Liberation Psychology Research Articles

Feminist Liberation Practice with Latinx Women: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue synthesizes the interdisciplinary scholarship and clinical knowledge regarding the application of liberation psychology and feminist approaches with Latinx women. Embracing the approach of decolonization, the authors of this special issue center the intersectionality of Latinxs’ identities and experiences and interrogate neocolonial practices that perpetuate marginalization. The articles address oppressive structural and systemic processes, share innovative frameworks and methods (e.g., testimonios) of feminist liberation practice, and give voice to narratives that have been erased or silenced.

Therapeutic Spaces in Public Places

Abstract. The effectiveness of both mental health education and clinical practices is often limited by an overemphasis on US perspectives and approaches. Based on a lens and practice of reflexivity within international community psychology, this article describes a theater-based practice that is both an educational tool for training mental health providers and a community mental health intervention. This practice is based on an integration of the work of three Latin American theorists: Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, Ignacio Martín-Baró’s liberation psychology, and Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy. The approach we will describe integrates these Latin American originating theories with the practical and pragmatic clinical and theoretical assumptions of walk-in/single-session therapy. This mental health perspective addresses many of the barriers to services faced by underserved and international populations. We will discuss how we have utilized these ideas and practices by developing a form of street theater that provides educational opportunities for future mental health providers and creates community dialogues about common clinical concerns in Mexico City.

The Structural Clinical model: Disrupting oppression in clinical social work through an integrative practice approach

It is critical that clinical social workers become actively aware of the endemic processes and manifestations of racism, social inequities, structures and dynamics of white supremacy within and across organizational, supervisory and clinical relationships. The Structural-Clinical Model (SCM) is presented, providing a multi-layered and theoretically rich pathway for clinical social workers to examine the intricate, and multifaceted interconnections expressing racialized oppressive forces across macro, meso and micro systems that impact the totality of clinical practice. SCM integrates critical race theory, liberation psychology, and relational theories bridging long standing theoretical and conceptual divides. The SCM aims to de-pathologize clients, recognizing instead the pathology of white supremacy, racism, and other oppressive structural forces affecting organizations, relationships and people’s lives, particularly those most racially, ethnically and historically marginalized within our society. The SCM is introduced with a structural assessment framework designed to explore how structural social inequalities produced by white supremacy impact social work organizations, the clinical supervisory relationship and the supervisor-therapist-client relationship. A multilevel case example is provided to demonstrate how structural power dynamics that influence service delivery can be identified through critical dialogue using the SCM in the clinical supervisory relationship and between the clinical social worker and client.

Black Love, Activism, and Community (BLAC): The BLAC Model of Healing and Resilience

The purpose of this article is to describe the Black Love, Activism, and Community (BLAC) model of healing and resilience. The assumption of the BLAC model is that Black activism is inspired and sustained by love and community. Building on empirical research, liberation psychology, and African-centered psychology, the BLAC model identifies four culturally grounded domains of resilience (relationships, spirituality, identity, and active expression) that are hypothesized to serve as protective factors. These domains are also postulated to be critical components of culturally centered healing practices. Within the context of anti-Black racism, it is important to understand how activism can mitigate mental health outcomes among Black activists. The BLAC model also describes culturally centered intervention approaches for healing and wellness. Finally, applications of the BLAC model are discussed.

Black, indigenous, and trainees of color stress and resilience: The role of training and education in decolonizing psychology.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has instigated a paradigm shift in psychology graduate training and education. As these system-wide changes are being implemented, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) continue to be disproportionately impacted as they simultaneously experience, witness, and relive the deleterious consequences of systemic and institutional racism as trainees and members of minoritized communities. The field requires a radical culture shift to counteract the effects of ongoing psychological harm on trainees of color. Our analyses are grounded in two decolonizing frameworks, Critical Race Theory and Liberation Psychology. We also provide a systems-based analysis of how BIPOC trainees are impacted by systemic racism and examine how these -isms are perpetuated in psychology training. Testimonios are used as examples on how to center trainee's experiential knowledge. Psychology is uniquely positioned to transform how science and practice informs, builds, and sustains equitable systems for trainees and the public. The profession must question and disrupt the status quo and system inequities to build capacity and foster resistance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Feminist Approaches to Gender Equity in Perú: The Roles of Conflict, Militancy, and Pluralism in Feminist Activism

