Rich scholarship in psychology and sociology has conceptualized mental health diagnoses as dynamic, socially constructed and politically embedded. Critical perspectives argue that diagnoses are shaped by diverse interests, their meanings negotiated in everyday interactions. Despite these contributions, the question of how individuals come to seek a mental health diagnosis remains theoretically underdeveloped. In psychological literature, focus has been given to experiences of mental health conditions, discourses of particular diagnoses and critiques of diagnostic systems. Less emphasis has been placed on diagnosis-seeking – a processual phenomenon concerning individuals and unfolding in social and political contexts.

Today, discourses about mental health proliferate on social media, conflicting public narratives about self-diagnosis emerge and barriers to support persist – a background that points to the importance of theorizing the process of diagnosis-seeking. To have a transformative potential, such theorization has to consider individuals’ meaning-making practices and the ways their agency is manifested, enabled and constrained.

This paper presentation outlines a preliminary conceptual mapping for developing a psychological theory of diagnosis-seeking grounded in critical perspectives on mental health. Drawing on scholarship in the sociology of diagnosis and critical health psychology, as well as insights from an ongoing constructivist grounded theory study of adults seeking an ADHD diagnosis, I propose conceptual avenues centered on: (1) issues of individual agency, (2) the processual aspect of diagnosis-seeking and (3) the role of digital spaces in this process. I argue that advancing theory in this area can enrich psychological understandings of how individuals construct meanings of diagnoses and navigate contemporary mental health systems.

Biological theories and quantitative methods in psychology are frequently criticized for fostering reductionist accounts of complex human phenomena. While calls for rigorous quantification—often seen as a solution to the replication crisis—reflect a poorly understood positivism, critiques of this approach sometimes overlook the potential of natural science methods when used with epistemological awareness. This oversight weakens a critical psychology perspective by ignoring that humans are natural beings embedded in physical systems, whose biological foundations and everyday activities yield both qualitative and quantitative traces.

This paper argues for integrating natural science approaches into critical psychology, guided by an understanding of their explanatory limits and in accordance with Haraway’s concept of ‘situated knowledge.’ Two case studies illustrate this: First, research into neuronal mechanisms and epigenetics shows how biological methods can reveal the developmental and sociocultural dynamics of psychological phenomena. Second, the use of sensor and log data (e.g., tracking sleep, activity, and digital interactions) provides quantitative insights into everyday behavioral patterns of users. While such data have been linked to both creating self-awareness (e.g., of mood swings and related stressors) and problematic self-optimization, I explore how the computational frameworks behind these analyses—rooted in systems theory and probabilistic causality—challenge simplistic causal models and support a dynamic, embodied view of human interactions with digital tracking.

Together, these cases demonstrate that a nuanced engagement with natural science and quantitative methodologies can enrich critical psychology, fostering a more complex understanding of human experiences.

Gaston Bachelard, a French philosopher, founder of the "historical epistemology" (Rheinberger), coined the paradigm shifts of physics in the early 20th century, epistemic breaks. Psychology was not a discipline studied in that sense that it could serve him as a good example for finding epistemic breaks. However, looking at the research of the contributions to this panel, we might find these breaks also in psychology, especially in relation to causation and causality. This paper discusses how the incorporation of new methods, models and technologies leads to theoretical shifts. With Bachelard, it illuminates that the „phenomenotechnology" that makes new aspects visible and available to research is paramount. The paper continues to reflect on parallels of the „historical epistemology“ and the enterprise of Critical Psychology to develop concepts and methods in psychology methodologically, thereby following ideas that were discussed, among others, by Vygotsky and Lewin. It ends with the question whether the concept of circular causality connects to a historical perspective of psychological theorizing.

Our presentation outlines a critical re-reading of Alexander Luria’s seminal work (1976), The Cultural and Social Foundations of Cognitive Development, a book recognised as a classic in cultural psychology and frequently cited in ongoing debates concerning culture and cognition. We aim to integrate theory and empirical inquiry by focusing closely on the text itself, seeking to understand the book on its own terms rather than through historical or biographical reconstruction. The core scholarly significance of Luria’s research lies in its representation of an experimental study that successfully bridges ethnography and laboratory science. The presentation has four parts.

I. Theoretical Context and Luria’s Original Contribution

The conceptual value of Luria’s text is immense, positioning it as a foundational example of a “social” account of mind. This account challenges the deeply entrenched individualist assumptions that typically dominate mainstream psychology and is central to the historical and ongoing development of socio-cultural psychology.

Luria’s original research describes his expedition to Central Asia in the early 1930s, specifically studying Uzbeks and Kirghiz populations. At this time, the region was experiencing dramatic social, cultural, and political transformation under Soviet rule. The central objective of his research was to test empirically how cultural systems and social conditions shape fundamental cognitive functions, including perception, reasoning, and imagination.

The original findings of the expedition highlighted a distinction in cognitive processes: they differed significantly between people engaged in concrete, practical tasks and those accustomed to utilizing abstract, theoretical thought. Luria concluded that his results supported the Marxist view, maintaining that human consciousness is not static but develops fundamentally through engagement with specific social and historical conditions. According to Luria's analysis, the significance of schooling transcends merely the acquisition of new factual knowledge. Rather, schooling is vital for the creation of new motives and formal modes of discursive verbal and logical thinking which are necessarily divorced from immediate practical experience. Furthermore, he argued that sociocultural changes, such as the implementation of state schooling, affect populations far beyond those who directly attend school; the impact exists on a wider social level. This societal shift paves the way for new social knowledge concerning how one can orient oneself by drawing on new generalised others and provides new ideas about ways of interacting effectively in certain situations.

