History is the cure. An introduction to social therapy

Abstract

History is tbe Cure. An introduction to Social Therapy brings together foundational and clinical practice discussions of Social Therapy, a psychotherapy based on Marxian methodology, developed in the United States. This introduction highlights the main theoretical underpinnings, concepts and goals of the Social Therapy practice and movement and thus serves not only as an introduction to other readings but to the foundations of Social Therapy as an activist (practical- critical) challenge to traditional developmental, clinical and educational psychology. Major influences on Social Therapy are Lev Vygotsky's socio- cultural theory of activity and his discovery that learning leads development, and Frantz Fanow's identification of how oppresion (especially of people of color) stops development

Basic to Social Therapy is the understanding that human Deings live simultancously in society and history. When societies adapt their members to society and not to history, they become alienated from even the process of their own (individual, cultural, and historical) development. Thus, subjectivity is understood in contemporary societies as private and individuated while, in fact, itis-notmerely instrumentally, butontologically- soctal, Conflictand contradiction grow out of the societally-organized (but historically-determined) incoherency, benween history and society, between the historical activity of human beings as producers of change and the societal behavior of human beings as objects to be changed. Emotional problems, learning problems, psychopathology, etc., are treated in Social Therapy by facilitating groups of people collectively producing change -building new environments that meet their needs. It is proposed that, in the face of the increasing difficulty of adapting to international society in economic, political, social and moral crisis (and thus not adaptable 10), Social Therapy reinitiates development by helping people adpat to history (and therefore to the actual human life space, society/history). Social Therapy as a developmental therapy of empowerment and a methodology for a human science is discussed.