Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Therapeutic work with the younger generation today: The effects of a poly-crisis in society
No full textThis article explores how issues related to several emerging crises in UK society are affecting psychotherapeutic work with younger people. After defining the main areas of social justice, the various defined areas are then explained with reference to evidence of how these key social trends are emerging. The discussion and conclusion focus on ways in which we, as therapists, may wish to supplement our practice to better emphasise social justice issues
Psychotherapy in the UK: Multicultural, Eurocentric, and Americentric influences on a complex field in a troubled time
Full text linkIt is now typical to assert that the UK, USA, and other Western nations are systemically oppressive towards minoritised groups, and that their psychotherapy traditions are in the same mould and in need of overhaul. Mass immigration and multiculturalism are uncritically endorsed by a powerful progressive left-wing. The putative evils of Brexit, Eurocentrism, and Americentrism are constantly pointed out. This article reminds us that psychotherapy in Britain has in fact largely been imported from continental Europe and the USA, and Britain is not especially resistant to knowledge coming from elsewhere. Evolutionary and historical phenomena are presented here to suggest that a valid counter-narrative to the currently dominant leftist-progressive view is available
Lessons from psychology in Palestine : More than psychotherapy, we need a truly community psychology
Full text linkIn this article, we provide a historical overview of community psychology in Palestine, drawing lessons for the critical analysis of psychology’s development, especially for capitalism periphery, and its possible contributions to Palestinian resistance against genocide. The rise of Palestinian community psychology, linked to liberation and anti-colonial struggle, and its subsequent decline, demonstrate the need to go beyond academia and institutionalisation, overcoming the boundaries of psychology itself. Community psychology, criticism of psychology, and decolonisation are not metaphors or rhetoric. They are praxis. It is important to consider community psychology as a part of another ethical-political project of psychology. In this regard, more than psychotherapy, we need a truly community psychology. Finally, solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians as a political praxis is essential, as is the production of knowledge that engages with Palestinian resistance, especially from the perspective of Palestinians and their voices
Rethinking biopolitics in the pandemic: Psychopolitics as a new political framework
No full textThis article is an attempt to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic that advances beyond Foucault’s biopolitical framework. The article sets out alternative futural imaginaries in the present: critical accounts of contemporary thoughts of psychopolitics which productively and creatively problematise and challenge biopolitics of the world in our contemporary condition. The psychopolitical regime of power forms the conditions of possibility for the production of different types of relations, dependencies, and interactions. The thesis is that a psychopolitical regime of power is what human beings need in order to move beyond the biopolitics of the world to new futures. In this study, how Ghana responded to the pandemic is evaluated within the context of contemporary thoughts of psychopolitics. In conclusion, the article examines how psychopolitics calls into question contemporary governance of crises to construct a new agency of productive imagination in difficult circumstances. The argument is that the pandemic response needs to account for its embeddedness in the thoughts of psychopolitics to move beyond biopolitics of the world to new futures
Towards a new psychoanalysis of violence in Israel–Palestine
No full textPsychoanalytic thinking has tended to bring together aggression and loss, trauma and violence. However, such a bringing together has, in the case of Israel and Palestine, become not only ethically questionable and politically futile, but purposely occlusive as to what is really, or what else, might be happening. We want to agitate those proposals that the trauma of the Holocaust has led to the violence, that loss has produced aggression—proposals that continue to grasp our discourse and our thinking, proposals that foreclose the entry of other possibilities and lead us to fatalistic ends. We aim to create ruptures and highlight gaps in the central relation of ontological violence required to construct colonial power, drawing on Franz Fanon’s radicalisation of the collective unconscious. Through this, we hope to speculate a different psychoanalysis of violence that takes seriously Fanon’s case studies (with particular attention to Series A, Case 5), not only as a political intervention but also as a profoundly psychoanalytic one. Our article first traces the historically