28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

developed by employees exposed to it (N=130) The relations between their identity construction,
social support and the organizational climate are analyzed with a multimethodological approach
(statistical and content analysis) We will focus on social support as a coping mechanism towards
workplace violence.
3091 ORAL
History, theory, psychology as a discipline
Chair: Svend Brinkmann, Denmark
3091.1 Critical contributions to contemporary psychology, John Desmond Kaye, The
University of Adelaide, Australia
Academic psychology's governing paradigm has limited the study of many aspects of human
experience and its sociocultural positioning central to human behaviour and its control.
Postfoundational theory provides a critique of the limitations of this paradigm and offers a frame
that legitimates study of these phenomena. Additionally Critical Psychology has interrogated
psychology's sociocultural role and its role in maintaining socially unjust practices. This paper
addresses 1) postfoundational contributions to psychological knowledge, enquiry and practice 2)
the reality/relativism debate as artifactual 3) Critical Psychology's role in developing a socially
responsible psychology and one responsive to change in the social ethos.
3091.2 A phenomenological investigation on “placebo effect”, Wai Fu, Centre on Behavioral
Health, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
The current study is a phenomenological investigation about the assumptions, applications, and
the essences underlying the placebo effect. In disagreement with DeMarco’s (1998) proposal to
shelve “placebo effect” from psychotherapeutic evaluation research, the author provides an
alternative by reconceptualizing “placebo” and “placebo effect” in terms of “internal act” and
“external interventions”. Methodological issues will be discussed.
3091.3 The life-world of self-referential systems, Vasi Van Deventer, University of South
Africa, South Africa
Third order cybernetics is an attempt to explore the ontology of the subject. In this paper the
subject is explored as a self-referential system using Derrida's concept of 'differance'. The
approach offers two counter-intuitive conclusions, namely (a) the world in which self-referential
systems find themselves is not a world that contains these systems, but a world that appears as the
limit of the self-referential system, and (b) the subject is something that is neither simply present
in nor simply absent from this world. The paper avoids complex arguments by using diagrams to
explain the basic concepts.
3091.4 Psychology modelled as a moral science, Svend Brinkmann, University of Aarhus,
Denmark
It is becoming increasingly clear that psychology as science and practice is deeply involved in
socio-political processes. This forces psychologists to examine the ethical presuppositions and
implications of their discipline. This presentation advocates conceptualizing psychology as a
693