The counselor's role in collective healing.
"White folks' particular reluctance to acknowledge impact as a collective while continuing to benefit from the construct of the collective leaves a wound intact without a dressing. The air needed to breathe through forgiveness is smothered. Healing is suspended for all. Truth is necessary for reconciliation."
-angel Kyodo williams
As counselors, we can practice psycho-historical and culturally competent care both in traditional therapy, and expand our role as advocates by facilitating growth and change in the collective psyche in group settings. Counselors can be active participants in a national project of mainstreaming marginalized stories, retrieving the hidden or unspoken past, and helping the nation integrate its shadow, so that our national sense of self can move towards wholeness. Counselors can foster healing for both those whose histories have been ignored and past traumas minimized as well as for those of us who have inherited systems of power that are in part upheld by a denial of the collective shadow.
Liberation psychology offers a framework and lens for counseling that is centered around freeing the mind from oppressor-constructed narratives of the national identity that encourage forgetting without recovery and forgiving without justice. Paolo Freire's idea of "conscientisation," writes Mark Burton in "Liberation psychology: A constructive critical praxis," offers an experience of awakening through "new self-understanding about the roots of what people are and what they can become." Until counselors disrupt the consensus view of the cultural personality that normalizes the denial of painful events and their legacy, we are unwitting participants in both inflicting trauma and continuing a cycle of collective self-delusion. As the Gestalt layers model illustrates, the US, as a national personality, is stuck in an immature and superficial mythic self-concept (as the land of opportunity, a meritocracy, land of the free, home of the brave, with liberty and justice for all), at the cliche, constructed, and impasse levels of neuroses. The constructed self is limited to a stunted and stagnant role that psychiatrist, Eric Berne, described as "inauthentic" and "dysfunctional." In our national life, we have gone through periods of social change at the surface levels, making us more clever and creative at playing our constructed roles, all the while, never reaching the truest layers of our national identity. We accept mainstream narratives so that we can avoid the hard realities underneath. We must confront aspects of self that we've found too uncomfortable to face. Without deep mourning, without embracing the deadly and destructive forces that we contain, we are unable to experience peace in the collective and are held back from actualizing America. Counselors can take the lead through committing to learning to bring an inclusive historical perspective into their sessions while also taking an active and collaborative role in collective efforts.
“Our goal is just to get people to confront
the truth of our past with some more courage.”
--Bryan Stevenson, on the reasoning behind his memorial in Alabama, honoring the victims of lynching
The following are recommendations for collaborative action projects of critical history, public remembering, and healing of the collective psyche, as well as concrete ways to integrate historical memory into one-on-one sessions with clients. Click below on each for more information.
References
Burton, M. (2013, April-June) "Liberation psychology: A constructive critical praxis." Estudos de Psicologia Campinas. 30(2): 249-259.
Corey, G. (1996). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Pub.
Robertson, Campbell. (2016, August 15). "Memorial in Alabama will honor victims of lynching." The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/us/memorial-alabama-victims-lynching.html
Williams, A. K., Owens, R., & Syedullah, J. (2016). Radical Dharma: Talking race, love, and liberation. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Burton, M. (2013, April-June) "Liberation psychology: A constructive critical praxis." Estudos de Psicologia Campinas. 30(2): 249-259.
Corey, G. (1996). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Pub.
Robertson, Campbell. (2016, August 15). "Memorial in Alabama will honor victims of lynching." The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/us/memorial-alabama-victims-lynching.html
Williams, A. K., Owens, R., & Syedullah, J. (2016). Radical Dharma: Talking race, love, and liberation. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.