The church, the factory, and the market as metaphors for psychology

It is somewhat of a challenge to be asked to address the position of “psychology in the postmodern age”. I am not going to suggest a postmodern psychology here, but rather discuss conditions for psychology in a postmodern age. I shall regard psychology as a cultural, a social, and a historical activity and trace how shifting styles of doing psychology reflect assumptions from the culture at large. In the first part I attempt to cast some light on the science and profession of psychology by invoking three cultural metaphors for psychology-the church, the factory, and the market. In the second part I discuss psychology as a postmodern religious, industrial, and commercial collage, and outline two contrasting scenarios of psychology in the postmodern condition: a postmodern psychology as a contradiction in terms and psychology as the postmodern discipline par excellence.