To criticise the critic: Songs of experience

We contrast two senses of 'critique' in psychology. In one, all empirical psychology is critical insofar as it opens the methodology of its findings up to public challenge. Today's 'critical psychology' can be seen as extending this methodological reflexiveness to include reflexiveness about the discipline's political and value commitments. In this sense, however, a critical psychology would set out from the diversity of individualised experience. It is by this step, we argue, that it would best fulfil the critical objectives of the discipline as first conceived: as the touchstone of science and the guarantor of social progress. Such a step would have productive consequences for pedagogy, research, theory, and political practice.