For the past several decades, coordinated efforts from within the women’s social movement in Perú have led to groundbreaking legislation surrounding gender equity – for example, the National Gender Equality Policy of 2019 and the Gender Parity Law of 2020. These institutionalized policy changes mark milestones on the path to gender equity, certainly in Perú, but activist efforts that targeted these outcomes can inform women globally. The current study investigated key components of feminist activism by social movement actors themselves through the use of testimonio with nine key leaders in the movement. Using a liberation psychology approach and thematic narrative analysis, the findings suggested three key components of feminist activism: conflict, militant identity, and pluralism that were critical in processes of change. Centering majority world women’s voices contributes to the production of knowledge regarding approaches to gender equity, in particular because much that has been written about feminist action in psychology has been produced among samples of white women in the United States. Implications for understanding how the findings have the potential for global change are discussed.

Testimonios in the mouth of the dragon: A call for Black liberation in psychology.

U.S. society has witnessed and experienced the impact and suffering caused by the racial pandemic within the COVID-19 viral pandemic. In response to anti-Blackness, a multigenerational and multiracial movement of people is rising and demanding justice for Black lives. Using testimonio research and Liberation Psychology as a theoretical framework, the authors describe their current understanding of what it means to practice a more responsible resistance to racist power structures as non-Black Latinas in the field of psychology. Braun and Clarke's (2016) thematic analysis (TA) was used to search for patterns of meaning within the authors' testimonios. Results revealed four themes: (a) to "hold the line" means to struggle for Black liberation, (b) confront anti-Blackness and colonial mentality in the self and community, (c) challenge anti-Blackness within the field of psychology, and (d) collective struggle. The third theme was divided into two subthemes: (a) tear down and (b) center Black lives. The testimonios emphasize that practicing allyship involves being a dissenter who questions and challenges colonial mentality and anti-Blackness, who fights for the abolition of racist policies and power systems, and who moves beyond the hegemonic values that exist in the field of psychology. This study presents the use of testimonio research and Liberation Psychology as suitable tools for psychologists to increase their racial consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

New book announcements.

Article presents a list of recently announced books. Titles include: Readings from William Stern's contributions to scientific psychology; Problematic research practices and inertia in scientific psychology: History sources and recommended solutions; Tracing the emergence of psychology; and A people's history of psychoanalysis: From Freud to liberation psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Engagement in migrant organizations for immigrant integration: A mixed-method study with Peruvians in Chile.

Immigrant communities in Chile face barriers to their integration, in the form of discrimination and social exclusion. Psychology of liberation claims that, when minority groups experience oppressing conditions, community engagement can be a path toward integration. Nevertheless, community participation has been mainly studied in North America and Europe. Through a concurrent nested mixed-method design, this study explores the relation between community engagement and perception of integration of Peruvian immigrants in Santiago de Chile. One hundred and ten Peruvians (age range 19 to 52 years), engaged in migrant organizations (MOs), completed a self-report questionnaire that aims to identify the predictors of integration based on psychosocial perspective (education), acculturation (national identity and ethnic identity), and liberation psychology literature (perceived institutional sensitivity, knowledge of the Chilean culture and laws). Additionally, 18 Peruvian leaders (ages 31 to 56 years) were interviewed in order to explore intergroup relations and organizational strategies that their MOs use to enhance integration. An interesting and novel finding points to the role of a Latin-American identity that appears to have potential negative consequences in maintaining the status quo for the social exclusion that Peruvians currently face.

Identity and memory as resilience: Applications of liberation psychology in a rural Maya Achi community.

This study sought to understand interpretations of interconnections between historical trauma, contemporary violence, and resilience in a Maya Achi community currently engaged in promoting peace and social change through popular education. In particular, the ways in which participants drew upon identity and memory in articulating characteristics of community distress and resilience are discussed. The research is informed by liberation psychology and critical perspectives of mental health, particularly considering the challenges inherent in the promotion of collective memory of trauma and resistance in contexts of violence and humanitarian settings. Participant reflections on historical and contemporary violence highlight elements of collective distress, connecting identity and memory with acts of both oppression and resistance. Education and development are signaled as possible sites of resilience but also experienced as sites of power upholding the status quo. Diverse experiences and applications of identity and memory provide insight into the ways in which community organizations working in contexts of political violence might navigate polarizing and paradoxical discourses in order to subvert, co-opt, or adapt to hegemonic cultural, political, and economic power relations in the process of transformation for collective resilience.

