On the Dangers of Transnational Influences of Western Psychology: Decolonizing International Perspectives on Women and Therapy

Abstract

Psychology of women, feminist psychology, and therapy with women have been primarily connected to dominant Western methodologies and practices of the Global North. The history of misogynistic and patriarchal methods in Western psychology is often limited to critiques of psychoanalysis, even though international and multicultural critical perspectives continue to draw primarily on psychoanalytic theoretical and clinical modalities. The history of colonization, eugenics, and imperialism are routinely minimized or denied in accounts of psychologies of the Global North, while indigenous and non-Western and Global South traditions are fetishized and appropriated without critical analysis. The dangers of colonization of global impact, especially on psychologies not associated with industrialized worlds of the Global North, are noted in relation to dominant psychology’s insistence on neutral experimental research, reduction of human experiences to biology and animal behavior, the privileging of methods of thought and behavior control, and ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of Western contributions of the Global North. Possibilities of critical and liberatory practices in relation to the practice of psychology with women with connections to global non-Western cultures are explored. This article concludes with a personal narrative about the dangers and limitations of the uncritical export of dominant psychologies of the Global North.

Keywords:

• Decolonization
• history of psychology
• globalization
• racist sciences
• sexist sciences

Disclosure statement

I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oksana Yakushko

Oksana Yakushko is an immigrant from (Soviet) Ukraine. She is licensed psychologist and professor of psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her scholarship and clinical work have focused on issues related to immigration, xenophobia, human trafficking, and gender violence. Her recent work has turned to histories of eugenics, scientific racism and scientific sexism in the discipline of psychology, including its iterations in “positive” psychology, “evolutionary” psychology and clinical theories of control over human emotions and behavior. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is a member of psychology-based social justice organizations, and is psychoanalyst-in-training with the National Training in Psychoanalysis, New York City.