Revelations and Transformations: Brent Dean Robbins’ Critical Metabletics as a Cultural Therapeutics

Brent Dean Robbins has made significant contributions to qualitative research in psychology. His work with metabletics, also known as historical phenomenology, has revitalized a research method that has received little attention in the field. Metabletics studies the nature of changes in reality, which reflect changes in humanity itself. Robbins, in his critical approach to metabletics – drawing on Sipiora, Romanyshyn, and others – argues that understanding these changes illuminates the cultural unconscious, which opens up possibilities for the future. This departure from van den Berg’s descriptive method to a more prescriptive approach reinvigorates metabletics, by offering a pathway to answer the question – what now? Robbins’ critical metabletics also takes an ethical stance. Revealing the cultural unconscious allows for a reclaiming of responsibility and accepting accountability for the world we have created. It points toward a return to the spiritual – something greater than the individual or ethics defined by risk management. The ethical and critical nature of Robbins’ work is evident across his literature, which has had a lasting impact on his students, who have been inspired by Robbins and have taken up critical metabletics in their dissertations.