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Being critical in a globalised world

Mervyn F. Bendlea
a
James Cook University,

To cite this Article Bendle, Mervyn F.(2001) 'Being critical in a globalised world', Australian Psychologist, 36: 1, 81 — 83
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 Being Critical in a Globalised World
MERVYN F. BENDLE
James Cook University
ritical psychology in Australia must realise its intellec-
C tual promise as a critical discourse within psychology
and the human sciences generally. This task is made
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imperative by the rise of globalisation and the social and
political challenges it is producing, and by the genetic deter-
minism associated with the Human Genome Project. Critical
psychology must also analyse and critique the recent sharp
turn towards scientism and the increasing reliance on
American taxonomies of psychological “illness” represented
by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
It must also engage with the rise of identity politics and the
emergence of new forms of subjectivity under the impact of
globalisation.
The following remarks reflect seven and a half years of
experience as a member of a school of psychology and
sociology and some eight years teaching students taking
psychology degrees, in various areas of sociology, including
deviance, identity, health, religion, social theory, and intro-
ductory sociology. They are meant to be general remarks
made from a close but external perspective and a r e
concerned with psychology generally where it engages with
people and society. They are not directed at the former
school or its members, some of whom are only too aware of
the problems of the discipline. Moreover, similar comments
could be made about other disciplines, including my own.
These remarks are informed by various higher degrees,
including a Masters in Psychoanalytic Studies, by broad
research interests, and by decades of interest in critical
psychology and its predecessors. These remarks are also
less concerned with areas of experimental psychology that
lack any direct or significant social involvement.
A key task for critical psychology in Australia is to
realise its intellectual promise as a critical discourse within
psychology and the human sciences generally. This in itself
would contribute greatly to the ongoing development of
psychology in Australia, which requires the presence of
reflexive theorists, researchers, educationalists, and practi-
tioners if it is to avoid any further decline into scientism and
ultimate social irrelevancy. Indeed, psychology as a whole
is under challenge from the right, represented by the genetic
Address for correspondence: Dr Mervyn Bendle, Department of Sociology, James Cook University, Townsville QLD 481 1, Australia. Email:
Mervyn.BendleBjcu.edu.au
determinism associated with the Human Genome Roject.
As it exists, critical psychology is a pluralist and open
endeavour that can be defined in various ways, and there is
no intention here to suggest that it should be sharply delim-
ited o r should follow a set of prescribed principles.
However, it can be distinguished from both mainstream and
radical psychology by its commitment to the great tradition
of critical thought that has come down to us from Kant and
which elevates its perspective above the mundane pursuit of
lower order data and knowledge to encompass the critique
of the entire conceptual and discursive apparatus within
which psychology is pursued as both an academic and
professional discipline.
For example, an entire research program could be
pursued through an analysis and critique of the rise to
hegemony of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric
Association), as has been demonstrated by Kutchins and
Kirk in Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and
the Creation of Mental Disorders (1997). In Australia, a key
issue would be the extent to which the influence of the DSM
involves the importation into this country of fashionable
American constructions of mental disorders and moral
panics. Such critiques would be enhanced by their location
within broader social, cultural, and political analyses of the
contemporary world, such as those developed by various
important scholars who have worked or are working still in
the critical tradition of analytical thought, a tradition that
has always sought to interrogate conditions of oppression,
injustice, and inequity.
In pursuing this task of critique, critical psychology
must be rigorous and severe both with itself and with
mainstream psychology. This rigour is required not only
because the highest scholarly standards should always be
pursued in any field, but also because it must resist the
regrettable “physics envy” that Leahey identified in his
History of Modem Psychology (1994) as a common afflic-
tion within mainstream psychology. This scientistic outlook
believes that “in the modem world, science and technology
are revered, and whatever does not fit their mould is deemed
eccentric - interesting, perhaps, but decidedly second-rate”
(p. 359). The dominance of this pre-critical scientism
sometimes expresses a fragile pretence to methodological
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 MERVYN F. BENDLE
superiority that is almost pathetic in its desperation to be
associated with the “machismo” of “real” scientists and
their funding opportunities.
