individual level and on being neutral despite dealing with massive ecological rupture and cases of exploitation of marginalized groups in Indonesia.

Karolina Lamtiur Dalimunthe is a lecturer in the fields of community and educational psychology at Faculty of Psychology Padjadjaran University. She also has interest in studying disaster as cultural, social and psychological phenomenon. She is a PhD candidate in Faculty of Social Science at Radboud University Nijmegen The Netherlands since 2014. The professional work that she has been done so far relate with women, children, and other disadvantage or vulnerable groups in facing difficult circumstances such as disaster, violence, human trafficking and other adversities. The agency, social-cultural movements and healing processes for individual and communities have been one of the focuses of her research and intervention besides policy advocacy in Indonesia. 

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman is a scholar-activist in the fields of community psychology, agrarian politics, community development, social movements, and political ecology. He got PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011. Before he joined the doctoral program in Berkeley in 2005, he had been one of the leaders of Indonesian agrarian movements, a trainer in community organizing, community driven development, and policy advocacy. After finishing his Ph.D. in 2011, he led the Sajogyo Institute for Indonesian Agrarian Studies based in Bogor, Indonesia, while teaching on “agrarian politics and movements” and “Indonesian land policies” at Bogor Agricultural University. Between 2015 and 2018 he worked full-time at the Executive Office of the Indonesian President. Currently, he is doing policy-related and on-the-ground works mainly intersections of agrarian reform, rural development, social forestry and conservation, local and indigenous communities, and land tenure security, while teaching community psychology (undergrad and master levels) at the Faculty of Psychology, Padjadjaran University. His last work is “Indirect Recognition. Frontiers and Territorialization around Mount Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia” (co-authored with Christian Lund) published in World Development, 2018, volume 101, page 417-428.

 

Martin Dege and Irene Strasser  (France / Egypt)

 

Critical Psychology and the liberal arts

 

The idea of a ‘critical’ psychology has been around almost as long as psychology has existed as a discipline. It is strongly related to a perception of psychology in a state of ‘crisis:’ Psychologists seem unable to find answers to the most important problems within the discipline, or maybe more so, they seem unable to ask the right questions. Against this background, many new consensus groups have formed over the past decades that typically made use of the label ‘critical psychology’ in one or the other way. In our talk we want to examine some of these critical strands - many of which claim to be ‘culturally aware’ - and analyze the extent to which they form particular orthodoxies to oppose what they perceive as a psychological mainstream. We want to challenge these ideas, and from this plateau reflect on ways to truly pluralize psychology beyond an oftentimes narrow focus on ‘being critical’. We believe that one starting point for such a pluralization can be found in the liberal arts and recent changes at progressive liberal arts institutions reflected in a turn to more democratic classroom settings and increased community involvement. In the final section of our talk we want to draw from our own teaching experiences and show how education can contribute to critical understandings of the potential of psychology as a discipline and as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

 

Martin Dege is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the American University of Paris. He received his PhD and MA degrees from Clark University, Massachusetts and a BA from Freie Universität Berlin. Professor Dege's research follows three strands. On the theoretical level he is interested in the historical emergence of psychology as a discipline, more specifically, how various theoretical ideas have been intertwined with political interests and power struggles to form the discipline as it stands today. On the empirical level, he investigates how new forms of technology change our everyday lives, at once unfolding new potentials for inclusive practices across our society and foreclosing particular local traditions and systems of thought. On the institutional level, he explores concepts of digital humanities and how digitalization changes both research and teaching. mdege@aup.edu

 

Irene Strasser is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the American University in Cairo. In the past, she held positions at the American University of Paris and the University Klagenfurt. She received her PhD form Vienna University. Professor Strasser’s research focuses on lifespan development with an emphasis on age and aging, in particular on concepts and images of aging. Her work is informed by critical perspectives in gerontology, the development of wisdom in the context of biographical experiences, and gender studies. Her aim is to explore equal rights issues in the context of aging as well as possibilities of older people to participate in societal activities, regardless of gender, class and ethnicity. irene.strasser@aucegypt.edu

 

 

Masahiro Masuda (Japan)

 

