Towards a Revitalization of Qualitative Psychology's Critical Potential

Abstract

Qualitative psychology has been co-opted by institutions that represent scientific rationality inherited from modernity (with its emphases on observation, measurement, and control). A process of cooptation involves an assimilationist attitude of ownership, where the difference or opposition adheres to a policy preset by the largest group's consensus and privilege. Through the institutionalization of qualitative research and its bond, sometimes forced-to traditional scientific paradigms, qualitative psychology loses its critical potential. Given this, we propose a critical review of the epistemological and ontological assumptions of qualitative psychology and propose alternative methods (such as critical discourse analysis, feminist epistemology, fractal method, critical ethnography, among others) to revitalize critical activity. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1202201

Keywords

• qualitative psychology
• critical psychology
• critical methodology