The Many Faces of Systemic Oppression, Power, and Privilege: The Necessity of Self-Examination

Abstract The author describes systemic oppression, considers its multiple and overlapping contexts, and offers perspectives on and examples of its traumatizing effects. She reflects on systemic power and privilege by describing dimensions and dynamics of leadership and by considering personal and collective responsibilities involved in transforming the unfairness, inequality, and trauma of systemic oppression and power differentials in organizations. The inescapable presence of systemic oppression in transactional analysis culture suggests that we in transactional analysis, along with the rest of global organized social structures, can both enable and confront its reach within those contexts. The author also discusses the place of our unconscious primitive motivations and complicated universalities and intersections in relation to systemic oppression.