Jung and Educational Theory by Inna Semetsky

Author:Inna Semetsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

The Psychoeducational Practices of a Transformative Political Psychologist

Currently the field of political psychology is a subfield of the discipline of political science. The research completed in this field supports the application of psychological knowledge to the goals of political science. Political psychology has made invaluable contributions to our knowledge of politics including ‘the development of political attitudes, the perception of political leaders, the sources of party identification, and attribution of traits to enemies and allies, the relationship between ideology, attitude, and act, social trust, and the attractions of authoritarianism’ (Alford, 2002, p. 198). The practitioners in this field embody the best of Dewey’s political individual and have built substantial institutions based in the values of political liberalism.

However, the unintended passivity/neutrality of the social scientist enters into the identity of the political psychologist who, according to political psychologist Fred Alford, offers only ‘understanding’ and ‘no solutions’ (Alford, 2002, p. 195). This troubled stance carries forward into the recent work of Lakoff (1996; 2004; 2008) and Westen (2007) both of whom have generated new ideas about the political function of emotion but neither of whom use their insights to imagine more developed, advanced ‘political identities’ for the social scientist or the progressive community and its activists. While helpfully focusing on the public use of emotion, they fail to imagine into the relationship between political identity, emotion, and political development. While their work helps create educational programs that inform existing progressive groups of how to ‘frame’ their political work, it does not embrace Dewey’s vision, however abstract, of forming a new ‘psychological and moral type’. While the work of Lakoff, Westen and others is invaluable, the critique offered here goes to the question of the potential role of the social scientist in intervening in political culture. What would happen if the political psychologist imagined into existence the capacity to intervene in political systems, paralleling the role of a psychotherapist in clinical practice (Samuels, 1993, p. 55)?

Currently the field of clinical psychology brings to the table the idea that the social scientist, as psychotherapist, is capable of activating the psychological and moral development of her clients. As expressed in the governing images of Luke’s ‘physician heal thyself’ or of the ‘wounded healer’, psychotherapists are expected to achieve some modest level of self-reflection and self-development. While circumscribed by the limits of just treating individuals, this image can be pulled forward and combined with the identity of the political psychologist.

From political psychology we can draw forward the need to understand political culture. From clinical psychology we can draw forward the opportunity to intervene in this culture as an agent of transformation.This hybrid image grounds Dewey’s idea of the social scientist as a new ‘psychological and moral type’ combining the interests of understanding and intervention into an image of psychocultural development. Incorporated in this image is a new psychological and moral type of ‘practitioner/citizen’ who takes responsibility for her own and her community’s political development.

These new types of practitioners/citizens could engage their communities in order to help

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