 |
||||
 |
||||
|
Liberation Psychology: By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
The world of the child is a world of wonder, beauty, joy, spontaneity, and openness. On a daily basis I am amazed by what I learn from children. For several years I have been working with children in preschools, schools,and hospitals, and in psychotherapy. I have raised two girls of my own and I am involved with two stepchildren who were adolescents when our relationship began. These experiences with children have taught me what a healthy, fully functioning, liberated human being needs in order to flourish and to grow. Liberation Psychology is my own approach to the study of outer societal, familial, and parental oppression and inner psychological, spiritual, and emotional oppression. Inner and outer oppression makes people sick and limits their fulfillment of basic needs. Basic needs may be frustrated or blocked by other people or institutions, as well as by a person's particular form of inner tyrant. Liberation Psychology considers the human person in their total life-world and works toward the meeting of basic needs. Liberation Psychology resulted from my study of children from several different cultures, trying to determine what makes healthy children and productive, creative, peace-loving people. My research on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Mahatma Gandhi indicates that one of the most important aspects of their lives was their families' commitment to them as children and to their self-esteem. High self-esteem is the essential element for success in all cultures and for the continuation of cultural ways. The following components of self-esteem are universally practiced in cultures around the world. Physical Needs Infants learn to organize their physical and emotional life through interaction with the parents. Parents need to walk a narrow ridge between overacting, and thus overstimulating the infant, and underacting, which understimulates the infant. Through interaction and mutuality-a sort of body talk between parent and infant-the child is helped to calm down and relax. This helps her to integrate her emotional and physical being. The early months of physical organization are foundational for the emerging self of the infant. The violence of physical abuse and sexual abuse interferes with basic physical needs and blocks the physical and emotional growth of the child. Prenatal alcohol and drug abuse is another kind of physical abuse. These forms of violence stifle growth in the child and affect them negatively throughout their whole life. Meeting the physical need for housing is essential if children are going to develop healthy personalities. Blaming the homeless individual for not having shelter because of laziness or low intelligence removes responsibility from society for allowing the conditions to exist that contribute to homelessness. Blaming the mental illness that is prevalent among the homeless ignores the fact that the lack of housing itself causes a lot of suffering and mental illness. The children of this population suffer because of the hunger and exposure to cold temperatures and wet, windy weather. The physical needs of children must be fulfilled for them to learn effectively and to succeed in school. Learning is difficult if a child is experiencing physical violence or hunger. Meeting the physical needs of our children is essential if they are to grow into happy and capable adults. Safety, Security, and Competence Needs The child who feels safe and secure experiments with her environment through exploration and curiosity. The environment has to support this adventuring for the child to learn skills and to feel competent. Feeling safe, secure, and competent are basic needs that must be satisfied in order for the child to have high self-esteem. When these needs are not met it may lead to various forms of mental illness, which can emerge at any time during the child's life. Racism and sexism block and frustrate a child's safety and security needs. When a child does not feel safe and secure she has a difficult time learning the basic academic and social skills needed to feel competent. A lack of safety and security makes a child experience shyness, embarrassment, and shame. Such a child feels unworthy, unlikable, and incapable of interacting with classmates. This interferes with the child's play and with her ability to have empathy for others and to role-play with peers. Competence enhances emotional and social well-being, and the child is able to reach out in wonder and amazement for the joy of learning -- the most precious human adventure. For growth and health the child needs a predictable world, a world that she feels she is influencing and that has some sort of balance or consistency. Safety, security, and competence lead the child to a life of amazement, hope, vitality, and joy. Power and Justice Needs When I tell my children it is time for a family meeting, there are groans and moans because the meeting invites talking about problems. However, encouragement is also given to talk about individual success and family strengths. This is important because people who are not assertive often don't tell others how much they appreciate them. In family meetings some people have a difficult time waiting their turn to talk. The American Indian talking circle is a good model for the empowerment of family members in a process of creative family conversation. In a talking circle an eagle, the person who is talking, holds a feather and then it is passed to the next person in the circle. While holding the eagle feather they express their frustrations and their joys with tribal members in any fashion they chose. They may sing a song or cite a poem or tell a story or legend. In family meetings each family member might suggest an object that is sacred to them to be used in the same way that the eagle feather is used. It is important to ritualize the process and to pick a sacred place in the house and a special time to hold the talking circle. The scared place, sacred time, and sacred object help to channel frustrations and anger by making the family meeting a special event. This process of handling family meetings empowers all the family members and assures that each person will have a chance to speak and be heard. Justice needs are met in families that recognize the power needs of each family member. A family ritual such as the talking circle empowers each family member while demonstrating justice. Actual changes come about as a result of conversations in the family meetings. Children who are raised in families that practice justice have influence in their family and in their world. In this way true democratic education begins in the home and can be continued in the school. Gandhi taught that we need to practice justice in our own family and home before we can expect to have justice in the world. Belonging, Respect, and Love/Nonviolence Needs The family is the basic unit to which all people belong even though family structures differ from culture to culture. Families consist of one or more significant others to whom a person feels they belong. Children in residential treatment need to be in some sort of family setting, and they need to have their belonging needs met. In residential treatment homes that have low staff turnover, children feel like they belong because they bond with one or two staff members. When there is a high turnover of staff, children feel lost, become withdrawn, and don't flourish, because they do not have time to bond to any particular individual. Research in this area of the interface of biology and environment shows that children who are severely deprived of belonging and love/nonviolence needs have smaller brains, may be profoundly retarded, and may fail to thrive or to grow. This is the violence, the physical abuse, that is done to the biology of a child who is not touched or hugged appropriately and does not experience love/nonviolence. Children need to be touched and hugged appropriately in order to feel confirmed and respected, and to have a sense of belongingness and self-respect for their body. Self-respect of one's body and emotions is absent in children who have been molested. A large percentage of molested children develop anorexia nervosa or bulimia, which are serious eating disorders. The documented evidence shows that approximately l5 percent of people who have serious eating disorders die. In this way the violence of molestation continues because of the frustration of the basic need for love/nonviolence. Children who have had their belonging and love/nonviolence needs met are turned on with life; they thrive and have empathy for others. They practice altruism and develop respect and compassion for themselves and for other children. Self-respect helps them to have compassion for and acceptance of their own deficits and inadequacies. Likewise, they are more tolerant of other people and they are more apt to confirm others with unconditional love. These children become the loving members of our society. Liberation Psychology has a spiritual and ethical goal to make sure that society and its institutions and families are aware of the necessity of meeting the basic human needs that lead to high self-esteem. Our responsibility as a society is to make sure that our citizens enjoy basic needs satisfaction, which encourages success and the development of love and reconciliation for all the different dimensions of a nation. References Marston, S. (1990). The Magic of Encouragement: Nurturing Your Child's Self-Esteem. New York, NY: Pocket Books. Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.
|
||||
 |
||||
 |
  |
 |
       
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
