Liberation Psychology
Any psychology, to be useful, must look at two basic questions: How did we get into this mess? and How do we get out of it? A psychology of liberation, rooted in the magical* description of the world, sees that the process of getting into our mess is long, complex, and historic; that we are in pain because we live in psychic and social structures that destroy us.
Our way out will involve both resistance and renewal: saying no to what is, so that we can reshape and recreate the world. Our challenge is communal, but to face it we must be empowered as individuals and create structures of support and celebration that can teach us freedom. Creation is the ultimate resistance, the ultimate refusal to accept things as they are. For it is in creation that we encounter mystery: the depth of things that cannot be wholly known or controlled, the movement of forces that speak through us and connect us at our core.
To value the mysteries we must describe the world in ways that make possible encounter with mystery. When we view the world through the lens of that description, the old systems and structures may themselves be revealed as distortions.
The core of the mysteries is the understanding that truth is always deeper and richer than any description of it. To change lenses and face a fuller spectrum of that truth can be frightening, shattering. It requires daring.
* Magic is the art and science of changing consciousness at will (Dion Fortune).
Quoted from:
Starhawk. (1987). Truth or dare: Encounters with power, authority, and mystery. San
Francisco: Harper, p. 26.
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