Links with other Theoretical Perspectives

Critical psychology became known in Italy through the translation in 1974 of Holzkamp’s Kritische Psychologie (1972). It was widely read because it dealt with a topical issue of the time: the challenge to the psychology labelled as „bourgeois science“. However, though deriving from Berlin Critical Psychology, in Italy it took on its own characteristics as it developed in an original way links with the Cultural Historical School and, in particular, the Tätigkeitstheorie of Leont’ev – author more widely known in Italy than in other western European countries due to cultural relationship with the USSR. The main characteristic of Italian Critical Psychology is that it – less ideological and abstract than Berlin Critical Psychology – addressed problems existing in the world of work, in psychiatric institutions and in communities.

From the 1980s, the political and cultural changes of those years led to the eclipse of Berlin Critical Psychology and in tandem its Italian variant, which nonetheless has continued to exert an influence. This is particularly the case in the Italian psychology of community, with regard to the basis of research – the genetic historical analysis of the factors that interact in the context investigated – and its aim, which is to make the subjects protagonists of change. In reference to this, the links are explained between Critical Psychology as understood in Italy and other theoretical perspectives to be found in Italian culture: Lewin’s social psychology and action research, which have influenced social psychology in Italy, the Cultural Historical School, and the thought of Gramsci. These links rest on the concept of activity (i.e. praxis in Gramsci, Tätigkeit in Leont’ev, purposive action in Lewin) and on the critical capacity of common sense.