International Review of Theoretical Psychologies

Preface

2023-12-17T21:36:10+01:00

Welcome to the much-anticipated second volume of the International Review of Theoretical Psychologies (IRTP). This issue reflects the vibrant dialogues that unfolded at the 2022 conference of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), virtually hosted by the the University of Sacramento, USA, with Basia D. Ellis as the local organizer. As an open-access online journal, IRTP publishes carefully crafted and peer-reviewed articles that emerge from ISTP conferences and other activities linked to the society. With a biennial publication schedule aligned with the conference themes, this volume showcases the intellectual richness of the latest ISTP conference, themed "Building Community: Theoretical Psychology in the Service of Social Issues."

Using Youth Participatory Action Research to Support BIPOC, Working Class, and Working Poor Elementary School Students' Conscientización

2023-12-17T22:11:42+01:00

This talk draws together two decades of research designed to center BIPOC children as they discuss and continue to develop what a productive school culture means to them. All studies are presented to address a framework to better understand the process of change/conscientización as a theoretical guide. I engage two research questions: What are the characteristics of liked school places, and how do they differ from disliked places? and How does the developmental process of conscientización unfold (prospectively)? The first reserch question, based on a long-term collaboration at one elementary school, sets the stage for another long-term youth participatory action research project at another elementary school. The second research question is addressed through a series of studies where children decide how they want to make decisions as a group, how they discern a problem to focus on, and how this affects their relational empowerment in the school. Children’s critical consciousness and actions are highlighted across these studies.

On Atmosphere

2023-12-23T01:19:23+01:00

This paper traces the work of Tosquelles, Oury and Guattari in transforming psychiatric care by reshaping the "atmosphere" of asylums. Breaking down asylum walls and hierarchies, Tosquelles sought to liberate patient expression and agency. Oury built on this through the notion of "antennas" attuned to environmental subtleties often imperceptible to clinicians. For both, transforming institutional spaces was paramount. Guattari helped reveal how such environments could foster the emergence of new subjectivities. For all three, the sustained “atmosphere” was a central concern. Building on this work, I discuss my co-founding of the Ueinzz theatre group, which provides an artistic outlet for individuals experiencing psychological distress and fosters radical solidarity by empowering marginalized subjectivities. Such micropolitical interventions, I argue, are vital given the contemporary context of pervasive "normo-pathy" and pressures imposing psychic confinement.

Feminist Community Psychology and the Advancement of Women in South Africa

2023-12-23T01:48:39+01:00

In this presentation, I offer a brief personal reflection of my entry and introduction to psychology. I start from positionsing myself to highlight how we do not come into institutions of higher learning and our disciplines as empty vessels but with histories that shape how we view the world. Drawing from social justice scholars and my earlier work, I point to how psychology needs to shift from locating ‘problems’ within individuals but instead acknowledge the structural imbalances that contribute to individual and collective dis-eases facing society. I go on to call for a decolonial feminist psychology that acknowledges the multiple oppressions faced by people in many formely colonised nations such as South Africa, with a particular focus on women. I further show how visual methodologies such as embroideries offer the potential for epistemic justice and decolonial possibilities by centering community members as co-constrctors of knowledge. I conclude by highlighting how hope carries the potential for psychological healing.

The Pedagogy of Relation and Educational Communities

2023-12-23T02:01:36+01:00

The paper challenges the efficacy of traditional educational reforms focused on accountability, choice, and technology, proposing that the essence of education lies in the relational dynamics between teachers and students. The author explores the concept of the relational self, arguing that education involves the development of diverse relational selves through various life stages. The author critiques dominant educational theories for neglecting the fundamental caregiver-child relationship, emphasizing the need for educational relationships that balance support and challenge. The text advocates for a new dimension of educational accountability that measures relational well-being, calling for a paradigm shift to recognize the importance of relational dynamics in educational outcomes and student experiences. The work presents a case for redefining educational success beyond conventional metrics, underscoring the transformative power of relational pedagogy.

The Narrative Form and Forms of Truth

2023-12-23T04:09:07+01:00

Within the last decade, it has been commonly claimed that societies in the United States and other countries, have entered a ‘post-truth-era’, a time when deception and falsehood have flourished, and the value of factual truth is diminished. Paradoxically, at the same time (1) concerns with truth have become more prominent in popular discourse and in the priorities of institutions, and (2) definitive empirical evidence of an unprecedented recent increase in false or misleading information is lacking. Therefore, how is it that the idea of post-truth earned such widespread acceptance? The possibility explored here is that the idea of a post-truth-era is symptomatic of a deepening commitment to increasingly compelling and divergent narrative truths (as opposed to factual truths). This process is related to the use of the internet and social media platforms and the opportunities they afford for individuals to co-construct their own narrative accounts of reality. While prevailing conceptions of a post-truth-era show some recognition of the challenges this divergence in realities poses—particularly for the geographical communities that most directly sustain infrastructure and institutions—because these conceptions are grounded in a correspondence view of truth and language, they are fundamentally unable to recognize and address the challenges at hand. The latter, we show, can only be adequately grasped and addressed by recognizing the role of the narrative form in the construction of reality.

“I Feel Like a Sex Ed Wizard Now”

2023-12-23T04:30:11+01:00

The discourse around sex education is ambivalent and normatively loaded, stretching roughly between conservatism, liberalism, and neo-emancipation. In Germany, teachers receive no specific training and have little access to education, besides short and optional training from third-party providers. As a result, they feel left alone, overburdened, and politically at risk while simultaneously reporting a personal desire to make a positive change. Teach Love is a psychological knowledge transfer project applying critical community psychology to teachers’ continuing education on sex education. The participants receive emotion-, value-based, and pluralistic digital training based on empirically assessed needs and in collaboration with scientists (psychology, pedagogy, sociology) and practitioners (therapists, teachers, midwives) focusing on comprehensive competence. In this contribution, I present the empirically assessed teacher's needs on sex education and the resultant didactic. Second, I present the empirical post-measure evaluations to discuss the potential of applied critical community psychology in teachers' professionalisation. This contribution serves in three ways. Firstly, the paper presents a practically tested approach to how to deal constructively with polarizing topics in pedagogy. Secondly, the results show how to support teachers by applying critical community psychology in the teacher's professional development. Finally, insights into digital education formats, their applicability, effectiveness, and acceptability are gained.

The Importance Of Decolonial Narratives

2023-12-23T04:50:52+01:00

This paper aims to discuss the importance of decolonial narratives in general and in the field of history of psychology in particular. For this, we take as the starting point the initial results of a recently published empirical study, which investigated different styles of management within the scope of labor in Rio de Janeiro between 1949 and 1965 through the analysis of publications of the journal Arquivos Brasileiros de Psicologia. Such results pointed to an inadequacy between the interpretations of the management styles that are used, on the one hand, in the English and North American context and, on the other, in Rio de Janeiro. The discussion of this article focuses on this inadequacy, underlining the differences between how colonial and decolonial narratives conceive the relationship between empirical data and intelligibility matrices and the historiographical and methodological consequences of this relationship.