A Theoretical Study Of Western Feminist Psychology

Western feminist psychology is both psychological theory and practice with a definite political standpoint, and was formed and developed during western woman's movement in the 1960s and 1970s. This dissertation aims at a comprehensive and systematic study of the historical logic and the theoretical construction of feminist psychology, a revelation of the influence of feminism on psychological branches and the methodological implications of feminist psychology, an evaluation of significance and contribution of feminist psychology based on an examination of its internal theoretical controversies, and finally a prediction of its future developmental tendency against a background of contention between modernity and postmodernity in counter-mainstream culture.As a new paradigm and perspective of psychological research, feminist psychology is the outcome of interactive development of social culture, philosophy and psychology. The theoretical construction of feminist psychology mainly has three orientations: feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint, and postmodernist feminist psychology. Their different attitudes towards criticism and reconstruction of scientific psychology reflect their different interpretations of gender and different conceptions of feminist psychology. Now feminism has permeated into various fields of psychology, especially clinical psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, and experimental / cognitive psychology. With its shock to the concept of "value-free", emphasis on women and women's experience, dissolution of dualism, and promotion of multimethodological, multicultural and multiperspective research of psychology, feminist psychology has remarkable significance to the methodology of psychological research.Despite the controversy over essentialism, social constructionism and feminist methodology within feminist psychology, it has greatly enriched theories and research of psychology with its distinguished subjects, outcomes, perspectives and constructive outline, and therefore proved its theoretical value to psychological study. Based on the exploration of feminist psychology caught between modernity and postmodernity, this dissertation concludes that postmodernism-orientated feminist psychology is the most promising developmental direction for the new science, and feminist psychology ought to raise its academic status, encourage interdisciplinary dialogues and promote the reform and development of psychology.