Conference Agenda

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.

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.

In this talk I argue that the question of ‘the good life’ is an important psychological question that is an implicit part of psychological practice, but that is mainly approached explicitly from the perspective of positivity in psychological theory. I argue that this approach falls short in understanding and dealing with the otherness that constitutes human existence. Instead, I turn to Hegelian dialectics and negativity and suggest that Kierkegaard and Lacan offer a philosophical anthropology and ethics that consistently takes the otherness of existence seriously. I want to show how Kierkegaard and Lacanian psychoanalysis understand the human being as constituted by otherness, how this means the human being is constitutively in an existential state of alienation, lack and despair, how this state is nonetheless obscured and enjoyed, and ultimately how the human being can alternatively confront otherness dialectically and precariously in a practice of the good life characterized by continuous negative existential work. Finally, I raise the questions of the possibility of a negative psychology and its potential for integration with social theory.