Don Eulert offers an overview of critical psychology in the Association for Humanistic Psychology’s Perspective Magazine, in which he notes this:
For the last ten years or so, I have asked all our entering candidates for clinical psychology to answer a questionnaire where one of the items is ‘Should psychologists function as moral agents of social change?’ Of course I wanted to posit their views about a ‘valuefree ‘ psychology before they were exposed to conscientization. An interesting comparison is that the 1999 class split 22/21 across the median. In 2005, 30 candidates agree that psychologists should function as moral agents of social change, and only 13 disagree at any level. Thirteen candidates ’strongly agree’ and only two ’strongly disagree’ that their role carries moral agency.
From these small samples, it appears that a post 9/11 crop of psychologists seeks to act in moral agency beyond the ‘atomistic ‘ presentation of an individual client ’s problem…..
Eulert’s conclusion:
Political, cultural, and global events have reached a ‘critical mass, ‘ setting off explosions in the psyche of anybody who watches or avoids the news ‘whatever your affiliation. The collision of worldviews and collective economic/political institutions resonates with us all. Or conversely, perhaps our inactive personal and professional agency, lollying in the shadow, feeds into the collective derangement.
Here I’ve summarized some spokespersons who circle around the question of the helping professions ‘ potential for moral agency and change in these matters. Perhaps psychologists collaborate in programming the human spirit for acceptance or denial, or perhaps the profession has objectifi ed itself into irrelevance. But surely, thinking psychologically ‘which for me involves heart and reasoned intentionality ‘ is critical for any possible solution to human-sponsored disorders affecting human well-being. Finally, perhaps not only persons but even institutions can be modified by love, which none of these critiques quite dared mention.