Critical Psychology

Critical psychology draws extensively on critical theory to challenge mainstream psychology's own assumptions, theories and methods, and to apply psychological understanding in different ways than the mainstream field does. The field has no single unifying framework, and its practitioners begin from different critical starting points with substantial differences as well as similarities between them, so that critical psychology functions more as an umbrella term covering various critiques of the status quo than as one school of thought. A recurring theme is assessing the social effects of psychological theories and practices: critical psychologists argue that mainstream psychology inadequately accounts for differences in power and discrimination between social classes and groups, and that it largely ignores institutional racism, postcolonialism and social-justice deficits facing minority groups, even as the movement pushes psychology as a whole toward emancipation and social justice.