Resurrecting constructivist views of developmental processes of personal relationships: Acts of shared meaning

 

Social psychological research on developmental processes of personal relationships was inaugurated by Byrne’s “bogus stranger” experiment in late 1960s, which posited that the anticipatory high ratio of similarity in attitudes would possibly increase preliminary attractiveness of a prospective relational partner. Unlike other pioneers’ works on attractiveness which attached greater importance to the values of stimulants (that is, attractive figures) or outcomes of relationships with them, similarity research as well as other cognitive approaches have been relatively disregarded in the realm of relationship research except for social psychological research on empathic accuracy and communication research on comforting messages, both of which do not well explain the ebb and flow of personal relationships.

This paper briefly reviews constructivist approaches to stability and change in personal relationships, focusing on Duck’s initial attempt to apply Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory to friendship formation in 1970s and his second theoretical venture named the model of Serial Construction of Meaning in 1990s. Duck has paid more attention to the construction of shared meaning through communicative interactions , and therefore, his theoretical trials has explicated how common experiences shared with relational partners enable them to reach sociality in Kelly’s term, that is, the attempt to see the world through each other’s eye. This paper critically compares and contrasts Duck’s model of Serial Construction of Meaning with other scholars’ “successful" perspective-taking approaches and make suggestions for utilizing ideas unique to Kellian constructivism for elucidating dynamic processes of relational development beginning initiation through dissolution.

 

Masahiro Masuda, Ph.D. (Communication Studies), University of Iowa, USA, 2000;

M.A. (Human and Environmental Studies [Social Psychology]), Kyoto University, Japan, 1993; B.A. (Letters [Psychology]), Kyoto University, Japan, 1991.

Professor of School of Health and Nursing Science at Wakayama Medical University, Japan, teaching psychology and interpersonal communication as well as academic research skills and social scientific methodology.

 

 

Michiko Tsuge (Japan)

 

LGBTQ+ and Psychologists in Japan: Where we are and where we are heading

 

In Japan in order to be a Certified Clinical Psychologist or a Certified Public Psychologist, there are no requirements for studying or being trained in Cross-Cultural Psychology, Multicultural Psychology, Minority Issues, Feminist Psychology, or Sexual Minority Issues. Therefore, psychologists' knowledge of these issues varies widely given that what they know on these subjects is either gained through studying on their own or learning in the process of providing services. It is probably safe to say that many, if not most, psychologists in Japan have very limited knowledge of or experience with these issues.

In the area of sexual minority issues, Japanese Certified Clinical or Certified Public Psychologists are just beginning to serve LGBTQ+ individuals and learning about their psychological needs. However, as this field is still new to us, misunderstandings are very common, and we have a long way to go to better understand and serve this population.

Japanese professionals in the field of psychology are more aware of and exposed to privileged, upper- and middle-class Japanese LGBTQ+ populations. Little is known about those LGBTQ+ individuals who also face multiple discriminations due to being non-Japanese or biracial, poor, disabled (physically or mentally) in Japanese society. It is unlikely that they are seen or recognized by either Japanese society or psychology professionals. The purpose of this presentation is to further explore LGBTQ+ issues and what needs to be done to provide appropriate and effective psychological services to all LGBTQ+ individuals in Japan.

 

Michiko Tsuge is a certified Clinical Psychologist as well as an adjunct Associate Professor at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. After receiving her M.A from International Christian University in Japan she moved to the U.S. to further study counseling psychology where she received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from an APA accredited Program at Temple University. She also completed an APA accredited Internship at Purdue University counseling center in the U.S. Throughout the program, she learned the importance of Ethics, as well as Diversity including Feminism, Cross-Cultural perspectives, and Minority issues in the field of Psychology. After her return from the U.S., her clinical and research focus was with the often forgotten and/or ignored populations and the minority issues, especially LGBTQ+, arising from their status in Japan.

