Critical psychology states that humans‘ emotions, cognitons and behaviour always take place in certain social, economic and cultural conditions. Humans are by nature social or rather “societal” beings. Thus in order to understand people’s actions and their reasons for these actions we must first have an understanding of the society they live in. In this workshop I will first try to explain how this natural sociality could, according to Critical Psychology, have developed in human phylogenesis and ontogenesis.
Hopefully we can then discuss examples of how in academic psychology and in everyday life social conditions are often personalized. Additionally we speak about why critical psychology criticizes the “nature vs. nurture” debate of mainstream psychology and how most social psychology-approaches don’t grasp society but only immediate social interactions.