Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life

by Fred Newman, Lois Holzman

Taking a unique "post-postmodern" approach to the current crisis in psychology, this book is at once a narrative of the family history of philosophy, modern science, and psychology and a critique of methodology in current psychological practice. Arguing that psychology today is a pseudoscientific hoax, the authors deconstruct three of its most powerful the myth of the individual, the myth of mental illness, and the myth of development. They tell the story of how these myths were constructed out of age-old philosophical abstractions to create a world and a discourse of godlike psychological objects. Synthesizing the anti-foundationalism of two "pre-postmodernists," Lev Vygotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the authors urge the construction of a distinctly unscientific psychology--an approach to understanding human life that is cultural, relational, and performatory rather than scientific.

212 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 1996

About the author

Frederick Delano Newman was a public philosopher, psychotherapist and playwright who created social therapy. His writings on psychotherapy, politics, culture and social change synthesize Marxism and postmodernism.