 

 

Robert K. Beshara  (USA)

 

Cutting Through False Dualisms: Transformative Social Change as a Transmodern Moral Framework for Critical Psychological Research

 

In this article, I will use the two truths doctrine from Buddhism to explicate transformative social change as a transmodern moral framework for critical psychological research. The two truths doctrine, a teaching from the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by Nāgārjuna, nondualistically collapses the ontology of transformation (absolute truth) and the epistemology of social change (relative truth) in the name of soteriology. At their core, dualistic problems and reductionist solutions are based upon the reification of concepts, which can result in devastating effects, such as the objectification (and oppression) of research participants—not mentioning moral relativism. This article attempts to offer a transmodern moral framework for qualitative and theoretical researchers in critical psychology outside the confines of the modern–postmodern debate.

 

Robert K. Beshara, Ph.D., M.F.A., is the author of Decolonial Psychoanalysis: Towards Critical Islamophobia Studies; the editor of A Critical Introduction to Psychology; the founder of www.criticalpsychology.org, a free resource for scholars, activists, and practitioners; and an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Humanities at Northern New Mexico College.

 

 

*Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu (Turkey)

 

How Different is Critical Psychology from the Mainstream

 

Strengthening critical psychology (CritPsy) in East Asia requires a careful analysis of historical conditions and structural forces that influence psychology, science, and universities in general. It is important to recognize, at the outset, that CritPsy tends to suffer from biases that are prevalent in hegemonic mainstream psychologies. First, mainstream psychologies (MP) function as an “import-export” business: MP produced at certain centers is later marketed globally as knowledge, practice, model, etc. Importers bring the “product” in and dealers market it locally: Universities and scholars often serve the former; practioners often serve the latter function. CritPsy is hardly different. Many critical psychologists in the Global South “import” and are more in tune with CritPsy from the Global North than in their own region or country. Secondly, many in CritPsy have not done sufficient decolonizing: CritPsy in Asia has to confront colonial biases in psychology, particularly Orientalism (Dhar & Siddiqui, 2013). Third, many critical psychologists continue to use standards based on notions of scholarship, sophistication and prestige prevalent in MP: These biases include valuing publications over action, judging quality based on citations rather than content, and even English-language skills. Fourth, CritPsy grounded in local struggles and published in native languages is hardly recognized, let alone utilized. Fifth, CritPsy has failed to address the danger of “permanent war” that has emerged following the end of Cold War (Duckett & Değirmencioğlu, 2017). Finaly, many critical psychologists fail to engage in both old and new forms of solidarity. A decade of CritPsy work in Turkey will be examined to illustrate the points above.

 

Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu was professor of psychology in Istanbul when he was fired in April 2016 for having signed a peace manifesto. In 2017, he was banned from public service for life. He has been in exile since 2016 and has held visiting positions in Cairo, Macerata, Brussels and Frankfurt. Most recently, he was a visiting scholar at Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. He now lives in Athens.

He has produced ground-breaking books on young people’s participation, martyrdom and militarism, psycho-social consequences of personal debt, and corruptive influences of private universities, and an award-winning documentary on the university entrance exam in Turkey.

As an outspoken advocate of children’s rights, he writes a Sunday column focused on children’s issues in a daily newspaper in Turkey. He is currently serving as president of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict & Violence (Peace Psychology). In the past, he also served as president of the European Community Psychology Association.

 

*Serdar will not able to come to the Conference due to complexity of Visa procedure

 

 

Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz and Andrea Precht  (Chile)

 

The Construction of Subjectivities on Schoolchildren Who Have Repeatedly Repeated: A Perspective from Critical Psychology

 

Subjective experiences are constructed through discourses and sustained within institutions of power such as the educational system. Understanding who we are and how we know each other through others are two aspects of the same process, one where subjectivities are articulated and molded in discursive practices throughout the life trajectory. One of the most significant trajectories encompasses the processes of schooling, in which experiences of school failure and success are intertwined with the socioeconomic and cultural reality of students. Repetition in repeat offenders in highly vulnerable contexts is one of them, and as a phenomenon it has been studied mostly from the economic perspective that the Chilean State has for reinvesting in these schoolchildren. From a post-structural perspective, using the contributions of Michel Foucault and the approaches of Critical Psychology, this essay seeks to expose the processes of construction of subjectivities in schoolchildren who have repeated repeatedly in contexts of high vulnerability, within the Chilean neoliberal system. Our aim is to evidence the pathologizing rationalities of hegemonic psychology that legitimize repetition as a process of social segregation and reveal how and why they are sustained. The methodology of critical discourse analysis will be used to analyze discursive practices established within the school context. These practices are articulated by their main actors—students, education professionals and proxies—and contrasted with psychological and educational theories regarding school achievement and repetition. It is hoped to show and expose how these discursive practices from traditional psychology mold the subjectivities of schoolchildren, in pathologizing school contexts.

