Auto-ethnography and psy-critique in Covid times. A book review essay of Ian Parker’s Psychology through Critical Auto-ethnography

ABSTRACT

This book review essay of Ian Parker’s Psychology through Critical Auto-ethnography has three objectives. The first is to provide an assessment of Parker’s unique contribution to the field of Critical Psychology. Parker’s critique of the psy-sciences is shown to offer a key challenge not only to mainstream psychology but also to those who envision themselves working in the field of Critical Psychology how not to relapse in the traps of mainstream psychology and psychologisation? The second objective is to scrutinize Parker’s idiosyncratic use of the methodology of auto-ethnography. Here it is argued, again, that Parker’s appropriation of this method not only is ideally positioned to question the problematic field of mainstream psychology, but also opens up a different perspective on subjectivity and sociality that should challenge Critical Psychology. The third objective is to apply these insights to the Covid crisis if Parker enjoins us to step outside the psy-complex and “find many other ways to live together without it,” the entry of mainstream psychology into the Covid-debate, claiming expert knowledge on how we should live apart/together, should be confronted head-on. To achieve these three objectives, the author also uses a moderate dose of auto-ethnography.