2 - A critical history of psychology

Summary

How should one do the history of psychology? I would like to propose a particular approach to this issue, a critical history of the relations between the psychological, the governmental, and the subjective. A critical history is one that helps us think about our nature and our limits, about the conditions under which that which we take for truth and reality has been established. Critical history disturbs and fragments, it reveals the fragility of that which seems solid, the contingency of that which seemed necessary, the mundane and quotidian roots of that which claims lofty nobility. It enables us to think against the present, in the sense of exploring its horizons and its conditions of possibility. Its aim is not to predetermine judgment, but to make judgment possible.

Psychology and its histories

The psychological sciences – psychology, psychiatry, and the other disciplines that designate themselves with the prefix ‘psy’ – are certainly not devoid of a historical consciousness. Many weighty tomes tell the story of the long development of the scientific study of psychological functioning, normal and pathological. Almost every psychiatric or psychological textbook appears obliged to include a historical chapter or review, however desultory, of the topics under discussion. These texts repeatedly tell us the story of the development of the psychological sciences in similar terms: they have a long past but a short history. A long past: a continuous tradition of speculation concerning the nature, vicissitudes, and pathologies of the human soul, virtually coextensive with the human intellect itself.