The praxis of theorizing in psychology from traditional to critical perspectives

The praxis of theorizing in psychology: From traditional to critical perspectives.. The praxis of theorizing in psychology: From traditional to critical perspectives 1 Thomas Teo York Un

This manuscript is not the copy of record and does not exactly replicate the authoritative

document published by Routledge

The published article is available as: Teo, T (2022) The praxis of theorizing in psychology: From traditional to critical perspectives In B D Slife, S C Yanchar, & F C Richardson

(Eds.), Routledge international handbook of theoretical and philosophical psychology: Critiques,

problems, and alternatives to psychological ideas (pp 537-551) Routledge

The praxis of theorizing in psychology:

From traditional to critical perspectives 1

Thomas Teo York University

Abstract

Employing the term praxis refers to the idea that theorizing has not only a traditional but also a

critical dimension and that it can be accomplished in academia as well as everyday contexts

Distinguishing theorizing as an activity from theory, and articulating the relationship between

theorizing and interpreting, it is suggested that the process begins with experiencing or observing

a problem Critical theorizing accounts for the cultural-historical and socio-political dimensions

of a problem, temporality, change as a possibility to transcend the status quo, and reflexivity as well as its implications and consequences As a concrete starting point, it is suggested that

theorizing begins with concepts, that are used for critiquing, reconstructing and creating

materials Using examples from the discipline of psychology and psychosocial realities, the praxis of theorizing is demonstrated It is argued that in theoretical activity critique,

reconstruction and creation are entangled Finally, it is suggested that theorizing is not just an individual but a collective and relational praxis

This chapter challenges the idea that theories and theorizing are confined to the academic world based on quantitative empirical studies It contests the assumptions that theories emerge

“naturally” after doing empiricist work, that theorizing is self-evident, that a top-down approach

(by the scientist) using criteria such as parsimony (for instance, simplicity) is beneficial or

sufficient, and that psychological theorizing can ignore the nexus of the individual and the historical world In contrast, from a critical-psychological point of view, it is suggested that everyone can theorize using empirical material in its broadest meaning (including everyday

socio-experiences), that theorizing can be a bottom-up collective and reflexive activity that makes it

relevant to community members, and that critical theorizing can do justice to the psychosocial reality, understanding that individual, relational and societal life are connected

Using the term praxis in the title not only refers to the practice but also to the critical

activity of theorizing (Freire, 1997), which supposes that theorizing has traditional as well as

critical components (see also Horkheimer, 1937) Theorizing needs to be distinguished from theory, with former referring to an activity and latter denoting the results of theorizing, which is

accomplished in formal languages, models, visualizations, but more often in psychology, in written texts While theorizing can be non-linear, theories are expressed in linear statements (with a beginning, middle, and end) that contain assumptions, assertions, postulates, axioms, concepts, ideas, empirical results, explanations, etc that are, ideally, connected and coherently expressed in language Scientific theories, the result of the process of scientific theorizing, are the purview of academia and research, whereas the practice of theorizing is and can be exercised

in everyday life The chapter intends to encourage the practice and praxis of theorizing in all domains of life

What is the purpose of theorizing? What motivates “us” to theorize? Theorizing begins with a question, concern, thesis about the characteristics of an issue, an argument that needs to be developed, a problem that needs to be understood or solved Theorizing captures realities or possibilities (“what is possible?”), a neglected topic, a misunderstanding, a process, and so on

Theorizing wants to do and should do justice to the problem (problem stands here for all the

things that could be theorized) (Teo, 2021) Theorizing takes place in the world (everywhere) and as such theorizing is subject to historical, cultural, and societal conditions, paradigmatic and programmatic commitments (a psychoanalyst theorizes a problem differently than a behaviorist), subjective and intersubjective interests and tendencies Disinterested theorizing is conceivable but empirically not occurring, and more or less obvious personal and social interests should be identified or disclosed when theorizing

The quality of theorizing can be assessed on whether it does justice to problems and depends on the quality of the questions, materials, observations, interpretations, understandings, and applications The question itself indicates the breadth and depth on how a “material” could

be theorized; it may draw on existing frameworks and knowledge but, in critical traditions,

moves beyond the status quo Theorizing requires material because one works with and theorizes

something Material can be personal and others’ observations, experiences, objects, events, processes, texts, results, data, etc For instance, if one wants to theorize the meaning of dreams, one can work on one’s own dreams, other people’s dreams, dreams as discussed in scientific or fictional literature Material is addressed and interpreted using existing or creating concepts,

theories and worldviews that inform theorizing One could draw on the concept of displacement

