Nowa Krytyka

There is a clear distinction between mainstream and critical psychology. While the former introduces itself as being neutral, objective and focused on evidential warrant mainly through statistics – thus as being scientific – the latter accuses this approach of lacking conceptual theorizing, illusion of existing beyond any social values and fetishizing individualism. Despite this basic contradiction, a common space for fruitful cooperation is possible and worth to create. Jost and Jost’s (2007) view that there exists Marx works’ continuity for both Marx as a classical philosopher and empirical social scientist opens a window of possibilities to connect two contradictory approaches. On one hand, mainstream psychology, even though rooted in social practice, needs more philosophical theorizing from the critical perspective to acquire capacity of rejection the thoughtless research maintaining the oppressive status quo. On the other hand, conceptual ideas of critical psychology may polish their scientific quality by being verified or falsified by a great amount of data collected by mainstream psychology. Marxian theories of revolution, false consciousness or ideological superstructure are instances of how the empiristic data can improve their quality or explain their very existence with greater precision.