Liberation psychology is an approach that aims to understand wellbeing within the context of relationships of power and oppression, and the sociopolitical structure in which these relationships exist. Liberation Practices: Towards Emotional Wellbeing Through Dialogue explores how wellbeing can be enhanced through dialogue which challenges oppressive social, relational and cultural conditions and which can lead to individual and collective liberation.

Taiwo Afuape and Gillian Hughes have brought together a variety of contributors, from a range of mental health professions and related disciplines, working in different settings, with diverse client groups. Liberation Practices is a product of multiple dialogues about liberation practices, and how this connects to personal and professional life experience. Contributors offer an overview of liberation theories and approaches, and through dialogue they examine liberatory practices to enhance emotional wellbeing, drawing on examples from a range of creative and innovative projects in the UK and USA.

This book clearly outlines what liberation practices might look like, in the context of the historical development of liberation theory, and the current political and cultural context of working in the mental health and psychology field. Liberation Practices will have a broad readership, spanning clinical psychology, psychotherapy and social work.

About the Author

Taiwo Afuape is a Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Psychotherapist who has worked with transitional populations, torture survivors in a human rights charity and adults in a mental health systemic service. Currently she is lead psychologist and systemic therapist for Openminded - South Camden Community CAMHS, Tavistock Foundation NHS Trust and Lead systemic therapist of an adult mental psychology and psychotherapy department in CNWL NHS foundation trust. She published Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma in July 2011.

Gillian Hughes is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Psychotherapist who currently leads the Child and Family Refugee Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Throughout her career she has worked in the state sector in inner-city locations with marginalised communities as a practitioner and trainer, where she has developed innovative community, systemic and narrative approaches.

Reviews

Liberatory approaches to nourishing psychological and community well-being are being crafted on every continent, attending to the needs, challenges, and visions of particular local communities. Afaupe and Hughes' edited volume offers readers an important look at how liberation psychology is being articulated and practiced in a diverse variety of community and clinical settings in the U.K. In doing so, the inspiring work that is featured will help practitioners perceive the interdependence of the social and the psychological and be able to link resistance to oppression with helping to cultivate settings where creativity, emancipatory dialogue, and social transformation thrive. Liberation Practices will also help to open the imagination of cultural workers beyond the UK, contributing to transnational efforts to articulate a broad range of libertory healing practices that are available for contextualized improvisation with local communities suffering in the face of neoliberal globalization. - Mary Watkins, Ph.D., Author of Toward Psychologies of Liberation

Beyond liberation psychology and above praxis: A new way to liberate our own practices - Maritza Montero, Universidad Central de Venezuela (Venezuela Central University)

Book Information
ISBN 9781138791138
Author Taiwo Afuape
Format Paperback
Page Count 250
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 385g