30 Jan De Vos
about” are arguably the most powerful weapons of modernity shaping and
colonizing the human being, shaping and colonizing the world. What then,
and this is the scope of this chapter, are the chances of criticality vis-à-vis
the arguably hegemonic neuroturn in the psy-sciences? I will approach this
via a little excursion through some psychology textbooks as these are a
prime example of how the neuropsysciences establish their firm but not
unproblematic claim to be able to put its finger on the human and
humanity.
MIND THE GAP
Textbooks are the place where the supposedly neat scientific results
are proposed, where disputes are skimmed over, the consensus is taught
and the road to a bright future is sketched. The underlying struggle for
hegemony, that is, the struggle for which signifiers that will function as the
central coordinates of the debate (cf. Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) is kept out of
sight. Hence, it is always interesting to look in textbooks for the stitches
and the short-circuits that are used to unify a field. With this I don’t mean
that in psychology textbooks there is no room to describe disputes or
opposing views but that all these are presented from the perspective that
psychology, although a relatively young discipline, is as such a valid
scientific field heading toward ever more progress and more unity. And,
guess what, it is precisely here that the brain comes in as the great unifier,
the great pacifier of the psychological field.
Hence in the same way as popular psychology is able to reveal some
fundamental characteristics of mainstream psychology (De Vos, 2015) also
psychology textbook simplifications are perhaps not just secondary as they
might teach us something about psychology proper. Put succinctly: the
necessary simplifications of textbooks might show us the essential
simplifications within psychological science as such. Or phrased in relation
to the brain as the great unifier of psychology: textbooks might reveal to us
that the attempt to unify the field of psychology cannot but lead to
paradoxes and anomalies. In this respect one sometimes wonders which