Income Inequalities between minorities and genders I’m working on a psychology writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn. A) outline income inequallities in the US and identify some of its primary social consequences, use one framework/a

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 Income Inequalities between minorities and genders
I’m working on a psychology writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

A) outline income inequallities in the US and identify some of its primary social consequences, use one framework/approaches (about 1 page)

B.) Identify your own position about the issue including how you arrived at this position, how it relates to your own social location and any personal connection or lived experience with the topic. Los Angeles and being a woman (about 1 page)

C.) Then advocate for one specific social change strategy or action that you think should be implemented by governments, community groups, and/or individuals. Be as clear and explicit as you can about the change you are promoting and what level your strategy works on, is it a strategy for individuals? for organizations? for governments? etc. Your overall goal is, in alignment with your personal statement of your position on the issue, to advocate for a social strategy or action that would help to resolve, transform, or alleviate the problem/issue chosen. How would the change or action be implemented or delivered? Is it a training? Is it a new law? What would you do to help create this change? What is your role? Who would you do this with? Describe what social interventions or processes would be necessary for this change to occur. Use concepts, approaches, and course references in justifying your strategy or action for social change and its anticipated impacts. How will you target your approach? How will you know it is finished? What is your dosage? How many people will be impacted? Here you will use course references, with at least 1 references coming from Part 3 of the course, for a total of 4 course references used in the paper. (about 4 pages)

Requirements: 6 pages   |    file

ATTACHED ARE THE RELEVANT READINGS AND NOTES

Journal of Counseling & Development  ■  Summer 2008  ■  Volume 86288
© 2008 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the
mind of the oppressed.

—Stephen Biko (as cited in “World Cultural Geography,” 1998)

Culture is part of the soul. As human beings, we are all part 
of a culture and not separate from it. When the soul or cul-
ture of some persons are oppressed, we are all oppressed and 
wounded  in  ways  that  require  healing  if  we  are  to  become 
liberated from such oppression. When discussing these issues, 
it is important to realize that we have all been on both sides of 
the oppression/oppressor coin at different points in our lives. 
It is also important to become aware that a clear path toward 
healing must be undertaken by individual counselors as well 
as by the mental health professions as a whole if we are to 
realize new and untapped dimensions of our individual and 
collective health and psychological liberation. In taking the 
healing  path,  counselors  will  be  able  to  provide  individual 
clients and the world community with much-needed under-
standing of the way toward liberation and the fullness of life 
in a manner that promotes harmonious interactions within the 
overall web of the life–world. 

From the work that we have been doing in Indian  country for 
many years, it has become apparent that there are parallels in the 
soul-wounding and soul-healing processes that are manifested in 
the Native community and the counseling profession, of which 
we are a part. All people have gone through some form of histori-
cal trauma that continues to cause confusion and suffering in the 
present. If the historical soul wounding is not effectively dealt 
with, each person, as well as her or his descendants, is doomed 
to experience and perpetuate various forms of psychic and spiri-
tual suffering in the future. For these reasons, it is important that 
counselors understand (a) how history affects the present mental 
well-being of persons from marginalized racial/cultural groups 
in  general  and  Native  communities  in  particular  and  (b)  how 
intrusions by the counseling profession, if not done with cultural 
competence and respect, will predictably contribute to the soul 
suffering that is already pandemic in societies across the world. 

Multicultural  scholars  have  described  the  various  ways 
that the mental health professions have been an instrument 

of oppression from their earliest days when the power of the 
Church was passed on to the new priests of the society (i.e., 
mental health professionals) who could impose their will on 
people from diverse cultural groups under the guise of being 
healers (Duran, 2006; Foucault, 1967). The various forms of 
psychological oppression that continue to be perpetuated by 
many well-meaning and good-hearted counselors, psycholo-
gists, and social workers are by-products of broader economic, 
political, religious, and social mechanisms that have histori-
cally been used to colonize persons from diverse groups and 
backgrounds in the United States. Operating from culturally 
biased views of mental health and what are considered to be 
appropriate  intervention  strategies,  these  professionals  per-
petuate various forms of injustice and institutional racism by 
imposing helping paradigms that are often incongruent with 
the worldviews, values, beliefs, and traditional practices that 
have been used to promote the psychological well-being of 
persons in diverse groups (Constantine & Sue, 2006). 

Similar to those religious missionaries who worked to pro-
mote and maintain a particular worldview and political status 
quo,  contemporary  mental  health  professionals  have  been 
criticized  for  primarily  assisting  clients  from  marginalized 
and devalued groups to conform to the social, economic, and 
political realities that characterize the dominant group in U.S. 
society (Ivey, D’Andrea, Ivey, & Simek-Morgan, 2007). 

As the saying goes, “everything is political,” and psycho-
logical science and practice are no exceptions. The fact that 
counselors have intentionally and unintentionally used their 
professional  knowledge  and  skills  to  support  the  existing 
power structure in ways that adversely affect the lives of many 
persons from diverse racial/cultural groups is an indictment 
of the counseling profession (Duran & Duran, 1995). 

This  indictment  is,  in  part,  linked  to  the  perpetuation  of 
ethnocentric  practices  in  counselor  education  programs  and 
counseling practices in the field. From the perspective of Native 
people, the use of ethnocentric practices in counselor education 
programs and counseling practices inadvertently results in the 
wounding of the souls of many racially and culturally different 
clients as well as those members of the counseling profession 

Eduardo Duran and Judith Firehammer, United Auburn Indian Community, Loomis, California; John Gonzalez, Department of
Psychology, University of Alaska Fairbanks. John Gonzalez is now at Psychology Department, Bemidji State University. Correspon-
dence concerning this article should be addressed to Eduardo Duran, United Auburn Indian Community, 3268 Penryn Road, Suite
100, Loomis, CA 95650 (e-mail: soulhealing16@yahoo.com).

Liberation Psychology as the Path
Toward Healing Cultural Soul Wounds
Eduardo Duran, Judith Firehammer, and John Gonzalez

Oppression resulting in soul wounding has afflicted indigenous communities and the counseling profession. Internal-
ized oppression has become part of oppressive practices inflicted on communities served. The authors delineate a
liberation psychology that leads toward the psychological and spiritual emancipation of individual clients, communities,
and the counseling profession.

Journal of Counseling & Development  ■  Summer 2008  ■  Volume 86 289

Liberation Psychology Healing Cultural Soul Wounds

who have not acquired the psychological liberation or cultural 
competence that would enable them to work respectfully, ef-
fectively, and ethically with diverse client populations. 

The psychological oppression that ensues from these prac-
tices  results  in  various  forms  of  injustice  that  are  typically 
inflicted  unintentionally  by  counselors  who  are  genuinely 
interested in helping clients from diverse groups and back-
grounds  to  realize  new  and  untapped  dimensions  of  their 
humanity.  Despite  the  intention  of  many  good-hearted  and 
well-meaning  counselors  to  help  foster  the  mental  health 
of clients from diverse racial/cultural groups in general and 
Native Americans in particular, a careful examination of the 
counseling interventions commonly implemented by cultur-
ally  incompetent  practitioners  serve  very  different  ends. 
Rather than promoting the collective dignity and psychologi-
cal liberation of clients in these diverse cultural populations, 
Western  counseling  interventions  are  inadvertently  used  to 
promoting the types of social control and conformity that are 
necessary  to  sustain  the  existing  political/economic/social 
status quo (Duran, 2006). 

With  this  backdrop  in  mind,  this  article  explores  the 
meaning of three interrelated concepts that are of particular 
importance  in  counseling  persons  in  marginalized  cultural 
groups in general and especially when working with members 
of Native communities in particular. This includes examining 
the  meaning  and  relevance  of  psychological  liberation,  the 
soul wound, and soul healing in the work counselors do. 

Psychological Liberation, the Soul
Wound, and Soul Healing

It is interesting to note that the root metaphors of the coun-
seling professional identity are historically grounded in what 
has been referred to as the soul. The term psychology itself  
literally  means  the  study  of  the  soul.  Culturally  competent 
counselors,  who  are  knowledgeable  of  Native  American 
perspectives of mental health, know that the primary goal of 
psychological helping is not only to explore issues of relevance 
to clients’ souls but also to help them find healing and relief 
from psychopathology or soul suffering. 

The psychological healing tradition, as practiced in the ancient 
world, did not shy away from soul healing. Instead, soul healing 
was the central interest of the priest/therapist to restore harmony 
to the individual’s life. The distant ancestors of the counseling 
profession, as exemplified in the healing practices of the Askle-
pian tradition in ancient Greece, approached clients in the fol-
lowing manner. That is, the healer (counselor) would address the 
individual’s soul, as a path to end suffering (Duran, 2006). 

Although  examples  of  similar  counseling  interventions 
that address individuals’ spiritual needs are still in existence 
in  most  traditional  indigenous  cultures  today  (Heilbron  & 
Guttman, 2000; Mohatt & Eagle Elk, 2000; Roberts, Harper, 
Tuttle-Eagle Bull, & Heideman-Provost, 1998), Western coun-
seling approaches have moved away from addressing clients’ 

soul wounds. Tracing the historical factors that contributed 
to a movement away from addressing clients’ spiritual issues 
in general and individuals’ soul wounds in particular exceeds 
the scope of this article. However, in our work with Native 
people, we have come to the opinion that many indigenous 
and culturally diverse communities would benefit greatly from 
counseling services that intentionally direct attention to these 
important aspects of human functioning. 

By  addressing  issues  related  to  clients’  spiritual  needs 
and soul wounds, counselors are better positioned to foster a 
greater sense of psychological health, well-being, and psycho-
logical liberation among persons in groups that continue to be 
marginalized and oppressed in contemporary society. To do so, 
counselors will need to undertake a serious self-examination 
of the impact of their privileged position in society that often 
leads them to ignore many of injustices that underlie clients’ 
soul wounds and psychological distress. 

Because the counseling profession has, in large part, held 
a privileged position in the United States, many counselors 
have been unaware of and complacent to many forms of social 
injustice that continue to be perpetuated in marginalized com-
munities in this country. Becoming aware of the various forms 
of  cultural  oppression  and  social  injustices  that  adversely 
affect the mental health of clients from devalued groups in 
U.S. society as well as the psychological development of many 
Western-trained  mental  health  practitioners  is  an  essential 
component of the process of liberation psychology. 

The theory of liberation psychology is grounded in many 
tenets of liberation theology that have emerged from grassroots 
community struggles in other parts of the world where oppres-
sion reached an intolerable level. Providers of mental health 
and spiritual guidance in Latin American countries have been 
particularly vocal in bringing attention to the lamentation of the 
oppressed poor through the use of psychological liberation in-
terventions in clinical practice as well as in theory development 
and  critical  pedagogy  (Alcoff  &  Mendieta,  2000;  Batstone, 
Mendieta,  Lorentzen,  &  Hopkins,  1997;  Dussel,  1997;  Fals 
Borda, 1988; Freire, 1972; Gutiérrez, 1973; Kane 2001). 

The Latin American liberation process is deeply influenced 
by Freire’s (1972) idea of conscientiziation, essentially meaning 
a change in consciousness. Through a gradual transformation 
of  consciousness  via  ongoing  deconstruction  of  the  life  ex-
periences of oppressed persons, the entire community that is 
adversely affected by systemic forms of oppression and injustice 
can begin to liberate itself and, in that process, liberate the op-
pressor (Duran 2006). According to Freire, the transformation 
of the oppressor as well as the oppressed involves a genuine act 
of love that has profound implications for the work in which 
counselors  are  supposed  to  be  engaged  within  a  culturally 
diverse contemporary society. 

In  our  work  with  Native  persons,  we  analyze  and  help 
clients  deconstruct  their  cultural  history  in  ways  that  liber-
ate them from the traumatic and oppressive conditions that 
brought them to their present situation. The counseling profes-

Journal of Counseling & Development  ■  Summer 2008  ■  Volume 86290

Duran, Firehammer, & Gonzalez

sion has limited this sort of deconstruction to personal (intra-
psychic) issues, thus leaving out the sociohistorical context, 
which is of paramount importance to clients’ mental health and 
psychological development. In our work with Native Ameri-
can communities, it has also become exceedingly clear that 
the counseling profession’s unwillingness to address clients’ 
historical context contributes to the psychological oppression 
of individual clients, their families, cultural communities, as 
well as the helping professions themselves. 

