“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” Psychology, Agency, and Activism

Abstract

SUMMARY This article proposes that psychotherapists must abandon the practice of seeing mental health issues as individual problems and more willing to see these issues as the consequences of social injustice. This leads to an imperative to develop models of insight that focus on a client's awareness and understanding of social and political forces, through integrating concepts from liberation psychology. Therapeutic models should be revised to avoid deterministic explanations of social issues and rather incorporate contextualist models that better explain concepts such as social power, freedom, agency, and resistance, which are more compatible with psychotherapy. Finally, socially-aware psychotherapy must focus on re-envisioning the therapeutic relationship, specifically on factors in that relationship that allow individuals to reclaim personal and social agency.