 

Msc. Silvana S. Hernández-Ortiz

Psychologist, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción Chile.

She is currently PhD candidate in Psychology, mention in Education from the Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. Her doctoral thesis work has been developed within the framework of Critical Psychology based on Michel Foucault's post-structural epistemology, with emphasis on Foucauldian discursive analysis and critical analysis of discourse. She is currently participating in the Fondecyt Regular Project No. 1181925 “Mothers’ Ways of Agency Within the School” leading by Ph.D. Andrea Precht.

During 2019, she presented at the International Critical Psychology Praxis Congress, at Northern New Mexico College, in the United States, with the paper "Critical Analysis of the Press Release Comments on the New Law Relating to Repeating School in Chile".

Ph.D. Andrea Precht

Professor Andrea Precht is a faculty member of Universidad Católica del Maule, where she is a researcher in cultural studies in education and is currently leading the Fondecyt Project No. 1181925 Mothers’ Ways of Agency Within the School. She is a member of Centro de Investigación en Educación para la Justicia Social (CIEJUS). She is a faculty member of both the psychology and education doctorate programs at UCM and a former head of the doctorate program in UCM education at the same university.

 

*Sonia Soans  (India)

                                          

Dilemmas of Psychology in India

 

Psychology in India traces its history to the colonial era, with the establishment of a Psychology department in Calcutta University. Since then, universities offering degrees in Psychology have increased.  

 

Psychology in India today is dominated by American literature and concepts. This is reflected in how the discipline is often taught. While American authors and their textbooks have a monopoly over the discipline, indigenous theories also exist. The predominant focus of indigenous psychology is through ancient religious texts. Modern psychological concepts are often anachronistically attributed to the distant past. On the surface endeavours made to indigenise and look at ancient texts might seem like a means of decolonising, however it replaces one hegemony with another. The religious texts studied are not accessible or sacred to all communities in the country.

 

Both these positions, looking toward the west, or into the distant past have little or nothing to say about current conditions in India. As a result, psychology often transmits itself through banal, commonsensical ideas which negate justice. In doing so, pre-existing prejudices have been normalised and justified.

 

This paper will attempt to challenge the dominant discourse of psychology in India. Using personal experience and locating oneself within this system of knowledge production and dissemination, the author will examine how at its most banal the discipline transmits dangerous ideas about the human condition.

 

Keywords: revisionism, identity, conflict, hegemony,

 

Dr Sonia Soans is a critical psychologist whose interests lie in cinema, gender, nationalism and violence. She has written and published work in these areas. She is currently working as an assistant professor in Bangalore, India.

 

*Sonia will not able to come to the Conference due to travel restrictions.

 

 

Syifa Adilla  (Indonesia)

 

Between ‘Normal’ and ‘Mentally Ill’ In Indonesia: Who Builds the Discourse?

 

Mental health in Indonesia is a delicate issue that is not limited as a responsibility to mental health practitioners, such as psychiatrist or psychologist.  In a country with over 264 million people, this issue also becomes responsible for religious leaders and dukun (supernatural/magic service providers).  Each profession is favored by different local community with different characteristics and has a significant role in the local community to understand and diagnose a person with ‘normal’ or ‘mentally ill’ label.

