By Royal E. Alsup, Adjunct Faculty Member of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco, California

“The needs for justice, power, freedom, nonviolence, love, respect, belonging, trust, hope, safety, security, competence, uniqueness, gender, culture, creativity, and spirituality burn deep in oppressed people.” -- Alsup, 2000

In the mid-70s, I began developing educational programs with a social action emphasis that used a Rogerian approach with culturally oppressed people in our society. This led to a synthesis of what I call Liberation Psychology (Alsup, 2000) and provided an opportunity to expand the notions of self-actualization and nonviolence by incorporating Native American psychology. This bold experiment in education has had a significant and growing impact on the field of mental health and the justice system. The political implications were vast. The political climate induced a struggle that led to the passage of important legislation concerning Native American children and families.

The therapeutic, educational, social, and political implications of the Rogerian, humanistic orientation to education were obvious to me, although these implications were not commonly being implemented during the time I began my exploration and work. My career in multicultural psychological work started at Sonoma State University in the late 60s when as an undergraduate I read the work of Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Abraham Maslow. Multicultural education in the context of humanistic and transpersonal psychology continues to be important in my current work as an adjunct faculty member at the Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. I continue to do multicultural work as a therapist in private practice at the Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychotherapy Center in Humboldt County, in Northern California.

My use of the Rogerian approach to graduate education that I learned at Sonoma State finally came to fruition in the mid-70s when I began working with a group of creative Native Americans from several different nations in providing education and mental health services. We began to see an urgent need for Native American professionals to earn advanced degrees in the field of psychology, particularly in order to protect Native American families by safeguarding their sacred tribal ways. The group of Native Americans, who came together to study under the Humanistic Psychology Program at Sonoma State University (HPP) in the late 1970s, eventually became known as Native American Transformations. This name will be used throughout this article to refer to this Rogerian educational program.

There was tremendous political resistance from mainstream mental health practitioners, probation officers, welfare workers, and the courts. We worked for the acceptance of culturally sensitive mental health services and built structures to provide those services to Native American children and their families. Such social action fought the oppression of Native Americans through the dominant culture’s lack of appreciation and respect for the contextual and individual educational, social, and mental health needs of Native American people. It was out of this political struggle to fulfill the needs of Native Americans that I created a particular Liberation Psychology based on humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychological methods and community interventions.

The uniqueness of this Liberation Psychology is its emphasis on nonviolent liberation from the inner and outer psychological and social domination that we experience as humans. Outer domination is the pursuit of one’s goals without consideration for the basic human needs of those who are affected by one’s actions. An example of domination, both inner and outer, that I saw in my association with Native Americans, was the failure of schools to serve Native American children in a manner that was sensitive to their unique cultural ways of teaching and learning. Because culturally appropriate educational styles were not being used, many Native American children were pushed out of school, rather than dropping out. In fact, the teaching methods often went against the ways they were taught at home and in the tribal setting. Internally, the children would begin thinking that their cultural ways were inferior and that they were stupid. They became angry and had no attachment to the school.

Psychological liberation removes the inner tyrants—the abusive inner critics that cause feelings of inferiority and self-hatred. Political liberation changes societal systems and structures by providing constructive alternatives. Through direct social action, the HPP group created an alternative mental health system that was responsive to Native American ways. This was so important because at that time, Humboldt County was the only county in California that allotted money specifically for mental health services that respected Native American ways. The structure we created for the advancement of political and psychological liberation was named the Psychology and Law Committee.

Nonviolent liberation strives to eliminate psychological and social domination through what the existential theologian Paul Tillich referred to in his discussion with Carl Rogers as listening love (1989). Liberation is made possible through listening with agape and radical openness. Such an attitude means listening to the other person’s words to understand their perspective and all the while listening to your own inner experience of the dialogue as it is happening. The very moment of honoring one’s inner life by giving it gentle attention, and listening to the other person’s side of the story, as Tillich would say, is the source from whence the decision for action comes. Working to cause systemic change through a dialogical process is true person-centered social action.

The particularity of this humanistic Liberation Psychology stresses the urgency and responsibility of mental health professionals working in a multicultural society to humanize institutions and bureaucratic structures that oppress people and to make these institutions and structures more responsive to human beings. The emergence of Liberation Psychology from my being mentored with Rogerian humanistic ideas, and from my indwelling within and understanding Native American humanistic existentialism was a natural and normal progression because of the emphasis on the needs of both the community and the individual. In the community of Native American life, the individual human being is so important. Unlike the common misunderstanding of communal life as being restricted tribal conformity, the particularity of each individual Native American is a vital and respected element.

How the Rogerian Educational Experience Evolved

Using the Rogerian idea of accepting persons where they are called for having the Native American students design their own program according to the fulfillment of the needs, interests, and desires of each tribal member. There were several different tribes represented in the program, including Yurok, Hupa, Tolowa, Chumash, Shoshone, and Karok. It is important to understand that each of these tribal people had unique worldviews and distinctive cultural psychology. As Native Americans, however, one common theme was that their people felt political oppression from mainstream bureaucratic social structures and psychological practices.

The HPP group co-learning process used the Rogerian approaches of person centeredness, empathic teaching, empathic learning, congruence, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. Each of us was a teacher; and each of us was a learner. I taught courses on humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology. Each learner taught a course about his or her own sacred ways. This type of democratic approach won the trust of these Native Americans, who continued the program to receive their Master’s degrees in Humanistic Psychology. The directions taken in the educational process were arrived at by consensus in light of the learning goals. The group members were not forced to give up their Native American cultural ways in order to get their degrees. No one dropped out.

The negative effects of the psychology of oppression from the dominant culture upon the Native American people in the program were pervasive; and their common experience was a powerful occasion for learning. As Native American people living in the dominant society, the group members witnessed ongoing oppression and racism. The depth and breadth of the negative effects of the psychology of oppression are incomprehensible to people who have not experienced them. Native American life, both modern and in the ancestral times that are carried close the Native American heart, is saturated with pain from the ravages of things such as the structural violence of poverty, unemployment, the removal of children from their homes because of poverty, and the removal of youths from their communities to the California Youth Authority for minor problems. These events and situations are not relics from a distant past. These political and personal experiences were the forces that drove the HPP group to commit themselves to the work of becoming professionals who could effectively correct the system. A shared motivation in the group was to protect Native American children from the brokenness received at the hand of systems of psychological oppression that occur at all levels of government.

Equally influential was the variety of knowledge concerning tribal healing practices that each person brought to the educational experience. Each group member took responsibility for teaching a class on Native American psychology and healing practices to the rest of the group. In a recent conversation with one of the Native Americans who graduated from the program, I was told that “we really mistrusted you at first. We thought that you were a crazy white man if you believed that we could get a Master’s degree in Psychology by documenting and presenting our own tribal psychology.” The classes addressed different aspects of psychological and social oppression that they experienced as tribal people. Such person-centered and tribal-centered education was important because it helped them to claim their own identity through articulating their own tribal psychology.

One primary goal was to train Native American psychologists who could debate and critique the oppressive psychology of the dominant society that was used in the court systems to destroy and damage the Native American family and to lower the self-esteem of each family member and ultimately each tribal member. Properly trained Native American psychologists and therapists would be able to serve as expert witnesses in courts to oppose the misdiagnoses that imposed a dominant cultural definition of health that did not fit the Native American person. Work toward this goal gave rise to a political struggle that demanded and required learned, sophisticated, and dialogical social action. Many of the Native American Transformations group members continued their humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychological education through the Rogerian model to earn doctoral degrees and licensing as psychologists or marriage and family therapists. These successes were not end products but were a means to continue a life and career that work toward the fulfillment of dreams. They went on to work in places such as tribal health services and family and children service centers to continue confronting and changing the oppressive bureaucratic structures that Native Americans are constantly faced with in their daily lives. Through this humanistic approach to deeply meaningful learning and working, an idealistic dream has a chance of becoming a reality.

The Basic Rogerian Elements that Evolved

The Native American Transformations learning group based on the educational techniques of Carl Rogers stressed the following: Teaching was based on a dialogical relationship where all class participants were co-learners. All members contributed to the knowledge offered.

Person-centered learning took place when each tribal member respected and accepted each other’s worldview. It was such a unique experience for group members from so many different tribes to sit in one room with a common goal of learning and sharing the mystery and the wonder of each person’s perspective.

The concept of the actualizing tendency that according to Rogers runs through every individual and all of nature is compatible with Native American psychology. Members of the group felt that this idea was fun and that it helped them to explore the order at the center of the sacred landscape and their sense of the order in the center of the person.

Learners taught courses based on each person’s unique tribal psychology and approach to healing. Each person became a facilitator.

Feelings of safety and warmth created a prevailing atmosphere that allowed the personal freedom to spontaneously initiate a different direction in the educational process.

A different learner would surface at different times as leader and facilitator of the group. The facilitators proved to be competent in helping members of the group at times to move from an incongruent, closed, false self toward a congruent, open, true self.

Unique clinical methods were created for educational and mental health interventions with individuals and the community, such the Psychology and Law Committee that provided culturally competent assessment for schools and courts. Talking Circles were facilitated in mental health environments for family therapy and group therapy.

For artistic and creative expression, the learning method used stories, legends, and myths; brought in paintings that expressed personal and transpersonal visions and meaning; the sharing of poems and stories that were stimulated by the HPP group experience; and the showing of examples of regalia (symbolic items, ceremonial objects, costumes, jewelry, etc.) made by group members. Service-learning included working in tribal and Native American nonprofit organizations that allowed the learners to use their humanistic methods in a cultural, community setting.

The education experience was truly an education of the whole person, using the visceral, emotional, and somatic to balance with the cognitive. Empathic learning and teaching took place when an aha experience of similar tribal ideas would have a visceral and affective experience that filled the room with excitement and unconditional positive regard.

We developed empathy, compassion, and unconditional positive regard for each other. There were moments of tears, anger, fear, joy, and love that were shared openly by all the members of the HPP group. These emotions emerged from creating interventions to prevent the removal of Native American children from Native American homes. The removal of Native American children from their homes is another attempt at terminating tribes.

The Rogerian learning experience led to awareness of the need to train Native-American psychologists to protect cultural ways against the dominant psychology of oppression. This process caused many negative feelings to emerge. The negative feelings were a motivation to find solutions to problems surrounding the scarcity of Native American professionals in the mental health field. Due to the Rogerian methods of empathic teaching and learning, most of the students felt genuineness and congruence in becoming mental health or health service providers.

Transpersonal psychology was experienced during the ceremonial season when we held classes at sacred landscape sites. Bringing the sacred place into the educational process made it a truly culture-centered educational program. This made the education person-centered at the same time, which was deeply satisfying for all.

Social action for social justice emerged out of these classes and from political actions at the state and national level to reach out to other tribes at national Indian Health Services conferences. This was influential in getting many tribes nationally involved and interested in using psychology as a way of getting tribal needs met. The group presented workshops and conferences to train mainstream social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, law enforcement officials, probation officers, judges, and lawyers in Native American tribal ways and in the necessity for understanding such issues in the providing of social services to meet the needs of Native Americans.

The group organized the first Psychology and Law Conference in Humboldt County.

The group presented the first statewide Native-American mental health conference, in Portola near Yosemite National Park.

My utopian dreams for a Liberation Psychology to help both the oppressor and the oppressed were inspired by the honor of knowing the Native American Transformations group that participated in the HPP at Sonoma State University. Carl Rogers’s seminal ideas contributed the model and the way for an oppressed group of people to gain self-respect, self-love, and the power and responsibility for their own lives so that altruism could emerge. Rogers’s ideas took us out of despair and hate, and led us to love, hope, and nonviolence.

References

R. E. Alsup. (2000). Liberation Psychology: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Beloved Community as a Model for Social Creativity. A paper presented at Building a Liberation Curriculum Workshop, hosted by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project at Stanford University in July 2000 (archived at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, Georgia).

C. R. Rogers. (1977). Carl Rogers on Personal Power. New York: Delta.

C. R. Rogers. (1980). A Way of Being. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

H. Kirshenbaum & V. L Henderson (Eds.) (1989). Carl Rogers: Dialogues. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.