II. Methodology of the Critical Re-reading

Our approach employs a discursive reading strategy, specifically focusing on key transcripts found in Chapter 4, "Deduction and inference", and Chapter 5, "Reasoning and Problem-solving". We ask how our critical reading of the book advances cultural psychology and how our work helps shape and address enduring methodological challenges in the field. The core of our critique involves reinterpreting the interactional dynamics within Luria’s test scenarios. Basic dialogical notions inform our reading, emphasizing that the human mind is structured by self-other relationships, other-orientation, and sense-making. We frame the experimental situation as a ‘strange’ situation for the participants.

Luria himself interpreted the participants’ answers—particularly those from non-literate, traditional populations—as evidence that their reasoning remained concrete and experiential, rather than abstract and hypothetical. He saw this concrete orientation as a key distinction driving his argument that cognitive processes necessarily develop through cultural and educational change.

III. Discursive Analysis of Key Transcripts

Our analysis challenges the traditional conclusion that these differences necessarily point to limited or deficient formal cognitive abilities. We suggest that the 'misalignment' observed arises because the tests conflict fundamentally with the local worldview of experience held by the participants.

A powerful example comes from the syllogism task analyzed in Chapter 4, involving Abdurakhm, a 37-year-old illiterate man from Kashgar Village. The researcher presented a classic syllogism: "In the far North, where there is snow, all the bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the far North and there is always snow there. What color are the bears there?". Abdurakhm’s initial response rejected the premise: "There are different sorts of bears". When the researcher repeated the syllogism, Abdurakhm stated, “I don’t know. I’ve seen a black bear, I’ve never seen any others...”. He further clarified his epistemic commitment, stating, "We always speak of what we see; we don’t talk about what we haven’t seen".

Our analysis shows that Abdurakhm was treating the syllogism as a ‘real-world’ problem that required empirical verification, rather than engaging with it as a purely formal educational exercise. This highlights a fundamental difference in orientation between the researcher and the participant. The experiment implicitly requires familiarity and competence in an implicit kind of specialized discourse practiced in education. The researcher insisted on using the syllogism because Abdurakhm did not provide the expected answer, revealing an asymmetrical relationship and a normative orientation where the "right answer" according to the researcher was anticipated. Abdurakhm, however, did not share the implied "educational ground rule".

A similar interactional issue is seen in the problem-solving example from Chapter 5, concerning Khashim, a 67-year-old illiterate man. When presented with a word problem regarding distances: "It is twenty versts from here to Uch-Kurgan, while Shakhimardan is four times closer [the reverse is true]. How many versts is it to Shakhimardan?". Khashim immediately challenged the premise, stating, "What! Shakhimardan four times closer?! But it’s farther away". He initially refused to solve the problem, explicitly citing his lack of formal schooling: "I’ve never studied, so I can’t solve a problem like that! I don’t understand it!". Yet, following further interactional guidance and repetition from the researcher, he performed the computation correctly: "If you divide by four, it’ll be… five versts… if you divide twenty by four, you have five!". Luria concluded that this successful navigation—achieved by social guidance/scaffolding within the situated interaction—allowed Khashim to draw on transcending aspects of social knowledge, enabling him to navigate the ‘strange’ situation and discern what was required of him.

IV. Conclusion and Implications for Decolonising Psychology

Our conclusion centres on a reinterpretation of Luria’s data, moving the focus away from fixed internal cognitive structures towards the social organisation of reasoning in talk in interaction. We contend that the participants’ utterances are better understood not as evidence of limited abstraction or "pre-logical" reasoning, but as contextually appropriate discursive accomplishments that reflect local moral and epistemic norms. Their responses privilege empirical verification over hypothetical speculation, revealing how they orient to culturally specific criteria of truth and experience.

The implications of this re-reading are significant for contemporary theoretical psychology, especially concerning the Decolonising Psychology agenda. Luria’s work functions simultaneously as both a critical resource and a cautionary tale. On one hand, it provides a methodological precedent for studying cognition as culturally and historically situated, laying a foundation for critical, non-Western psychologies. On the other hand, traditional cross-cultural research can inadvertently reproduce colonial relations when cultural difference is interpreted as a deficit or merely a stage toward modernity, rather than recognizing it as an alternative epistemology.

A truly decolonial re-reading must reinterpret the reasoning of Luria’s participants not as ‘primitive logic’ but as situated, experiential epistemic practices that are entirely valid within their own cultural rationalities. New methodologies, such as Discourse Analysis (DA), can help make these situated practices visible. The findings from Luria's study, which occurred almost 100 years ago, remain relevant for considering the effects of schooling, societal aims, and globalisation on cognitive processes today.

Future work, stemming from this critique, will involve fieldwork in contemporary Uzbekistan within the community engaged in the traditional Ikat/Adras practice. This research will apply the critical study to this community to explore the cultural nature of cognitive development in the 21st Century, considering the tensions between heritage preservation and globalism. The ultimate goal is to move beyond judging cognitive difference as a deficit toward modernity, treating cultural rationality as a dynamic social accomplishment.