It can be heuristically useful to view scientific theories in general, and psychological theories in particular, as a kind of commodity. Theories are manufactured and produced (more or less carefully) at home or in scientific factories. They are traded locally, globally, and sold by producers and representatives whenever possible. They are offered in "drug stores," supermarkets, and at international fairs. Frequently, they are advertised as a "package" together with empirical stuff. And too, it is not unlikely that the packing of the theory promises more than the factual quality of the content. Some consumers care what they buy, others have been influenced by ads, others develop an emotional relationship to the product, and again others demand consumer standards.

The international psychological market is not a fair market. Today it is dominated by North American odds. This was not always the case, as historians of psychology know. Psychologists who do not care about or subject themselves to the North American market have difficulties promoting or selling their products--even if they present important insights. A good example from a German point of view is Klaus Holzkamp (born 1927) and his research program "Critical Psychology." For 25 years, Holzkamp and his colleagues at the Free University of Berlin developed their program. It resulted in anew paradigm including a different understanding of the subject matter, a new psychological methodology, and a new practice. In this sense Critical Psychology represents the last German psychological architectonic system. In Germany, Holzkamp is counted, although his theory is rather controversial, as one of the most significant national contemporary psychologists, who has inaugurated important discussions about the experiment, psychological methodology, philosophy of science, practical relevance, and the scientific status of psychology. He had influence on generations of students in Berlin and Germany.

What a different scenario in North America! One reason for Critical Psychology's missing reception has to do with Holzkamp's terminology. It seems to be a peculiar habit of German theoreticians--remember Hegel or Heidegger--to develop a specific jargon that handicaps a smooth understanding and represents a challenge to every translator. Holzkamp developed a new language--a system of categories--that is comprehensible only after an intense reception of the material of Critical Psychology. And this material is based on dozens of monographs, a journal, and several conference proceedings. Another reason for this lack of reception has to do with developments in critical meta-theory: postmodern, social constructionist, or multiple-voice arguments (feminist, ethnic minority,contextualist, etc.) challenge Critical Psychology's aim for an adequate understanding of the subject matter of psychology by a foundation of psychology. Yet, such factors cannot explain the whole story: Habermas is also difficult to read, but is well accepted in North American social theory. A significant reason for this missing reception is that Holzkamp himself never was really interested in "selling" his theory to a North American market because he did not care for science as a social enterprise.

It is mainly due to Tolman that a North American readership and audience can be made familiar with Critical Psychology in a systematic way. Tolman (1994) documents the few existing English translations of Critical Psychology (pp. 153-154), but it is Psychology, Society, and Subjectivity that is the concise introduction to this paradigm. Too, it enables an understanding of texts that have been translated and published in a previous book, edited by Tolman and Maiers (1992).

Since theories do not fall down from heaven, Tolman refers to the socio-cultural context of Critical Psychology by examining the political and ideological developments in post-war Germany (Part I). The reference to the sixties and their movements of the left enables an understanding of why and how approaches such as Critical Psychology emerged and continued to take shape. Further, one should not forget the Americanization of German psychology: after the extinction of innovative research programs in Nazi-Germany and the emigration of leading psychologists, an import of concepts, methods, and materials from North America occurred during the cold war and the West-integration of the Federal Republic of Germany. In this process, psychology was accepted as a natural science. The nomothetic principles of the empirical-analytical philosophy of science, experimentation, and statistics claimed dominance. In the 1960s, internal deficits of this "new" psychology became apparent. External political developments intensified a critique of this psychology. Tolman contributes to an understanding of both aspects. He discusses institutional and political developments in Germany as well as the turn to Marxism of parts of the student movement.

Holzkamp was one of the few professors who was theoretically influenced by the student movement and in the process changed his whole way ofthinking. Until 1968 Holzkamp was not really challenging the foundations of traditional psychology. Holzkamp (1972) started his critique of mainstream psychology--taking concepts of critical theory into account--by arguing that psychology is irrelevant to the practical working psychologist. He argued that the sophistication of experimental design, measurement methodology, the emphasis on statistics and mathematics have lead to the particularization and reduction of reality in research, which in turn has led to an inflation of statistically significant but small (unimportant) empirical results. However, the reality of the practical psychologist is not constructed like the laboratory of the academic psychologist, and all the error variables that show significance in everyday life are excluded in research. Hence, psychology loses more and more technical and practical relevance. Furthermore, technical relevance perpetuates the hegemonic structure of society. Therefore, a critical psychology needs emancipatory relevance, and this relevance is obtained when research helps individuals in their quest for enlightenment with regard to their psychological and societal predicaments. Paralleling the student movement, Holzkamp later turned from Neo-Marxism to classical Marxism, which led to Critical Psychology.

