Critical psychology is a branch of psychology that is aimed at critiquing mainstream psychology and attempts to apply psychology in more progressive ways, often looking towards social change as a means of preventing and treating psychopathology. One of Critical Psychology's main criticisms of conventional psychology is how it fails to consider or deliberately ignores the way power differences between social classes and groups can impact the mental and physical well-being of individuals or groups of people.
One of the criticisms of conventional psychology raised by critical psychology is the inattention to power differentials between different groups - examples include between psychiatrists and patients, psychologists and clients, wealthy groups and the less financially well-off, or industrial lobbyists and the general public. This inattention to power has resulted in conventional psychology tending to assume that how things are is how they should be, that the current state of affairs is the natural state of things. As a result, conventional psychology has a tendency to uphold the status quo, blame the victim, and situate problems within individuals rather than the social context they are embedded in.
In relation to the debate and statement made by a fellow psychologist, who claimed that the main objection to 'Critical Social Psychology' is it implies that traditional or mainstream social psychology stands 'uncritical'.
Traditional or mainstream psychology fails to consider or deliberately ignores the way power differences between social classes and groups can impact the mental and physical well-being of individuals or groups of people. Fox and Isaac (1997) note that critical psychology and traditional psychology differ in fundamental ways. Throughout life, since the beginning of time, there are instances where it (it being ‘X’) is so. It simply is or is not. Such as gravity or Einstein’s infamous E=mc2. Then there are cases in point where...