This book opens up a critical dialogue within and across the theoretical traditions of critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology. It explores and addresses fundamental issues and problems within both traditions, with a view to identifying new avenues for productive discussion and cooperation between these two important movements in contemporary psychology. Accordingly, the book gathers contributions from a range of internationally respected researchers from both fields who have demonstrated a willingness to look critically, and self-critically, at their theoretical allegiances and trajectories. This book provides readers with the opportunity to both appreciate and reflect on fundamental differences of perspective across the ‘cultural-historical’/’critical’ psychology divide and, thereby, to consider and debate key issues facing the discipline of psychology more generally.

This broad-ranging introduction to the diverse strands of critical psychology explores the history, practice and values of psychology, scrutinises a wide range of sub-disciplines, and sets out the major theoretical frameworks.

Presents a fresh perspective that explores the development of psychology as both a human and a natural science.

Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology is a comprehensive reference work and is the first reference work in English that comprehensively looks at psychological topics from critical as well as international points of view. Thus, it will appeal to all committed to a critical approach across the Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, for alternative analyses of psychological events, processes, and practices. The Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology provides commentary from expert critical psychologists from around the globe who will compose the entries. The Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology will feature approximately 1,000 invited entries, organized in an easy to use A-Z format. The encyclopedia will be compiled under the direction of the editor who has published widely in the field of critical psychology and due to his international involvements is knowledgeable about the status of critical psychology around the world. The expert contributors will summarize current critical-psychological knowledge and discuss significant topics from a global perspective.

Cultural psychology as a human science / Gordana Jovanovic -- Natureculture in a transformative worldview: moving beyond the "interactionist consensus" / Anna Stetsenko -- Nature unveiling herself before science: the relationship between mind and culture in the perspective of Giambattista Vico / Luca Tateo -- Völkerpsychologie as cultural psychology: the place of culture in Wundt's psychological project / Saulo de Freitas Araujo -- Wilhelm Dilthey's conception of a descriptive and comprehensive psychology / Hans-Ulrich Lessing -- Ernst Cassirer's cultural theory: culture as symbolical practice / Jan Weyand -- Roots and rise of cultural psychology / Lars Allolio-Näcke -- Culture and personality: a once and future research program? / Christian G. Allesch -- Bruner's lectures: cultural psychology in statu nascendi / William R. Woodward -- Ernst E. Boesch and his symbolic action theory / Lars Allolio-Näcke -- The repression of cultural psychology in the history of psychology / Gordana Jovanovic -- Contingent universals as the expression of a culture / Rom Harré and Jean-Pierre Llored -- The place of culture in psychology: a social constructionist standpoint / Kenneth Gergen -- Light through a cultural lens: decolonizing the history of psychology and resilience / Wade E. Pickren -- Narrative psychology as cultural psychology / Csaba Pléh -- Towards cultural (African) psychology: links, challenges and possibilities / Kopano Ratele -- The self in Japanese culture from an embodied perspective / Shogo Tanaka -- The moving body / Elisa Krause-Kjær, Jensine I. Nedergaard, & Jaan Valsiner -- Toward a vygotskian analysis of emotions: theoretical and methodological bases for a critical social psychology / Gisele Toassa -- Aesthetics and cultural psychology / Christian G. Allesch -- Let one person's tears not be infectious: Efik proverbs as emotion regulation exemplars / Vivian Dzokoto, Eyo Mensah, Eunsoo Choi, and Melissa Washington-Nortey -- Cultural-historical hyperobjects / Cathrine Hasse -- The genesis of macro cultural psychology's culture theory from traditional cultural psychology / Carl Ratner -- The genesis of macro cultural psychology's political orientation from other approaches to cultural psychology / Carl Ratner -- Thinking with cultural psychology about the future / Gordana Jovanovic, Luca Tateo, and Csaba Pléh

If the reader will excuse a brief anecdote from my own intellectual history, I would like to use it as an introduction to this book. In 1957, I was a sophomore at an undergraduate liberal arts college major ing in medieval history. This was the year that we were receiving our first introduction to courses in philosophy, and I took to this study with a passion. In pursuing philosophy, I discovered the area called "philosophical psychology," which was a Thomistic category of inquiry. For me, "philosophical psychology" meant a more intimate study of the soul (psyche), and I immediately concluded that psychology as a discipline must be about this pursuit. This philosophical interest led me to enroll in my first introductory psychology course. Our text for this course was the first edition of Ernest Hilgaard's Introduction to Psychology. My reasons for entering this course were anticipated in the introductory chapter of Hilgaard's book, where the discipline and its boundaries were discussed, and this introduction was to disabuse me of my original intention for enrolling in the course. I was to learn that, in the 20th century, people who called themselves psychologists were no longer interested in perennial philosophical questions about the human psyche or person. In fact, these philosophical questions were considered to be obscurantist and passe. Psychology was now the "scientific" study of human behavior. This definition of psychology by Hilgaard was by no means idiosyncratic to this introductory textbook.

This book is an exploration of science in the making. It offers readers the opportunity to critically reflect on the process of development of Vygotsky's research program from the perspective of dialectics, focusing on the dramatic process of building and rebuilding cultural historical theory. Vygotsky's creative and dramatic journey is no less important than the concrete results of his research. An epistemological and historical investigation of the formulation of cultural historical theory sheds light on the process of knowledge production and reveals hidden dimensions of creativity in science.