Social Constructionism and Psychology

The chapter focuses on social constructionism as a critical voice in psychology. It describes the assumptions underlying the discipline of (mainstream) psychology before going on to demonstrate the key features of social constructionism and how these challenge mainstream psychology: the historical and cultural specificity of knowledge, the relationship between knowledge and power, challenging the concepts of objectivity and truth, and anti-essentialism. These key features are illustrated through the examples of intelligence and personality, age categories, psychopathology and disability. The implications for the discipline of psychology and for selfhood are discussed.