This paper exemplifies the approach and intervention used by each profession, from mental health practitioners to religious leaders and dukun in Indonesia.  Some of interventions that are still used are Ruqyah (Islamic form of exorcism) or exorcism done by religious leaders and pasung (patients who are diagnosed as mentally ill is being locked and chained) as a form of rehabilitation for mentally ill patients.  Those interventions are still common in Indonesia, since the stigma of mentally ill person being not religious enough and still being seen as a disgrace to society.  Data per May, 2019 given by HIMPSI (Himpunan Psikologi Indonesia – Indonesian Psychology Association) has shown that there are only 1.143 people who are certified as psychologist in Indonesia and the number is not widely spread through the country – most of them are centralized in big cities in Indonesia, very expensive that making them not accessible for people who come from lower class income and rural communities.  Given the centralization of mental health professionals, access of proper mental health rehabilitation is only limited to certain classes, people who have money and live in big cities, making mental health in Indonesia a very exclusive treatment, and the stigma that is still around the society, it is not surprising if there are certain local communities prefer to seek for help from religious leaders and dukun, even though their approach is scientifically questionable.  The discrepancy of classes in community leads to the differences of a discourse on deciding whether a person is ‘normal’ and ‘mentally ill’ in Indonesia.  Who are being listened by the society or who make the categorization and discourse of ‘normal’ and ‘mentally Ill’ in Indonesia?  Is people who have better access to proper mental health are considered more ‘normal’than the people who do not?

 

Syifa Adilla is a social psychology graduate student in Universitas Padjadjaran, Jatinangor, Indonesia. She graduated as a bachelor of psychology from Universitas Padjadjaran in 2017, with an undergraduate thesis research about ‘Personal Identity in Indonesian Third Culture Kids’. After her graduation, she had internship opportunity with METI Japan Internship Program 2017 for 3 months, from October to December 2017 in Kumamoto, Japan. During the internship, she received cross-cultural training in international work setting. She has an interest in cross-cultural psychology and is planning to study the subject specifically in future. Outside of school, she is also an active volunteer of Bina Antarbudaya (AFS Indonesia). Currently, she is working on graduate thesis about ‘Re-Entry Process in Indonesian Third Culture Kids: Study of Cultural Marginality, Cultural Intelligence and Perceived Parental Support’.

 

Takehiko Ito (Japan)

 

The nuclear plant accident and children

 

The Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, was a mega-earthquake followed by a large tsunami. The disaster was compounded by meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The disaster caused tremendous suffering in Japan, but it also shocked the entire world and drew global attention to the issue of widespread radiation leakage from the nuclear power plant. This leakage forced many people to evacuate their homes, and the large number of evacuees continues to represent a grave problem. Due to the fact that the effects of radiation are long-lasting, the physical and emotional trauma that they caused will remain an important issue during the coming decades. We analyzed 161 essays written by school-aged children using the text mining technique; and found that the victims of the nuclear plant accident in Fukushima are suffering more from their on-going relocation and limitations on outdoor play, whilst the sufferers from the tsunami tend to describe their bitter experience as a past event and want to convey what they learned from it to the future. We need to follow up the long-term effects on those children.

 

Takehiko (Take) Ito obtained a Ph.D. in Psychology from Tohoku University in Sendai. He has taught General Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Peace Psychology at Wako University for more than 30 years. His research interests include text mining and mixed methods in psychology and nursing science. He is interested in positive psychology, critical psychology, and peace psychology. He likes doing research, traveling, wining and dining, and doing nothing.

take@wako.ac.jp

www.takehikoito.com

 

 

 

Teguh Wijaya Mulya  (Indonesia)

 

What has the market done to our research? Resisting the neoliberalisation of knowledge production through qualitative psychological research

 

Globally, scientific knowledge production has increasingly become a commodity; it is understood, managed, and regulated under the market logic and mechanisms. In Asia, this neoliberal orientation to research has been widely taken up by policymakers, universities, and researchers, including in psychology. Mainsteam psychological research - positivistic, quantitative, and depoliticised - rarely questioned such commodification since psychology itself has increasingly become an apparatus of capitalist power in creating and governing docile subjects. In this paper I firstly represent some anecdotal moments in my experience as a psychology researcher in Indonesia (where neoliberalism, as in many other Asian countries, largely goes uncontested) to demonstrate how knowledge production has been reduced to an entrepreneurial game of competition, networking, and metric optimisation. My focus will be on psychology researchers’ ways of being producers of knowledge, and discourses given rise to their subjectivity. Secondly, I explore possibilities to disrupt the dominant free-market logics and ways of being a researcher through my engagement with qualitative research students. I argue that, instead of detached, commodified, and audit-oriented (or impact factor-oriented, to be precise), qualitative psychological research provides a space to engage with knowledge production as embodied and relational. As demonstrated by these research students, research could be understood as an avenue for self-discovery, (re)connecting with others in a deeper level, and even spiritual journey. By exploring, identifying, and circulating these alternative subjectivities and discourses, it is hoped that hegemonic neoliberal discourses constituting psychological research practice become more possible to be disrupted, destabilised, and even subverted.