(Freud, 1900/1955) in order to make sense of, theorize and interpret dream material

Interpretations depend on the selection, usage, neglect of material, on what, when and how it is

used (e.g., something heard from a radio talk show host about a pandemic might not be the best material to theorize the medical nature of a pandemic but might be used to theorize conspiracy theories) as well as on the hermeneutic (interpretative) competence of the theoretician

Limitations and possibilities of interpretation and theorizing depend on the scope and depth of the traditions “we”2

draw on Good theorizing may impact the quality of applications (e.g., “how should one deal with mass shootings?”)

Theorizing is a hermeneutic process and interpretation is a form of theorizing, and thus

topics such as horizon, tradition, prejudice come into play (Gadamer, 1960/1997) Theorizing is close to what Dilthey (1910/1958) called higher forms of understanding, which he distinguished from elementary forms of understanding, which are ubiquitous in everyday life in the form of

immediate processes Higher forms of understanding occur when something challenges “our” everyday experience, when “we” step back and makes sense of what occurred (e.g., “why did this person not shake my hand?”) “We” try to make sense of the natural, social, technological, and psychological world in “our” everyday life “We” theorize when a problem emerges, for instance, in everyday interactions, and “we” want to understand together why someone did something, what motivated them, why they made a specific choice, etc Theorizing goes beyond

an immediate interpretation as “we” live “our” lives and aims at a conscious and active process

of what has happened or of what is possible In the process of theorizing, theorizing itself can and should be scrutinized, confirming, disconfirming or alternative evidence weighed, and

reflexivity (thinking about “my” thinking and doing) invoked, on the background of programs or worldviews Humans are indeed as much theorizing as they are interpreting beings

2

“We” and “I” is used in quotation marks when it refers to a generalizable we or I Without quotation marks it refers

to the author

In critical traditions (e.g., Horkheimer, 1937), theorizing requires taking the historical and socio-political contexts of a problem / material into account Regarding

cultural-psychological issues it means not to separate individual from problems of society Critical

theorizing also means to theorize the temporality and the history of problems and to apply reflexivity

to one’s own theorizing, setting the conditions of the possibility for better theorizing Critical

theorizing may contribute to change and ask to which degree theorizing is justifying or

transcending the status quo Critical traditions also emphasize the social consequences of

theorizing, e.g., not only to which degree theorizing addresses power, resistance, and social justice, but also to which degree theorizing can reduce social injustice Theorizing is not only done for theoretical but also for reasons of action

Theorizing with concepts

The emphasis in this contribution is on the praxis of theorizing and therefore the focus is

on the usage, application, and development of concepts, understood as basic units of theorizing

“We” understand problems through concepts, interconnected concepts (that form theories), and worldviews Rather than discussing what a psychological concept is and the many ideas that exist in the literature on the topic (e.g., Slaney & Racine, 2011), the more relevant question for the praxis of theorizing is what a concept accomplishes, which is addressed by drawing on the continental philosophical traditions (see also Blunden, 2012) Even more relevant than Kant (1781/1965) who suggested that through concepts experiential objects are organized and that concepts help to organize and make sense of experiences, is the dialectical tradition that

emphasizes the capture of experiences, at least in their most important features, through

concepts For instance, Hegel (1830/1992) suggested a model of science that captures reality in a system of concepts, and Marx (1867/1962) developed a network of concepts to understand the workings of political economy and the sources of wealth (e.g., surplus value, profit, commodity)

In psychology, the importance of concepts and their developments was emphasized in the cultural-historical school (Vygotsky, 1978) as well as in German critical psychology (Holzkamp, 1983) in order to understand psychosocial realities In these traditions, concepts are understood

as the basis of scientific knowledge, and should be able to comprehensively address observations and experiences, by capturing psychosocial realities and possibilities Any concept developed should be exposed to more observations and new experiences in order to further improve the concept Within dialectical traditions, the praxis of theorizing means a move from experiences to

an abstract concept that identifies the general features of reality, and from there, to new concrete experiences to assesses whether the concept captured them This means that the praxis of

theorizing is an open process, whereby a concept can be abandoned, revised, or sublated