If counselors were to simply proceed with mental health 
practices  in  the  fashion  that  has  been  prescribed  by  the 
counseling  profession,  marginalized  cultural  communities 
will  simply  not  benefit  from  such  culturally  biased  helping 
interventions.  Unfortunately,  professional  counselors  are 
too often trained to further pathologize the members of such 
communities  by  refusing  to  address  the  historical  context, 
injustices,  and  subsequent  soul  wounds  that  underlie  much 
of their psychological distress. Consequently, Native Ameri-
can  clients  are  often  labeled  as  resistant  when  they  do  not 
demonstrate  an  interest  in  continuing  to  participate  in  the 
counseling process.

The counseling profession has not had the humility to critically 
assess the depths of the culturally biased nature of its helping 
methods nor the negative outcomes that commonly ensue from 
imposing  traditional  Western  helping  theories  and  practices 
among  clients  from  diverse  groups  and  backgrounds  (Duran 
&  Duran,  1995).  Liberation  psychology  advocates  encourage 
counselors  to  direct  their  efforts  toward  fostering  a  liberation 
discourse in the helping process with clients as well as in profes-
sional forums in the profession. This sort of discourse necessarily 
involves an exploration of clients’ and the counseling profession’s 
historical context as well as their current life and professional 
challenges in culturally diverse counseling interactions. 

Advocates  of  this  “liberatory”  approach  to  helping  and 
professional development emphasize the latter point in their 
work because they are keenly cognizant of the ways in which 
many culturally diverse persons have too often suffered from 
various forms of oppression in the name of traditional Western 
counseling and psychotherapy. Duran (2006) underscored this 
by pointing out the following: 

Liberation  discourse  involves  taking  a  crucial  eye  to  the 
processes of colonization that have had a deep impact on the 
identity of Original Peoples; as a result, a new narrative of 
healing will emerge. The mental health profession has been 
instrumental  in  fostering  the  colonial  ideation  of  Native 
Peoples all over the world. I am merely bearing witness and 
bringing awareness to this process, to change it. By turning 
a  critical  eye  on  our  professional  activities  of  healing,  we 
liberate ourselves as well. (p. 1) 

In  the  process  of  developing  liberation  psychology  in 
Indian  country,  we  have  found  early  on  that  much  of  the 
available Western psychological theory was not useful and at 

times irrelevant when used among culturally diverse clients 
unless  it  was  retheorized  using  appropriate  cultural  meta-
phors. For example, the labels counselors and psychologists 
commonly  use  to  diagnose  clients  are  really  metaphors  for 
describing a condition, and these metaphors usually do not 
allow clients to relate to their condition. As a result, the etio-
logical explanations for many psychological disorders, such 
as depression, have frequently been noted to be incongruent 
with the client’s worldview, regardless of her or his cultural 
background (Duran, 2006). 

When working with Native clients who are depressed, we 
have found it useful, instead, to provide a culturally appro-
priate metaphor by suggesting that the “spirit of sadness” is 
visiting the client. Using this metaphor allows these Native 
clients to relate to their psychological condition from a cultural 
perspective that leads to several different options for the client 
to find relief from that condition. In doing so, a client who is 
depressed is able to engage in a conversation with or actively 
imagine the visiting spirit called sadness. In that conversation, 
the spirit of sadness can reveal existential meaning to the client 
and therefore liberate her or him from being a victim of the 
problem of depression. The client may need to find balance 
in the relationship with the spirit of sadness as all individuals 
must do at different times in their lives. When the client has a 
relationship with the disorder instead of being the disorder, a 
new narrative emerges that is liberating to the individual and 
the community of which she or he is a part.

There can be countless etiological explanations as to why 
this spirit is visiting different clients, all of which necessitate 
taking into account the clients’ sociohistorical context. Clients 
can trace the problem they are experiencing to a place in his-
tory where the problem originated. To successfully use this 
form of liberation counseling, we encourage clients to make a 
tribal genogram to find their place in history where the specific 
trauma occurred. By finding the historical place of this trauma, 
the client can stop self-identifying as a “defective Indian” and 
experience a greater level of psychological liberation by more 
accurately understanding the historical-contextual genesis of 
her or his experience with depression or other forms of psychic 
disorders (Duran, 2006). 

Another example of such liberatory processes comes from 
the Northern Plains tribes. If a child or person in these cultural 
groups experiences severe abuse/trauma, it is believed that the 
individual’s soul or spirit will leave the body, thus allowing 
another spirit to enter (i.e., the spirit of sadness). A specific 
set of ceremonies is required to call back the client’s original 
natural spirit. Through the praxis of considering the cultural 
context and becoming knowledgeable as to how this praxis 
leads to better ways of understanding and working with Native 
clients, a new theory of psychological liberation counseling 
for Native peoples begins to emerge. 

Furthermore,  commenting  on  the  process  of  liberation 
counseling, Martin-Baro (1998) pointed out that “it shouldn’t 
be  theories  that  define  the  problems  of  our  situation,  but 

Journal of Counseling & Development  ■  Summer 2008  ■  Volume 86 291

Liberation Psychology Healing Cultural Soul Wounds

rather the problems that demand, and so to speak, select their 
own theorization” (p. 314). Such an approach to helping is 
a more respectful and effective way of proceeding with the 
work  of  psychological  liberation  and  mental  health  care  in 
multicultural  contexts.  Moreover,  while  working  in  Indian 
country with Native clients, we quickly learned that by simply 
applying existing counseling theories and practices added to 
the feelings of alienation felt by indigenous peoples toward 
mental health professionals. It is important for counselors to 
consider why this happens. 

Many Native people believe they are living in a life–world 
that has been taken over by a foreign mythology. Therefore, if 
someone offers help using an oppressive mythology embedded 
within the dominant cultural group that has imposed so much 
historical suffering, it seems only natural that the individual 
or  community  (subjected  to  such  oppression  and  injustice) 
would be resistant to being helped in this way. This problem 
becomes  exacerbated  when  a  counselor  offering  help  from 
the oppressive theoretical mythology continues to label and 
pathologize the targeted person or community because of their 
reluctance to accept the help that is being offered.

The fact that Native people were resistant to mental health 
professionals’ initial involvement in Indian country became 
the rationale for us to explore new narratives for therapy and 
counseling  in  our  own  work.  In  exploring  new  helping  ap-
proaches that we hoped would be more culturally competent, 
respectful,  effective,  and  liberating,  it  became  increasingly 
apparent that even the manner in which the fields of counseling 
and psychology categorize mental health problems is culture 
bound and oppressive. The culture-bound nature of the diag-
nostic nosology used by mental health practitioners, referred to 
as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 
(4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000), 
serves to alienate Native people and persons from other cul-
tural groups who do not understand or accept a Eurocentric 
worldview of mental health and psychopathology. 

To  begin  the  healing  narrative  for  all  diverse  communi-
ties, it is imperative that the issue of history be brought into 
therapeutic  ceremonies  that  are  aimed  at  fostering  clients’ 
psychological  liberation.  Once  historical  honesty  becomes 
an integral part of the counseling/healing ceremony session, 
the fields of counseling and psychology will themselves begin 
the long-needed healing process that enables counselors and 
therapists to realize new and untapped aspects of their psy-
chological  liberation.  Duran  (2006)  has  written  extensively 
about this important issue, noting,

Lack  of  understanding  of  the  Native  epistemological  root 
metaphor  (ways  of  being  in  the  world  which  include  the 
psychological and spiritual worlds) continues to hinder our 
profession.  Historical  narcissism  (the  belief  that  one’s  own 
system  of  thinking  must  be  used  to  validate  other  cultural 
belief  systems)  continues  to  be  an  issue  in  the  relationship 
between Native/Original People and those who hold power in 

the academic and clinical life-world. I use this strong language 
because the Native/Original person is expected to fully under-
stand the world of the colonizer simply because the colonizer 
says so. When it comes to the colonizer making an effort to 
understand the life-world of the Native/Original person, the 
colonizer becomes very creative in his/her defenses in order 
to preserve his/her Cartesian life-world. The intention of this 
book is to provide a bridge between Western and Traditional 
Native healing worlds and in this manner bring healing to the 
historical trauma that all people have suffered at one time in 
their history. (p. 7) 

Epistemological Hybridity
In  developing  a  template  for  the  work  that  lies  ahead,  we 
recommend  that  the  fields  of  counseling  and  psychology 
implement  a  mind-set  of  epistemological hybridity.  The 
epistemological hybridity that we are calling for is nothing 
less  than  the  capacity  to  become  enmeshed  in  the  cultural 
life–world of the person or community seeking help. Becom-
ing enmeshed in the cultural life–world of those persons with 
whom counselors are planning to work with in the future is 
a very different approach to professional development than 
has been currently implemented in the profession. This is so 
because  much  of  what  has  been  done  in  the  area  of  cross-
cultural and multicultural counseling training has been laden 
with paternalistic attitudes (Duran, 2006). 

These paternalistic attitudes can best be illustrated by an 
analysis  into  how  mental  health  professionals  are  deemed 
qualified to do cross-cultural work. Typically, it is thought that 
a three-unit course in cross-cultural/multicultural counseling 
suffices in qualifying counselors to work with persons from 
diverse cultures. Given the complexity of cultural issues in the 
counseling/healing process, it is suggested that this limited 
approach  to  multicultural  counseling  training  needs  to  be 
supplemented with what we refer to as an enmeshing training
process (Duran, 2006). 

The third author was previously involved in implementing 
this sort of enmeshing training process and was thereby pro-
moting the sort of epistemological hybridity discussed earlier 
in a doctoral counseling program. In his former doctoral train-
ing program, all incoming students were required to attend a 
cultural immersion experience before their first semester. This 
experience involved having students interact and engage in 
daily activities with Native elders and other cultural experts 
in the Native community. 

The benefits of this immersion experience are many and 
probably differ for everyone, depending on her or his previ-
ous life experiences. Among the benefits reported by students 
participating  in  this  enmeshing  process  include  debunking 
stereotypes  and  establishing  important  relationships  with 
community  members,  elders,  and  traditional  healers.  Stu-
dents also quickly learn some of the basic cultural rules of 
etiquette  that  are  critical  to  developing  positive,  respectful, 

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Duran, Firehammer, & Gonzalez

and potentially healing relationships with persons in the Na-
tive communities. 

Following  this  enmeshing  experience,  students  enroll  in 
their  first  required  doctoral  course  called  “Native  Ways  of 
Knowing.” This course provides a historical context to Na-
tive  issues  and  challenges  students  to  thoroughly  examine 
the  epistemologies  of  indigenous  peoples  as  they  relate  to 
human behavior. Both the immersion/enmeshing experience 
and  the  aforementioned  course  are  intended  to  set  the  tone 
for the students’ future training because they open students 
up to the idea of epistemological hybridity, thus guiding them 
through  a  process  of  liberation  from  orthodox  professional 
Western practices as are commonly taught in most counselor 
education programs. 

As a way to foster students’ psychological liberation further, 
they are exposed to and are encouraged to engage in intense 
discussions during Talking Circles in classroom settings. These 
Talking Circles groups focus on many of the issues outlined 
earlier in this article as well as other mental health issues that 
are grounded in an indigenous perspective. Students are asked 
to reflect and comment on these issues as they relate to their 
professional development and the work they want to do in the 
future  as  they  become  the  next  generation  of  “healers.”  By 
increasing their understanding of the ways of being in the Na-
tive life–world, students are able to begin the journey toward 
becoming  more  knowledgeable  of  the  context  of  historical 
trauma and how this trauma affects the present lives of Native 
persons in the United States.

Generations of Suffering
Presently in Indian country, it is well accepted that the history 
of violence and genocide inflicted on the indigenous persons 
of this land continues to have a deep impact on the indigenous 
peoples in the United States. This history has resulted in forms 
of intergenerational trauma that continues to have an adverse 
impact on the mental health and psychological well-being of 
many Native persons, contributing to much of the psychopa-
thology that is encountered in Indian country (Brave Heart, 
1999; Duran & Duran, 1995; Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, & 
Yellow Horse-Davis, 1998; Epstein, 1979). Slowly but surely, 
mental  health  care  providers  and  counseling  programs  are 
modifying treatment strategies in ways that reflect a greater 
understanding and acceptance of the intergenerational trauma 
that continues to affect persons in Indian country. 

