Lecture 'Reimagining psyhotherapy for social change: a critical liberation approach'

In this workshop, critical psychology is applied to identify seven inbuilt assumptions and and an alternative Critical-Liberation Psychotherapy (CLP) model is described. Although psychotherapy does not need to serve a part in social change movements, clinicians interested in using therapeutic practice to support genuine liberation may take interest in CLP.

CLP centers critical theory and maintains that psychotherapy can provide relational and institutional conditions that cultivate novel forms of subjectivity. Marginalized decolonial and liberation practices provide specific insights into how to recontextualize and apply these conditions to foster critical consciousness and social change. The interplay between self and society is illustrated through case vignettes, in which psychotherapy encounters are discussed as carrying the potential to rekindle social imagination and actualize novel possibilities.