Feminist Praxis towards Liberating Psychology in the 21st Century: Knowledge Constructed with Mayan and Rwandan Survivor-Protagonists

Abstract

Jesuit priest and social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró sought to liberate psychology from its roots in a dominant, dualist, positivist paradigm evident in Euro-American/Western psychological theory, research and praxis in the 20th century. He called for a new horizon for psychology, one of relevance defined by its contribution towards breaking cycles of personal and social oppression. He has been credited with developing an onto-epistemology ‘of the people’ – ways of being, knowing, and doing that evolve in situ – within and beyond the context of the 1981–1990-armed conflict in El Salvador in which he was one among approximately 75,000 people assassinated. Against the backdrop of his contributions, we note the emergence of a contrasting ‘trauma industry’ whereby mental health professionals regularly enter war zones and post-conflict settings with diagnostics and treatment models imported from the global North, thereby de-politicizing and de-contextualizing historically rooted violence and locating social suffering in individual symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. We authors – feminist community and clinical psychologists, researchers and consultants with long-term relationships of accompanying survivor-protagonists in Guatemala and Rwanda – explore selected ethical and conceptual shortcomings of that international trauma boom as it has influenced our work. We then discuss our engagement with and confrontation of contradictions encountered within the very power structures that we seek to overcome through a praxis of mutual accompaniment. Martín-Baró’s liberation psychology orients our research and trauma work as we draw on critical reflexivity vis-à-vis our positionalities as ‘outsiders’, Euro-American/Western educated White feminists who have developed dialogic relationships with women and child survivors of gross violations of human rights. We seek to decolonize psychology while the latter continues to privilege us and marginalize those we accompany. Through a lens of an open dialogue between two different regional contexts we identify and discuss ‘lessons learned’ through similar praxis developed ‘from the perspective of survivors’, while identifying ruptures and limitations as well as pending questions encountered in the field as we seek to contribute to a liberation of psychology through a praxis of mutual accompaniment.