The Subject-Scientific Perspective

Constitutive for the subject-scientific perspective of Critical Psychology are, on the one hand, historically empirically obtained object determinations such as its reconstruction of human nature as societal nature, its materialistic concept of human subjects as societally situated bodily actors, and its determination of the intentionality of human action coming into effect in the practical possibility relationship of individuals to societal structures of meaning. Pertinent are, on the other hand, methodological principles of actual-empirical research that indicate the consistent transition to a generalised standpoint of the subject as a point of knowledge. With this, it can in principle connect to cultural psychological programme that analyse individual action and psychological phenomena in their constitutive relationship to social-culturally transmitted artefacts, discourses, and ways of life, and include people in research on an equal footing as subjects acting on good grounds. How psychological research and practice can open up subjective spaces of possibility in an emancipatory perspective is outlined with reference to critical-psychological theory formation and exemplified by a research project on subject development in early childhood.