Recently,  researchers  have  collected  empirical  data  that  shed 
new light on what the Native American community has known for 
decades; that is, intergenerational/historical trauma contributes to 
many of the behavioral health concerns and problems experienced 
by Native individuals and communities (Whitbeck, Adams, Hoyt, 
& Chen, 2004). Reporting on these issues from their research 
endeavors, Whitbeck et al. pointed out that a high prevalence of 
historical trauma associated with emotional distress (anxiety, depres-
sion, anger) is routinely manifested in ways that undermine the indi-
vidual and collective health of many persons in Indian country. 

Although it is encouraging that researchers have been able to 
finally validate these findings empirically, it is unfortunate that 
such knowledge has taken so long to be scientifically proven by 
Western researchers when the insights gained from these investi-
gative efforts have long been understood by Native people. Again, 
a case of paternalism and lack of cultural hybridity is exemplified 
when indigenous knowledge must be validated through Western 
empiricism. The  lack  of  validation  for  indigenous  theory  and 
clinical methods creates a feeling of helplessness in indigenous 
communities and leads to untold suffering among many people 
in these communities at the present time.

Cultural Hybridism as Liberation
Freire (1972) described the theory of liberation as a process 
that, once set in motion by the oppressed, will have the pro-
found liberating and healing impact on the oppressor as well as 
those victimized by various forms of cultural oppression and 
social-political injustices. In essence, theories of psychologi-
cal liberation and cultural hybridity represent a transforma-
tion of consciousness among oppressed persons. Realization 
of  this  liberated  consciousness  results  in  the  understanding 
that, by remaining oppressed, persons in marginalized cultural 
groups help to perpetuate an insane and dehumanizing dance 
of psychological and spiritual suffering that adversely affects 
the oppressor as well as the oppressed persons. 

In such a dynamic relationship between the oppressed and 
the  oppressor,  the  negative  energy  of  oppression  consumes 
the lives of the human beings involved and creates an insidi-
ous reality of self-perpetuating suffering. Through the use of 
counseling interventions that emerge from cultural hybridity, 
individuals  are  able  to  acquire  a  new  historical-contextual 
awareness of their individual and collective development and 
problems. This awareness results in the emergence of a greater 
level  of  consciousness,  psychological  liberation,  and  soul 
healing that can transform the health and lives of individuals 
victimized by various forms of social injustice as well as those 
responsible for perpetuating such oppression.

Healing Versus Curing
Healing and curing are concepts that merit discussion when 
exploring issues related to liberation psychology. Within the 
Western mind-set of counseling and therapy, the main intent 
of therapeutic interventions is the removal of symptoms that 
is accomplished within a “helping” context often viewed in 
contradictory or adversarial terms among persons from mar-
ginalized cultural groups. The adversarial nature of such help-
ing is reflected in the ways that many well-meaning “helpers” 
declare war on various human-social problems. This includes 
but is not limited to the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and 
the war on terrorism, to name a few. 

Using  these  metaphors  as  a  guide  in  their  work,  mental 
health  professionals  identify  target  populations  and  define 
specific tasks and objectives to eradicate social and psycho-
logical problems. Traditional tribal worldviews find the afore-

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Liberation Psychology Healing Cultural Soul Wounds

mentioned images of helping to be foreign, strange, inhumane, 
and in discord with natural processes. Healing in a traditional 
Native worldview is primarily concerned with helping indi-
viduals learn how they fit into the overall cosmology. 

Being a productive member of society has a very different 
meaning in traditional indigenous cultures, which are mainly 
concerned with the person’s relationship to the universal cos-
mology versus curing a culturally defined psychological dis-
order. From an indigenous liberation psychology perspective, 
individuals can be very depressed and still have a relationship 
with  their  soul  and  the  way  their  soul  harmonizes  with  the 
universal life force. Within Western cultures, there are revered 
artists,  scientists,  and  other  highly  creative  and  productive 
persons who are recognized for their contributions to the world 
soul while dealing with their “mental disorders.” 

Empirically Tested Healing
and the Future Possibilities

Presently,  the  mental  health  professions  delineate  how 
counseling/therapy/healing  is  to  be  delivered  in  order  for 
counselors to practice within the scope of what the profession 
deems  appropriate  and  ethical.  Funding  sources,  including 
third-party payers and governmental grant sources support, 
have  empirically  tested  best  counseling  and  therapy  prac-
tices. This  ensures  that  counselors  will  adhere  to  treatment 
paradigms that have passed the Western empirical test while 
disregarding considerations of culturally appropriate interven-
tions that are aimed at fostering soul healing. 

From a multicultural/social justice perspective, it is sug-
gested that such an approach to counseling is largely designed 
to ensure that clients become a productive and conforming 
member of society in ways that enhance the corporate struc-
tures that operate behind the scene. These structures represent 
supraordinate  societal  forces  that  significantly  dictate  what 
people in the general citizenry are conditioned to believe are 
appropriate ways of thinking and acting in the world. Although 
it is not often discussed in mainstream professional counseling 
and psychology publications, this mass psychological condi-
tioning is clearly grounded in a social-political ideology that 
promotes generalized notions of mental health and illness. It 
is  further  asserted  that  this  general  psychological  ideology 
influences both the empirically tested interventions counselors 
are required to use, for reimbursement by third-party payers, 
and the assumptions and beliefs that underlie the diagnoses 
counselors make of clients’ mental health status. 

In making these statements, we are not suggesting that we 
are opposed to empirically supported therapies. However, we 
do believe that just because a counseling approach has gone 
through the filters of empirical testing does not make a particular 
helping theory a theory of choice for all or even most clients 
whom counselors are called upon to serve. Indeed, the efficacy 
of many counseling theories is supported by clinical trials and 
empirical testing. However, if an empirically validated approach 
to  helping  is  not  culturally  relevant  to  clients  from  different 

groups,  the  use  of  that  particular  theoretical  approach  is  not 
likely to be effective or beneficial for those persons. Cognitive-
behavioral therapies represent important counseling approaches 
that are supported by much empirical research. From a multi-
cultural research perspective, it is acknowledged that there is 
merit  in  using  cognitive-behavioral  approaches  with  persons 
from diverse cultural groups in general and Native populations 
in  particular  (McDonald  &  Gonzalez,  2006;  Renfrey,  1992; 
Trimble,  1992).  However,  from  a  multicultural/social  justice 
counseling  perspective,  it  is  emphasized  that  such  helping 
strategies should never be used “off the shelf ” without some 
cultural metaphor modification. 

The  potential  benefits  of  cognitive-behavioral  counsel-
ing approaches that have been modified to complement the 
cultural worldviews of diverse clients are underscored by the 
recognition that these helping concepts have been promoted by 
many cultural groups for thousands of years. For example, the 
Buddhist system uses the concept of Vipassana (seeing clear-
ly) meditation (a method of observing the mind and thoughts 
as they move across the landscape of one’s consciousness) to 
foster mental health and psychological well-being. 

Similar Western cognitive-behavioral therapy strategies are 
often used with clients as a way of helping individuals cope 
more effectively with stress and alleviating mental disorders. 
One  of  the  central  differences  between  the  aforementioned 
Buddhist approach and Western cognitive-behavioral counsel-
ing strategies is that the former method is practiced to promote 
mental liberation and psychological health, whereas the latter 
is  often  aimed  at  ameliorating  symptoms  of  psychological 
distress and disorder.

Many Native American tribes subscribe to what Western 
mental health professionals call “cognitive-behavioral tech-
niques” by following cultural precepts that encourage them to 
“watch their thoughts” so that they can change those cognitive 
processes  and  ensuing  behaviors  that  are  not  conducive  to 
positive and liberating psychological outcomes. If counselors 
were to proceed to use cognitive-behavioral helping strategies 
in  ways  that  accommodate  this  and  other  relevant  cultural 
metaphors (e.g., by encouraging Native American clients to 
watch their thoughts), they are likely to experience a greater 
level of effectiveness in fostering the psychological liberation 
of clients in this cultural group than if they were to use more 
orthodox Western cognitive-behavioral counseling approaches 
(Duran, 2006). 

Moving Beyond Western Scientific
Models of Research and
Theory Validation

When it comes to testing the effectiveness of a new therapy or 
counseling intervention, it is crucial that the testing process in-
clude research methods and ways of knowing that characterize 
the diverse client populations that will ultimately become the 
recipients of such helping services (Allen et al., 2006; Fisher 
& Ball, 2002; Mohatt, Hazel, et al., 2004). Unfortunately, most 

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Duran, Firehammer, & Gonzalez

research  that  is  done  in  this  area  is  conducted  via Western 
scientific methods of inquiry. These research methods have 
historically relied on quantitative methods of investigation to 
verify the effectiveness of various approaches to counseling 
and psychotherapy. 

As a result of adapting these research methods to determine 
the  best  practices  in  counseling,  counselors  and  other  social 
scientists have accepted the idea that if numbers are involved 
in assessing the effectiveness of a theoretical approach, there 
must be objectivity and truth in these interventions. Many prac-
titioners who view themselves as being multicultural counseling 
advocates have sacrificed their souls on the 12-step scientific 
method “altar,” forgetting that there are other prescribed ways 
of knowing the life–world that transcend the Western research 
methods that are taught in graduate school.

Counseling researchers who are open to alternative research 
methods (e.g., including using a variety of qualitative research 
models that have emerged in the profession over the past de-
cade) are better positioned to help liberate themselves and the 
profession from the narrow and culturally biased information 
that is typically generated from quantitative methods of inquiry. 
By breaking the chains that imprison their minds as a result of 
unquestionably accepting a logical positivist approach to coun-
seling research, counseling researchers are able to transcend into 
a world in which there are no boundaries as they use multiple 
research methods that help uncover the multiple truths persons 
from diverse cultural groups embrace when it comes to defin-
ing effective helping strategies that foster their constructions 
of mental health and psychological liberation.

Counselors can begin doing this by including qualitative 
methods in all research endeavors in which they are involved—
from  the  evaluation  of  professional  training  programs  to 
counseling efficacy and outcome research. Although they are 
not perfect, qualitative research approaches can yield informa-
tion that quantitative research approaches cannot match. It has 
also been noted that qualitative approaches are much more 
congruent with Native and indigenous ways of knowing than 
the quantitative research strategies that continue to permeate 
the fields of counseling and psychology (Hill, Thompson, & 
Williams, 1997; Mohatt, Rasmus, et al., 2004). 

One  example  of  the  positive  lessons  learned  from  using 
qualitative research methods to evaluate the efficacy of mental 
health  services  provided  to  Native  persons  comes  from  the 
People Awakening Project, which was implemented among 
indigenous  people  in Alaska  (Mohatt,  Hazel,  et  al.,  2004). 
This  project  included  the  recording  of  clients’  life  stories 
that were gathered in narrative format as a way of identifying 
the pathways to sobriety and the protective factors that help 
Alaska  Native  people  deal  with  alcohol  problems.  Further 
work is being conducted by the People Awakening Team to 
develop and test culturally grounded therapies and counsel-
ing interventions based on empirically derived pathways and 
protective factors. Similar methods need to be used in other 
cultural  communities  and  Native  tribes  as  the  counseling 
profession  strives  to  realize  a  greater  level  of  its  own  psy-

chological liberation by moving beyond traditional forms of 
empirical research methodology. 

Conclusion
We have briefly delineated helping processes that encompass a 
different approach to healing and counseling in the life–world. 
Soul wounding has been offered as a pivotal issue that is asserted 
to be at the root of many of the psychological problems facing 
society and the counseling profession. In order to heal the soul 
wound, it is suggested that the notion of soul healing needs to 
become a central metaphor that guides the daily activities of 
counselors and therapists. If counselors remain courageous in 
striving to change the way mental health professionals have been 
traditionally taught, by operating in the counseling life–world 
and by including the notion of soul healing, they will be able to 
create a liberating psychology that will slowly begin to trans-
form the clinical and research areas of the counseling profession 
as well as positively affect society at large. 

In order to move toward a more humane method of soul 
healing and psychological liberation, counselors will need to 
create a certain level of chaos in the existing armamentarium 
of  counseling  theories,  treatment  strategies,  and  research 
methods. Recognizing that counseling interventions continue 
to  be  commonly  implemented  by  practitioners  who  are  not 
respectful of nor responsive to the worldviews, expectations, 
values, and needs of persons in culturally diverse communities, 
we urge counselors to stop, reinvent, and modify what they 
have been trained to do and to develop new helping strategies 
that focus on soul healing through psychological liberation. 

