Psychology aspires to be a science and, as such, must be based on objective data. However, it is also true that in order to reach relevant conclusions on certain issues, it is necessary to take into account the interpretations and subjective points of view of the people who make up the groups studied. For example, if one works with indigenous people in the Amazon, it is necessary to get to know these cultures, which are so different from the Western culture, which is much more accustomed to the rigors of the scientific method.

The Spanish psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró believed that under this 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 one’s own.

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

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

Once he was appointed to the priesthood in 1966, he went to live in El Salvador and obtained his degree in psychology there in 1975 through the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), after which he received his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Chicago.

On his return to the UCA, where he started working in a psychology department. His open criticism against the country’s government placed him in the target of the paramilitary forces led by the ruling political class, which assassinated him in 1989 along with several other people.

What is the Psychology of Liberation?

Ignacio Martín-Baró denied that psychology is a science destined to know timeless and universal patterns of behavior, shared by the entire human species. Instead, he pointed out that the mission of this field of knowledge is to understand the way in which context and individuals influence each other .

However, the context is not simply a space shared by several individuals at once, as in that case we would all live in the same context. For this psychologist, 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 can be the use of knowing 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 understand the distinctive problems of oppressed groups, such as peoples with indigenous origins whose lands have been conquered or nomadic societies without the possibility of owning or inheriting land.

Against reductionism

In short, Liberation Psychology establishes that in order to cover all the problems of human beings we must look beyond the universal evils that affect people individually , such as schizophrenia or bipolarity, and we must also examine the social environment in which we live, 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 be understood by analyzing only that person or, even better, the cells and DNA of his or her organism (biological determinism).

It is therefore necessary to stop investigating aspects of human behaviour in artificial contexts belonging to rich countries and to go and tackle the problem where it occurs. In this way it is possible to satisfy the need to address problems that are socially rather than individually rooted, such as conflicts and stressful environments created by the confrontation between nationalisms.

Trauma in society

Normally, trauma in psychology is understood as an emotional imprint loaded with deeply painful sensations and ideas for the person, since they refer to experiences lived in the past by the person himself and that caused much discomfort or acute stress.

However, for Martín-Baró and the Psychology of Liberation, trauma can also be a collective phenomenon, something whose cause is not an experience lived individually but collectively and inherited through generations. In fact, Martín-Baró points out, conventional psychology is often used to feed these collective traumas in a discreet way for propaganda purposes; it seeks to channel this pain towards goals that are convenient for an elite.

Thus, for Liberation Psychology, knowing the mental problems frequent in an area tells us about the history of that region and, therefore, points to a source of conflict that must be addressed from a psychosocial perspective, not by acting on individuals.