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This study explores the psychologization of the women's movement by examining the activist practice of consciousness-raising in a transnational perspective. We follow the lines along which P/psychological concepts that were appropriated and developed by North American feminist activists during the late 1960s and early 1970s traveled to the German-speaking countries and were translated, adopted, and transformed by feminist activists in Germany and Austria. We explore both the process of psychologization as the practice traveled from the United States to German-speaking countries and the various dimensions of psychologization: diffusion of Psy-expert discourse beyond the borders of the psy-disciplines, academization, individualization, and meta-psychologization. With the latter term, we aim to capture the relationship between (feminist) P/psychology and its critique.

Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der Affektgenese moralisch-welterschließender Haltungen und diskutiert diese mit Blick auf das Ressentiment. Dabei fassen wir das Ressentiment mit Rückgriff auf Scheler (1913, 49) als »dauernde psychische Einstellung«, die sich aus der Erfahrung eines (moralischen) Unrechts heraus entwickelt und sich in einer negativen Werthaltung gegenüber verschiedensten Objekten äußert. Anhand einer von uns konstruierten Fallvignette zeigen wir zunächst, dass sich eine präkognitive Einschätzung der Situation, als ein leibliches Zur-Situation-ausgerichtet-Sein, an einer anderen als der die Affekte eigentlich evozierenden Stelle entladen kann, und analysieren, wie diese Verschiebung hin zu einer moralisch-welterschließenden Haltung verstanden werden kann. Auf Basis von Schelers Theorie der Ressentimentgenese argumentieren wir anschließend, dass Ressentimentbildungen als eine spezifische Form moralisch-welterschließender Haltungen verstanden werden können. Abschließend diskutieren wir die in diesem Artikel fokussierte psychogenetische Betrachtung moralisch-welterschließender Haltungen mit Blick auf eine soziogenetische Perspektive. Rückbeziehend auf die Fallvignette greifen wir in einem Ausblick auf, wie bereits bestehende (und weiter zu entwickelnde) sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven und Konzepte genutzt werden können, um die psychoaffektive Analyse der geschilderten Situation in sozialund machttheoretischer Weise zu vertiefen.

Social and liberation movements all over the world have acted on the premise that oppression is kept alive, among other ways, through psychological mechanisms. Feminist and critical race epistemologies such as “feminist standpoint theories” and “epistemological ignorance” suggest that there might be different forms of not knowing involved depending on the social location of the (not) knowing subject. In this paper we suggest that the concrete psychological mechanisms involved in not knowing or outright ignorance differ according to one’s position in the social fabric of oppression and privilege. Drawing on various critical psychological and psychoanalytic reflections, as well as interpreting selected passages from a group discussion among elderly retirement home residents in Vienna, we illustrate how social position is translated into lack of knowledge about systems of oppression and privilege

ZusammenfassungFeministische, frauenspezifische und gendersensible Therapieansätze haben sich als schulenübergreifende Perspektive in den meisten westlichen Ländern seit Anfang der 1970er entwickelt. Sie wurzeln in sogenannten consciousness-raising Gruppen, die sich im Wesentlichen überall dort entwickelt haben, wo es eine zweite Welle der Frauenbewegung gab und stellen eine Querschnittperspektive dar, die keine eigene Therapieschule sein will, sondern darauf abzielt, bestehende psychotherapeutische Theorien und Methoden durch den Einbezug gesellschaftlicher Strukturen und Bedingungen zu ergänzen. In diesem Aufsatz geben wir zunächst einen Abriss der historischen Entwicklung dieser Therapieansätze und gehen dann auf einige Kernbegriffe bzw. Kernmerkmale ein.

In psychological research, ressentiment is alluded to as a negative emotional response directed at social groups that are mostly marked as ‘inferior others’. However, conceptual work on this notion is sorely missing. In our conceptual proposal, we use the notion of ‘moral emotions’ as a starting point: typically referred to as “other-condemning” moral emotions (Haidt), psychologists have loosely conceptualised anger, contempt and disgust as a set of negative emotions that have distinct elicitors and involve affective responses to sanction moral misconduct of ‘others’. Though this conglomerate of different other-condemning emotions might describe emotions of ressentiment, we argue that the phenomenon itself is a more complex sentiment. Therefore, we apply Withy’s concept of ‘disclosive posture’ to account for the different psychological processes underlying ressentiment. Disclosing refers to a specific openness to the world, which in the case of ressentiment implies a specific awareness of and sensibility for instances of inequality, grudge, or disfavour. Ressentiment thus becomes a perceptual tool in morally relevant everyday situations. The term ‘posture’ refers to a habitualised, embodied comportment or action tendency that leads to the adoption of a negative attitude and stance towards others. Drawing on Withy, we discuss ressentiment’s similarities (and differences) to the closely related concept of hatred (Szanto, Vendrell Ferran) to embed the analysis of ressentiment in a broader social framework.