Tolman's introduction to Critical Psychology takes a systematic approach over an historical one. He explains (Part II) the many critiques of Critical Psychology in the philosophy of science, social theory, and psychological theory. Tolman discusses the philosophies of science (naive empiricism, logical empiricism, falsification theory) and their shortcomings in terms of subjectivity. Subjectivity has something to do with society, and Tolman shows what this "something" means. He shows the semantic distinction between "social" and "societal" (pp. 37-38) and its significance for psychology, and he argues why the abstract opposition between society and individual does not make sense (p. 50). In preliminary critical writings, Holzkamp (1972) analyzed the conceptualization of the individual in psychology as erroneous, as in psychology the assumption is made that the individual is concrete andsociety is abstract. Holzkamp argues the contrary: the idea of the individual as concrete is untenable because the individual must be conceived as a societal individual. Tolman also discusses shortcomings of traditional social theory against historical materialism. He is vividly convincing in his explanation of complicated theory. I have not seen a similar skill in the many German books on Critical Psychology.

For psychologists, Tolman's discussions of other psychological approaches (behavioral-functional, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis) are substantial. One important point of Critical Psychology is the critique of the subject matter of traditional psychology. Holzkamp (1972) already argues in his earlier critical writings that traditional psychology relies on anthropological assumptions regarding an ideal subject. This is a person who behaves in a way that is expected by the experimenter (e.g., the experimenter could not cope with the participant if he or she doubts the experiment). Therefore, persons who are generally (in everyday life) able to behave in diverse ways reduce their behavior in psychological settings and behave like "organisms." Mainstream psychology reproduces this organismic behavior in its theories. Furthermore, the relationship between the experimenter and the participant is not the same as the subject-object relationship in physical experiments. Ontologically, the subject-object relationship in physics is transcended by a subject-subject relationship in psychology, with important implications for methodology.

How then is subjectivity to be adequately understood? Tolman offers (Part III), in a remarkable summary of the central book "Grundlegung der Psychologie" (Holzkamp, 1983), Critical Psychology's answers. The starting point for Critical Psychology is the indeterminacy of psychology. Holzkamp argues that the theoretical interpretation of experimental or empirical data is arbitrary. In experimental manipulations, certain predictors are isolated and reduced, and many factors lead to empirical evidence even if the proposed causation is unimportant (irrelevant) in everyday life. As a consequence, there is empirical evidence for contradictory positions in psychology. Obviously, there is a circular relation between theory and empirical results in psychology: empirical resultscannot go beyond what is conceived in theory. Tolman does not present in his introduction the whole dialectical process as reconstructed by Holzkamp; rather, he presents the basic principles and results. Holzkamp's answer to psychology's indeterminacy is the reconstruction of central psychological categories with a so-called functional-historical method. This is a reconstruction of the phylogenesis of the psyche, which is the most fundamental category of psychology. Holzkamp's method is a genetic reconstruction of the evolution of the psyche, its differentiation and qualifications up to its human level. The critical-psychological network of categories is gained by matching processes and categories.Holzkamp introduces the term functional relevance to avoid indeterminacy. Those dimensions that are less dependent are more relevant: for organisms, this means that those dimensions are more relevant as the survival of the organism is dependent on it. On the level of humans those aspects of knowledge, ability, need, attitude, etc. are relevant that guarantee the individual's life, enable him or her to get control over his or her life conditions, or that assimilate the personal developmental status to the societal possible one. The method of Critical Psychology allows Holzkamp to identify qualitative transitions in the development of the psyche: the transition from pre-psychical to psychical organism, the differentiation of special functions and dimensions, the evolution of the capacity for learning and individual development, and emergence of the societal nature of humans. Tolman demonstrates how and why sociogenesis dominated over phylogenesis in the course of evolution and how common definitions of human subjectivity and their significance for society can be derived and employed. One result of this is formulated by Tolman: "The world for which individual human beings are biologically prepared by evolution, and into which they must develop, is a societal one" (1994, p. 105). He further describes and explains central categories of Critical Psychology such as the "possibility relationship," "action potence," "groundedness of action," and the "subjective situation." He develops the concept that people act specifically due to having reasons for their behaviour, and not due to causes. Traditional psychology is able to understand that contexts affectbehaviour, but it does not have a concept to understand that contexts are shaped by persons. Tolman explains the implications of critical psychology for emotion, cognition, motivation, and the unconscious.

