Uden for tema - Den politiserede psykologi

Resumé

This review interprets the history of personality theory from the outlook of psychology as a politicized subject field. The idiographic-nomothetic issue and the personality-situation debate are analyzed as dichotomizing fronts that to a larger degree than commonly
accepted are especially influenced by two major historical events in the western history of ideas, World War II and the 1968 students’ revolt. The analysis emphasizes how classic social psychological studies shifted psychology’s traditional focus on nature and person, which was criticized for its deterministic outlook, to nurture and situational effects on
human behavior. The article illustrates how these studies, as well as other important schools of (social) psychology have had a political agenda which has extrapolated into a fear for personal psychology to lead to dehumanizing consequences.