Thomas Teo

Thomas Teo
York University · Department of Psychology

Dr. phil.
Theories of subjectivity. Critical psychology.

About

163
Publications
73,363
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,610
Citations
Introduction
I have been active in the advancement of theoretical, philosophical, and historical psychology from a critical perspective throughout my professional career. My research has been metatheoretical in order to provide a more reflexive understanding of the foundations and trajectories of current psychology and subjectivity.
Additional affiliations
January 1996 - present
York University
Position
  • Professor (Full)

Publications

Publications (163)
Article
Full-text available
The indigenous psychology (IP) movement has challenged mainstream psychology, which is considered rooted in colonial legacies, and has advocated for locally informed and developed theories and practices. The article explores the nexus of IP and decolonial psychology, emphasizes the need to challenge Western-centric hegemony and promotes a contextua...
Article
Full-text available
The argument is based on the premise that method follows subject matter. A representational view of methodology is discussed, arguing that a natural–scientific approach based on variabilization and subdivision of mental life is epistemically insufficient. Subjectivity as the subject matter of psychology must be studied with methods that are capable...
Article
Full-text available
After challenging models of human nature and psychological science, a series of interrogations are proposed that aid in improving the practice of theorizing in psychology, specifically in regard to the topic of race. The program of autoepistemology is defined as the study of how “my” knowledge is connected with histories, cultures and societies as...
Data
The concept and practice of autoepistemology should aid academics and the public to exercise reflexivity when discussing and evaluating works and ideas from outside their own intellectual and cultural traditions.
Article
Full-text available
After introducing general problems that a theory of subjectivity must address, the meaning of subjectivity is discussed and defined as the wholeness of first-person somato-psychological life. The most important principle in a theory of subjectivity is the entanglement of socio-subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and intra-subjectivity. This entanglem...
Article
Full-text available
The commentary introduces autoepistemology as a first-person reflection on one’s own epistemic framework, using the example of assessing and commenting on other authors’ works. The problem of evaluation is exacerbated when dealing with analyses from radically different intellectual and cultural contexts. It is suggested that reviews and commentarie...
Article
Full-text available
After explaining the meaning of mentality, sources of globalization are discussed. Globalization, and antiglobalizing and deglobalizing mentalities, are understood as grounded in the historical, material, and concrete discursive and practical experiences of individuals. Globalization is divided into political-economic, cosmopolitan, and internation...
Article
The unprecedented pace and scope of globalization over the past half century have had major impacts on the field of psychology. We observe that since the 2008 financial crisis, there have been increased academic and political concerns with “deglobalization,” which is often associated with terrorism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, Brexit, the US–Chin...
Article
Full-text available
Because psychology lacks a comprehensive theory of subjectivity that accounts for the entanglement of the social, cultural , historical, interpersonal, and personal, relevant elements for a theory of subjectivity are identified and presented. An important dimension for a theory of subjectivity is the reality of living everyday life, which includes...
Data
In the aftermath of globalization: Antiglobalizing and deglobalizing forms of subjectivity
Book
Full-text available
Portuguese translation of 7 articles by T. Teo
Article
Full-text available
This commentary discusses the Special Issue on Law, Medicine, and Bioethics: Role of Interdisciplinary Leadership in Influencing Health and Public Health Policy and Democratic Systems of Governance from the perspective of the concept of killability/dieability. Killability refers to the idea that the other can be killed as an active doing, whereas d...
Article
Full-text available
Critical race theory guides the analysis of the nature of a white epistemology in psychological science, the consequences for the study of race, and how scientific racism has been possible in the pursuit of knowledge. The article argues that race has not only been misused in the politics of psychology but misappropriated because of the logic of psy...
Chapter
Full-text available
On the background of ethnocentrism, the lack of knowledge and experiences, and the a priori assumption that one’s culture is not only the standard or norm but at the apex of a historically constituted or imagined hierarchy, the expressions of culture-supremacy are discussed. Although culture-centrism afflicts every culture, with every context havin...
Chapter
Full-text available
Employing the term praxis refers to the idea that theorizing has not only a traditional but also a critical dimension and that it can be accomplished in academia as well as everyday contexts. Distinguishing theorizing as an activity from theory, and articulating the relationship between theorizing and interpreting, it is suggested that the process...
Book
Full-text available
Serbo-Croatian translation of: Teo, T. (2018). Outline of theoretical psychology: Critical investigations. Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapter
Full-text available
Subjectivity and the critical imagination in neoliberal capitalism is a conversation with Thomas Teo, interviewed by Dennis. C. Wendt. Thomas Teo and Dennis Wendt enter a dialogue about psychology’s entanglement with society, culture, and the history of psychology. Their discussion highlights important aspects of Teo’s recent scholarship that aims...
Chapter
