Psychology and critics: strange bed partners. What we can learn of ayn rand’s critic to psychologization

Abstract

How to connect psychology with critical thinking? In this essay I do this by introducing two extra terms. The two terms both refer precisely to the critique of psychology itself. The first is the critique of psychology from psychoanalysis and the second is the critique of psychology from a right-wing and conservative agenda. Starting from the latter, I engage with the work of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), novelist and cult-philosopher, whose work is one of the most radical eulogies on capitalism. Rand voiced a very sharp critique of psychology and psychologization, but I will argue that Ayn Rand eventually relapses into psychology and psychologization. As Silicon Valley pundits draw inspiration from Ayn Rand and her objectivist philosophy/ psychology, the digitization of subjectivity presents us with an exemplary case for scrutinizing how the models and theories of psychology are integral to the backbone of today's digital capitalism. From here it is clear that for a critique of psychology from psychoanalysis to be a critique that does not relapse into psychology and psychologization, it has to be a political critique, a committed and partisan critique.