Growing Critical: Alternatives to Developmental Psychology

by John R. Morss

Growing Critical is an introduction to critical psychology, focussing on development. It takes a fresh look at infancy, childhood and adulthood and makes the startling claim that 'development' does not exist.
John Moss guides the reader from the early critical movements of the 1970s which gave rise to the 'social construction of development' through the wide range of more recent approaches. He looks in turn at Vygotsky's 'social context of development, at Harre's 'social construction', Marxist critique of development psychology, psychoanalytic interpretations of development, and finally post-structuralist approaches following Foucault and Derrida. He surveys the range of alternative positions in the critical psychology of development and evaluates the achievements of Newman and Holzman, Broughton, Tolman, Walkerdine and others.
Marxism, psychoanalysis and post-structuralism - as well as such movements as feminism - challenge our understandings of human development. Morss looks beyond the laboratory, to Marx and Freud, to Foucault and Lacan. What sets Growing Critical apart from orthodox psychology is the seriousness with which he has thought through the implications of these challenges.
Contemporary and 'reader-friendly', Growing Critical will be of value to both undergraduate and to advanced students, as well as to anyone interested in human development, in pyschology, sociology or education.

Genres: Psychology

184 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 1995

Reviews

[javor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. Morss describes the advances and shortcomings of various alternatives to or critiques of developmental psychology (two Vygotskian schools, social constructionism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, etc.). The deconstructive project left to the near-end of the book which dismantles the epistemological bases of previous critiques does not merely let the project of critical psychology sink into nothingness; Morss provides a clear-cut, constructive conception of critical psychology and concrete ways of reconceptualizing child development. Rich with grounded examples of development in schools, in the home, and in discourse, this book is a spectacular read for anyone wishing to "look underneath" the so-called 'science' of psychological development.