The Psychology Of Liberation By Ignacio Martín-Baró
Psychology aspires to be a science and, as such, it must be based on objective data. However, it is also true that to reach relevant conclusions on certain topics, it is necessary to take into account the interpretations and subjective points of view of the people who make up the groups studied. For example, if you work with indigenous people from the Amazon, it is necessary to authentically connect with these cultures that are so different from the Western one, much more accustomed to the rigors of the scientific method.
The Spanish psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró He believed that beneath the apparent objectivity of psychology that is more concerned with obtaining results that can be generalized to the entire human species, there is an inability to recognize the problems of cultures different from its own.
From this idea, he developed a project that is known as Liberation Psychology Let’s see what it consists of; But before that, a brief review of the biography of this researcher to contextualize.
Martín-Baró was born in Valladolid in 1942 and after entering the Society of Jesus as a novice, he left for Central America to complete his training in the religious institution there. Around 1961 he was sent to the Catholic University of Quito to study Humanities and, later, to the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá.
Once he was appointed priest in 1966, went to live in El Salvador and he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Psychology there in 1975 through the Central American University (UCA), after which he earned a doctorate in Social Psychology at the University of Chicago.
Upon his return to the UCA, where he began to work in a psychology department. His open criticism of the country’s government They placed him in the objective of the paramilitary forces directed by the dominant political class, which murdered him in 1989 along with several other people.
What is Liberation Psychology?
Ignacio Martín-Baró denied that psychology is a science aimed at knowing timeless and universal patterns of behavior, shared by the entire human species. Instead, he noted that the mission of this field of knowledge is understand how context and individuals influence each other
However, the context is not simply a space shared by several individuals at the same time, since in that case we would all live in the same context. For this psychologist, the context also includes the historical moment in which one lives, as well as the culture to which one belongs at a given moment. He conceived of Psychology as a discipline close to History.
And what purpose can it be to know the historical process that has generated the cultural contexts in which we live? Among other things, according to Martín-Baró, to know how to recognize the “traumas” of each society. Knowing the specific context in which each social group lives makes it easier to know distinctive problems of oppressed groups, such as people with indigenous origins whose lands have been conquered or nomadic societies without the possibility of owning land or inheriting it.
Against reductionism
In short, Liberation Psychology establishes that to encompass all the problems of human beings We must look beyond the universal evils that affect people individually such as schizophrenia or bipolarity, and we must also examine the social environment in which we live, with its symbols, rituals, customs, etc.
In this way, both Ignacio Martín-Baró and the followers of his ideas reject reductionism, a philosophical current that, applied to Psychology, is based on the belief that someone’s behavior can be understood by analyzing only that person or, even better, the cells and the DNA of your organism (biological determinism).
Therefore, it is necessary to stop investigating aspects of human behavior in artificial contexts belonging to rich countries and go to address the problem where it occurs. Thus the need to address social root problems can be met and not individual, such as the conflicts and stress environments created by the confrontation between nationalisms.
Trauma in society
Normally, trauma in psychology is understood as an emotional imprint loaded with sensations and ideas that are deeply painful for the person, since they refer to experiences experienced by the person in the past and that caused a lot of discomfort or acute stress.
However, for Martín-Baró and Liberation Psychology, trauma can also be a collective phenomenon, something whose cause is not an experience lived individually but collectively and inherited through generations. In fact, Martín-Baró points out, conventional psychology is often used to discreetly feed these collective traumas for propaganda purposes; It seeks to channel that pain towards goals that suit an elite.
Thus, for Liberation Psychology, knowing the frequent mental problems in an area tells us about the history of that region and, consequently, points in the direction of a source of conflict that must be addressed from a psychosocial perspective, not by acting on it. individuals.