 

Teguh Wijaya Mulya is a lecturer in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Surabaya, Indonesia. He completed his doctorate in 2017 from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His critical psychology research has been informed by feminism, poststructuralism, and discourse theories; which he had applied to examine various topics such as sexuality, religion, and education. He has published in reputable international journals including Psychology & Sexuality, Media Psychology, Asian Studies Review, and British Journal of Religious Education. However, since returning to Indonesia in 2017, he is struggling to find communities of critical psychological researchers in Southeast Asia. He can be contacted at teguh@staff.ubaya.ac.id

 

 

Tomoaki Imamichi (USA)

 

Select Eastern Perspectives in Environmental Psychology

 

This project explores Environmental Psychology from a critical, and select Eastern perspectives with their larger implications. Environmental Psychology (associated with mainstream Environmental Psychology) is often more understood by the focus on environmental topics and less understood by the focus on an environmental perspective (associated with Critical Environmental Psychology and the origins of Environmental Psychology). Mainstream Environmental Psychology rarely examines fundamental assumptions that limit its approaches, including to one of the most pressing issues of our times, the environmental crisis. Different cultural and critical perspectives can profoundly enrich the field. They can challenge and have the potential to transform beliefs and systems that can be seen as some of the root causes of the crisis. This is what an environmental perspective and Critical Environmental Psychology seeks to address.

The focus of this project is select Eastern perspectives, such as aspects of Taoism and Zen Buddhism that have also received some considerable attention in various domains in Western societies and have arguably inspired existentialism, the counter-culture movement, and have been adapted into the New Age movement, as well as mainstream culture with some distortions, which also have been subject to reverse import. In these explorations, of particular interests are perspectives on the self and others, the environment, and human-environment relationships and compatibilities with an environmental perspective, which includes holism, minimalism and pantheism. Various interpretations of these perspectives and articulations (such as wu-wei, wabi-sabi, and mono-no-aware) can play an important role in health/well-being, environmental justice, and sustainability.

 

Tomoaki (Tomo) Imamichi is Associate Professor of Psychology at LaGuardia Community College and an affiliate faculty at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. He received his PhD in Environmental Psychology from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.   
His interests include environmental competence (how to deal with challenging tasks and environments), phenomenological approaches, which include moving-through-the-environment from running-with-a-stroller (2014) to walking-with-an-elderly (2019), and modes of being-in-the-world (Ma as an essential part of being-in-the-world (2019)). His is also interested in exploring how Environmental Psychology can be more environmental from a Critical Psychology and practical perspective. Additional information can be found at:
https://lagcc-cuny.digication.com/tomo_imamichi/Welcome/

 

 

 

V. Didik Suryo Hartoko and A. Harimurti  (Indonesia)

 

The Emergence of Psychology in Indonesia: From Dutch East Indies to Contemporary Indonesia

 

As a former colony of Dutch, the history of science in Indonesia is the history of Dutch knowledge that colonized Indonesian. The discipline of Psychology first emerged colonial Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) through psychiatry in the early 20th century. Dutch East Indies psychiatrists used psychological analysis to psychologize the character of the colonized society. Indonesian people were described as childish and uncivilized. These descriptions were justifying to prolonged colonization. In 1952, the discipline of Psychology became popular with a similar way of colonial psychiatry in post-colonial Indonesia. Starting in the 1960s, Psychology began to be institutionalized through the establishment of the Department of Psychology in several universities. Unfortunately, in 1965, there was a genocide of those who were considered communists. The massacre on behalf of the state then escorted Soeharto as president for 32 years (1966-1998). Everything that was supposed as left thinking or circulated from Eastern Europe was then muzzled. During the Soeharto era, most of the Psychology professors came from American positivistic tradition. There was stagnation with the challenges of the left during Suharto's rule, one of which was the support of Psychology based on Marxism that had developed in Indonesia in the early 1960s. This paper discusses the reason why Psychology with individualism perspective is becoming dominant comparing to Psychology which takes side to the issue of social change or liberation.

