Double trouble: psychology and psychologization under the spotlight

Brendon Barnes
2017 unpublished
1 0 3 | P I N S [ P s y c h o l o g y i n S o c i e t y ] 5 4 • 2 0 1 7 [ B O O K R E V I E W ] De Vos, Jan (2013) Psychologization and the subject of late modernity. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-30846-6 hbk. Pages xi + 189. Jan de Vos' starting point in the Psychologization and the subject of late modernity is the gap between being and knowledge. In other words, between how people are as psychological subjects and how they could be as psychologized subjects. He argues, as he
more » ... as elsewhere, that psychologization is not simply a spillover of psychology into society but that psychology is psychologization. Psychologization is psychology's paradigm. In the introductory chapter, de Vos introduces the idea of psychology and its doubles. That is, that the human subject is at once positioned as a subject that is, but the subject is also called upon to see itself, with the help of expert knowledge, as the subject that it could be. Moreover, the subject is asked to reflect upon this chasm by asking "how do you feel about this?" He argues that critiques of psychology have overlooked the (re)doubling of psychology, that is, that psychologization calls upon the subject to reflect upon itself. In de Vos' words, "Psychology takes the psychological double for the real thing and denies it has created another subject, the watching one, the psychologized subject, the proto-psychologist"
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