What if our psyches are not isolated, self-contained entities but are instead profoundly shaped by and inseparable from the currents of history and culture?
This provocative question lies at the heart of Introduction to Metabletics: A Phenomenological Approach to Social Psychology, a new article by Ashley Bobak and Brent Dean Robbins. In it, they illuminate the method of metabletics, a framework that challenges mainstream psychology by embedding the psyche within the ever-changing currents of historical and cultural transformations.
âAs consciousness changes, so does the world, and, vice versa, as the world changes, so does consciousness,â write the authors.Â
By treating human psychology as something that âemerges and evolves within cultural and historical horizons,â metabletics move beyond static, individual-focused models to situate the psyche in its dynamic socio-historical context.
This shift in perspective not only reframes our understanding of human psychology but also calls for a reimagining of how research and therapeutic practices are conducted. Bobak and Robbins take this further, presenting critical metabletics as a cultural psychoanalysis:
By âuncovering hidden truths about the past,â they argue, this approach can open up ânew possibilities of understanding for the present and future.â
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I never had a mental health professional talk about society or culture as being part of the problem. It was either genetics/biology or family/parents that are the problem. I think that most of the time it’s a combination. I never had a mental health professional explain that the brain can be negatively affected by chronic abuse/stress during childhood years. From what I see personally, in the last 15 years or so we are mainly blaming the brain for everything (genetics or the biological predisposition you are born with). In this way family and society get a pass and nothing really has to be dealt with. Blaming the brain in this way is the easy way out. Who wants to deal with ugly realities right? Who wants to look bad if they can avoid it. We can see our problems collectively as well as individually but people don’t want to be seen as part of the collective problem let alone the main problem.
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Isn’t this what novelists, poets, anthropologist various types of counselors and psychotherapists and related disciplines have always done?
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My initial take on this is that the theory is conceptually ponderous and difficult to apply to people. Of course experience shapes the mind. But to find out which experiences shaped the mind of a particular individual, the most obvious thing to do is to find out from the individual what they have experienced. Isn’t that obvious?
In traditional psychology, this obvious and direct approach is hampered by the unfortunate and incorrect assumption that the individual could only possibly remember their experiences from the current lifetime. Though this has been demonstrated by many researchers to be false, most continue to believe it.
All we need to move forward is to dump this one-lifetime fallacy and start digging in to our pasts for real. The material is there to be found; I know that for sure.
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