In addition to resisting scientism, critical psychology
must also resist the closely related antipathy towards theory
exhibited by mainstream psychology. As Slife and Williams
(1 997) put it:
It is as if the discipline is content to believe that all the
possible, or at least all the necessary, overarching perspec-
tives from which human behaviour can be understood have
all been discovered; [and] there is no further need to
question our understandings or to push the frontiers of our
understandings in search of new ones (p. 118).
In fact, critical psychology is in the vanguard of a process
that has seen a major increase in theoretical work in
psychology, particularly with approaches such as phenome-
nology, humanist and existentialist psychology, social
constructionism, feminist, gay and lesbian theory, applied in
areas such as personality studies, concepts of the self, cogni-
tive psychology, artificial intelligence, schizophrenia,
psychoanalysis, minority groups, and the study of narrative
and human agency. As these examples indicate, critical
psychology should also continue to be a major vehicle
through which the previously subjugated knowledge from
the margins is introduced into psychological research and
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analysis.
An uncritical belief in science, coupled with an antipa-
thy to theory sometimes appears to involve a complacent
ignorance of the historical, cultural, social, and economic
forces that are continuing to revolutionise the world, most
notably, of course, through globalisation and the informa-
tion revolution. In contrast, critical psychology should
continue to be resolutely open and interdisciplinary in its
approach to knowledge and the education of students. At
present, opportunities for psychology students to be exposed
to broader analyses of these vital sociocultural dynamics are
frequently limited to first year. After that, psychology
degree structures often seem to adopt the closed “North
Korean” model: “There is no outside world. You receive the
best of everything here!”.
This deliberate restriction of vision raises the question
of credentialism, which is both the life-blood and the curse
of psychology. Credentialism confers status on psychology
and its forms of professional knowledge, thus increasing
student demand and underwriting academic positions and
careers. It also controls competition within the profession.
More generally, credentialism mandates psychology as an
expert-system within what Nikolas Rose (1985, 1999) and
others term the psy-complex of state-corporate social
control and governance, a situation that should continue to
be subject to analysis and critique by critical psychology.
There are, of course, eminently sensible reasons for
ensuring that professionals who are mandated to intervene
in people’s lives should be properly trained, if this in fact is
achieved through credentialism. However, it is not as clear
that the price paid is not too high, especially in terms of
academic and social isolation and the broader education that
seems to be foregone. Also, one must be suspicious of any
vocational course that does not have a substantial compo-
nent involving placements in work situations at undergradu-
ate level, as is found, for example, in both education and
social work. Some would see this as a deplorable failure of
responsibility in an area such as psychology. It would be a
major contribution of critical psychology to help overcome
this situation, by ensuring that students have substantial
placements that expose them to the life-worlds of those with
whom they will be dealing. A critique of credentialism and
of the political role of psychology, together with a focus on
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practical experience for students, can be areas of particular
strength for critical psychology in its institutional settings.
Such placements might bring students into closer
contact with young people like those described by Kevin
McDonald in his recent book, Struggles f o r Subjectivity:
Identity, Action and Youth Experience (1999). This book
well illustrates many of the points made above, and we shall
spend a moment upon it. Drawing upon three years of field-
work amongst 150 young people in the inner western
suburbs of Melbourne, Struggles f o r Subjectivity explores
the relationship between the social and economic situation
of these young people and the new modes of selfhood that
they are experiencing. Drawn from different ethnic, class,
and gender backgrounds, and variously homeless,
unemployed, anorexic, graffiti artists, and on the margins of
criminality, they represent “the new urban poor” (p. 18)
confronting the major social and cultural transformations
brought about by globalisation. Driven by forces they often
cannot understand, they struggle to make sense of their
subjectivity, establish a coherent identity, and develop
constructive relationships with others. Within this turbulent
world, “youth” is no longer a predictable transitional stage
between childhood dependency and adult independence.
