The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology: Understanding the Impact of Locke, Shaftesbury and Reid

Today new forms of critical psychology are challenging the cognitive revolution that has dominated psychology for the past three decades. This book explores the historical roots of these new psychologies. It demonstrates that their ideas are not quite as new as is often supposed.

In the early modern period, thinkers like the earl of Shaftesbury and Thomas Reid reacted against Locke's cognitive psychology in ways that were surprisingly modern, if not post-modern. However, Shaftesbury and Reid have been virtually written out of psychology's history. It is now time to recognize the great originality of their psychological thinking. Writing in a non-technical style, Michael Billig seeks to overturn the dominant views of psychology's history. In so doing, he gives a fascinating account of the times, bringing psychology's hidden past vividly back to life.

Insightful and entertaining, The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying conceptual and historical issues in psychology. The book's highly original argument should also appeal to psychologists more generally and to specialists in the history of ideas.