Implementation of these new methods and interventions 
may seem random and chaotic for some persons in the counsel-
ing profession whose psychological liberation is constrained 
by their own cultural history and professional training. How-
ever, if the counseling profession is genuinely committed to 
its  own  ongoing  development  and  practitioners  are  willing 
to demonstrate the courage necessary to create new clinical 
and  research  paradigms  that  more  effectively  and  respect-
fully foster healthy human development from a multicultural 
perspective, the need to create temporary chaos in the profes-
sion will be viewed as positive necessary steps in promoting 
soul  healing  and  the  liberation  of  individual  and  collective 
psychology. We hope that the suggestions presented in this 
article, regarding the need to foster counselors’ and clients’ 
soul  healing  and  psychological  liberation,  will  help  other 
members of the counseling profession better understand ways 
in which they can assist in the transformation of the mental 
health  professions  in  ways  that  stimulate  a  greater  level  of 
human dignity and development through cultural diversity.

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Introduction

Unravelling the Contexts of Stigma: From
Internalisation to Resistance to Change

CATHERINE CAMPBELL
1* and HARRIET DEACON

2

1
Institute of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, UK

2
Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT

This special edition on ‘Understanding and Challenging Stigma’ seeks to further our understandings

of the types of representations and practices through which stigma is perpetuated, the social contexts

within which they are produced and reproduced, and the possibilities for agency, resistance and

intervention. In this introductory piece, we outline three broad approaches to stigma in the existing

literature — individual, macro-social and multi-level. Aligning ourselves with the latter, we discuss

how social effects become sedimented in the individual psyche in ways that often make it difficult for

stigmatised group members to resist their devalued social status. This insight frames our discussion of

the papers in this volume — which cover various types of stigma, drawing on research in six countries.

We focus on the ways in which the papers contribute to our understandings of (i) the material,

political, institutional and symbolic contexts of stigma; (ii) the possibility of resistance to stigma; and

(iii) the types of interventions most likely to facilitate such resistance. We conclude that the fields of

social and community psychology have a central role to play in advancing the types of understandings

that are so urgently needed to inform effective multi-level stigma-reduction interventions. Copyright

# 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: stigma; internalisation; resistance; agency; power; interventions; the Other; social

context; social change

INTRODUCTION

The editors of this special edition are keenly aware of the limited effectiveness of strategies to

reduce particular forms of illness stigma. This highlights the need for more communication

between stigma researchers across various contexts to improve stigma theory, research

methods and the planning and assessment of anti-stigma interventions. We have therefore

brought together papers that explore stigma across various categorizations—disease

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/casp.901

* Correspondence to: Catherine Campbell, Institute of Social Psychology, London School of Economics,
Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: c.campbell@lse.ac.uk

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 1 September 2006

(diabetes, tuberculosis, AIDS), race/ethnicity, immigration status, occupation (sex work),

sexuality (gay men) and health-related behaviours (smoking), drawing on qualitative research

in Ghana, India, Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa and England. The papers deal with various

dimensions of stigma: causes, modes of expression, consequences and responses. Each seeks

to understand the complexity of the social psychological contexts within which stigma arises,

and how it might be challenged or resisted.

Goffman (1963) characterises stigma as a ‘mark’ of social disgrace, arising within social

relations and disqualifying those who bear it from full social acceptance. Marks take

various forms: ‘abominations of the body’ such as physical deformities, alleged ‘blemishes

of individual character’ such as mental illness or unemployment and ‘tribal identities’, such

as religion or ethnicity. People who possess such characteristics acquire a ‘spoiled identity’

associated with various forms of social devaluation.

Some argue that it is important to distinguish between stigma (understood as negative

ideologies or attitudes) and discrimination (negative behaviours) (e.g. Deacon, this

volume). Others define stigma as a blend of affective, cognitive and behavioural responses,

with the primacy of each factor resulting from variable interactions between the nature of

the stigma, the context in which it is encountered, and individual differences amongst

interactants (e.g. Heatherton, Kleck, Hebb, & Hull, 2003).

The stigma literature is diverse, with three broad trends: the first two representing a

polarisation between individual and macro-social levels of analysis, and the third seeking

to build bridges between these (Deacon, Stephney, & Prosalendis, 2005).

Individualistic explanations for stigma — often drawing on social cognition

approaches — examine psychological attributes of perpetuators or targets, or inter-

individual interactions between them (e.g. Herek, Capitanio, & Widaman, 2002), paying

limited attention to social power, inequality and exclusion. They tend to focus on the

stigmatiser more often than the stigmatised, and are often associated with interventions that

implicitly align stigma with ignorance, seeking to reduce stigma by providing people with

‘the facts’ about an illness or about stigmatised groups.

When attention is given to the stigmatised, this falls within individual-level models of

stress and coping (e.g. Levin & van Laar, 2006). Existing social relations are usually taken

as given. The burden of adjustment falls on stigmatised individuals — with their responses

conceptualised in terms of their individual abilities to adapt to the stress of stigma.

Individual counselling is often the associated intervention for stigmatised people.

The failure of individual-level approaches to effect widespread stigma reduction has led

to an alternative focus on the links between stigma and wider macro-social inequalities

(e.g. gender, ethnicity). Such analyses suggest that stigma is not something that individuals

impose on others, but a complex social process linked to competition for power, tied into

existing mechanisms of dominance and exclusion (Parker and Aggleton, 2003). Macro-

social analyses imply that interventions such as anti-discrimination legislation or poverty-

reduction will assist in stigma reduction. But taking this view can mean that researchers

pay little attention to the individual psychological dimensions of stigma.

It is possible to straddle individual and macro-social analyses. Link and Phelan (2001)

define stigma as the co-occurrence of: labelling, stereotyping, categorical in-group/out-

group separation, status loss and discrimination, emphasising the exercise of power as an

essential element. Rooting their explanations in psychoanalytic theory rather than social

cognition, Crawford (1994) and Joffe (1999) highlight the processes through which the

individual and social are inextricably intertwined in the construction of stigma. They argue

for a universal human fear of uncertainty and danger. Individuals project this onto

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)

DOI: 10.1002/casp

412 C. Campbell and H. Deacon

identifiable out-groups — responding negatively towards them to distance themselves from

the threat. Whilst such ‘othering’ is common across societies, the targets of stigma often

vary, with choice of the ‘other’ reflecting wider power differentials in particular settings.

Combining macro-social and psychological analyses facilitates a better understanding of

individual compliance, change and resistance to stigmatisation. For example, Crawford’s

(1994) study of AIDS stigma in the United States analyses how the stigmatisation of people

with HIV/AIDS (compounded by the association of HIV/AIDS with marginalised out-

groups such as intravenous drug users, gay men, sex workers and ethnic minorities)

reinforces a conservative ‘middle American’ social morality — which requires people to

police their behaviour in ways that support the economic and political status quo.

Faced with multiple layers of social disadvantage, it may be difficult for people to

challenge their stigmatised status. This is particularly problematic because ‘power is

seldom conceded without a demand’ (Bulhan cited in Seedat, 2001). Social elites seldom

voluntarily give up their power without a vigorous demand from excluded groups. Given

the social and intra-psychic benefits of ‘othering’, the ‘non-stigmatised’ may have a

complex and multi-layered investment in maintaining the symbolic status quo.

The self-policing that Crawford speaks of is deeply social psychological, rooted in the

complex mechanisms through which the social becomes sedimented in the individual

psyche. Even when members of stigmatised groups are not exposed to overt and direct acts

of discrimination, individuals who carry stigmatised markers may ‘internalise’ negative

representations of their status (Goffman, 1963). This may lead to loss of confidence and

self-esteem, undermining the likelihood that they will challenge their devalued status.

What are the implications for anti-stigma activists? Here we would argue against a

simplistic view of power which regards stigmatised people as passive victims of inexorable

social forces, ignoring that where there is power, there may also be the potential for

individual/collective resistance. In certain conditions stigmatised people may contest, even

transform, stigmatising representations and practices. Much remains to be learned about

the types of representations and practices through which stigma is perpetuated, the social

contexts within which they are produced and reproduced, and the possibility of agency and

resistance. It is here that we locate this volume’s contribution.

UNRAVELLING THE CONTEXTS OF STIGMA

Each paper contributes to particular specialist literatures — perspectives too rich and varied

to summarise here. In this section we seek only to highlight how papers contribute to

understandings of the material, political, symbolic and institutional contexts that support

the stigmatisation of various groups, undermining or enabling opportunities for group

members’ agency and the development of positive, active self-definitions that might inform

individual/collective resistance to stigmatisation.

Material contexts

At the material level, poverty/deprivation are potent drivers of the stigmatisation of diabetics in

Ghana (de-Graft Aikins), of people with tuberculosis (TB) in Zambia (Bond and Nyblade) and

African migrants with AIDS in England (Dodds). The combined effects of poverty and gender

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/casp

Unravelling the contexts of stigma 413

discrimination make Indian sex workers particularly vulnerable to stigmatisation (Cornish).

Poverty also undermines resistance to stigma. The psychologically disempowering effects of

deprivation mean that working class British smokers are far less able to withstand the

stigmatisation of smokers than their middle class counterparts (Farrimond and Joffe). The

social psychology of deprivation also significantly reduces the likelihood of stigmatised group

members taking full advantage of health campaigns (e.g. anti-smoking campaigns) or

potentially life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa (Mills).

Political contexts

Conceptualising ‘political’ in terms of the operation of power in social relations, each paper

provides insights into political contexts of stigma. The term ‘layered stigma’ highlights that

stigma may follow existing social faultlines, deepening existing divisions between, for

example men and women, rich and poor. Deacon warns against simplistic associations

between stigma and existing power differentials, however, saying that stigma may sometimes

affect members of high status groups, or create new social faultlines. As such, it is not always a

replication of existing power relations, but also sometimes a new source of power inequalities.

Dodds shows how AIDS stigma ‘overlaps’ with other sources of social marginalisation

in the UK, including homophobia, xenophobia and racism. Layers of stigma preserve

social structures in the on-going constitution and reconstitution of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’

groups. Dodds’s findings highlight the complexity of overlaps and their effects — showing

how the positioning of people with AIDS in other social hierarchies shapes the extent and

type of stigma that they faced. For example, whilst the experiences of gay white men with

AIDS are extremely negative, the experiences of black African migrants with AIDS are

even worse in the face of additional layers of marginalisation resulting from lack of access

to British nationality, citizenship and cultural integration.

Institutional contexts

Several papers show how institutional contexts facilitate stigmatising representations and

practices. The public health system plays a key role in perpetuating TB stigma in Zambia

through its overly zealous isolation of TB sufferers (Bond and Nyblade). Posters depicting

smoking as a disgusting habit may unintentionally reduce the likelihood of working class

smokers quitting. They may play into the complex processes that undermine the confidence

and self-esteem of deprived groups in England, and their sense of control over their

health — with well-intentioned campaigns more likely to perpetuate than remove health

inequalities (Farrimond and Joffe).

However just as institutions create stigmatising contexts, they also open up spaces for

resistance and social change. The success of the Indian Sonagachi Project shows the role a

well-networked NGO can play in challenging stigma in conditions of poverty and

exclusion (Cornish). The church plays a key role in stigmatising people with HIV/AIDS in

Tanzania, yet it also opens up spaces within which people are starting to problematise this

stigmatisation (Hartwig et al.). These insights echo Foucault’s warning against simplistic

and unidimensional accounts of power and oppression, keeping us alert to ever-present

possibilities for resistance even in unexpected places (Foucault, 1980).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/casp

414 C. Campbell and H. Deacon

Symbolic contexts

Using the term ‘symbolic’ to refer to the frameworks of understanding within which people

make sense of their life experiences, each paper throws light on the symbolic contexts

within which stigma is constructed, internalised or resisted. Mills’ discussion of non-verbal

gestures used to communicate about peoples’ HIV/AIDS status in South Africa reveals the

rich seam of metaphors through which stigma is expressed — reminding us not to limit

explorations of the symbolic to the verbal realm alone.

De-Graft Aikins maps out the representational field in which people make sense of

diabetes in Ghana — including wider representations of unhealthy lifestyles and the

supernatural. She highlights the interpenetration of the symbolic and the material, showing

how poverty shapes how people give meaning to illness. The symbolic-material link is also

emphasised in Cornish’s account of how representations of ‘rights’ are mobilised by

activists to redefine the occupation of sex work in a less stigmatising way, whilst

emphasising that calls to ‘rights’ are most likely to lead to effective collective action when

accompanied by the possibility of real material changes to peoples’ lives.

Disease stigmas may be multiplied when layered with other stigmatised conditions.

