Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.