Piaget’s Structural Developmental Psychology

In its emphasis on suprahistorical totalities, structuralism in developmental psychology has failed to acknowledge the sociohistorical nature of cognition. In this it converges with, and serves the purpose of, ideology. A recently emerging attack on developmental theory has appropriately taken the form of an ‘ideology-critique’. The form of this critique is reviewed, and while it is found to be potentially valid, it suffers from problems of evidence, relativism, and self-contradiction. Possible avenues towards a rapprochement between ideology-critique and structuralist stage theories are suggested, with a view to the eventual construction of a critical psychology of development.