After making the distinction between fascist politics and fascist subjectivity, it is argued that the latter depends on specific content that has reemerged in Western countries. At the core of fascist subjectivity is a capitalist mindset that justifies and enacts political-economic inequities based on racism and/or subhumanism. Analyses that focus...
Article
Full-text available
Introducing the concept of motivated historiography, we seek to answer the question of what constitutes a good history of psychology and of German Critical Psychology (CP) in particular. It is suggested that one needs to include questions about the purpose of historiography, the background and horizon of the historiographer, the quality and origina...
Article
Full-text available
Methodology is intrinsically related to “object” and its quality is based on the degree to which a method is doing justice to the object, demonstrating the entanglement of ontic, epistemic, and ethical considerations. The intent of “doing justice” is at the core of methodology and is the de facto guiding principle for conducting research and for pr...
Article
Full-text available
It is emphasized that theoretical psychology is based on the practice of theorizing. After presenting and challenging some ideas about theories, three tasks for theoretical psychologists are discussed: theorizing as critique refers to describing psychology as a hyper-science that inflates its methodological and technical activities in order to conc...
Chapter
Full-text available
Critical psychologies and cultural-historical approaches in psychology have common sources but have become separated in their historical trajectories. These divergent paths allow for mutual critiques and possible reconciliations. In this paper, differences and similarities are discussed, beginning with the role of critique, the society-individual n...
Article
Full-text available
This comment responds to Held’s (2020) analyses of Indigenous and critical psychologies, not by providing line-for-line refutations of arguments, but by laying out some of the larger issues in those areas of research and practice. The argument clarifies assumptions and misunderstandings by looking at the relationship between critical and Indigenous...
Chapter
Full-text available
All psychologists may imagine a global psychology, but it is not clear what would constitute such a psychology. The export model of epistemic globalization (from the West to the rest) could be contrasted with Yang’s indigeneity model that, in theory, gives all indigenous approaches, including Western psychologies, an equal standing. We suggest that...
Article
A critical analysis of social behavior proposes that the contempt for immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers around the world is explicitly or implicitly powered by an ontology of the subhuman, a term that was used in early 20th century American race and eugenic theory, as well as in fascist Germany, to describe and justify the mistreatment of min...
Chapter
Psychologism and psychologization refer to the ways in which psychological thinking oversteps disciplinary boundaries and permeates other areas of study, as well as how we understand ourselves and act in the world. Critiques of psychologism and psychologization have been put forth since the beginning of the 20th century by philosophers and sociolog...
Article
Full-text available
This comment responds to the four target articles published in this special issue on “Women in Psychology and Related Sciences.” It is suggested that the articles have explanatory power for answering the question, “Why are things the way they are?” when it comes to gender issues, by drawing on history, theory, feminism, political thought, and in sh...
Chapter
Full-text available
The subjectivity of the researcher is as much embedded in society, history, and the larger culture as any other subjectivity. Political-economic conditions, the Zeitgeist, social characteristics, the academic habitus, personal idiosyncrasies, institutional realities, or politics can influence the questions, methodologies, interpretations, and appli...
Chapter
Full-text available
The chapter suggests that theoretical psychology needs to move beyond the traditional alliance with philosophy and embrace the possibilities of the psychological humanities. Using examples from the humanities, their value for reflexivity and interference as well their significance in understanding the psychological are articulated. It is argued tha...
Book
This volume presents a re-envisioning of the field of theoretical psychology and offers unique visions for its present and future from leaders of North American philosophical psychology. It contends that theoretical psychology has reached ‘middle-age’ and must consider new directions to renew its growth. Rooted in a range of research traditions and...
Book
This volume presents a re-envisioning of the field of theoretical psychology and offers unique visions for its present and future from leaders of North American philosophical psychology. It contends that theoretical psychology has reached ‘middle-age’ and must consider new directions to renew its growth. Rooted in a range of research traditions and...
Article
Full-text available
Foucault once articulated his relationship with Marxist theory, suggesting that he uses the master without authenticating, lauding or eulogizing his significance and that, if an intellectual pioneer is important, his or her ideas should be integrated into current work. I suggest that we adapt Holzkamp for current intellectual and practical purposes...
Article
Full-text available
Based on a Neo-Sprangerian approach to forms of life in Western cultures, and drawing on humanities-based ideas about personality, a critical-hermeneutic description of a neoliberal form of life and its corresponding form of subjectivity is presented. In the neoliberal form of subjectivity, the self becomes central, but in a way that the distinctio...
Book
Full-text available
“Outline of Theoretical Psychology” is the first systematic monograph that discusses basic philosophical problems in the discipline and profession of psychology from a critical-theoretical perspective. Using a traditional division that includes ontology, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, core problems that interfere in psychology as a disciplin...
Chapter