Bond and Nyblade highlight how TB stigma is exacerbated through its link with AIDS in

Zambia. Whilst the symbolic link between TB and AIDS reflects the biomedical reality of

co-infection, the biomedical co-existence of diabetes and AIDS is less common. However,

diabetes is often incorrectly linked to AIDS through the shared symptom of weight loss.

This leads to equally distressing and debilitating consequences for people with

uncontrolled diabetes in Ghana, as de-Graft Aikins demonstrates in her contextualisation

of diabetes experience within interlocking cycles of biophysical disruption, financial

destitution and psycho-social neglect.

AGENCY AND RESISTANCE

Howarth argues that in certain conditions stigmatised people may contest and even

transform stigmatising representations and practices — and that a social psychology of

stigma needs to take account of human capacity for agency, and to allow for the possibility

of resistance and change. She emphasises that social knowledge is ‘always in the

making . . . constantly reworked, resisted and transformed as we find new ways of
mastering our constantly changing realities’. Stigmatising representations are not always

internalised. Negative representations may jar with an individual’s or group’s experience of

themselves, leading to resistance and the renegotiation of previously stigmatising

representations in a more positive light.

Furthermore, stigma will not always be a disadvantage. Stigmatised identities might

even become a platform for group mobilisation and resistance. In exceptional

circumstances, people might even gain status if they ‘come out’ with a stigmatised

characteristic, for example, in the South African Treatment Action Campaign, with its

assertive ‘HIV positive’ message (Deacon).

In some cases, agency and resistance may arise spontaneously. However where stigma

overlaps with other forms of social devaluation, external support or intervention may be

necessary to facilitate resistance by devalued groups. For example, an ‘external change

agent’ of some sort may work with members of stigmatised communities to develop the

skills, support networks and resources that enable them to (i) think critically about their

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/casp

Unravelling the contexts of stigma 415

negative social representation; (ii) develop a sense of confidence and capacity to challenge

it; (iii) collectively negotiate locally appropriate and realistic individual and collective anti-

stigma strategies; and (iv) identify and build the types of strategic alliances most likely to

facilitate effective action (Campbell, Nair and Maimane, forthcoming).

FROM ANALYSIS TO ACTION

Elsewhere, we have lamented the mismatch between the copious research into ‘what

stigma is’, and minimal research on ‘what to do about it’ (Deacon, Stephney, &

Prosalendis, 2005). Several papers in this volume seek to address this problem,

commenting on implications of their findings for stigma-reduction interventions.

De-Graft Aikins supports her argument for multi-faceted interventions through her

account of the interplay of factors (biophysical, economic, symbolic, social psychological

and structural) that drive diabetes stigma. In addition to health education and improved

service delivery, she highlights the potential for self-help groups to help provide psycho-

social support for diabetics. However, the most fundamental driver of stigma in her context

is material: poverty and under-resourced health services. She highlights two recent

‘landmark’ developments in Ghana — a National Insurance Scheme providing medical

cover for chronic illnesses, and a Disability Bill providing the disabled with free access to

medical care (following a rights-based approach).

Focusing on small-scale church-based interventions, Hartwig et al. emphasise the value

of workshops in providing space for reflection in a complex and contradictory

environment, and for the construction of narratives about ways in which individual

religious leaders have created opportunities to challenge stigma.

Cornish provides a detailed social psychological account of the processes through which

the Sonagachi Project has successfully challenged the stigmatisation of sex work. She

shows how the social psychological realm is deeply penetrated by the material and

symbolic in ways that open up the possibilities of resistance and change, with skilful

facilitation, and under exceptional circumstances. The project challenged the fatalism

undermining women’s agency in conditions of poverty and many-layered social

devaluation through a double pronged approach. Efforts to facilitate alternative and

positive self-understandings went hand in hand with the possibility of real material changes

in peoples’ daily lives, such that the material and symbolic were intertwined as

‘complementary aspects of a single process of politicised change’.

Stigma is a quintessentially social psychological topic: a phenomenon rooted in the

individual psyche, yet constantly mediated by the material, political, institutional and

symbolic contexts referred to above. Community psychology has a key role to play in

advancing our understandings of the possibilities for collective resistance and for stigma-

reducing psycho-social change. Much remains to be learned about the mechanisms through

which individuals and communities may resist stigma, and the contexts which facilitate or

hinder this process — we hope this volume contributes to this challenge.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank Flora Cornish and Ama de-Graft Aikins for their comments.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 16: 411–417 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/casp

416 C. Campbell and H. Deacon

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DOI: 10.1002/casp

Unravelling the contexts of stigma 417

Special Thematic Section on “Decolonizing Psychological Science”

Psychosocial Accompaniment

Mary Watkins*a

[a] Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology Specialization, Depth Psychology M.A./Ph.D. Program, Pacifica
Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA, USA.

Abstract

This essay advocates for a paradigm shift in psychology toward the activity and ethics of accompaniment. Accompaniment
requires a reorientation of the subjectivity, interpersonal practices, and critical understanding of the accompanier so that (s)he
can stand alongside others who desire listening, witnessing, advocacy, space to develop critical inquiry and research, and
joint imagination and action to address desired and needed changes. The idea of “accompaniment” emerged in liberation
theology in Latin America, and migrated into liberatory forms of psychology as “psychosocial accompaniment.” This essay
explores accompaniment and its ethics from a phenomenological perspective, highlighting differences from mainstream stances
in psychology. Attention is also given to the effects of accompaniment on the accompanier. Efforts to decolonize psychology
require careful attention to the psychic decolonization of its practitioners and to the cultivation of decolonizing interpersonal
practices that provide a relational and ethical foundation for joint research, restorative healing, and transformative action. Such
practices endeavor through dialogue to build mutual respect and understanding, promote effective solidarity, and contribute
to the empowerment of those marginalized. The decolonization of psychology should enable practitioners to be more effective
in working for increased social, economic, and environmental justice; peace building and reconciliation; and local and global
ecological sustainability.

Keywords: accompaniment, witnessing, psychic decolonization, conscientization, participatory action research, negative
workers, Fanon, Martín-Baró

Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2015, Vol. 3(1), 324–341, doi:10.5964/jspp.v3i1.103

Received: 2013-01-07. Accepted: 2014-11-15. Published (VoR): 2015-08-21.

Handling Editors: Glenn Adams, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA; Ignacio Dobles Oropeza, University of Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica

*Corresponding author at: Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology Specialization, Depth Psychology M.A./Ph.D. Program,
Pacifica Graduate Institute, 249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, California, 93109, USA. E-mail: watkinsmarym@gmail.com

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.

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“To Walk in the Company” of Others

[W]hat we want is to walk in the company of man, every man, night and day, for all times.
Frantz Fanon, 2004, p. 238

On the eve of the Algerian Revolution, Caribbean-born and French-educated psychiatrist Franz Fanon became
the medical chief of the French Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. There he intimately encountered
the colonial nature of psychiatry. Each day he struggled to treat both Algerian resistors of colonialism who suffered
from the aftermath of torture at the hands of French forces and French military and police perpetrators of such
torture. The psychiatry he was being asked to perform aimed to patch up psychic wounds incurred in struggles
for resistance and domination, without clarifying and fighting against the system of violent oppression that was
producing enormous emotional and social suffering in a subjugated and occupied population. His conscience
demanded that he act to remove the cause of his patients’ suffering: the violent colonial domination of the native
Algerian population. To more directly “treat” these causes, he resigned his post at the hospital and turned his
fuller attention to revolutionary action. In a searing letter of resignation he denounced the French colonial powers’
“abortive attempt to decerebralize a people” (Fanon, 1967b, p. 53).

If psychiatry is the medical technique which sets out to enable people to relate to their environment, then
I have to state that the Arabs, because they are permanently alienated in their own country, live in a state
of total depersonalization. (1967b, p. 53).

Before his untimely death he wrote that “we need a model, schemas, and examples” different from the ones we
have inherited from Europe and America, models that will allow us to join in “projects and collaboration with others
on tasks that strengthen man’s totality” (Fanon, 2004, p. 236). He urged us to “make a new start, develop a new
way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man” (p. 239). For Fanon, “what we want is to walk in the company
of man, every man, night and day, for all times” (2004, p. 238); to claim the “open door” available in our conscious-
ness so that the “possibility of love” can emerge (Fanon, 1967a, pp. 332, 42).

Liberation psychology offers us a language to describe the role that Fanon carved out for himself with respect to
the Algerian people: “psychosocial accompaniment.” Psychosocial accompaniment counters the “cultural invasion”
(Freire, 2000) of exporting diagnoses and treatment interventions that should not be universalized and imposed
from positions of cultural supremacy (Nickerson, 2013). For both researchers and clinicians, moving toward ac-
companiment requires both psychic and social decolonization, a shedding of the professionalized role of expertism
that is often oriented toward professional aggrandizement. This paperi is an effort to phenomenologically describe
psychosocial accompaniment and to advocate for seeing it as a potential role for psychologically-minded people
so that we can practice walking “in the company of others” (Fanon, 2004, p. 238). It responds to Fanon’s call for
“a model, schemas, and examples” in an effort to enrich our imagination about the kinds of decolonizing work that
are needed (2004, p. 236).

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Psychosocial Accompaniment

Accompaniment: to deviate from other pathways for a while (and then forever), to walk with those on the
margins, to be with them, to let go. Accompaniment is an idea so radical and difficult for us to comprehend
that its power and significance reveal themselves to our Western and Northern minds only slowly and
with great difficulty.
Dennis and Moe-Lobeda (1993, p. 21)

“Accompaniment” is a term currently used in social medicine, peace activism, human rights, pastoral support, and
social and liberation psychology. The concept is used when speaking of accompanying the ill who are also poor
(Farmer, 2011), those caught in prison and detention systems (Lykes, Hershberg, & Brabeck, 2011; Ragbir, n.d.,
New Sanctuary Coalition), political dissidents (Romero, 2001), refugees (Jesuit Refugee Service), those suffering
occupation (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine), victims of torture and other forms of violence
(Rodríguez & Guerra, 2011), those forcibly displaced (Sacipa, Vidales, Galindo, & Tovar, 2007), those suffering
from human rights violations (Mahoney & Eguren, 1997), and those attempting to live peacefully in the face of
paramilitary and military violence (such as the peace communities in Colombia, see Fellowship for Reconciliation,
n.d.). In Latin America, “psychosocial accompaniment” has arisen as a role that is distinct from that of psychother-
apist or psychological researcher, though it may include elements of each.

The root of acompañamiento is compañero or friend (Goizueta, 1995). It draws from the Latin ad cum panis, to
break bread with one another. Dr. Paul Farmer (2011, 2013), founder of Partners in Health and an innovator of
social medicine that creates systems of medical care for the poor that have been previously reserved only for the
affluent, has placed accompaniment as the “cornerstone” of his practice.

To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on
a journey with a beginning and an end. There’s an element of mystery, of openness, of trust, in accom-
paniment. The companion, the accompagnateur, says: “I’ll go with you and support you on your journey
wherever it leads. I’ll share your fate for a while—and by “a while,” I don’t mean a little while. Accompani-
ment is about sticking with a task until it’s deemed completed—not by the accompagnateur, but by the
person being accompanied. (Farmer, 2013, p. 234)

Accompaniment often, though not exclusively, occurs in communities that are struggling with various collective
traumas, including poverty. Liberation theologian Roberto Goizueta (2009) describes how the accompanier needs
to forego his usual safe enclosure apart from those in need: “To ‘opt for the poor’ is thus to place ourselves there,
to accompany the poor person in his or her life, death, and struggle for survival” (p. 192).

As a society, we are happy to help and serve the poor, as long as we don’t have to walk with them where
they walk, that is, as long as we can minister to them from our safe enclosures. The poor can then remain
passive objects of our actions, rather than friends, compañeros and compañeras with whom we interact.
As long as we can be sure that we will not have to live with them, and thus have interpersonal relationships
with them… we will try to help ‘the poor’—but, again, only from a controllable, geographical distance.
(p. 199)

Farmer and Goizueta underline that accompaniment requires time and commitment, as well as placing oneself
alongside the accompanied.

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While keeping company on the journey, the accompanier—depending on the needs and desires of those accom-
panied—may provide individual and community witness and support, solidarity in relevant social movements,
assistance with networking with communities at a distance suffering similar conditions, research on needed dimen-
sions, and participation in educating civil society about the difficulties suffered and the changes needed to relieve
this suffering. Liberation psychologists Edge, Kagan, and Stewart (2003) draw from the human rights and devel-
opment fields to characterize the process of accompaniment as involving an invited dialogical relationship that
becomes close and continuous, involving listening, witnessing, and the offering of specific, flexible, and strategic
support. They are clear that accompaniment demands our capacity and willingness to experience the pain and
struggle of those we accompany, and that we need to refrain from strategizing on behalf of those accompanied,
proposing solutions to their problems, instead of listening intently to their emergent strategies.