With the growth of female inmates worldwide, research regarding specific treatment of these has become more important. Although new programs have been started, the lack of scientific results is startling. The goal of the current study was to identify differences between participants from the men&rsquo, s and women&rsquo, s section in a specialized prison for criminal offenders suffering from substance dependence syndrome regarding the effects of dog-assisted group therapy. Therefore, 81 incarcerated participants (50 male, 31 female) took part in a dog-assisted group therapy targeting socio-emotional competencies. Self-report questionnaires to measure self-concept (SDQ-III), emotional status (EMI-B) and emotional competencies (SEE) were employed. Statistical analysis included General Linear Model (GLM) procedures and &eta, 2 as concurrent effect size measure. Results demonstrate that participants from the women&rsquo, s ward tend to benefit significantly less from the dog-assisted group therapy in most measured areas than men, especially in terms of their emotional status (e.g., aggressiveness) and emotional competencies (e.g., emotion regulation). Treatment programs specific to the needs of women might be a future challenge for practitioners and researchers in AAT.

Feminist psychological knowledge production has flourished in the German-speaking countries since the late 1970s. But, in contrast to countries like the United States, Canada, or Great Britain, it only gained finite traction in the academy. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the so-called “project phase” of the second wave women’s movement saw the founding of counseling centers for women in Vienna and all over Austria. During the mid-1980s, students at the University of Vienna started recruiting feminist psychologists from the feminist counseling center Frauen beraten Frauen to teach courses on the psychology of women. From the mid-1980s until 2000, the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna offered an unusually high number of courses in the psychology of women (up to ten seminars per semester and about 200 in total), turning the department into an unofficial and temporary teaching hub for feminist psychology. With 14 courses on the psychology of women, the academic year 1987/1988 marks the apogee of feminist psychological teaching by adjunct lecturers at the Department of Psychology. During the 1990s, it was again students who fought for and succeeded in having several guest professors in the psychology of women appointed at the Department of Psychology. This pinnacle period for the interrelation of feminist teaching and research saw not only the development of new didactic methods but also some continuity in the collaboration of a guest professor, adjunct lecturers, and students as well as a plethora of feminist psychological theses written by students.

This paper explores the ways in which feminist psychologists at an Austrian women’s counseling center both created and criticized their own working conditions during the mid 1980ies until the early 1990ies. Looking at both their concreted practices of counseling and of critique and at large scale social transformations in the sphere of work we analyze how these feminist psychologists produced psychological knowledge on the basis of which they criticized the social status quo. We also inquire what alternatives they envisioned and realized and how these alternatives rooted in larger scale transformations of society and how they fed back into society. We locate our analysis within a contextual history of psychology and focus on new modes of being and working that activists of the second wave of feminism paved the way for mostly in the form of women’s collectives and feminist project work, in order to situate the psychological knowledge produced by feminist psychologists and psychosocial practitioners working at a counseling center for women. In a next step, we rely on the concept of the new spirit of capitalism and the role of critique in societal transformation in order to analyze how feminist counseling centers were not only rooted in their social, cultural, and economic contexts, but also fed back into these contexts by co-creating new modes of work while at the same time critically reflecting upon their own working conditions. We thus describe the relationship between feminist psychology and its social context as circular: While women’s counseling centers were both affected and brought forth by their social context, their efforts and activities changed not only the psychosocial support system, but also the working conditions in this field.

In this chapter we reflect on ways in which scientists’ social positions and subjectivities afford opportunities or obstacles to knowledge. Starting from the observation that psychology has until now rarely been used to contribute to feminist science and technology studies, we ask how epistemological concepts developed by feminist and critical race theorists may be further developed by considering psychological processes. Focusing on feminist standpoint theory and analyses of epistemological ignorance we first discuss the relations between social position, experience, and knowledge or lack thereof. Drawing on social psychological and psychoanalytic reflections and studies we then illustrate how social position is translated into lack of knowledge about systems of oppression and privilege and we ask how this process may be disrupted by “affective shifts.” We conclude with some preliminary ideas on how scientists may use reflexivity and affective dissonance in order to identify and tackle their own psychological mechanisms of not knowing or ignorance in their relation to social positions of oppression or privilege.

