PSY-5450KK: Liberation Psychology: Intercultural Depth Psychology and Trauma Theory

Psychologies of Liberation have developed on every continent in recent decades to address the aftermath of violence, especially forms of physical and psychological abuse that have affected whole populations as in racial oppression, violence against women, homophobia, state terror, and genocide. The wounds of such violence have begun to be theorized as a form of collective trauma within these psychologies which link trauma theory with depth psychologies and community social justice activism. This course will present in historical context some of the analyses, literatures, and films that have emerged from Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Germany, Vietnam, and the United States on these topics. We will explore the symptoms of traumatic experience and the difficulties of memorializing such experiences through official histories and monuments as well as through resistant counter-memories and counter-monuments in environments where majorities erase the past through amnesia about historical events. Various projects of dialogue, reconciliation, and restoration will be analyzed, and community liberation arts projects will be explored. Finally, we will discern the outlines of new practices and theories emerging as liberation psychologies, questioning what aspects of our own understandings may have been shaped by a traumatic past. We will begin the course with an analysis of traumatic experiences in specific environments, drawing on film and literature to focus on symptoms and cultural effects of both physical and psychological violence. In the middle weeks of the course we will sort through the outcomes of violence for victims as well as for perpetrators, bystanders, and witnesses, and we will trace their performances in historic attempts at dialogue, reconciliation, or denial. Finally, in the last several weeks we will explore the theories and methodologies, as well as innovative aesthetics and ethics that have developed as liberation psychologies, evolving in communities to promote collaborative forms of art, dialogue, and research that break with the status quo and develop new solidarities for social transformation.
Min. Credits: 3.0
Credit Basis: Quarter credit
Location(s): Antioch Univ Los Angeles
Method(s): Workshop
Faculty Consent Required: N
Program Approval Required: N
Course Type Psychology, Counseling and Therapy

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PSY-5450KK: Liberation Psychology: Intercultural Depth Psychology and Trauma Theory