A Psychological Theory of Being “Out-Here”: Broad-Based Organizing, Transformative Education, and Relational Empowerment

Abstract

This dissertation uses an autoethnographic, participatory action research approach to consider James Hillman’s 1992 call for therapy to be a “cell of revolution,” rather than a response to the pathological or disadvantaged—“a kind of building of doorways, opening conduits, and making channels” (Hillman & Ventura, 1992, p. 208). Through case studies in a broad-based organizing initiative and transformative education program, and phenomenological interviews with participants of both, this study explores what a relational approach to empowerment makes available for community psychology. It asks: what modes of praxis from the case studies can contribute to a psychology at the level of organization or community which is both preventive and liberatory? In addition to theory around empowerment and relational self, Paulo Freire’s concepts of conscientização and dialogic pedagogy provide a framework for viewing the processes and concepts involved. These case studies inform a model of applied community psychology which links inner freedom and power with freedom and power in the world, through relational methodologies, and resulting in an understanding of being “out-here.”