This article analyzes several more or less public controversies around evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. It is asked how participants in the debate draw the lines between science and non-science and what is at stake in their boundary work practices. Evolutionists and their critics practice boundary work both in scientific insider debates and in public scientific controversies. All contenders agree that science is characterized by authority relations and disciplinary gatekeepers and that science is distinguished from other social practices and by a certain code of conduct. Evolutionists and their critics differ in their assessment of scientific authorities’ roles and responsibilities, in their definition of scientific code of conduct, and in their conception of the relation between science and society. The analysis offers insights into the social production of knowledge in both scientific and public discourse and into the ways in which scientists negotiate the very nature of science as such.

Being a feminist to me means something quite mundane and still rather astonishing. It means that it is constantly possible for the world as I know it to appear in a somewhat different light. I know of no other theoretical tradition so able to capture the complexities of the social world and their interrelation with the realm of everyday experience, action, and thought. Furthermore, feminism challenges me to ask just what power relations are at play at a concrete time and place and how they interrelate. However, it might be my hopes, dreams, and aspirations that express my feminist identity most thoroughly. Being and working with others, in particular, allows me to realize parts of my visions of a better future in the present like the safe space envisioned by Andrea Smith (2013): a space that does not escape reality but creates it; a space to practice the very world we want to realize. ‘‘I am overburdened to the point of nausea. I don’t have a life.’’ I noted these sentences almost two years ago when I kept an observation diary about a course called ‘‘Activation, coaching, computer literacy.’’ The Austrian unemployment agency had compelled me to attend the course in order to improve my job-seeking skills during a prolonged period of unemployment after my PhD. Before starting it, I decided to conduct a study on the experience of unemployment together with my friends and colleagues Katharina Hametner and Markus Wrbouschek and to write an observation diary for this purpose. One of the individual ‘‘activation’’ coaches assigned to me augured that I could make an indefinite amount of money in addition to my unemployment benefits as

This article examines the interrelations between psychology and feminism in the work of feminist psychologists and radical feminists in Toronto in the early 1970s. For Canadian feminist psychology as well as for second-wave activism, Toronto was a particular hotspot. It was the academic home of some of the first Canadian feminist psychologists, and was the site of a lively scene of feminists working in established women's organizations along with younger socialist and radical feminists. This article analyzes the interrelations of academic feminist psychology and feminist activism by focusing on consciousness-raising, a practice that promised to bridge tensions between the personal and the political, psychological and social liberation, everyday knowledge and institutionalized knowledge production, theory and practice, as well as the women's movement and other spheres of women's lives.

In this article we argue that our present-day mode of looking at bodies expresses a cosmetic gaze, that is, a gaze already informed by the techniques, expectations and strategies of bodily modification and a way of looking at bodies as awaiting an improvement. The cosmetic gaze, as we see it epitomized in contemporary media phenomena like reality makeover shows on television, is also a physiognomic gaze in that it creates a short-circuit between inside and outside beauty. Our article traces some of the history of the present short-circuit between an inside and an outside and analyzes how different visual media have informed and shaped the gaze in historically specific ways, but also how aspects of that history inhere in media practices today. More specifically, we will analyze John Caspar Lavater’s hand-drawn portraits, Francis Galton’s photographical composites, the anthropometrically defined but still intuitively discovered ideals of the ‘Aryan body’ in Nazi Germany, and today’s reality television makeover shows in order to understand some of the continuities and discontinuities of the cosmetic gaze.

In his article “Is psychology based on a methodological error?” and based on a quite convincing empirical basis, Michael Schwarz offers a methodological critique of one of mainstream psychology’s key test theoretical axioms, i.e., that of the in principle normal distribution of personality variables. It is characteristic of this paper—and at first seems to be a strength of it—that the author positions his critique within a frame of philosophy of science, particularly positioning himself in the tradition of Karl Popper’s critical rationalism. When scrutinizing Schwarz’s arguments, however, we find Schwarz’s critique profound only as an immanent critique of test theoretical axioms. We raise doubts, however, as to Schwarz’s alleged ‘challenge’ to the philosophy of science because the author not at all seems to be in touch with the state of the art of contemporary philosophy of science. Above all, we question the universalist undercurrent that Schwarz’s ‘bio-psycho-social model’ of human judgment boils down to. In contrast to such position, we close our commentary with a plea for a context- and culture sensitive philosophy of science.

