Toward Psychologies of Liberation (Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences) [Paperback]

Helene Shulman (Author), Mary Watkins (Author)

Book Description

Series: Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences | Publication Date: March 2, 2010

Understanding that the psychological well-being of individuals is inextricably linked to the health of their communities, environments, and cultures, the authors propose a radical interdisciplinary reorientation of psychology to create participatory and dialogical spaces for critical understanding and creative restoration.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This landmark book takes us on an unforgettable journey across disciplines, countries, spiritualities, and techniques to teach us twenty-first century psychologies of liberation. Authors Watkins and Shulman transform the discipline of psychology, showing us its connections to all disciplines concerned with liberating the imagination. Across international fields of difference, these authors never give up the prize: social and psychic emancipation. In doing so, they define what 'decoloniality' means for the twenty-first century.' - Chela Sandoval, Associate Professor of Liberation Philosophy, Chair, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. 'A scholarly, heartfelt, and desperately needed re-visioning of psychology.' - Dr Craig Chalquist, JFK University, USA 'One cannot help but recommend this text with utmost enthusiasm. Although not by any means a summary of its plural subject, Toward Psychologies of Liberation can be read as multi-layered digest of the major psychological, philosophical, and theological roots of this movement, as well as a review of some of the major problems tackled by theorists and practitioners within the tradition. Watkins& Shulman have crafted for us a major tour de force, broad in scope and encyclopedic in nature.' - Journal of Religion and Health 'Toward Psychologies of Liberation' provides us with a brilliant and timely compilation, in the mode of an appreciative evaluation, of these diverse strands that might be woven into the fabric of critical and progressive social science...This is a path-breaking book, and an enormous service to our scholarly community in the extensiveness and sophistication of its coverage...It is a remarkable work which deserves widespread attention.' - Barnaby B. Barratt, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society

About the Author

MARY WATKINS is core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA, the author of Waking Dreams, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, co-author of Talking with Young Children about Adoption, and co-editor of Psychology and the Promotion of Peace. She works with groups to promote peacebuilding and social justice, teaching dialogical and participatory methodologies. HELENE SHULMAN has taught cultural studies, critical race theory, and depth psychologies at several universities in the United States including Sonoma State, St. Lawrence University, and Pacifica Graduate Institute, She is a community activist, Jungian analyst, and workshop leader in liberation arts and psychologies. She has written several articles and book chapters on these subjects, and a monograph, Living at the Edge of Chaos: Complex Systems in Culture and Psyche.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (March 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230537693
• ISBN-13: 978-0230537699
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A scholarly, heartfelt, and desperately needed re-visioning of psychology, November 1, 2008

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toward Psychologies Of Liberation (Hardcover)

As I write this review, I have before me an online piece of research arguing that the blink rate of political candidates correlates with whether they win an election. Election Day is three days off. After decades of involvement in the field of psychology, the disgust rising in me has a familiar sourness to it. Why are psychologists tabulating how often a conservative practitioner of flagolatry blinks, but saying nothing about his reactionary authoritarianism, his angry impulsivity, or his Nuremberg Rally style of vicious scapegoating? Is blinking all that psychologists have to tell us about the deteriorating cultural and political conditions under which we struggle to live meaningful lives?

No. TOWARD PSYCHOLOGIES OF LIBERATION represents decades of collaborative work between two psychologists who have taught extensively, engaged with liberationist practitioners in Latin America even when this involved entering dangerous situations, and traveled the world to witness and help build socially engaged restorative practices and networks that address the psychological effects of poverty, genocide, environmental devastation, and other globalized catastrophes and collective traumata too vast to fit into the therapist's office.

