Liberation Psychology as Heir to and Unforgotten History of Psychoanalysis

Whoo boy are you in for a treat! I had not expected to like so much, or be so overwhelmed with the riches in, Daniel José Gaztambide's new book, A People's History of Psychoanalysis: from Freud to Liberation Psychology (Lexington, 2019), 270pp. But riches there are in all kinds of new, or previously under-explored, connections not just between liberation theology and psychology in Latin America and psychoanalysis, but also between some of the pivotal figures in the latter, including Ferenczi, Fromm, and Freud--to name just the most prominent. This is historical scholarship of a rare and welcome sort, but it does not dwell in the past, or fondly indulge a propensity for nostalgia: it is scholarship with a view to what's happening on the street today and how insights from the past can inform and propel forward our struggles today for justice and a better world. 

The author--whom I will interview on here in the coming days--has gone back to the first generation of analysts, including Freud, to bring forth some of their early social justice initiatives that were later lost as psychoanalysis became more and more medicalized and bourgeois in the United States in particular. In this, the author is explicitly indebted to such important recent works as Elizabeth Ann Danto's fascinating 2007 book, Freud's Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918–1938. 

But he also draws on figures such as Paulo Friere and his famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The author skillfully shows connections ranging from Vienna to Harlem to Latin America, across Jewish and African-American and Latin American histories of oppression and injustice. The conclusion alone is worth the price of the book to read his careful and discerning insights into that topic everybody scorns today without understanding it: "intersectionality" and the quest for justice. He ends with a very moving appeal to raise "critical consciousness and political mentalization," here weaving in some of the insights of Peter Fonagy et al. towards an "insurgent universality" of love.  

I could go on and on, but already did in my interview with him. My point is this: not only is this a work of fascinating historical scholarship, but it also brings to the fore critical ideas that clinicians today, charged with responsibilities of advocacy and attending to the social conditions and contexts of our patients, will find hugely invigorating.