(incorporated) in a new or more developed concept Theorizing with concepts is an ongoing process with new experiences changing theorizing There is no logical end to theorizing should one intend to advance one’s theorizing as well as one’s theories (there is an interactive end when

we express our theorizing)

Other critical traditions, drawing on Kantian motives, emphasize that theorizing is not just about bringing a given perception under a general concept but to create new experiences, because concepts are not only representing, but also creating reality Schraube (2015)

emphasizes that “psychological research does not just reflect reality but virtually creates reality through the way it conceptualizes it” (p 538) This statement does justice to the usage of

psychological concepts, which may be based on discovery, social practices, or even on making

up people (Danziger, 1997; Hacking, 1986) Social constructionist approaches emphasize that psychological concepts have a history, culture, and society Embedded in the language practices

of the community of psychologists, concepts in psychology are socially constituted, show

looping effects (they influence how we think about ourselves), are value-laden, but also enable psychological observations (Martin & Sugarman, 2009) Any reflection on psychological

concepts must address the human-kind quality of concepts (meaning that psychological objects are not natural the way H2O might be)

For the praxis of theorizing, one needs to address the degree to which existing concepts are doing justice to psychosocial reality and how they go along or oppose power and particular

interests (is drapetomania - slaves fleeing slavery in the 19th

century - really a mental illness?) One needs not only to distinguish between traditional and critical theorizing but also between traditional and critical concepts Whereas traditional psychological concepts are ahistorical, not capturing the relationship between the individual and society, not understanding the socio-

political dimension of concepts, thus, supporting the status quo, critical concepts intend to

address these entanglements, as well provide status-quo-transcending ideas The quality of

traditional concepts and theories depends on the quality of all materials, invoking scientific criteria such as corroboration, falsification, verification, meaningfulness, sources, empirical support, objectivity, reliability, validity, parsimony, etc

The quality of critical concepts may include such criteria, as well as account for the subjectivity of the theorizer, the historical dimensions of concepts and the power of

psychological concepts Whereas traditional psychological concepts reflect and support the status

quo by addressing problems from above, critical concepts are intended not to be “about” but

“for” and “with” people (see also Teo, 2018a) In taking a radical democratic perspective, critical concepts should be able to address power and resistance Taking the contextuality and

temporality of concepts into account, critical concepts invoke a reflexive dimension that situate concepts themselves This reflexivity is hardly achieved in solipsistic practices of theorizing but

more often in collaboration with other people It also means that the praxis of theorizing is not confined to the academic world but occurs in everyday life

Critical theorizing suggests not only operating with existing schemes but providing alternative theorizing, better theorizing In critical theorizing in psychology the quality of a concept depends on the degree to which personal, interpersonal, and socio-cultural meanings are taken into account For example, if one observes that not all individuals react the same after a

life-threatening event, a traditional psychologist might invoke the term resilience to make sense

of that observation, with resilience understood as a quality of individuals In critical theorizing, the same term resilience might be employed, but the concept includes the idea of resilience not only as a personal, but also as a relational and socio-cultural concept (e.g., Kirmayer et al., 2011) Resilience is conceptualized not just as a private but also as a community feature For the

praxis of theorizing, a psychological concept that does not include the world, the connection of

the person with the world, would be a limited and limiting concept

It should be clear that theorizing has implications Theorizing intelligence as culture-free,

or that the result of an IQ test limits a position in life, or that within-group heritability estimates explain between-group differences, etc have significant implications It means that a concept that is based on countless empirical studies and is widely used, is not exhausted by empirical support, as the concept of IQ clearly shows (e.g., Gould, 1996) From a critical perspective, one needs to reflect on the consequences of theorizing not only in academia (specialized scientific language) but also in public life (everyday language) Psychologists must address the

psychosocial and cultural consequences of theorizing If one tries to theorize a mass shooting, e.g., through a psychoanalytic or neuroscientific framework, employing psychoanalytic or

neuroscientific concepts to capture the problem, then one needs to ask about the implications of doing that That task itself is a process of theorizing and often a process of critique

Theorizing as critique

The praxis of theorizing in everyday and academic contexts is entangled but separated here for analytic purposes into (a) theorizing as critique, (b) reconstructing and (c) creating (see also Teo, 2020a) For instance, when “we” theorize resilience, “we” need to discuss the

limitations of existing concepts (having observed, experienced or studied materials), reconstruct how this concept (or varieties of it) came to be, and invoke or even create a new concept of resilience that includes history, society, and culture, and can be used by persons for their self-understanding and is status-quo-transcending by challenging existing ideologies It is based on theorizing material, developing and applying the concept to new materials on the background of taking the subjectivity of the theorizer(s) into account