Psychology has a problematic historical record regarding marginalized groups in terms of knowledge and treatment. Nonwhite populations, the second gender, underclasses, persons with disabilities, queer persons, and other groups have been identified in psychological knowledge as deficient. Critical psychologists have challenged the supposed knowledg...
Chapter
Based on the argument that ontology precedes epistemology and that method is not necessarily the route that leads to knowledge, it is asked why psychology has embraced a methodologism and a narrow epistemology when debating questions about psychological knowledge, ways for achieving knowledge, and the meanings of knowledge more generally. Some crit...
Chapter
Because psychologists draw on ontological assumptions about the nature of psychological objects and concepts, the two-culture approach in psychology is introduced. Not only do objects and events possess certain ontic realities that necessitate particular epistemological or methodological practices, but language itself, used to describe, explain, an...
Chapter
The chapter focuses on ontological reflections regarding the nature of psychology as an academic discipline, profession, and cultural phenomenon. It also addresses the issue of the psychological object and subject matter and includes questions about what psychologists study or should study, the specific and unique characteristics of the psychologic...
Chapter
From a critical perspective, it is important to assess the role of social categories such as class, gender, and cultural location for knowledge-making, and to examine the implications of the historical fact that psychology as an academic discipline has been associated with certain social characteristics. The idea that social categories influence re...
Chapter
Ethical thinking and doing, in a broad sense, play a significant role in psychology. It is inconceivable that a discipline that deals with human beings does not have ethical–political concerns at its core. The values of psychology and practical reason in psychology, based on the distinction between ethical, pragmatic-utilitarian, and moral thinking...
Chapter
Aesthetics is still a neglected field in theoretical psychology. The marginal status of aesthetics within theoretical psychology might be based on a notion that studies in epistemology, ethics, and ontology have an immediate relevance to the discipline and profession, whereas aesthetics is assumed to be superfluous. Discussing the concept of the ps...
Chapter
From a critical perspective, it is important to assess the implications of the historical fact that psychology as an academic discipline has been developed in modern Western societies. Culture is conceptualized in terms of a time period (epoch, historical culture, Zeitgeist) and as a geographical (or indigenous) context. Cultures can be dominant or...
Chapter
For critical psychologists, addressing social justice is not about avoiding a negative in the discipline and profession of psychology, or about following rules in order to avoid legal or professional sanctions. “Doing no harm” in research and practice is certainly a minimum requirement, but attending to injustice must also be about caring for membe...
Chapter
Ontological discussions in psychology include the meaning of being human, how psychological competencies contribute to that debate, and how implicit and explicit theories of human nature in the past and present impact psychological theory and practice. Tracing classical theories of human nature, consequences for the science and practice of psycholo...
Book
Outline of Theoretical Psychology discusses basic philosophical problems in the discipline and profession of psychology. The author addresses such topics as what it means to be human in psychology; how psychological knowledge is possible and what it consists of; the role of social justice in psychology; and how aesthetic experience could help us to...
Book
Full-text available
Article
The development of psychology as a science and the struggle for scientific recognition has disrupted the need to interrogate the discipline and the profession from the perspective of the humanities, the arts, and the concept-driven social sciences. This article suggests that some of the humanities contribute significantly to an understanding of hum...
Article
Full-text available
In 2015 Attorney David Hoffman and his colleagues published the results of an extensive independent review in which he concluded that the American Psychological Association (APA) interacted with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and colluded with the Pentagon in an effort to curry favor with these agencies and to protect and expand the role of...
Article
Full-text available
The development of psychology as a science and the struggle for scientific recognition has disrupted the need to interrogate the discipline and the profession from the perspective of the humanities, the arts, and the concept-driven social sciences. This article suggests that some of the humanities contribute significantly to an understanding of hum...
Chapter
Full-text available
In discussing various forms of struggles, three different types of injustices are highlighted and related to subjectivity and the arts. It is argued that in neoliberal societies these struggles and injustices have become intertwined to the degree that agentic socio-subjectivity is no longer experienced or conceptualized. Admitting that art embodies...
Article
Full-text available
Reviews the book, The Myth of Racial Color Blindness: Manifestations, Dynamics, and Impact edited by Helen A. Neville, Miguel E. Gallardo, and Derald Wing Sue (see record 2015-24372-000 ). Racial color blindness is an intersubjective phenomenon, because believing “that skin color does not play a role in interpersonal interactions and institutional...
Article
Full-text available
The question is raised whether the American and Canadian codes of ethics for psychologists (codes) are able to address some of the most important moral issues that have plagued the discipline of psychology in recent history. Applying Habermas’s distinction between pragmatic, ethical, and moral reasoning, the codes are challenged on moral grounds an...
Article
Full-text available
