Neuroscience in Psychology Textbooks 45It is an idealistic scheme that puts a theoretical framework first,
ahead of its analysis of reality, and goes no further in its exploration of
things than what is indicated by the hypotheses it has formulated.
(Martín-Baró, 1994, p. 22)Hence, I argue, the positivism of the neurosciences gets bogged down
in an obscured idealism via its unquestioned reliance on psychologistic
assumptions which are never ‘objectively’ investigated. It is precisely this
which leads to a whole array of problems and paradoxes which become
visible in for example the psychology textbooks that we discussed, as these
testify of how contemporary psychology itself takes recourse to the
neurosciences precisely in order to try to escape the unruly and
insubordinate non-psychological ground of subjectivity.
In this respect I started out this chapter sketching out how textbooks —
together with the mainstream discourse in the psychological departments
all over the world— engage in a specific interpellation of psychology
novices so that these adopt the allegedly stable, sane, external, positivist
perspective of science from which they become blind to the tautological
psychology-neuroscience-psychology circle and which makes them numb
to the paradoxes that are clearly and objectively hidden at plain side.
However, we should add here that these objective epistemological
problems only become visible, from our, particular, engaged and even
partisan point of view, from where we, as critical psychologists, or better,
as critics of psychology mount our critique.
To clarify this disclaimer, I need to rehearse my plea for a non-
psychology once again (I am engaging in a kind of re-cap movement here,
but rest assured, no exercises or rehearse questions are awaiting you). As
the human speak-being is always at a distance of what he or she is said to
be (or of what he or she believes him or herself to be) his or her
psychology always escapes him or herself. The most important claim I
make here is that there is not some kind of basic, underlying psychology
that is out of reach for the mainstream neuropsysciences and which would
be potentially really touched upon by critical psychology, decolonized or
indigenous psychology. Rather, I argue, the true defining characteristic of