Arguing against colonial models of the autonomous self that move health and pathology into the heads of individuals instead of tracking them in our relations with each other, Watkins and Schulman call for and describe emerging psychologies that deal with people as they really live: embedded in contexts of cultural, ecological, and political forces that frame and disrupt their lives. Drawing on interdisciplinary sources (the arts, the humanities) and on local work by those who fight for justice and sovereignty, the liberation psychologies described in this book hold social justice and mental health together in ongoing experiments and envisionings of the kinds of societies that meet human needs while respecting those of the planet. In this kind of work, people are encouraged to dream up their own ideas about how to live together, to try out new forms of attachment and belonging, and to come up with their own values and norms instead of being the passive recipients of normative models imposed by "experts" from the top down.

A key ingredient in liberatory work is dialog: the invitation of all voices to the table. Psychologies of liberation create "public homeplaces" (hooks, Belenky) where normally marginalized voices and visions can be shared safely in ongoing conversations that create community. These dialogs also foster the "critical consciousness" (Freire, Martin-Baro) to break through the internalized fatalisms of oppressive social conditions and begin to entertain a conscious desire for new ways to live humanely together. Such conversational enclaves also open spaces for practicing new roles that give the performer a regenerated sense of agency and personal efficacy. As the authors state it:

"Here the role of the psychologist becomes that of a convener, a witness, a coparticipant, a mirror, and a holder of faith for a process through which those who have been silenced may discover their own capacities for historical memory, critical analysis, utopian imagination, and transformative social action. The psychologist might bring to the table theories and histories that have been developed in the past, but they will be `relativized' and `critically revised' in each local arena where they may or may not apply. Truth in this new epistemology is democratized."

Psychologies of liberation do not confine themselves to far-off places or "third world" countries. As the recent economic downturn, bail-outs for banks, foreclosures rising into the millions, and outright deregulatory pillaging of the American national treasury have demonstrated for all to see, tottering empires eventually turn on their own citizens. By contrast, participatory action research changes institutions from the inside out by involving everyone to be present and available for transformation through participatory dialog and engaged imagination, pooling new knowledge about alternatives and fresh possibilities.

The book is organized into the following parts:

Part I - Compass Points. Liberation psychologies push beyond eurocentric universals, beyond ideology, and beyond "development" to emphasize the liberation of individuals in community.

Part II - Psychic Wounds of Colonialism and Globalization. Loneliness, narcissism, emptiness, and the silencing and degrading of others are a few examples of how the colonial paradigm has divided people internally and externally.

Part III - Springs for Creative Restoration. By contrast with the wounds described in Part II, states of interdependence, revelation, hospitality, and inclusion remain available to those who engage in alternative forms of dialogically based subjectivity and community-making.

Part IV - Participatory Practices of Liberation Psychologies. This section offers many examples of successful resistance, remembering, and local democracy as projects of transformation for self and others.

The title of the Afterword is fitting for a book as bold and humanitarian as this one is: "The Restoration and Repair of the World."

I recommend this book not only to psychology practitioners, but to every reader who desires a look at how it's possible to discard customary frames of thinking and being, seeing and feeling deeper into a time of worldwide polarization and struggle against empire-era structures extending their inner and outer dominion even as they sink into irrelevance and entropy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enter Love, Brilliance, and the Strength to Move Forward, September 11, 2011

By 

juniemoon - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Toward Psychologies Of Liberation (Hardcover)

This is hands down the best book I have ever read.

Watkins and Shulman, here, succinctly articulate the most profound challenges of living facing the world's peoples in the west today. They are a voice for the voiceless and a light in the darkness that is western militarism, consumerism, postcolonial reigns terror.

Please, order this book. Order this book for your daughters and your sons. Order this book for humanity. Order this book and read deeply, read authentically, read for your children and your grandchildren. Send copies to politicians and shut down academics who've given up hope. Send copies to your bosses, your employees, your clients, and your therapist. Let these women's voices speak right into your heart. You won't be sorry. I promise you.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, January 9, 2012

By 

Jorge - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Toward Psychologies of Liberation (Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences) (Paperback)

This was a great book. It provides a general but complete analysis of authors and writers in the field of psychology as well as social concerned writers.