The entanglement of critique, reconstruction, and creation/application can also be

understood when one attempts to theorize violence against Black persons in the United States and other countries “We” observe (or experience) the killings of Black women (e.g., Breonna Taylor), trans women (e.g., Riah Milton), trans men (e.g., Tony Mcdade), children (e.g., Tamir Rice), and men (e.g., George Floyd) One should look at the empirical realities (based on

publications or other materials) when it comes to the use of violence against Blacks in

comparisons to other ethnic groups Would the everyday concept, for instance, of “bad apples” in the institutions of law enforcement do justice to those occurrences? Would the psychological concept of racism as an individual characteristic do justice to what is happening?

Are traditional concepts (in everyday or academic life) sufficient to make sense of those observations (or experiences) and the extensive materials that exist on that topic? Critical

theorizing points to the limitations of existing concepts, challenging the individualization of problems and the psychologization of lifeworlds and their histories As an alternative, discussed

in parts of academic psychology, social science and the public, the term systemic racism or institutional racism or structural racism might be employed (having read articles or having had

encounters with the concept) that addresses historically grown cultural and institutional practices

of racism, embedded in history and society, often without the knowledge or intent of actors, leading to unequal outcomes (see e.g., Feagin, 2006) The concept helps to understand materials

on unemployment rates, wealth discrepancies, geographical divisions, as well as actions in the criminal justice system Systemic racism can become a concept to address what happened to Black persons in the United States and account for those observations It can be contrasted with concepts that attempt to address outcomes in institutions using individualizing terms or even victim blaming Theorizing materials through the concept of “systemic racism”, a public and academic concept, not only organizes observations, but also opens new areas of observations, and may have a resisting function by challenging psychologizing approaches to social life

Systemic racism is a critical concept that challenges not only the status quo but also status-quo thinking about existing problems It may connect to allied ideas and actions such as

“Black Lives Matter” based on the observation or experience that black bodies have neither been

safe nor have mattered in many cultural and institutional contexts The concept of Whiteness

used in Whiteness Studies (e.g., Frankenberg, 1993) may aid in making sense of such matters of fact The concept transcends the status quo by not only theorizing experiences of minority

populations but also the privilege of dominant groups, connecting the individual to history, culture, and society, and by guiding, for instance, psychological action that is not reduced to

individual therapy but policy changes A similar classical critical concept would be structural

violence (Galtung, 1969) that was developed in order to address violence not stemming from

persons but embedded in the structures of society, leading to social injustice It is also an

example where critique (individualistic notions of violence), reconstruction (why and how did violence change its outlook?), and creation (developing a new term) are connected

Psychologists theorize personal and interpersonal problems Critical theorizing emerges when a psychological label is used without addressing the degree to which a category is an outcome of cultural-historical processes For instance, one could critique the use of the clinical

term hysteria to identify the behaviors of a person, particularly women Based on feminist

frameworks, one can challenge the precision of such a term, its origin, taking into account the power of psychology in defining people; the trend to use psychological concepts in order to understand social problems; to usage of the term without connecting personal, interpersonal and societal realities; the status-quo-supporting role of such concepts; and maybe develop a better concept to account for the same observations and materials Critique would mean to challenge theorizing that does not account for the psychosocial complexity of a problem Clinical

categories offer an enormous opportunity for such critiques (see also Lafrance & Mohr, 2013)

McKenzie-By invoking concepts such as psychologization (De Vos, 2012), one can extend the

praxis of theorizing to psychology as an academic discipline, which has been a longstanding project of critique within theoretical psychology How do “we” theorize academic psychology? What concepts could “we” use, after observing the practices in psychology? What do “we” observe in academic articles, textbooks, and discourses in and about psychology (the material)?

