There is concern that in times of crisis, psychological theory may retreat into positions of political neutrality and avoid entanglement with power structures. In this paper we argue that the declarative mapping sentence (DMS) can provide theoretical psychology a methodological framework that explicitly engages with the political dimensions of psychological inquiry whilst dealing with socio-political phenomena in dark times.

The DMS was developed out of the quantitative facet theory approach to be used in qualitative and philosophical domains. Facet theory’s traditional mapping sentences impose a predetermined structure upon research data. However, the DMS is a reflexive framework written in ordinary prose that responds and adapts to emerging understandings during a research study where this responsiveness makes it particularly suited for theorising in unstable political contexts. This avoids the danger that rigid analytical frameworks may reify existing power relations.

We discuss the ways that the DMS operates reflexively during political engagement by examining its application to socio-political issues including social and environmental issues. We consider how the DMS requires researchers to explicitly articulate the ontological and mereological structure of the components of their research domains, as the significant aspects of a research domain and their interrelationships. We show how the DMS reveals the psychological structure of socio-political issues and concepts and has the capacity for iterative modification throughout a research project, a responsiveness mirroring the changeability of dark times themselves.

By providing an approach to theorising that is both structured and flexible approach, the DMS offers philosophical psychology a way to maintain theoretical rigour whilst, simultaneously being politically responsive. The DMS is both a method for describing socio-political reality and a participatory tool for depicting psychological theory's relationship to power, ideology, and resistance.

Several student movements have occurred at the Department of Psychology at University of Copenhagen in the last 60 years. These efforts of student resistance share common ground in students’ critique of hegemonic paradigms dominant in educational and academic structures that formed their education. Each generational movement left their mark on the institution, staff and student body in their own way. In recent years the psychology students have voiced concern over a rapid decline in the plurality of theoretical and methodological perspectives represented in the psychology programme, curriculum and academic research at Department of Psychology, UCPH. Although traces of humanistic and critical social psychological perspectives as well as qualitative methods can be found within this development, their influence seems constrained. As part of the current student movement psychology students organized a peaceful blockade of the Department of Psychology in December 2022, which the authors of this paper were a part of during their studies.

Tracing the events of the student movement leading up to and during the 2022 Student Blockade we seek to engage in thinking completion that Arendt (1961) poses as a critical part of political movements. We further turn to what Mørck & Celosse-Andersen (2019) calls Mo(ve)ment-methodology to analyze the conflictuality of doing student activism. We propose the question; how can engaging in this as a form of political thought contribute to theoretical comprehension and remembrance (Arendt, 1961) of the current student uprising as mo(ve)ments that contain situated engagements, identity formations, conflictualities and action potentials. In lieu of Arendt's (1961) aim it is at the center of our motivation for this paper to document our history as psychology students at UCPH for historical continuity and transformative agency of future students. As students critique has been a fundamental part of learning what the discipline of Psychology is, is becoming and (we hope) could be both within and outside our old university walls.

In this presentation, an attempt is made to approach madness from surrealism, as it is captured in the early stages, e.g. by the case of Hieronymus Bosch, and by key representatives of the movement, such as Breton, Dali and Callas. These three surrealists were chosen among others for the present analysis as representatives of three distinct moments in the surrealist path. For a more complete understanding of the project, it was considered useful to include elements of the basic views on madness from the perspective of the critical approach in the sciences of psychiatry and psychology. The surrealist perspective seems to be close to this critical approach and has probably influenced it at the level where movements and scientific fields meet and influence each other.