The Psychological: A Critique from Decolonial Community Psychology

The purpose of this chapter is to advance a deconstruction of the psychological in the logic of understanding that there is an installation of mental functioning, not generalizable to all cultures and human beings but promoted by modern eurocentric society. Thus, mental structures based on reason, planning, the superego, knowledge production mechanisms, etc. are observed that make up an entire way of thinking. This leads to constructing reality, as if it were the only possible truth, stimulating social relations that border on racism and discrimination against social sectors evaluated as less intellectually capable. In contrast, other cultures, such as the Latin American indigenous world in general, structure the mind with various parameters, forming an alternative subjectivity, where one of its central elements is intersubjectivity, which leads to valuing diversity, coexistence and presence, not just one reality but of a multi-reality.