Rather than a project directed towards an attractive and
accessible future, youth becomes a twilight condition in
which one can become stalled, perhaps indefinitely, facing
major problems of identity, subjectivity, and self-esteem.
For many of these young people, and others caught in
the backwash of globalisation, their future seems problem-
atic in the extreme. Equally problematic would be many
traditional psychological approaches that might be brought
to bear on an analysis of their difficulties. Critical psychol-
ogy, on the other hand, is well fitted to the task of bridging
the disciplinary borders to mobilise the conceptual and
theoretical resources that such an analysis requires. The
need for such work can be expected to become acute in the
years ahead.
This brings us to another area where critical psychology
has a significant contribution to make - the politics of
identity. This is a new type of politics that is overwhelming
earlier forms based on class and economic issues in its
capacity to mobilise political passion and even violence. By
its very nature, the politics of identity directly implicates
psychology and calls clearly for a response from a critical
and analytical perspective. Western and global societies
generally are characterised by a pervasive sense that the
acquisition and maintenance of identity are both vital and
problematic in this period of high modernity. This aware-
ness has been intensified by the information revolution, as
the psychoanalyst and sociologist Sherry Turkle makes clear
in her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the
Internet (1997).
A recognition of the importance of identity is reflected
in some work in psychology, such as Baumeister’s work
Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (1986).
However, it is not presently a prominent concern (signifi-
cantly, Baumeister’s most recent book (1999) is Evil: Inside
Human Violence and Cruelty - an ominous sign of chang-
ing times?). And this lack of attention exists despite (or
because of?) the parlous state of the field where, despite the
centrality of the concept, accounts of identity vary widely
and are often inconsistent with each other. They are also
frequently undertheorised and generally unable to bear the
analytical load required if the contemporary situation is to
be properly understood. Indeed, as my own work reveals,
the field exhibits an inherent contradiction between, on one
hand, a view of identity as something so fundamental that it
is crucial and even essential to a sense of personal self-

worth, to political activism, commitment to social
movements, and involvement in legal action; and, on the
other hand, a theorisation of “identity” that sees it as
something constructed, almost infinitely malleable, plastic,
fluid, multiple, impermanent, and fragmentary. The contem-
porary crisis of identity thus expresses itself as both a crisis
of personality and society, and a crisis in the theorisation of
the central concept of identity itself. This is another very
important and fertile field where critical psychology, with
its sensitivity to the many issues and debates involved, has
much to offer.
These remarks have been offered with one primary
thought in mind: to add another voice to those that are
already insisting that the rate of economic, social, and
cultural change is both increasing and becoming more
unpredictable in its effects, and that this raises major issues
for psychology, which has a very responsible role to play
within Australian society. It is simply untenable to suggest
that traditional approaches will suffice either now or in the
near future, and that there is no need to overhaul conven-
tional wisdom within psychology or the human sciences
generally. In such a context, many challenges are emerging,
and some of them have been touched on here. It is the task
of critical psychology to continue to realise its potential as a
vanguard movement within the discipline as a whole,
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forcing the pace if necessary, but committed always to the
-~
BEING CRITICAL IN A GLOBALISED WORLD
primary values of critical intelligence, social justice, and
avant-garde thought.
References
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders. Washington,DC: Author.
Baumeister, R.F. (1986).Identity: Cultural change and the struggle
for self. New York Oxford University Press.
Baumeister, R.F. (1999). Evil: Inside human cruelty and violence.
New York: W.H. Freeman.
Kutchins, H., & Kirk, S. (1997). Making us crazy: DSM: The
psychiatric bible and the creation of mental disorders. New
York: Free Press.
Leahey, T.H.H. (1994). History of modem psychology. New York:
Prentice Hall.
McDonald, K. (1999). Srruggles for subjectivity: Identity, action
and youth experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rose, N. (1985). The psychological complex: Psychology, politics
and society in England 186S1939. London: Routledge.
Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private
seF London: Free Association Books.
Slife, B., & Williams, R.N. (1997). Towards a theoretical psychol-
ogy. American Psychologist, 52, 117-129.
Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the
internet. New York Touchstone.
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