Finally (Part IV) Tolman moves towards practice of Critical Psychology, especially regarding methodological implications. He questions objectivity and generalization in psychology, and shows that both principles have to be understood differently if one practices psychology from the standpoint of the subject. It becomes clear that the method has to be chosen with regard to the subject matter. Thus, experimental thinking is just useful for unspecified levels of the psyche. Tolman outlines that if one takes Critical Psychology seriously "... the borders between research and other 'professional' practice necessarily fade" (1994, p. 143).

Psychology, Society, and Subjectivity represents the best introduction to German Critical Psychology available. Tolman (1994) works creatively by, for example, returning theory to the North American community, and in 163 pages, shows his didactic talent. He provides evidence that it is important to care for this program. Nevertheless, I would like to mention some problems. Tolman does not discuss that in Germany several other critical approaches are in opposition to Holzkamp's Critical Psychology but also call themselves "critical psychology." At least two other post-war critical psychological approaches of Germany must be mentioned: "Psychology and the critique of society" is bound to a journal of the same name, aiming at a permanent critique of ideology in all fields of psychology. This approach, affiliated with leftist movements in Germany, nearly dissolved as a research program as the crisis of traditional Marxism became obvious when postmodern discourse gained priority within the critical discourse. In contrast, the discomfort of "critical psychoanalysis" with mainstream psychology was nourished by psychoanalytic concepts and methods. The crisis of the left also lead to the disappearance of a market for a combination of psychoanalysis with Marxism.

Although I want to emphasize that it is theoretically profitable to care for Critical Psychology, and that an omission of it represents an unjustified neglect, it would have been necessary tomention that the traditional German "left" has been in crisis since the 1970s and that Critical Psychology has been affected. There are external and internal reasons for such developments. Politically, it would have been necessary for critical psychologists to present themselves not as the "officials of truth" (Foucault) but to seek solidarity, a kind of rainbow coalition between all critical approaches. It would have been more modest for Critical Psychology to view itself as an important element within such a rainbow coalition. Theoretically, Critical Psychology should have defined itself as part of a network in which it has contributed theoretically, especially with regard to the dimension of "labor," instead of designing an architectonic psychological system. A broader theory of subjectivity must include basic concepts such as communicative action (e.g., in the sense of Habermas), and aesthetics of life (e.g., in the sense of Foucault). Although Tolman presents the approach of Critical psychology much more carefully and unpretentiously than German representatives, he could have depicted it as an important heuristic. I see Critical Psychology not as an end in itself but as providing tools to enable us to see psychological "themes" differently. And reading through the final section, "Towards Practice," I expected more than a methodological discussion. More concrete examples as presented in the earlier chapters would have been helpful.

I guess that a problem remains a problem even if the person who raised the problem is not apt to solve it finally. Subjectivity is such a problem, and mainstream psychology is not able to conceptualize it within its frameworks. Critical Psychology has shown possible solutions--in its German tradition. The participants in Critical Psychology and their potential readers have to thank Tolman for this introductory masterpiece that mixes demanding theory with illustrative explanations.

Holzkamp, K. (1972). Kritische Psychologie. Vorbereitende Arbeiten [Critical Psychology: Preliminary works]. Frankfurt / Main: Fischer.

Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie [Foundation of psychology]. Frankfurt/Main: Campus.

Tolman, C.W. & Maiers, W. (Eds.) (1991). Critical psychology: Contributions to an historical science of the subject. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas Teo is research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin, Germany. His research interests include theory and history of psychology, developmental psychology, critical psychologies, theories of subjectivity, ethics of psychology, and racism. He will start an Assistant Professor position in theDepartment of Psychology (History and Theory) at York University on January 1, 1996. He is author of a German book and article on Theory Dynamics in Psychology using Critical Psychology as a case-example, author of an upcoming chapter in Recent Trends in Theoretical Psychology (edited by I. Lubek et al., Springer, New York), co-editor of a German book on the problems of immigrants in Germany (Other Germans), and first author on Context factors in L. Kohlberg's data in the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 41. The co-edition of a book on Psychology and Racism is in progress.

Fuente:
History and Philosophy of Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1995. Special Issue Tribute to Kurt Danziger