In vielerlei Hinsicht stellt sich die evolutionspsychologische Attraktivitatsforschung als Erbin Charles Darwins (1809-1882) dar. Der Evolutionstheoretiker fungiert als Inspirationsquelle, Reibungsflache, Legitimationsfigur und vieles mehr: David Buss’ Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology etwa ist Charles Darwin gewidmet; Randy Thornhill (1998) pragte fur die evolutionspsychologische Attraktivitatsforschung den Begriff Darwinian Aesthetics, der etwa auch von Grammer et al. (2003) ubernommen wurde; und nicht wenige evolutionspsychologische AttraktivitatsforscherInnen arbeiten sich an Darwins Theorie korperlicher ›Schonheit‹, seiner Fundamentalsetzung von ›Schonheitspraferenzen‹ und seinem damit einhergehenden Fokus auf die kulturelle Variabilitat von ›Schonheitsstandards‹ ab, indem sie etwa nachweisen wollen, dass Darwin selbst schon ein Auge fur die Universalitat derartiger Standards hatte (z.B. Cunningham et al. 2002), dass er in seiner Einschatzung von ethnozentrischen Kolonialberichten irregefuhrt war (ebd.) oder dass ›neuere Erkenntnisse‹ seine Annahmen widerlegt hatten (Rhodes et al. 2002; Grammer et al. 2002).

Ich kehre in diesem Kapitel zu den in meiner Einleitung formulierten Ausgangsfragestellungen zuruck und fuhre auserdem alle bisherigen Strange dieses Buches zusammen. Meine Ausgangsfragen hatte ich folgendermasen formuliert: Warum wird es um 1990 moglich, uber die Bevorzugung ›schoner‹ Menschen als ›Naturgesetz‹ zu sprechen, und warum wird es innerhalb der psychologischen Attraktivitatsforschung so gangig, diese Bevorzugung als ›Naturgesetz‹ zu formulieren, dass andere Erklarungen immer weniger relevant und damit immer weniger sagbar werden? Noch allgemeiner gefragt: Warum wird ›Schonheit‹ uberhaupt zu einem Gegenstand, um den sich eine eigene Subdisziplin, die Attraktivitatsforschung, entwickelt?

Immanente Kritik stellte seit jeher ein zentrales Instrument fur KritikerInnen der Evolutionspsychologie dar (vgl. Ruck/Slunecko 2013). Mein Fokus in diesem Kapitel liegt darauf, eine immanente Kritik der evolutionspsychologischen Attraktivitatsforschung zu vollziehen, die diese an ihren eigenen Masstaben misst. Wie ich in den Kapiteln 5.1 und 5.2 rekonstruiere, ist es nicht zufallig, dass sich ›gute Gene‹-TheoretikerInnen vor allem in der Evolutionspsychologie finden und dort eine akademische Heimat gefunden haben. In einem bestimmten evolutionsbiologischen Theorem – der sogenannten ›fluktuierenden Asymmetrie‹ – hat die ›gute Gene‹-Hypothese des gelernten Biologen Randy Thornhill zu einer erbitterten Debatte Anlass gegeben, die, wie ich in Kapitel 5.1 zeige, mit diversen und dezidiert nicht nur wissenschaftlichen Mitteln ausgefochten wurde.

Es gibt nur wenige Gelegenheiten, innerhalb eines einzigen Buches ein Vierteljahrhundert rasant voranschreitender Forschungsentwicklung in der Form eines Primartextes versammelt zu sehen — Wilhelm Reichs (1897–1957) „Charakteranalyse“ ist eine davon.

Freud war ein Held. Er stieg in die „Unterwelt“ und traf dort auf blose Schrecken. Er brachte mit sich eine Theorie wie ein Haupt der Medusa, das diese Schrecken in Stein verwandelte ... Er uberlebte. Wir mussen sehen, ob wir jetzt uberleben konnen, ohne eine Theorie zu benutzen, die gewissermasen ein Instrument der Verteidigung ist.