Critical psychology has become a generative and international movement in the last 5 decades, with self-identifying critical psychologists emerging from around the globe with publications and contributions, both theoretical and practical, in many areas of psychology. This article provides an overview of current trends in critical psychology and elu...
Chapter
Full-text available
Suggesting that aesthetics is a neg!巳cted field in theoretical psychology and acknowledging the complexity of the topic in philosophy, an a饥empt is made to articulate the possibilities of an aesthetics of resistance. Ambivalences about the embeddedness of art in class and as p组t of the cultural capital of the elites 田市 expressed. Using critical-the...
Article
Full-text available
It is suggested that Robinson's (2013) arguments are based on a less than clear articulation of the relationship between the history and philosophy of psychology. After tackling the relationship between these two subdisciplines and conceptualizing them in a dialectic relationship from a programmatic point of view, consequences for writing and readi...
Article
Full-text available
After suggesting that all psychologies contain indigenous qualities and discussing differences and commonalities between German and North American historiographies of psychology, an indigenous reconstruction of German critical psychology is applied. It is argued that German critical psychology can be understood as a backlash against American psycho...
Article
Full-text available
According to the philosophers of science Hempel and Oppenheim (1948), who were cited appropriately by Lilienfeld (see record 2011-12007-001) in his article, scientific explanations serve to answer "why" questions. Clarifying the logic of explanations in the sciences, they developed famously the notion that phenomena can be explained (using deductio...
Article
Full-text available
After identifying the discipline of psychology's history of contributing pioneers and leaders to the field of race research, epistemological problems in empirical psychology are identified including an adherence to a nave empiricist philosophy of science. The reconstruction focuses on the underdetermined rela-tionship between data and interpretatio...
Article
Full-text available
Introducing the concept of tradition and its importance for critical-intellectual development, traditions of radical philosophy and psychology are presented. Emphasizing the role of Marxist and post-Marxist thought in various critical approaches, critical programs are presented as theoretical endeavors that share the critique of ideology. These app...
Chapter
Full-text available
Using Holzkamp's Theory and Experiment from 1964, it is argued that the problem of the relationship of theoretical and empirical propositions has not been addressed, let alone solved, within mainstream psychology. The focus of this paper is on the critical impact of Holzkamp's methodological analyses for research on the Other. The concept of episte...
Article
The success of psychology can be measured, among other criteria, in terms of the psychologization of society, by which we mean the way individuals, groups, and cultures use psychological theories, categories, and practices, rightly or wrongly, to describe, understand, and deal with issues occurring in mental and social life. Theoretical and philoso...
Article
Full-text available
This editorial introduces the current issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (JTPP). It focuses on a new section developed for short discussion articles in JTPP. This new section includes short articles on critical thinking in psychology. The discussion articles in this issue are based on a symposium that was held in 2010...
Article
The field of psychology can be understood in terms of general accounts of mental life that differ over time and between cultures or in terms of an academic discipline. For the former, pluralism is an a priori condition because history and culture produce necessarily and universally varying accounts of human subjectivity that are embedded in local p...
Article
Full-text available
This article discusses the meaning of epistemological violence in the empirical social sciences. It is argued that the concept is closer to personal than to structural violence in that it has a subject, an object, and an action, even if the violence is indirect and nonphysical: the subject of violence is the researcher, the object is the Other, and...
Article
Full-text available
We understand metahistory as an approach that studies how histories within a particular discipline have been written and focus on insider scientists' reconstructions of twin research. Using the concept of ethical-political affordances we suggest that such histories are based on a management of resources that prove to be beneficial for representing...
Article
Full-text available
En s’appuyant sur des réflexions historiques, théoriques et empiriques, nous avançons que la théorie caucasienne ainsi que le terme sont désuets en psychologie. En discutant des origines historiques du terme dans les écrits de Johann Friedrich Blumenbach et des éléments clés de sa théorie, il est démontré que sa théorie n’est pas appuyée et a été f...
Article
Full-text available
The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology has entered a new era in its publication history by becoming part of the American Psychological Association’s Journals Program. This Spring issue of 2009 was based on a new electronic submission, manuscript management, and production process, which takes advantage of efficient and up-to-date p...
Article
In this editorial, the editor discusses the current special issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology on theism. It focuses on a radical article by Slife and Reber (see record 2009-22673-007) which in a sense challenges the foundations of current psychology, with arguments that have implications for metaphysical positions of...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
I am interested in departments or programs around the world that have a focus on the psychological humanities (using the humanities, arts, and concept-driven social sciences to address the psychological). I would like to compile a list to connect people and institutions.

Network

Cited By