Ian Parker
Ian Parker is a British psychologist who has been a principal exponent of three quite diverse critical traditions inside the discipline. His writing has provided compass points for researchers searching for alternatives to ‘mainstream’ psychology in the English-speaking world (that is, mainstream psychology that is based on laboratory-experimental studies that reduce behavior to individual mental processes).
The three critical traditions Parker has promoted are ‘discursive analysis’, ‘Marxist psychology’ and ‘psychoanalysis’. Each of these traditions is adapted by him to encourage an attention to ideology and power, and this modification has given rise to fierce debates, not only from mainstream psychologists but also from other ‘critical psychologists’. Parker moves in his writing from one focus to another, and it seems as if he is not content with any particular tradition of research, using each of the different critical traditions to throw the others into question.
“Democracy in contemporary society is a fake, predicated on an illusion that we are together making choices about how best to manage ourselves, an illusion that functions to obscure the fact that we vote for different individuals to exercise power in a state apparatus that is still dedicated to the efficient management of the capitalist economy. The imperatives of capitalism must always undermine democratic decision-making, and the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ serves to indicate that the hollow democracy of the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ must be replaced by a socialist democracy that realises the full potential of open collective self-management.”
“A country overwhelmed by evil has more dignity than one tripped up by fools.”