Why a community approach?

We exist in relation to others, to the particular family, social, economic, historical contexts into which we are born and move through in our lives. A community approach allows key ethical commitments to:

• stop locating psychological difficulties inside people (individualisation) and locate difficulties within their contexts (externalisation)


• collective dialogues and care, including for the environment


• engaging in transformative action towards social justice

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

                                                                                           Desmond Tutu

Both in arrative and Liberation psychology, you as the author of your own life, a co-creator of your realities, with agency to transform your life in your preferred ways. This makes therapeutic conversations highly enriching and transporting for all involved. Collective narrative practices (such as externalising and deconstruction), are about siding with you, collectively, in the development of critical awareness (defined in Liberation Psychology as conscientisation). Therefore, I actively position myself alongside people who consult with me, so that I am not a helper but, as a person with whom I worked said, "a friend" in solidarity.

"I am thinking of a solidarity that is constructed by therapists who refuse to draw a sharp distinction between their lives and the lives of others, who refuse to marginalise those persons who seek help"
                   
                                                                              Michael White (1993, p.132)

More about Community and Liberation Psychology

Liberation and Critical Community Psychology are founded on ideas and practices from Critical Pedagogy and (like collective narrative practices), are about finding ways of engaging with communities' realities and resourcefulness:

• your historical memory, the contexts to your lives beyond yourselves, including parents, grandparents, traditions in your families and cultures


• your collective skills, knowledges, capabilities, understandings

This helps in your re-authoring your sense of who you are collectively, so you can be active participants in your lives, rather than passive recipients of the historical moment you are living.

Click here to learn more about Liberation Psychology.

Click here to read more about Critical Community Psychology.