Liberation Psychology — Part I
Hello, Fellow Humans! I am so excited to talk about Liberation Psychology today, in the first of a two-part series. This topic is near and dear to my heart and while I assert that liberatory practices should always be front and center in mental health work, Liberation Psychology is rarely taught and practiced in the United States and Canada.
Before diving in further, I’d like to start today’s conversation with a story.
While still in graduate school, I was a therapist-in-training at a residential community, essentially a live-in (and locked down) space for folks identified as requiring round-the-clock mental health care. A client, who I will refer to here as “Pat”, carried a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and was heavily medicated and chronically symptomatic, experiencing hallucinations and delusions most days. Pat and I met a few days before his treatment team meeting, an event that was scheduled every three months to discuss progress or need for changes in care or treatment. During our session, I asked him how he felt lately, what his assessment of his well-being was. Pat told me that he felt terrible — lonely, isolated, and angry about restrictions around family visits and off-site trips. “I wish I had a best friend,” he said several times, a consistent theme during our work. At the treatment team meeting, the staff psychiatrist and support team were excited about Pat’s status, noting that they saw “decreased symptoms” since a medication change and that he was having “fewer outbursts” and was “more pleasant to get along with.” When I offered an alternative perspective, that Pat was expressing significant distress around social isolation, and shared, with his permission, some of his comments during our previous session, the staff laughed a little, as though his desires were “cute” but not medially relevant to his progress. We will come back to this vignette after a brief introduction to Liberation Psychology.
Liberation Psychology aims to support mental health by recognizing and addressing the psychological impact of oppression. Liberation Psychology is most closely associated with Dr. Ignacio Martín-Baró, a psychologist and Jesuit priest who was murdered by the U.S.-trained Salvadorian army in 1989, along with five other Jesuits involved in social justice and liberation work. Martín-Baró was a leading mind in understanding, developing, and advocating for a psychology that understands the interdependence of humans, prioritizes the relationship of culture and community on individual mental health, and rejects oppressive and violent social structures. The tenants of Liberation Psychology have been taken up in the United States by Black theorists, researchers, and clinicians under the title Black Liberation Psychology, which recognizes and prioritizes the impact of systemic racism, white supremacy, segregation, and generational trauma on the mental health of Black Americans, and advocates for the transformation of systems, institutions, and governing structures, as well as the individual seeking treatment.
I came to Liberation Psychology through my own research during a period of growing disenchantment with, and anger at, the current state of American Psychology. What I saw and experienced, clinically and theoretically, was a willful erasure of the massive impact of oppression on the individual experiences of clients by medical and psychological systems. I found myself working with many individuals who suffered, yes, but the source of their suffering was largely based on factors outside of their individual psychology; the source of suffering was living in an environment of oppression. A sneaky yet pervasive way that American Psychology participates in these oppressive systems is by treating the individual’s symptoms as the problem to be solved, rather than investigating and treating the cause of the symptom as a primary focus.
A symptom is defined as a characteristic sign of some particular disease. When a person’s symptom is the sign of a social disease like white supremacy or capitalism, the symptom is a natural and expected response to the stress of chronic adverse environmental conditions. Since the mental health professional cannot personally eradicate the oppressive system/social disease (although if I ever get three wishes, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are the first to go), treatment often focuses on decreasing symptoms. This then is an ethical and moral problem, as working to minimize the response to injustice (symptoms) without acknowledging the unjust cause both pathologizes the client and aligns the clinician with the oppressive power structure. Whew.
Let’s return to the case of Pat. When you reflect on this clinical example through the lens of liberation and oppression, what systems come to mind? What other information would you want to know about Pat, the treatment team, and the environment that would help you better understand his circumstances and his mental health status? Do you find yourself thinking about Pat’s case from the perspective of the treatment team (for example, thinking “what would I do as his doctor” or “what does he need?”) or from the perspective of Pat (for example, “if I were in that situation, what would I feel and want)? When I think about the ways that Pat experiences oppression, the following examples immediately come to mind: being subject to medical and psychological treatment without collaboration or agency; taking mandated medications without full enthusiastic consent; experiencing ableism from the treatment team, who focus on Pat’s experience as primarily about particular symptoms rather than quality of life; carceral medical care, or the experience of being physically locked-in, and limited in social and personal contacts.
For the next column we will zoom in more closely and explore practical ways to incorporate the philosophy and actions of liberation psychology in our own self-care practices, and to highlight ways that we can support liberatory practices in our communities. In the meantime, I invite you to consider the following questions about your own experience of emotional wellness:
What does emotional wellness look like for me, personally?
What systems or social norms get in the way of my emotional wellness? (Examples: I do not qualify for insurance so have trouble finding good care, I am a person of color living in a culture of white supremacy, I am working two jobs just to make ends meet and people congratulate my hard work rather than recognizing my burnout.)
Where do I intentionally or unintentionally prop up or support systems of oppression that harm others? (Examples: staying quiet when family or colleagues voice racist or sexist opinions, voting for legislation that benefits a wealthy minority of the population, assuming that you know what other people “need” or “should do” for their own well-being.)
Part of understanding liberation psychology is recognizing that it challenges many of the ways that we have been taught to engage in mental health work — I so appreciate you learning about and considering these practices with me. And keep sending your questions, particularly around this topic — there is so much to explore. Until next time, friends.
