Trends, Changes, Challenges in North American (Eurocentric) Psychology: Rethinking Assumptions, Practices, and Organization in Socio-Political Contexts

Abstract

Preface Psychology is neither the property, nor possession, of the American Psychological Association (APA), or any of its related organizations! Psychology is not a "commodity" to be bought, owned, and/or distributed by any organization or institution, even as that organization or institution may seek to control its existence, definition, and standardization, or other uses through wealth, position, and person. Psychology is not to be used to establish "hegemony," by imposing an organization or institution's expressed purposes, or empowering an organization or institution's implicit and explicit assumptions, goals, and intentions. The use of regulation, by-laws, and other forms of privileged, legal, or unexpressed codification, including membership demographics, must be clear in their intent and purpose. Nor should psychology be driven in its purposes by political or ideological preferences, designed to favor one nation's pursuit of hegemonic control. Because of the political, economic, and military status and stature of the United States of America, the American Psychological Association has distinct advantages in propagating and enforcing its unique historical, cultural, and epistemological assumptions and practices both within the nation, and across the world. This propagation does not represent an illegal act, but it does constitute a critical moral and ethical issue because of APA levels of proportion, process, and ideology. When psychology is organized and institutionalized within a powerful corporate model, it has the potential to serve obsequious purposes for "colonizing mind," via its assumptions, methods, and accepted standards. This situation has been described by many non-Western scholars, and deserves the courtesy and respect of the APA, North American, and Eurocentric psychologies: