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 in order to reach relevant conclusions on certain topics, it is necessary to have 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 aborigines in the Amazon, you need to authentically connect with them. These cultures 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 under the apparent objectivity of psychology more concerned with obtaining results generalizable to the entire human species there is an inability to recognize the problems of cultures different from your own.

From this idea, he developed a project that is known as Psychology of Liberation. Let's see what it consists of; But before, a brief review of the biography of this researcher to contextualize.

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Who was Ignacio Martín-Baró?

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 formation there in the religious institution. Around 1961 he was sent to the Catholic University of Quito to study Humanities and, later, to the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá.

Once he was appointed a priest in 1966, he went to live in El Salvador and he obtained his degree in Psychology there in 1975 through the Central American University (UCA), after which he received a doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Chicago.

Upon his return to the UCA, where he began working 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, who murdered him in 1989 along with several other people.

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What is Liberation Psychology?

Ignacio Martín-Baró denied that psychology is a science destined to discover timeless and universal behavior patterns, shared by the entire human species. Instead, he pointed out 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 Psychology as a discipline close to History.

And what use 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 peoples with indigenous origins whose lands have been conquered or nomadic societies with no possibility of owning or inheriting land.

against reductionism

In short, Liberation Psychology establishes that in order to cover all the problems of human beings one must look beyond the universal evils that affect individual people, such as schizophrenia or bipolarity, and we must also examine the social environment in which one lives, with its symbols, rituals, customs, etc.

Thus, 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 understood by analyzing only that person or, even better, the cells and DNA of their organism (determinism biological).

Thus, 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

Usually, trauma in psychology is understood as an emotional imprint loaded with deeply painful sensations and ideas for the person, that refer to experiences lived in the past by herself and that caused a lot of discomfort or stress sharp.

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 the generations. In fact, Martín-Baró points out, conventional psychology is often used to feed these collective traumas discreetly 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, therefore, they point in the direction of a source of the conflict that must be addressed from a psychosocial perspective, not acting on it. individuals.