ARENA OF EPISTEMOLOGY Criticism and Psychology: the Understanding with a Postmodern Psychology Juan David Millán 1 & Jean Nikola Cudina 2 & Julio César Ossa 3 Received: 3 April 2019 /Revised: 20 August 2019 /Accepted: 7 September 2019 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract Frequently, “critical psychologies” question the ideological and political framework that develops and legitimizes certain mainstream psychology. Nevertheless, it is still a field of knowledge which has not been fully differentiated from its crisis—mainly—because an exhaustive ontological categorical demand has not been made. From the analysis of Ian Parker’ s critical discourse psychology (CDP) and critical psychology, we observed the causes and consequences of the introduction of scientific realism as an intermediate stage in the elaboration of what has been called radical metapsychological project or a general critic of psychology. We reviewed, from the quantitative method multi-RPYS references, an approximate of 51 papers and 10 books of Ian Parker’ s work analyzed by the web program RPYS i/o. From the start, CDP and PCL avoided the short form of the critic, which is barely a differentiation from the totality of dominant psychology. Instead, they announced, implic- itly, some methodological and theoretical tools which could be useful to prevent its definite adhesion to postmodernism, where “anything goes” is its most manifest condition. Keywords Psychology . Critic . Latin American . Discourse . Critical realism Abbreviations SC social constructionism SR scientific realism https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-019-00083-9 * Juan David Millán juanmillan561@hotmail.com Jean Nikola Cudina j.nikolacudina@hotmail.com Julio César Ossa juceosssa@gmail.com 1 Psychology Program, Fundación Universitaria de Popayán, Popayán, Colombia 2 Corporación Niñez y Conocimiento, Bogota, Colombia 3 Psychology Faculty, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Cali, Colombia / Human Arenas (2020) 3:343–359 Published online: 11 December 2019 Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.