Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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National sovereignty and anti-imperialist struggle: Decolonising mental health in Palestine and Latin America
No full textThis article is intended to be a reflection on the notion of mental health from the constant imperialist oppression of peoples in the periphery of capitalism, focusing on the Latin American and Palestinian contexts. We have started from the premise that the actions of imperial domination in Latin America and the colonial occupation of Palestinian territory are part of the same capitalist and imperialist project of domination. We have as an objective to discuss the necessary anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist stance as fundamental premises for decolonising the notion of mental health in psychology. It is a theoretical article that establishes bases to understand capitalist dynamics, especially in the Latin American context, reinforcing the analysis of the genocidal colonial project perpetrated by Israel as a facet of imperialist domination. This analysis contributes to a critical understanding of mental health, pointing out insights for a psychology that embraces the ethical-political commitment, having a non-negotiable dimension of its practice, an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist stance
Where is the Brazilian psychology? : Apartheid, colonialism, and resistance in Palestine and Brazil
No full textThis article aims to present the Palestinian reality in the context of more than two years of genocidal offensive by the Israeli state on Palestinian territories. From this perspective, we sought to conduct a critical analysis of the relations between apartheid and colonialism in the Brazilian context and in the Palestinian context. Based on the contributions of authors such as Oswaldo Yamamoto, Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, and Aimé Césaire, we point out the similarities between the realities of both countries and the absence of psychology in this discussion, calling on the profession to play a relevant role in understanding and transforming this complex sociocultural context
Reflections after 15 months of war: Knowing there is suffering on a global scale, while holding in mind what I know as a therapist, about trauma, healing, and reparation
Full text linkPersonal narratives help shape therapists, and their narratives are the lenses through which they see the world. The legacy of intergenerational war trauma is one such lens. Lenses and personal narratives are foundational to building knowledge and understanding, of events on a small and large scale, and this is a soft power of influence to be shared. Many therapists have lived experience of mental health difficulties, and consequently they are not immune from what they study.
Social realities are co-constructed, and we are all active participants in building peaceful alternatives for generations to come. An agenda of nationalism is being forcefully applied in the Middle East, and this is triggering for anyone with lived experience of conflict which includes intergenerational trauma. I argue that there is a need to remain vigilant to the impact of global conflict, in personal, professional, and political spheres of life
Rupture and repair: The consequences of colonial childcare
Full text linkDuring the years of colonial rule in India, the white colonial classes delegated their childcare to Ayahs—or nursemaids—despite regarding them as inferior and less civilised. Marjorie, daughter of colonial parents, traces her early attachment to her Ayah despite her family’s racist attitudes. As World War 2 ended, Marjorie was abruptly removed from her Ayah and brought back ‘home’ to England where she was sent to boarding school following the conformist pathways of a colonial family. Her loss of her Ayah and her feelings of abandonment and being unloved cause her to close down emotionally and focus on surviving. Much later, in her fifties, she began to recognise her own state of emotional dysfunction and sought help with therapy. She was fortunate to meet Nick Duffell who had been developing an understanding of what became known as Boarding School Syndrome. With a group of other former boarders, they formed a support group to help those traumatised by boarding school years to process their feelings. Marjorie assisted many boarders and in doing so reduced her sense of isolation and loss. In the meantime, campaigners had fought to acknowledge the Ayahs who were brought to London to care for their charges on the long sea journey and who were then shown the door and abandoned on the streets of London. A care home was established and this effort to give support has finally been recognised
Acts of interdiction and acts of reaffirmation of humanity in 21st century colonialism: Reflections on the occupation, genocide, and resistance of the Palestinian people
No full textUpdating the violence of colonial rule for the context of the 21st century, Israeli colonialism denies the recognition of the humanity of the people under occupation as a necessary ideological strategy for its project of extermination. This article evokes the notion of ‘peripheral bodies’ to describe a category of political intelligibility that necropower imposes not only on Palestinian bodies, but on countless corporealities continually relegated to the space of dehumanisation which precedes their extermination. If peripheral bodies are the locus of implementation of necropower, they are also a source of dissent and contestation, insurgency and struggle. Thus, based on examples of anti-colonial resistance by the Palestinian people and Sumud, responses given by peripheral subjects to the violence of contemporary colonial rule and necrocapitalism are addressed. In dialectical relation to necropower, forms of agency, resistance, and reaffirmation of their lives and humanity are engendered
Colonisation and resistance: Frantz Fanon’s lens on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, gender, and mental health
No full textFrantz Fanon is recognised for his role in the fight against racism, colonialism, and oppression, as well as for his extensive contributions to understanding the psychopathology of colonisation. This article analyses the Israeli occupation of Palestine through the lens of Fanon’s theories on colonialism, gender, and mental health. It begins by outlining the theoretical framework of settler colonialism and its relevance to the social and political context in Palestine. By drawing on political theory informed by psychoanalytic perspectives, the article examines the ‘non-existence’ of Palestinians, exploring unconscious processes that deny the Other’s existence. It also considers the dual burden borne by women under political oppression and occupation. Finally, the article connects Fanon’s insights on the psychological effects of oppression to the Palestinian anticolonial struggle, emphasising demands for a human rights approach, anticolonialism, and resistance
Response to Peter Blundell
No full textPeter Blundell (2025) has written a letter expressing his anger at the publication of Colin Feltham’s (2025) recent article in Psychotherapy and Politics International. Blundell also raises three reasons why this article should not have been published and questions the way in which it was presented. We appreciate Blundell’s letter because it allows us to explain our decision to publish Feltham’s article and to publish it in the way we did. This is what we present now, discussing in turn Blundell’s anger, his three reasons for not publishing the article, and how it was presented
Palestinian resistance and the limits of bourgeois rationality: Reflections on psychology’s de-ideologising task
No full textThe escalation of the war of extermination against Gaza has exposed the hypocrisy of Western democracies and sparked global demonstrations against the Zionist occupation. However, the Western left has shown hostility toward armed resistance, assimilating the dualistic logic that constructed the superiority of the transcendental bourgeois subject. In contrast, from the perspective of Palestinian and Arab activists and intellectuals, Gaza achieved a form of triumph by challenging the invincibility of the Zionist invader and destabilising bourgeois rationality, which shapes reality according to the imperatives of Capital. Grounded in Marxian theory, I argue that, by exposing the fragility of Western ideology when confronted with objective reality, the Palestinian struggle offers valuable insights for the task of de-ideologising psychology, underscoring the necessary reconnection between epistemological critique and emancipatory struggles so that psychology may affirm, in praxis, the possibility of a world free from capitalist shackles
Speaking to silence: Palestine, psychotherapy, and transactional analysis
No full textThis article, written by members of the group ‘Transactional Analysis and Palestine’, offers seven individual but related reflections on psychotherapy—the field, its practice, and its practitioners—in the context of the genocide in Gaza, and the work of the group to date. It discusses silence, colonisation, decolonising psychotherapy, dissociation, and power, and ends with some reflections on the purpose, structure, and process of the group, and on allyship