“We” often observe a focus on methodology, highly technical pieces of method, the rhetoric of science (a science such as physics does not need to incessantly claim it is a science), the repeated

call for objectivity (without explaining the complexities as historians of science have shown,

e.g., Daston & Galison, 2007), etc One notices boundary work (what is and what is not

psychology?) by academic psychologists making distinctions to professional and

pop-psychology (Lilienfeld et al., 2010) Some academics have suggested that pop-psychology is a

problematic science (Woodward & Ash, 1982) The primacy of methodology has been aptly described in the literature as the worship of method or methodolatry (Bakan, 1961/1967) or methodologism (see Teo, 2005) Specific research practices such as null hypothesis testing have

be called out as a ritual (Gigerenzer, 2004) or an unreflective practice (Tafreshi et al., 2016) More generally, psychology has been identified as positivist (Tolman, 1992)

Indeed, the status of psychology has been characterized as being that of a crisis (e.g., Goertzen, 2008) More recently the replication crisis has garnered attention based on the reality that maybe half of psychology high quality studies cannot be reproduced (Open Science

Collaboration, 2015) More recently, I have suggested that the concept of a hyperscience be

applied to psychology (Teo, 2020a), meaning that psychology inflates and complicates its

methodological activities in order to conceal the temporality and contextuality of psychological phenomena and uses technologies to hide the fact that it is not a natural science The rhetoric of science, the laboratory, small and big machines produce a hallucinatory resemblance to science Such a characterization does not mean that psychology possesses no scientific features or that studies in psychology cannot be scientific, but that something went wrong in the discipline Employing concepts such as hyperscience for characterizing the discipline involves an

assessment whether it does justice to the material, experiences, and observations “we” have about psychology If such theorizing is understood as insufficient, one can expand the concept or even abandon it and develop a more accurate concept to capture what is going on in the

discipline It is a task for theoretical psychologists to address the changing nature of psychology itself, maybe contribute to its change, and to develop creative new concepts to describe the practices of academic psychology

If one thinks about current and future major problems in the world, one needs to talk about increasing inequality, climate change, migration, and technological advances as major sources and problems for psychosocial mental life It is known that increasing income inequality also increase mental health problems (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015), and, thus, “we” need to theorize mental health problem in the nexus of the personal, interpersonal, and societal For theorizing these issues, one can draw on the concept and literature of neoliberalism or neoliberal capitalism to make sense of the material The critique of neoliberal capitalism has accumulated a body of knowledge that psychologists can use (e.g., Harvey, 2005) Indeed, theories of

neoliberalism have produced a series of concepts that make sense and account for such

psychological realities, including responsibilization or happiness industries (Davies, 2015; see

also Teo, 2018b) Of course, it is important to create new concepts to account for the variety of psychosocial phenomena that appear when increasing inequalities become the norm

When it comes to climate change, psychologists can theorize on what is going in

academic or public debates One could draw on the socio-political term of climate change denier

in order to account for people who despite overwhelming evidence suggest (for reasons to be

studied) that climate change is not occurring A more academic concept is agnotology, a program

launched by historians, but also of psychological relevance, because ignorance and the

production of ignorance are important objects of study (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008) A

forerunner of agnotology was the concept of ideology (see Eagleton, 1991), the idea of false

consciousness, and the psychological question why people maintain it However, ideology is also

a concept that has taken on many meanings, to the degree that it is unclear if it is still a critical concept or not If everybody is considered ideological, the concept loses its power It also shows

that “we” need to create new concepts to account for phenomena, or to create taxonomies of ignorance that help to capture the complexities of ignorance and the limitations of knowledge

(e.g., Tuana, 2006)

How does one capture current migration realities? What critical concept could one invoke

to make sense of what one observes? It is fair to characterize certain actions by states,

institutions, and individuals as fascist? Does this explain enough, given the complexity of

materials? I have suggested that migration actions implicitly and sometimes explicitly operate

with an ontology of subhumanism that perceives human beings who migrate as under the

standards of humanity Subhumans do not have the same human rights and can be treated in dehumanizing ways (Teo, 2020b) The term is as much a critique as it is a re-creation of a

concept that makes sense of our observations, experiences, and the materials that exist

How should one theorize various forms of technology (biotechnologies, information technologies, technological applications) in relation to subjectivity? Is technology just an

instrument or has technology reached a qualitative leap that not only influences but constitutes

mental life? Critics of technology from phenomenology, critical theory to Science and

Technology Studies tried to develop ideas on how to conceptualize what is going on with

technology in society and subjectivity For instance, in critical-theoretical traditions the idea of

instrumental reason as a totalitarian way to approach all domains of life and produce

one-dimensional beings has been developed (Marcuse, 1964) The philosopher Han (2017) used the concepts of digital panopticon (surveillance from any angle by all participants) and dataism

(data fetishism, data totalitarianism, quantified self, etc.) to account for the overwhelming control