Abstract
This chapter provides an excavation of the relations between power, history, and psychology that exposes the complex enmeshed relationships between them. Each section of the chapter, which considers power, history, and psychology in turn, reveals the larger entangled structure at hand while maintaining the close connectedness of all three. In the section on power, they outline understandings of “power” within feminism and in (feminist) psychology, arguing for skepticism about the use of individualist “power-to” perspectives which appear to uncritically remove power from its situated context. The second section, on history, identifies how the very writing of history is contextually bound by gendered power and positioning. The section on psychology unearths the inner workings of power in the discipline demonstrating how feminist histories have been especially useful in revealing power dynamics within psychology but arguing for the further recognition of psychology’s inherent subjectivity and power. In doing so, the chapter concludes that it remains vital for feminist psychology to continue to reflect on its positioning within the structures of power that it seeks to dismantle. For feminist psychology to effectively undertake its liberatory work, feminist psychologists must keep complicated power/history/psychology dynamics within their sights.