The Subject as Drop-Out Cultural Accountability and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Psychology

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology to see how each attempts to articulate its disciplinary basis, and attempt to understand how the respective theories attempt to account for subjectivity.

Abstract: In this paper, psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology are treated as exemplars that demonstrate the salience of social factors in the constitution of the discipline of psychology. There have been a number of efforts that have addressed this impertinent social factor that compromises psychology's claim to being a sort of natural science. Within the current climate of alternative positions in the discipline, it is often assumed that psychology can be absorbed into historical formations, as in social constructionist critique, science studies and the endorsement of indigenous psychologies. Within contemporary mainstream psychology, other disciplines (such as biology) seem to give warrant to psychology's cherished claim to objectivity. Drawing on theories in which psychologists addressed subjectivity, the paper examines psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology to see how each attempts to articulate its disciplinary basis. In this paper, I attempt to understand how the respective theories attempt to account f...