Celebrating the Other (Paperback)

Edward Sampson is perhaps best known for his acute articles in which he accused psychology of expressing the (white and male) American ideal. Here he launches a new attack - this time on Western culture's centuries-long preoccupation with a contained, individualistic Self and its suppression of all that is Other - all that is experienced as different from the implicit, self-affirming white male standard. Denying the other so as to create a world secured on behalf of the dominant groups' interests has become an obsession driving not only the larger culture but the human sciences, in particular psychology's theories of human nature. Women, African-Americans and others not of the dominant classes have been constructed as serviceable Others, and appear in textbooks, journals and popular accounts as figures whose images and everyday reality have been created to serve and service the dominant groups' desires. Sampson's arguments are convincing, liberating, and have major implications for the human sciences and the people they claim to serve.