Psychosocial accompaniment involves prophetic imagination, what liberation pedagogist Paulo Freire (2000)
called “annunciation.” Around the particular issue or situation where one is accompanying there is a vision—latent
or manifest—of how the situation could be “otherwise.” This vision can guide and inspire, serving to widen circles
of solidarity, and to discern “right” action. Gutiérrez clarifies that the “poverty of the poor is not a call to generous
relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order” (Gutiérrez, 1983, p. 45). It is a demand
not for development, but for liberation (1983, p. 44). The practice of psychosocial accompaniment should be inex-
orably linked to these demands.

For this reason, the lifestyle of the psychologist must also be susceptible to critique in terms of seeing clearly how
it contributes to inequities and injustices. While as professional psychologists or human services providers we
are used to thematizing the effects of our professional actions on others, the horizontality of accompaniment requires
that we bring into sharper focus the effects of being alongside on each partner, the accompanied and the accom-
panier, including insights into the seeds and invasive weeds of coloniality in one’s thinking and behaving.

Psychosocial accompaniment often involves research and other conscientizing efforts with others to construct
“liberating knowledge” (Sacipa-Rodríguez, Tovar-Guerra, Galindo-Villareal, & Vidales-Bohórquez, 2009, p. 222),
knowledge that will assist in transforming status quo arrangements that undermine the integrity of body and mind,
relations between self and other, and between one community and another. Paul Farmer (2011) uses the word
accompaniment to describe Partners in Health’s approach to the intersection of global poverty with disease. He
stresses that real service to the poor must involve both listening to the poor and developing an understanding of
global poverty; i.e., not only a structural analysis but an analysis that is linked with the affective significance of
actual experiences of living poverty. The understanding that comes from these relational efforts is needed to
power and steer efforts to end poverty. For Farmer, research divorced from relationships of accompaniment will
fall short of the understandings needed for increased health equity.

Psychosocial accompaniment as a practice is rooted in an interdependent understanding of psychological and
community well-being, not in an individualistic paradigm of psychological suffering. The one who accompanies
holds the individual’s suffering and well-being in the light of the sociocultural and historical context, making con-
scientization (critical consciousness; Freire, 2000) the cornerstone of the practice. Insofar as psychological and
community symptoms memorialize violations that have occurred, the one who accompanies is also a witness.
This witnessing is a particularly crucial antidote when the events or conditions suffered have been repressed or
denied by the wider culture. The creation of opportunities for testimony enables those who have suffered violence
and social exclusion to exercise their agency and to bring their experience into the public arena to be acknowledged

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and witnessed. Opportunities for testimony may help to restore or strengthen self-respect and a sense of oneself
as an agent (Oliver, 2001), in addition to educating a wider public about needed changes.

When the one who accompanies is not from the group being accompanied, he or she often enjoys privileges and
freedoms those accompanied do not have access. In particular, the one who accompanies who is from elsewhere
or from a more privileged group (i.e., in terms of ethnicity, race, or class) usually has the freedom to come and
go, and the freedom to choose to share the situation and to what degree.

The accompanier may also be a member of the community where the accompaniment occurs. Such an accom-
panier may share fully in the issues that are being addressed in the accompaniment, and not be divided by class,
racial, or ethnic divides. Psychologists Belenky, Bond, and Weinstock (1997) chronicle the work of African Amer-
ican women in the U.S. Deep South to accompany members of their own communities, creating cultural centers
that promoted intergenerational exchange, supported the fulfilling of community dreams, and promoted the arts
and leadership traditions of the African diaspora to foster wider participation and inclusion. For cultural groups
that are not as badly marred by individualism as many white Euro-American groups, practices of accompaniment
are often deep cultural resources that reflect the lived values of interdependence and collective critical awareness.

Due to my own social location as a white American of European ancestry, I did not learn psychosocial accompani-
ment from my family and community of origin, or from my many years of psychology graduate education, but
primarily through my relationships and work with Quakers. Through their tradition of “workcamps,” Quakers have
partnered with communities to work together in a horizontal manner to help fulfill the needs of the community with
an emphasis on justice being necessary for peace. While my earlier practice of psychotherapy certainly contained
elements of accompaniment, the paradigm of individualism that undergirded it limited both the degree of
psychosocial insight I successfully employed and the boldness of my moving beyond the therapeutic container
to the societal roots of the psychological distress I witnessed. When I did succeed in doing the latter, I found myself
more deeply involved in community work and participatory research where I learned to widen the arc of accom-
paniment that I had learned through the practice of psychotherapy. This work has involved more sustained attention
to the social roots of suffering, and to those desiring accompaniment who find themselves outside of groups who
more routinely find support and witness.

In social science research, researchers have primarily “studied down,” economically speaking, rather than “sidewise,”
or “up” to the materially privileged. Many communities suffering from various forms of oppression and scarcity of
resources have protested that, to the extent that their difficulties stem from those groups who are relatively advant-
aged, they would appreciate research and work that focuses on those whose lifestyles are creating suffering for
others. While liberation theology and psychology speak of a preferential option for the poor, learning from com-
munities about the sources of their suffering can well return a more economically privileged scholar-activist ac-
companier back to his or her own community for the work of conscientization and transformation to more just
modes of relations with others and the earth.

This was underscored for me in 2003 while I was on a human rights delegation to Zapatista communities in
Chiapas, Mexico. Members of the Oficina de Buen Gobierno, a representative council that governs a region
through shared governance, told U.S. visitors not to stay there “to help,” but to return to the United States to affect
the policies creating suffering in the region: NAFTA, CAFTA, the war on drugs, the export of guns to Mexico, and
the support of corrupt factions in the Mexican government that have treated the autonomous communities in violent
and destructive ways (Watkins, 2012).

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In Latin America the practice of accompaniment by mental health professionals has a rich history (Hollander,
1997). During the Dirty War some Argentinean psychoanalysts emerged from their analytic offices to accompany
Las Madres de los Desaparecidos, the Mothers of the Disappeared, to bring awareness to the abduction and often
killing of daughters and sons by the state. Viennese psychoanalyst Marie Langer (1991) went to Nicaragua (via
Argentina and Mexico) to work with others to establish a community mental health system during the revolution.
Spanish social psychologist and Jesuit Ignacio Martín-Baró (1994) accompanied Salvadorans by listening to and
then documenting the human rights abuses and state sponsored violence aimed brutally against them. Lykes
(2001) through PhotoVoice and other work in Guatemala accompanied Mayan women as they suffered the effects
of genocide and worked to make the genocide known in the wider world. In Colombia, psychologists accompany
families forcibly displaced by paramilitaries from the countryside to Bogotá—families who have often lost family
members (Sacipa-Rodríguez et al., 2009, p. 222)—while others accompany those villagers who have declared
their villages zones of peace in the ongoing violence (Fellowship for Reconciliation, n.d.).

In the United States there is also a history of psychosocial accompaniment, but it has rarely been named as such.
When it has occurred, often it has been seen as outside the appropriate role for a clinician or a researcher. Indeed,
at times, psychologists have been censored for their accompaniment and seen as having fallen outside the pro-
scribed practices for the profession. Accompaniment is more common in community psychology, but even there
it is rarely thematized as such. Its effects on the accompanier are barely mentioned.

Freire (2000) was careful to identify culturally invasive approaches from culturally synthetic ones. Those involved
in psychosocial accompaniment are mindful of the power of each individual to construct meanings and to transform
the world. Interventions are not to be proposed “from the outside,” but determined with participants, alongside,
through dialogue and critical reflection. The accompanier needs to be a reliable presence, making consistent and
respectful visits, or living alongside. Through their openness to dialogue, the needs of the individuals and of the
community emerge and can be engaged together in a respectful and thoughtful manner. The resilience of those
accompanied and their own cultural resources for understanding and healing need to be cherished and supported,
not usurped.

A Phenomenology of Accompaniment

Since accompaniment often occurs in situations of difficulty and even danger—where most of those who can
move do—those who are accompanied feel less abandoned and forgotten, and are often less likely to be attacked
and abused than those left to fend for themselves without witnesses. They fear less that injustices that are meted
out will go unrecorded, unacknowledged, and unpunished. Due to the presence of those who accompany them,
there is a bridge to a larger world, even if they are unable to cross it in the present. In the press of daily struggles
they feel as though someone has taken the time to listen to their stories, to share the pain and grief they may be
feeling, and to lift off their shoulders some of the burdens of the situation. The solidarity of the accompanier with
those accompanied helps to builds hope that the adverse situation is capable of change in time. This fledgling
hope may contribute to helping people gather to strategize about how to transform the situation under consideration.
Being accompanied underlines the dignity of those accompanied. I have heard U.S. prisoners speak about what
it means to them that volunteers enter the prison to be with them. In the context of an Alternatives to Violence
workshop, one said,

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At first, I could not believe that the facilitators took the effort to come to this hell hole, to spend time with
me. I thought, if they believed in me enough to do this, it was time I began to believe in myself and start
planning for the life I want to live upon release.

For the accompanier, accompaniment steers us toward a different kind of being-present from many therapeutic
and research strategies. It moves away from forms of egoic rationality that support control, management, “fixing,”
and “intervening.” To accompany requires a fundamental re-orientation of psychologists’ professional subjectivity
such that we dis-identify with the vertical hierarchy of expertism that has been endemic to our education for pro-
fessionalization, and instead practice horizontality, moving alongside of others. It entails engaging a process of
psychic decolonization that enables us to step aside from modes of relationship that reinscribe colonial hierarchies
of power and value. Edge, Kagan, and Stewart (2003) describe accompaniment as requiring

(…) time, commitment, and openness and willingness to learn, negotiation of and reflection on relationships
as they change, independence from agency allegiances and responsibilities, patience, sense of humour,
the ability to listen and hear in non-judgmental ways, a flexible approach to and understanding of more
familiar interpersonal boundaries, including, amongst others, those of ‘friend’, ‘helper’, ‘client’, ‘expert’,
‘facilitator’, a continual reconsideration of ethical judgments. (p. 26)

Too often when individuals and communities experience extremely difficult situations, others turn away with a
blind eye. The initial insult is redoubled by others’ absence, by their failures of acknowledgment, empathy, and
compassion. Accompaniment can be a needed antidote to the injuries caused by others’ passive bystanding or
active denial of the human suffering in their midst. While accompaniment cannot wipe away the pain born of
traumatic injuries—individual or collective—it can begin to set into motion needed processes of psychic and social
restoration. The one who accompanies turns toward rather than away from those suffering. The accompanier
sees and acknowledges seeing what others turn away from. The accompanier brings his presence to what is dif-
ficult, allowing it to affect him, to matter to him, to alter his course.

Who is this one who accompanies? She understands that the violence—both direct and structural—and oppression
that people are subjected to has torn the connective tissues that bind humans together. If she can only offer one
thing, it is to treat each one with respect, reflecting back the preciousness and dignity of his or her life. At times,
the accompanier is an intimate part of the community and its members who are accompanied. She turns her at-
tention to the well-being of the members and the group. At other times, she is one who has left the place where
she feels most comfortable, and has chosen to make herself vulnerable. She may be returning to a place she
originally came from or is crossing over into a place she has never been before. Either way, this takes effort and
intention. She is one who has shown up where others often fail to come, at times when showing up conveys
support and solidarity. She does not disappear when staying is inconvenient and even dangerous. She is one
who, once known, is invited in. She is trustworthy and reliable.

We can learn from the extensive experience of musicians who accompany singers, dancers, and other musicians.
The musical accompanist must listen acutely to the unfolding song or melody or carefully watch the movements
of the dancers. Usually the accompanist recedes from the limelight, taking a supportive role. He often plays in a
lower pitch, and sometimes does not play in the final performance. He provides the background for more important
parts, supplying harmony and rhythm to the melody. He is successful to the degree that he is in alignment with
the unfolding music. One exception to this necessary subordination occurs in what is called dialogue accompani-
ment, where the accompanier engages in a call and response to the “lead,” being silent or providing rhythm as

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the lead plays, and playing himself when the lead rests, but always playing in relationship to what has come be-
fore—not breaking free of the whole unfolding composition but working in concert with the featured musicians to
articulate the evolving music.