Beyond ‘solidarity’ with Black Lives Matter: Drawing on liberation psychology and transformative justice to address institutional and community violence in young Black lives

AbstractThe authors, a Systemic Therapist (Author 1) and a young activist (Author 2), call for an approach that draws on Liberation Psychology and Transformative Justice to address pervasive racism in society, beyond statements of solidarity with Back Lives Matter. This requires addressing the impact on Black communities of the criminal legal (or criminal INjustice) system, ‘perpetual community trauma’ and grief, multiple forms of social disadvantage and exclusion and the relationship between these forms of racial trauma and serious youth violence. Rather than going back to business as usual once the current focus on Black Lives Matter dissipates, such as calls for more police, more prisons and more exclusion, the authors suggest that we work against the grain and envision alternative systems based on community‐based responses to trauma and oppression with mental health practitioners and community activists working together. Practitioner points Drawing on Liberation Psychology can enable us to go to the root of problems and directly challenge oppression Liberation Psychology advocates for (1) explicitly naming oppression, (2) reconnecting to a collective history of resistance and solidarity and (3) drawing on peoples’ creativity Radical change requires radical thinkers who can imagine alternative social systems based not on punishment and oppression but on Healing, Restorative and Transformative Justice

Uniting liberatory and participatory approaches in public psychology with refugees.

Increasing inequities both within and between nations call psychologists to consider whom they intend their research and practice to serve. The purpose of this article is to propose a public psychology rooted in the values of liberation psychology and utilizing participatory research methods to enact change. To exemplify this framework, we present the work of a community research partnership between academics and individuals with lived experience as refugees. All aspects of our research process, including the development of research questions and design, data collection and analysis, and dissemination and action planning, have been conducted via community-academic collaboration. Our focus has been to gain understanding of the strengths and concerns of Cincinnati's diverse refugee communities to inform actions promoting civic engagement. Refugee coresearchers successfully administered a collectively developed survey to 291 refugees in seven languages and facilitated follow-up focus groups with 35 people. Additionally, refugee coresearchers have identified three action plans based on the research findings to promote civic engagement; thus, translating research into meaningful action. This article details phases of our research process and interprets findings in the context of liberation psychology to illustrate the benefits of public psychology for academia, social policy, and community practice. We also discuss how our research illustrates the ways public psychology has the potential to not only promote greater equity but also to improve science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

AfroLatinx Females: Coloniality, Gender, and Transformation

ABSTRACT The intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class increases AfroLatinx females’ vulnerability to oppression. This article provides an analysis of AfroLatinx females’ realities from a coloniality of power, knowledge, and gender perspectives. Many AfroLatinx females struggle with postcolonization traumas, as well as with a colonial mentality. Decolonial liberation, womanism and mujerismo, and indigenous healing approaches are presented to facilitate AfroLatinx females’ transformation. Specifically, a decolonial integrative healing approach is introduced, geared to enhance AfroLatinx females’ psychological wellness and buen vivir, the Aymara worldview of living a life of fullness. This approach involves an amalgamation of liberation psychology, womanism/mujerismo, and indigenous healing into psychoanalytic theory and practice. Notwithstanding the harmful effects of postcolonial and current sociopolitical traumas, many AfroLatinx females resist, combat, and transform. Anchored in a new consciousness, numerous AfroLatinx females develop a revolutionary ethno–racial–gender identity, one that sustains their struggle for social justice.

De‐ideologization, liberation psychology, and the place of contradiction

AbstractIn following Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, we can understand ideologies as social processes that obscure the contradictions (i.e., how an object is not at one with itself) inherent to individual subjectivity and social structures. Despite claiming to be non‐ideological, mainstream psychology has, throughout its history, served the ideological interests of elite classes (e.g., by pathologizing political resistance). Working within the liberation psychology paradigm, I attempt in this article to elaborate on the notion of de‐ideologization (i.e., the politically committed retrieval of people's experiences beyond the ideological reference points of elite classes) through a consideration of contradiction. To do this, I explore how de‐ideologization can connect with contradiction through processes of re‐symbolization, solidarity‐making, and mobilizing progressive ideologies. Considered together, these three processes allow us to use contradiction to understand interlocking currents of oppression, divergent visions of emancipation, the development of insurgent subjectivities, and the building of an intersectional socialist politics. In conclusion, I consider some of the directions that theoretical and praxis‐oriented work on de‐ideologization may take, as well as some paths it may wish to avoid.

