Oppression and freedom in therapeutic space

Abstract

The asylum seeker is a particular dialectical embodiment of history. (S)he is a person with a specific individual history of lived experience, within a political history and mythology. To engage with one or more asylum seekers, a therapist must enter that political history and mythology. But the therapist too is a person with a history of lived experience, who inhabits and embodies a political history and mythology. The therapist also has a theory or discourse which addresses these experiences and experiential contexts more or less adequately. Thus, the therapy becomes pulled in the direction of a process of one person healing (or attempting to heal) another and conversely in the direction of a struggle of persons to discover themselves through the integration of their lived experience within its historical and mythological context. The former is constrained by the historical political context, while the latter requires a recognition and a critique of that context.