The accompanier of others patiently awaits a clear invitation to be present, and removes himself if this is not
forthcoming. This is non-negotiable. The “accompanier” must be transparent and honest as to the uses of her in-
volvement, as to who it will profit and how. Those extending an invitation should be able to do so in the fullest
knowledge possible of who it is who wants to come and what their motives are. The members of the community
must be free to participate with the newcomer or not, and free to ask her to leave. When there is a conflict between
the accomplishment of research goals and the well-being of the participants and the community, the latter must
be unequivocably chosen. For the accompanier the accumulation of knowledge is not an end in itself. S/he is
aware that knowledge is to be used and s/he must strive to be conscious about the uses to which it will be put.

The one who accompanies knows how to resist leading when it is important that others do so. She values being
alongside of others, working together with them, enjoying the mutual empowerment and greater understanding
that arises when all partners are involved in knowledge-making. She has practiced holding her plans and interpret-
ations lightly, choosing instead to hear the desires and meanings of others.

While she offers her support, she is ready to find that she is the one who will feel gratitude. Often the one who
accompanies finally joins into the situations she has been separated from by virtue of her own social location. In
doing so, her own dissociation begins to heal—her dissociation from the wider community, from the implications
of histories of oppression and violence, from her own psychic numbing against the feelings she carries in response
to the knowings she silences. She is able to emerge from the dissociation of bystanding violence—direct and in-
direct—to being an engaged witness who participates with others to create conditions for peace built on justice.
In doing so, feelings of alienation and loneliness, born of individualistic modes of thinking and relating, begin to
lose their grip.

The accompanier realizes that she is not the only one doing the looking, the observing. She wonders how she is
seen, and is willing to discover things about herself she never imagined, or only feared. What privilege she enjoys
is not invisible, far from it. By leaving her comfort zone, she may find that what she has taken for granted about
herself and her life are thrown into question. She may feel shame, guilt, and embarrassment. She risks a rupture
of her own certainties.

When we accompany someone who is not from our own community we are not on our own ground. We join them
on theirs—even if this is a temporary place such as a refugee camp. The command we wordlessly exercise in
our own offices, labs, and classrooms evaporates. Any plan we hold—however gingerly—is subject to the critique
of many voices, and displacement by other strategies conceived together or conceived by community members
without us. The accompanier requires not only an invitation, but a practiced and certain humility.

The accompanier has questions, but he wonders what questions compel others’ interest. He can write, and perhaps
he can produce videos, but he wonders how others desire to make their experiences known, if indeed they do.
He listens for the images and the storylines that reach through and beyond words. He searches for the roots of
feelings and symptoms, desiring a more complete understanding of the causes of suffering. He makes a point
not only to hear into the suffering being experienced, but to witness strengths, beauty, and resilience, and takes
part in activities that feed the spirit. He notes the assets and creativity of others, as subtly as he senses their vul-

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nerabilities and needs. He is humble because much is unknown, but he is bold for the same reason, wanting to
better understand and to act with others as needed.

If he has the freedom to come and go, he may be helpful in creating alliances, to bring the public spotlight to what
has been pushed aside and hidden and needs to be illumined. He works across similar situations, building alliances
so that those denied forms of dominant power can find solidarity and support in their shared experiences and
through their intensified interconnections. His witness calls forth his advocacy, and whether or not he is schooled
in lobbying and policy transformation, he may—with others—need to find his way in and through these worlds to
honor what he has borne witness to.

He is one who bears the tales of others and turns to meet his own. He works at being a witness for what many
would turn away from. He has found the spot where the difficulty of what is heard becomes bearable thanks to
the intimacy bred from sharing it—a fortunate alchemy in a sad world. He has left the familiar to be of some help,
and he finds that he has not only come to know others, but to come upon himself. Some of his hidden wounds
are no longer obscured from himself. His own complicity with the status quo that harms others may be revealed,
and when he acts to remediate this failure, his values are sharpened and his integrity deepened.

Mark Potter (2011) in “Solidarity as Spiritual Exercise: Accompanying Migrants at the US/Mexico Border” presents
a “spiritual phenomenology” of solidarity that is particularly relevant to accompaniers who enjoy wider societal
privileges than those they accompany. He draws on the work of Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino. From his reading
of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Sobrino believes that a potential of solidarity is as a spiritual
practice that can engender mutual transformation. Honoring and living into liberation theology’s preferential option
for the poor, the practice of solidarity is not a selfless act for others characterized as poor. Rather, the spiritual
poverty and indifferent remove of those who live on islands of affluence is challenged, leading to a potential for
self-transformation from an isolated “I” to a self-in-relation-with-others.

Gustavo Gutiérrez (in Griffin & Block, 2013) clarifies that the preferential option for the poor is not to exclude the
non-poor but to work toward a universality of love, reversing the usual starting point among the privileged that too
often ends up excluding the least powerful. Potter (2011) outlines “five movements of the spiritual exercise of
solidarity” that help to cultivate the humility and courage required for accompaniment (p. 835).

The first movement of solidarity as a spiritual exercise is for the non-poor to physically enter into a broken
reality—the reality of suffering, the violence of poverty, the social context that is normative for the vast
majority of people in our world (Potter, 2011, p. 835).

He quotes a Brazilian proverb, “the head thinks from where the feet are planted.” Potter stresses the importance
of moving one’s bodily presence so that one can come into contact with those who suffer in the very place they
are living their lives.

The second movement is to respond to those who suffer with compassion and mercy. While the first two movements
are outward, the third is inward. Potter, building on Jon Sobrino’s thought, stresses that through inward attention,
the non-poor may experience a double humility that quickens appropriate feelings of shame. The first humility,
Potter says, is one of association, where one’s proximity to people who live closer to death places one into more
intimate relationship with one’s own vulnerability and insecurity. The “second humility,” he says, “is the realization
that one has somehow been responsible for causing or exacerbating the suffering of others,” through action or
inaction and inattentiveness.

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In this sense, the scandal of the poverty and suffering of another—that which threatens their dignity and
humanity—indicates a grave deficiency in my own human dignity that I have been complicit in the dehu-
manization of others. In other words, my encounter with the consequences of sin experienced by others
makes me much more aware of my own sin (Potter, 2011, p. 836).

In the formation of relationships across the border between poor and non-poor, both parties confront the way in
which oppression and domination cut across their experiences. “[T]he sin of one’s suffering is directly related to
the sin of another’s active complicity or indifference” (p. 836). Potter describes how this can be a period of profound
desolation for the non-poor, and they can be fearful of the wrath of the poor. Indeed, the poor may be angry and
resentful regarding the condescension of the non-poor.

Potter argues that through a combination of the non-poor’s willingness to help shoulder the burdens of the poor,
the poor’s generosity, and by means of grace (the fourth movement of the spiritual exercise of solidarity), a rela-
tionship can be born that bears forgiveness and acceptance.

[The non-poor] receive from the poor a new horizon in which to understand their responsibilities to parti-
cipate in the transformation of the social reality that separates them, and a consciousness of why they
so desperately need the humanizing influence of the poor to overcome their own sins. In short, they ex-
perience and learn the truth of the phrase, “We need each other,” and experience without fear or misun-
derstanding the truth of the claim that ‘apart from the poor there is no salvation’ (Potter, 2011, p. 836).

Potter describes the fifth movement as one where the poor and the non-poor live in the knowledge that their
“salvation depends upon one another” (p. 836) and their transformation through relationship with one another.

Philosopher, theologian, and priest Ignacio Ellacuría, a Jesuit murdered alongside Ignacio Martín-Baró in El Salvador
in 1989, rejected embracing “the accumulation of capital as the engine of history, and the possession-enjoyment
of wealth as the principle of humanization” (quoted in Sobrino, 2014). He opposed a competitive and individualistic
culture that has as its aim accumulation of capital—a culture marred by arrogance, greed, and a propensity to
use violence to achieve and retain power—with cultures of solidarity where the meeting of everyone’s basic needs
is a primary and foundational goal.

The relationships developed between the non-poor and the poor in a time of dizzying income divides are resistance
to the centrifugal processes set into motion by transnational corporate globalization. To place oneself in proximity,
alongside, those abandoned in “zones of sacrifice” (Hedges & Sacco, 2012) is to enter into conversation that rejects
a vertical ordering of relationship, that seeks to metabolize the feelings of shame that arise through restorative
action, and to re-orient one’s life to honor what one has come to understand. Such a model exposes how accom-
paniment serves the one who sets out to accompany, and by virtue of their encounters with others becomes
clearer about how to seek greater integrity in their lives, so that the work they do and the manner in which they
pursue it are more consonant with their deeper understandings of what is needed and important in the world that
we share.

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“Model, Schemas, Examples”

Fanon (2004) called for examples that would quicken our imagination of how we might join in “projects and collab-
oration with others on tasks that strengthen man’s totality” (p. 236). With this goal in mind, I want to share some
examples of psychosocial accompaniment.

Psychosocial research can provide significant and needed accompaniment in the face of traumas inflicted on in-
dividuals and communities. Sacipa-Rodríguez et al. (2009) discuss “psychosocial accompaniment” in the context
of working with Colombian families forcibly displaced from the countryside by violence. Their goals were

(…) to make a concerted effort to understand and serve the people in Bogotá who suffer from displacement;
thus assuming the position of standing up for life, defending human dignity, and building peace and justice;
as well as understanding the Colombian armed conflict in its ethic[al] and political character (Sacipa-
Rodríguez et al., 2009, p. 221).

[It is] a process offering the displaced person a space to recognize their emotional experience along with
the possibility to express their feelings afterward, reflecting on the facts implied by violent acts. We speak
of psychosocial process that facilitates recuperation and repair of social and cultural damage. We believe
that accompaniment should be directed toward the affirmation of displaced persons as subjects in their
own stories and the reconstruction of the social fabric of the community (Sacipa-Rodríguez et al., 2009,
p. 222).

They stress the importance of the principles of tolerance, mutual respect, and solidarity for building peace, and
embrace UNESCO’s call for cultures of peace founded on “solidarity, active nonviolence, pluralism, and an active
posture against exclusion and structural violence” (Sacipa-Rodríguez et al., 2009, p. 224). Following Martín-Baró,
they see political violence as rupturing social relationships, and the healing of post-conflict situations as necessarily
linked to the restoration of trust and relationship.

Their goal as social psychologists, they said, “was to connect not only with the displaced person’s logical mind,
but also with their affection and spirituality. Informal everyday chats, actively listening, working and teaching were
the vehicles allowing us to develop open relationships” (Sacipa-Rodríguez et al., 2009, p. 224). Through the col-
lection of oral histories, the co-creation of support groups, the recognition and valuing of community resources
that contribute to empowerment and resilience, the participants were able to create a community that gradually
grew ties of trust. The authors emphasize, however, that a fuller recovery from suffering requires “peace and a
dignified life,” the latter supported by meaningful work (Sacipa-Rodríguez et al., 2009, p. 233). For the
psychosocial reconstruction of a community to be ultimately effective, it must be part of a total approach that includes
changes in the social, economic, and political life of the country. The families wanted it to be clear in public records
and memory that their loved ones were falsely assumed to be guerillas. They also wanted to know where their
loved ones’ remains are so that proper burials could be conducted. Honoring these deep desires, the psychologists
needed to become knowledgeable about and effective in interfacing with relevant judicial and public authorities.

In the face of violent repression of people and information in El Salvador in the 1980’s, Martín-Baró (1994) created
a public opinion institute at his university. Through the analysis of anonymous surveys he was able to disseminate
information about the political abuses and daily horror which citizens were experiencing and which it would have
been too dangerous for any single individual to speak openly. Strategically deployed research can help to document

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the situations people are struggling with, so that civil society can be better mobilized to intervene in the ongoing
injustices and violence.

For instance, several U.S. psychologists involved in the treatment of refugees who had experienced torture in
their countries of origin were alarmed when the existence and extent of torture at Abu’ Ghraib prison in Iraq, in
the black box detention centers set up in undisclosed locations for terrorism suspects, and at Guantanamo Bay
became partially known. They gathered with other psychologists to form the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology,
dedicated to removing psychologists from torture and abusive interrogation and instead employing psychologists
in the promotion of social justice and human rights. They documented not only the changes in codes for prisoner
treatment that formally permitted forms of treatment that were formerly deemed torture (and still are in most of
the international community), but also changes that were created in the American Psychological Associations’
ethics code to allow psychologists to be involved in the deployment of torture without losing their license to practice
psychology—a clear abrogation of earlier ethics standards. The psychologists exposing these abuses—including
Coalition spokespeople Stephen Soldz, Steve Reisner, Jean Marie Arrigo, Brad Olson, Roy Eidelson, Trudy Bond,
and Bryant Welch—left or supplemented their usual professional roles as psychotherapists to enter into years of
research and efforts to educate civil society and members of their own professional societies, at personal risk and
sacrifice.