Colonization of personality psychology in India: historical roots and contemporary status

The origin of present-day Euro-American personality psychology is rooted in the Western notion of individualism. It locates its history in post-industrial revolution of Europe and the post-enlightenment era of America. However, considerable evidences suggest that the study of personality, in terms of different typologies of mental and physical attributes of a person, constituted one of the core areas of enquiry in the ancient civilizations of the world namely India, Babylonia, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome. Such contributions of ancient civilizations hardly find intellectual space in epistemological terrain of Euro-American personality psychology. India, being one of the ancient civilizations, contributed significantly in this area. But, personality studies in the contemporary India largely subscribe to Euro-American conceptual and methodological frameworks. Against this backdrop, the paper tries to revisit the journey of personality psychology beginning with its inception in the rich intellectual traditions of ancient India vis-à-vis the other civilizations of that time, its debacle in medieval period and its colonization under the hegemonic policy of the Europeans and Americans in modern time. Continuing with the tradition of decolonization movement of psychological science, the paper, using critical theories perspective, tries to delve the way the British regime colonized personality psychology India. Taking insight from liberation psychology, the paper, finally, proposes some strategies to decolonize or rather indigenize personality psychology in India.

A psychopolitical interpretation of de-alienation: Marxism, psychoanalysis, and liberation psychology

In his pioneering work on liberation psychology, Ignacio Martín-Baró describes de-alienation as a subjective process of recovering fragmented historical pasts for the purpose of reconstituting and liberating ourselves from an oppressive, alienating present. In this article, I argue that although de-alienation is typically understood as a political concept, it also lends itself to psychoanalytic readings. To this end, I draw on Marxist notions of material alienation, as well as Lacanian conceptions of subjective alienation, to offer a psychopolitical interpretation of de-alienation. More specifically, I use Marx and Lacan to consider how liberation psychology work can advance de-alienating processes within political organising, the production of art, and knowledge creation. I conclude by urging those working within the liberation psychology paradigm to consider how other psychopolitical lenses might avail emancipatory insights into collective resistance.

This Being is a Guest House: Embracing Humility, Liberation & Strengths in Therapy with Sexual and Gender Diverse Muslims

ABSTRACT The complexity of the lives of sexual and gender diverse Muslims within the United States calls for mental health providers to own our power and privilege. Embracing cultural humility in service of aligning ourselves with liberation psychology, we call for an intersectionally informed, strengths-based approach to empowering/affirming clients whose diverse religious experiences intersect with their experiences of marginalization as sexual and gender diverse (SGD) Muslims. Drawing on extant personal narratives around mental health and therapy of this population, the authors offer critical reflections, processes and opportunities for clinicians to take responsibility in honoring the diverse journeys and experiences of SGD Muslims in serving them in journeys of healing.

A People's History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology by Daniel Jose Gaztambide

A People's History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology by Daniel Jose Gaztambide

Directive vs. Non-directive Clinical Approaches: Liberation Psychology and Muslim Mental Health

Liberation psychology (LP) is a psychological framework that emphasizes social justice as a key component of mental health, defined in LP as the ability of human beings to co-exist, live in harmony, and thrive in community. Muslim mental health as a clinical focus continues to develop, and most writing emphasizes the importance of cultural sensitivity in providing effective care for Muslims, which the literature often relates to the collectivistic nature of Muslim majority societies. The literature, in turn, often uses collectivistic tendencies and research to support 1-on-1 directive approaches.
 This paper questions the use of such directive approaches as potentially re-creating a model of hierarchy and dominance that is connected to Muslims’ mental health challenges, particularly those of Muslim sub-populations. The authors suggest and discuss several LP-based alternatives, especially the use of group therapy as a more appropriate and culturally responsive model, from both di-rective and non-directive clinical orientations.

Articulating liberation psychologies of culture.

Articulating liberation psychologies of culture.