Demarcación de la psicología cultural

Abstract

Both in the academic domain and in its attempts to explain human behaviour, psychology seems to have turned its back on culture, adopting an almost exclusively biological perspective. But it is fundamentally culture that gives meaning to human conduct. For this reason psychology should be considered from a dual dimension, incorporating both biology
and culture; hence the need for un anthropological basis for psychology, via the construction of a cultural psychology. This study, after analysing cultural psychology from a historical perspective, from Wundt to the present day, analyses its theoretical construction, distinguishing betweenpsychological
anthropology and ethnopsychology. It seems clear that cultural psychology plays a decisive role in developmental psychology (cultures of the life cycle), educational psychology, (initiation, enculturation), social psychology (groups, organizations, institutions), and psychopathology
(psychosomatics, symptoms, eating disorders, depression, etc.). The great problem with a biologically oriented psychology is that it reduces the study of a human, historical and symbolic conduct to a merely naturalistic endeavour.