Of all the forms of psychological research, participatory action research (PAR) is most resonant with the idea of
accompaniment. In PAR, the psychologically trained researcher partners with a group or community to offer research
support for the questions to which they seek answers. Instead of participants serving the research agenda of the
psychologist, the psychologist serves the research needs of the community. The research is undertaken together
to assist in the achievement of mutual goals. Community members gain the skills of formulating research questions,
conducting interviews, analyzing data, and discerning effective ways of disseminating findings that assist in the
achievement of shared goals.

In my estimation, no one exemplifies PAR as accompaniment more than M. Brinton Lykes. Over an eight-year
process, Lykes collaborated with Ixil and Quiché Maya women to develop economic development projects, a bi-
lingual educational program for children, and psychosocial creative workshops for women. Women with differing
religious and political affiliations, widows of soldiers and guerrillas, and internationalists joined together through
a PAR process “to create a photoessay that recounts the community’s story of war and survival as well as current
efforts to rethread social relations and rebuild institutions” (Lykes & Mersky, 2006).

More recently, through the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, Lykes has been collaborating with human
rights lawyers, immigrant community groups, deportees, and undocumented families to explore the effects of
current U.S. detention and deportation policies on Salvadoran and Guatemalan families residing in the Northeast
U.S. They are attempting to “reintroduce legal predictability, proportionality, compassion, and respect for family
unity into the deportation laws in the U.S. through successfully defending individual deportees, thereby setting
new precedents and creating a new area of legal representation” (p. 26). Lykes, Hershberg, and Brabeck (2011)
describe the overall project:

The current interdisciplinary and participatory action research (PAR) project was designed to create col-
laborative spaces for bridging the growing chasms between citizens and non-citizens and for deepening
a shared understanding of and response to injustices that immigrant families (many of which include U.S.-
born citizen children) face. PAR is one of several critical approaches to research and seeks to develop

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collaborative processes that prioritize the voices and actions of those marginalized from power and re-
sources in educational, advocacy, and organizing activities that contribute to knowledge construction and
material social change and/or transformation. Through iterative processes, co-researchers, including
local community members, members of activist groups, and students and professors from universities or
other institutions identify a problem focus, gather information, critically analyze root causes, and press
towards redressing the injustice (Reason & Bradbury, 2008). To realize these aspirations, Fals Borda
(2000) calls for the activist researcher to assume a moral and humanistic orientation that includes altruism
and solidarity. Thus, he describes PAR as a “life project” (Fals Borda, 1985, 1998) which includes research
and actions.

The interdisciplinary team seeks “to contextualize current risks to families within a socio-historical, sociopolitical
and transnational framework” and “to collaboratively respond to current realities through community-based actions,
policy development, advocacy and organizing” (Lykes, Hershberg, & Brabeck, 2011, p. 25). The activities of this
ongoing research program are multiple: bimonthly support groups; leadership development workshops; periodic
meetings to discuss objectives and the research process; community feedback and planning meetings; and a
series of inter-organizational, community-led Know Your Rights (KYR) workshops which utilize drama and small
group discussion. In community feedback sessions, “community members discuss preliminary findings from data
analyses, offer alternative interpretations, and engage in debate about, for example, traditional and more contem-
porary family patterns that constrain or facilitate how undocumented parents face threats posed to their families”
(p. 26).

Lykes, Hershberg, and Brabeck (2011) describe how they learned from the experiential knowledge of community
members, enabling them to discuss the relevant issues with fellow citizens. This has also been my own experience
in being part of a participatory oral history project in Santa Barbara conducted by the immigrant rights group,
PUEBLO. Aware of the need to build bridges between the Latino immigrant and Anglo communities, I began to
regularly attend the meetings, offering my help as requests arose. After more than a year, one of the members,
Aidín Castillo, proposed an oral history project that would collect the testimonios of undocumented immigrants in
Santa Barbara and then organize them into a book that could be used with various community and faith groups
and as part of school curriculum (Immigration Rights Committee, PUEBLO, 2008). The goal was to help the wider
community understand the experiences and challenges of neighbors in Santa Barbara without documents, partic-
ularly those from Mexico, our town’s largest immigrant source. Trained in participatory research and oral history
methodologies, I offered to assist. My offer was accepted, and I was asked to help in various ways throughout
the two year project: contributing to the education of the research volunteers, helping to host sessions that planned
the project and crafted the interview questions, assisting in creating a strategy to analyze the interviews with regard
to the key themes the group felt would be illuminating for readers, and contributing to efforts to disseminate the
findings in a way that could stimulate community conversations, particularly between immigrants and citizens. At
many points in such a process the psychologist must make sure that she is not usurping others’ roles in the research
process so that it can be a mutually empowering experience, where the knowledge and gifts of each team member
can contribute to a successful project. Lykes and Moane (2009) describe that such projects require “critical reflex-
ivity and ‘just enough trust’ to facilitate engagement across differences, in ‘spaces’ of choque, dialogue and ap-
preciation, wherein we craft solidarity, ‘lateral assists’ among nos-otras, and alliances for a renewed and transformed
praxis” (p. 293).

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The researcher living out a commitment to accompaniment now understands that his skills for inquiry can be
shared with others so that they can inquire on their own behalf. He no longer conceives of his projects and
questions by himself. He no longer takes his interviews back into his office, offering interpretations that go without
others’ interpretations, insight, and critique. He understands the wisdom of PAR and embraces a process of co-
collaboration.

Apprenticeships in Accompaniment

Accompaniment can take place in many spheres of life and does not necessarily require professionalization.
However, to take it seriously within psychology graduate training requires a re-imagining of curriculum and prac-
ticum. The spheres in which students are preparing to undertake accompaniment need to directly influence the
curricular offerings.

For instance, those seeking to work with communities recovering from violence will need not only an understanding
of individual and collective trauma and varied approaches to individual and community healing. They will need to
understand the long history of the conflict in the particular region in which they are working and the present
psychosocial needs of the community. In their “backpack” they will want to understand what contributes to cycles
of violence, how communities have influenced these factors, and how to build dynamic and sustainable peace.
Students will need to have experiences through community and ecopsychological fieldwork of joining into the
work of a community, of learning to deeply listen, and to be nimble in being of assistance, often outside of the
categories one has imagined for oneself. It will be helpful to understand how to undertake participatory research
in case this is needed and how to evaluate the effectiveness of programs that may be instituted in concert with
community members. A holistic understanding of how to move between interdependent levels of organization
(place, individual, family, interpersonal, community, regional, national, global) is necessary to an understanding
of accompaniment, as is a knowledgeable openness to addressing policy and legislation that may impact a given
situation. In addition, they must undergo a continuing exploration of their own subjectivity for remnants of coloni-
ality and examine the intersection of their and their ancestral families’ history with historical and ongoing injustice
and exploitation. Then they can approach the work of psychosocial accompaniment, knowing that their liberation
is inextricably tied up with the liberation of others. As Australian aborigine elder and artist Lilla Watson cautions:
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. If you come because your liberation is bound up
with mine, then let us work together” (Indigenous Action, 2014). In “Creating and Sharing Critical Community
Psychology Curriculum for the 21st Century,” Nuria Ciofalo and I have addressed these issues from our own ex-
perience crafting a masters and doctoral level program in critical community psychology, liberation psychology,
indigenous psychologies, and ecopsychology (Watkins & Ciofalo, 2011).

Accompaniers as “Negative Workers”

Those who embrace the idea and practice of accompaniment should reflect on whether it places them in a group
French sociologist René Lorau (1975) called “negative workers.” Critical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes,
borrowing on the radical Italian psychiatrist Franco Bascaglia, describes “negative workers” as professionals who
give their allegiance not to bourgeois institutions but to those who most need and want their help (Scheper-Hughes,

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1992, 1995). They are “a species of class traitor, usually a ‘technician of practical knowledge’ (doctor, teacher,
lawyer, social worker, manager, or supervisor) who colludes with the powerless to identify their needs against the
interests of the bourgeois institution” (p. 541). Singer and Baer (1995) describe negative workers as creating
“’openings’ in mainstream institutions that allow for critical” practice (p. 36).

If accompaniment is to be a role with integrity, it must not feed off those who suffer from the collective traumas of
our time, but be genuinely committed to changing the conditions that sow the seeds of their difficulties, thus
painstakingly undoing the need for their own role. Whatever psychological knowledge is useful should be demo-
cratized and made available to those who would express a need for it, instead of being hoarded to make one’s
expertise more valuable.

It is probably not possible for a Western psychologist such as myself to actively imagine and enact psychological
practices that do not carry traces of coloniality. This reality requires accompaniers to engage in and be open to
a state of continuing self-critique. Perhaps accompaniment of the less privileged by the non-poor—while an im-
portant step—is a step on a longer path from the kinds of academic professionalization that have been common
in Euro-American graduate programs to forms of walking in “the company” of one another, “night and day, for all
times” (Fanon, 2004, p. 239). Perhaps it is a necessary step in societies such as the U.S. that are so perniciously
divided along class, racial, and ethnic lines. Will we one day be able to undo the professionalization of accompa-
nying one another that professional psychology entails? Will the tragic divides of privilege and scarcity be so
erased that we can show up alongside one another less in the form of one person with more privileges accompa-
nying another with fewer, and more as fellow musicians creatively exploring and playing music with one another?
For even in a more just world, each of us would continue to be subject to life struggles where being accompanied
is welcomed, where the deep hospitality of one to another can help to lift the burdens that weigh down one’s
spirit.

Sadly, all this seems a long way off. In the meantime, I here propose accompaniment as a humble yet potent
antidote to forms of psychological professionalism that misread symptoms of distress (Watkins & Shulman, 2008),
that fail to see deeply enough, that insulate against the acute and chronic sufferings around us, and that unwittingly
participate in sustaining the disastrous divides from which we suffer.

Conclusion: “Accompanying or Not Accompanying”?

Martín-Baró (1994) concluded his last essay shortly before his assassination in 1989 with a challenge to psycho-
logists to critically confront the social system their work is embedded within: “the most radical choice Central
American psychologists face today concerns the disjunction between an accommodation to a social system that
has benefitted us personally and a critical confrontation with that system” (p. 46). This observation, we have argued,
is also true for U.S. psychologists as they witness the need for accompaniment in many spheres of life. The passage
continues,

the choice is between accompanying or not accompanying the oppressed majorities…. This is not a
question of whether to abandon psychology; it is a question of whether psychological knowledge will be
placed in the service of constructing a society where the welfare of the few is not built on the wretchedness
of the many, where the fulfillment of some does not require that others be deprived, where the interests
of the minority do not demand the dehumanization of all. (p. 46).

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If psychology is to emerge from its role in support of colonial discourses and practices, if it is to reject the pernicious
aspects of neoliberal globalization so many and so much suffer from, then we must be honest about the genesis
of the symptoms we are seeing. We must tolerate seeing the enormity of the challenges to human, community,
animal and earth well-being. If we are to honor what we come to understand by listening closely to other human
beings and the places they inhabit, then our professional practices must come to include accompaniment, and
the advocacy, witness, solidarity, and critical understanding and action that flow from it. This is not a psychology
that founds itself first on the positivistic and objectivistic pursuit of knowledge, but a psychology that bears and
responds to the broken heart of our current world.

Notes

i) This article is based on a longer paper that I presented at the California Institute of Integral Studies on 10/ 29/13. In that
paper, I extend consideration to the possibility of earth and trans-species accompaniment. Interested readers can find the
longer paper online at http://mary-watkins.net/?s=accompaniment

Funding

The author has no funding to report.

Competing Interests

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Acknowledgments

The author has no support to report.

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Psychosocial Accompaniment
“To Walk in the Company” of Others
Psychosocial Accompaniment
A Phenomenology of Accompaniment
“Model, Schemas, Examples”
Apprenticeships in Accompaniment
Accompaniers as “Negative Workers”
Conclusion: “Accompanying or Not Accompanying”?
Notes
(Additional Information)
Funding
Competing Interests
Acknowledgments
References