liberal and secular psychoanalytic positions on Israel and Palestine that ultimately, we argue, fall short and indeed reinforce the colonial Zionist order, in part because their psychoanalytic analysis relies on a concept of a liberal humanist modernity which is always already a colonial formation. Indeed, psychoanalysis is not immune to the segregated order (Fanon, 1967) but is complicit in and constituted through it. We further theorise Fanon’s contestatory and marginal position in psychoanalysis and the ways in which this contestation is essential for reproducing the current colonial orders. We then think with anti-colonial political theorist Aimé Césaire to propose a critical refinement of existing and emerging psychoanalytic insights, one that is attuned to ethico-political responsibilities. We argue for a psychoanalytic conception of colonial violence that begins from the psyche of ‘the wretched’ and moves from confinement to liberation
The quilombagem–sumud dialectic: Implications for Brazilian (and capitalist periphery) psychology
No full textI discuss the quilombagem–sumud dialectic (or articulation) and its implications for Brazilian psychology and from other peripheral countries: quilombos and quilombagem as resistance to slavery and its denial in Brazil, just as with the Intifadas, the Palestinian struggle and sumud are resistance to Israeli colonialism. I dialogue with Palestinian community psychology experiences and critical Latin American works, as well as a Brazilian intellectual and communist, Clóvis Moura. I argue how the quilombagem–sumud dialectic guides us towards paths of dispute and transformation within and beyond psychology, in a radical praxis. Therefore, we must ‘quilombagise’ and ‘sumudise’ psychology, building a horizon that surpasses it, contributing to overcoming the sociability that created it and reproduces itself in and through psychology
Buddhism as method: Spirituality as a counterforce to neoliberalism in psychotherapy
No full textBuddhist practices such as mindfulness have been decontextualised and misrepresented, often skewed to align with commercial interests under neoliberal ideologies. In response, this article explores spiritual wisdom within Buddhism, underscoring the inherently relative, conditioned, and impermanent nature of reality. It begins by introducing a decolonial analytical framework, Buddhism as method, to critically evaluate psychological research and practice. Through this lens, the article examines how current mental health practice may inadvertently perpetuate social injustice within a neoliberal context. Additionally, it advocates for spiritual engagement within the profession, emphasising the transformative power of personal spiritual growth in driving meaningful social justice advocacy. By engaging more deeply with socially engaged forms of spirituality, this article identifies areas for improvement in psychological research and practice while underscoring the vital role of personal spiritual growth in advancing social justice
Psychoanalysis, Palestine, and solidarity now
No full textThis article sets out the historical political context for building solidarity with Palestine, with a history designed to show that we need to beware of ‘campism’ as the misleading idea that the world is divided into a reactionary camp, that is the West and Israel, and a supposedly progressive camp; the Western states allied with Israel are for sure our enemy, but the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. This sets the stage for a discussion of ‘psychoanalysis under occupation’, which foregrounds the role of psychoanalysis as to disturb, unsettle, and—linked to an engaged critical analysis of culture and society—to change the internal and external world, to break the silence of psychoanalysts about Palestine
Learning from the Palestinian people: Eight lessons for psychology
No full textA political–epistemological shift is proposed whereby psychology, abandoning its position of presumed omniscience, humbly unlearns what it knows and replaces it with everything it can learn from the Palestinian people and their spokespersons, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. The proposal is for psychology to be reinvented and taught by the Palestinian people rather than continually applied to them by seeking to explain their resistance to the Israeli occupation and to understand and address the psychological effects of such an occupation. This article begins by reflecting on psychology’s relationship with the Palestinian people. Subsequently, after questioning the conventional and dominant approaches to the misnamed ‘Israeli–Palestinian conflict’, the article discusses alternative critical proposals and illustrates how they relate to the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation. These proposals allow us to give voice to the people and to enunciate eight lessons they offer psychology and the mental health field: collectivisation, connection with the people, a view from below, decolonisation, territorialisation, remembrance, resubjectivation, and repoliticisation