 

V. Didik Suryo Hartoko is a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology at Universitas Sanata Dharma, Indonesia. He is interested in the study of Vygotskian psychology, liberation psychology, and critical consciousness. He is the author of several edited books including: Identitas, Keseharian, dan Konteks: Sebuah Kolase Psikologi Budaya Makro [Identity, Context, and Everyday Life: A Collage of Macro-Cultural Psychology] (2016).

 

A. Harimurti is a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology at Universitas Sanata Dharma, Indonesia. He is interested in the study of psychology that is combined with history and anthropology. He is the editor and author of several books including: Identitas, Keseharian, dan Konteks: Sebuah Kolase Psikologi Budaya Makro [Identity, Context, and Everyday Life: A Collage of Macro-Cultural Psychology] (2016) and Mencari Peran Psikologi dalam Indonesia Masa Kini (Finding the Role of Psychology in Contemporary Indonesia) (2018).

 

 

Yasuhiro Igarashi (Japan)

 

What is Critical Psychology?: A Japanese View from the Standpoint of Theoretical Psychology

 

The international critical psychology movement that has seen accelerated growth from the turn of this century includes various practices with different aims across the globe. ‘Critical psychology’ is used as an umbrella term, including kinds of psychological activities that tackle problems the discipline itself suffers from and, indeed, causes. Critical psychology is as diverse as the existing areas of psychology, its research methods and theoretical resources are diverse, and local contexts each psychologist works in are also diverse, depending, of course, on specific social, political, economic, cultural conditions.
We can conceptualize these critical psychologies as operating in three categories. First, critical psychological practices which pursue political agendas as their major aims such like racism, misogyny, poverty, segregation, inequality, oppression, global warming, violence and war can be conceptualized as ‘political critical psychology’. Second, those which aim to create new theories and methodologies for doing psychology critically (such as German Critical Psychology, social constructionist psychology, postmodern psychology and Foucauldian discourse analysis) can be conceptualized as ‘theoretical critical psychology’. Third, those which aim to tackle problems concerning disunity and contradictions in the psychological world can be conceptualized ‘meta-theoretical critical psychology’, and this category includes the critical history of psychology and theoretical psychology.
It seems that most critical psychologists share these basic values. 1) Psychology should contribute to the welfare of people instead of exploiting them. 2) We should be solving obstacles such like ethno-centrism, discipline-centrism and ego-centrism that hamper research. 3) Reflexivity should include critique not only of other psychologists and society but also ourselves when that is necessary. Reflexivity is an eternal challenge to achieve the aims of critical psychology. I will discuss this based on the experiences of Japanese psychologists.

 

Yasuhiro (Yas) Igarashi is a critical psychologist based at Yamano College of Aesthetics in Tokyo, Japan. He serves as chair of Critical Psychology Colloquium of Japanese Psychological Association working to develop critical perspectives in Japanese psychological world. Since late 1990s, his research has focused on theoretical psychology, namely, history, philosophy and sociology of psychology and comparative analysis of theories and methodologies of psychology, and researches on discourse analysis as a new methodology of psychology to elucidate relations between subjectivities of people, powers which operate in daily living and their life courses in contemporary Japanese society from a stand point of critical psychology. He also uses discourse analysis to explore issues related to the Fukushima Nuke Disaster, and deconstruction of the mainstream psychology and construction of new ways of doing psychology which contribute to welfare of people from perspectives of Japanese critical psychology. He is also trying to make change in psychology and in psychologized societies, examining experiences of psychology in Japan that were introduced from Western countries since 1870s in the process of modernization.