Abstract

ORELLANA, Carlos Iván. The Challenge of Constructing a Critical Developmental Psychology in Inhospitable Societies. Rev. Costarric. Psic [online]. 2016, vol.35, n.2, pp.4-19. ISSN 1659-2913.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22544/rcps.v35i02.01.

Developmental Psychology is a field of knowledge whose existence is taken for granted in the academic imagination of Salvadoran psychology. However, there is a mainstream Developmental Psychology that is reproduced in texts, lectures and discourses, while a different one, consistent with the historical reality where its study takes place, and is still a pending task. Considering de-contextualization as one of its fundamental assumptions, this theoretical article deals with the situation of Developmental Psychology from the perspective of the Salvadoran case as an Inhospitable Society: one that distorts the progress of most of its people´s life cycle, due to, among other features, its violence and social inequality. Very well known analytical categories such as normative and non-normative developmental trends are subjected to scrutiny to show the relativity and biases of their usual applications. It is argued that, in the context of an inhospitable society, Developmental Psychology should consider at least: Early Childhood and Youth Adultisation Processes, the improbability of stable biographies, Precarious Old Age and the typical features of individuals living in the context of interest. It aims to advance a Critical Developmental Psychology: the need to rearrange the work and to reinvent itself epistemologically in order to construct a situated, appropriated and multidisciplinary knowledge that overcomes blindness, provincialism and academic reductionism.

Keywords : Inhospitable Society; Developmental Psychology; Psychology of the Lif Span; Critical Psychology; Normative and Non-Normative Developmental Trends; Ideology; Epistemology.

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