Epistemological Alienation in Scientific Psychology

Abstract

This article presents the concept of epistemological alienation in order to examine psychology's epistemological quantitative Paradigm and its connection to political reality. Politzer's work of how mainstream psychology turns the first-person language of the individual into a mechanistic third-person pseudoscience is thoroughly discussed. Consequently, through some marginalized voices within psychology, it is examined how psychologists disregard the subject's own voice, intentionality, meaning and judgment-forming mechanisms promoting instead a naturalistic and mechanistic language, based heavily on psychometric methodology and a false and altered account of psychology's history. Psychology's mechanistic language is compared to Marx's concept of alienation, various aspects of which are discussed. The case is made that epistemological alienation is an internal process in psychological research that stems from and reinforces, essentializes and "epistemologizes" the alienation and the individualization of the modern subject.

Keywords: Epistemological alienation; Naturalism; Politzer; Quantitative imperative.