Social representations of psychology: When paradoxes become a strength

Abstract

This article investigates the understanding by different groups of what psychology is and what psychologists do. We first recall some of the tensions that fuelled the discipline and underpinned its institutionalization in France. Then, drawing on social representations (SR) theory and on the wind-rose model, we explore how SR of psychology and of the psychologist are developed in two different groups and when these groups come together. The first study shows how future psychologists construct, during their studies, a paradoxical understanding of the discipline and of the profession, which echoes some historical tensions: they neither abandon common-sense ideas, nor do they integrate the different psychological dimensions to develop a global approach to the person. The second study, conducted in a context of legal innovation faced by multi-professional teams in charge of assessing disabilities, shows how very different representations of the discipline and of the profession are developed in order to serve local power relationships. Finally, the third study looks at SR constructed through psychological practices by analyzing reports written by psychologists and addressed to these teams. Through their writings, psychologists reconstruct historical tensions, but they also strategically emphasize the different facets of the discipline depending on the issue at play. Thus, when they address these teams with various representations of the discipline and diverse expectations of psychologists, the tensions structuring psychology may become a strength and serve their legitimacy. All in all, the social representations of psychology and of the psychologist appears as a dynamic and interactive process.