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The Psychological Assistance Bill: Bourdieu’s Lesson for Psychologists
📜 In the previous post, we talked about the present — about the changes proposed by the new bill regulating psychological practice in Russia. Now let us look backward and notice that something similar has happened before. Then, it concerned lawyers in France. And in the next post, we will think about psychology’s future. History often repeats itself — but can we learn anything from the repetition?
🔹 AN EARLIER PRECEDENT: FRANCE, 1989
Pierre Bourdieu, the distinguished sociologist, spoke about this in a lecture on February 9, 1989:
“The bill I am speaking about changes the rules governing legal professions by establishing diploma requirements. <...> These legal advice offices often employed people who did not have the status of lawyers backed by the corresponding diploma <...>”
Legal advice offices were put at risk. The law effectively threatened to exclude people who had worked in the field for years but did not hold a diploma:
“The right reflex is: ‘If this text is adopted, it will mean that a trade-union activist who has spent twenty or twenty-five years working on a grievance committee, and who has no diploma, will no longer be able to draft a legal document for which he receives a modest fee.’ <...> Consumers and trade unions will mobilize; otherwise their legal advice services will disappear within four years. I am not making predictions. Suppose they disappear in ten years: unless you are historians, you will forget that an alternative possibility ever existed. <...> A situation will become established, and its origin will be forgotten.”
🔹 THE STATE AND THE UNIFICATION OF PROFESSIONS
What does this mean for us? Psychology is now going through a comparable process. The state seeks to standardize the profession:
“This process of unification, centralization, standardization, and homogenization, through which the state itself is constituted, is accompanied by a process that reproduces itself: a phylogeny reproduced in ontogeny in every generation through the educational system, a process by which normalized individuals are formed and brought toward uniformity.”
One advantage of adopting a law on psychological assistance from the state’s point of view is that it creates an interest in the universal. ✍️
💡 At least one conclusion can be drawn: if changes of this kind are now happening to psychology in Russia, then psychology is growing and becoming socially significant. The state tends to regulate and organize spheres that have acquired value. Professional unification can therefore be read as a sign of maturation. It suggests that psychology may become one of the most important fields of knowledge in the coming decades.
🔹 WHO IS FOR IT, AND WHO IS AGAINST IT?
“To understand what happens in such cases, one would need to carry out a differential sociological analysis of the various positions: who is for it, who is against it... It is a remarkable experimental situation.”
Sources 📚
- Pierre Bourdieu, On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France, pp. 242–248.
#Psychology #Bill #Bourdieu #Sociology #History #Profession
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Read 📚:
- Draft law on psychological activity in the Russian Federation
- Once again, on how our word will echo
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Questions about this article
01What lesson from Bourdieu does the post apply to the psychological activity bill?
State standardization does more than set common requirements: it redistributes the right to practise a profession. If alternative arrangements disappear, people may eventually forget that the professional field could have been organized differently.
02Does the author treat professional unification as unambiguously beneficial?
No. He reads state interest as a sign of psychology's social importance and growth, while also noting the risk of excluding experienced practitioners and losing alternatives. Consequences for different groups still require analysis.
03Does the French case prove that the Russian bill will produce the same outcome?
No. It is a historical-sociological analogy across countries, professions, and periods. It helps frame questions about diplomas, stakeholder interests, and forgotten alternatives, but it does not predict the outcome.
04Which version of the Russian bill does the post discuss?
Published on March 14, 2025, the post discusses the version of federal bill No. 846497-8, “On the Foundations for Regulating Psychological Activity in the Russian Federation,” introduced on February 20, 2025.
05Does the post describe currently effective Russian law?
No. It analyzes the 2025 version of a bill and is not legal advice. The proposal was later revised, so its current text and status should be checked in the State Duma system.