Neuroscience in Psychology Textbooks 41author here, depicting a caring mother figure? What is the fantasy, the
ideologies at play in these scenarios? As I wrote elsewhere, don’t study
psychology, study psychologization. Or, mainstream psychology should
not be opposed with one or another “critical psychology”, but with a
genuine critique of psychology. Consider in this respect another fragment,
featuring another Mary, but this time from the Zimbardo-Johnson-McCann
textbook, where a seemingly critical position is being taken against mirror
neuron enthusiasm:
For example, if you see Mary grasp a cup, you might infer from the
way she grasps it that she intends to drink from it (rather than, say, give it
to someone else). Mirror neuron enthusiasts have assumed this type of
action-understanding comes with the mirror neuron package, so to
speak—in other words, that mirror neuron activity promotes deeper
understanding of the person’s motives and actions, leading to conclusions
that mirror neurons underlie empathy and social understanding. But
research outside the area of mirror neurons clearly shows that
understanding others’ motivations can occur outside a mirror neuron
system, in part as the result of analytical thinking skills. (Zimbardo,
Johnson, & McCann, 2012, p. 71)Is this not a reasonable criticism, which is not evident in most
textbooks? It says, wait a minute, does the mirror neuron explanation really
explains something, what about ... But of course, there it only gives
another model: the cognitive one: we understand Mary reaching for a cup
because.... But is this enough, do not the questions remain, who is Mary
and who is she to the observer? And who might be the “someone else”
evoked in the fragment? But of course the really interesting question is
where we ask why Zimbardo, Johnson, and McCann set up this particular
scenario and, subsequently, which are the original scenarios and fantasies
mounted by the inventors of the mirror neurons?^7
(^7) See, in this respect, the critique of Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (2015).