Psychology Under Fire

Reviews the book, Ignacio Martín-Baró: Writings for a liberation psychology edited by Adrianne Aron and Shawn Corne (see record 1994-98883-000). This book is an unusual collection of essays and journal articles written by an extraordinary man. In each of of his professional capacities, Martín-Baró's principal concerns were to speak against the U.S.-supported war in El Salvador, to open channels of dialogue between the repressive offices of the state and the popular insurgents, and to accompany the campesinos (peasants) ravaged by state-sponsored violence and oppression. Although the author was an uncompromising critic of ahistorical, apolitical scientism in psychology, he never lost faith in the possibility of an emancipatory psychological practice: an approach to the discipline that would ground its understanding of psychosocial processes in the conditions of people's everyday lives, recognize the need to transform dehumanizing social structures, and assist people in seeing through the "Social Lie" (p. 188) to the real enemies of social justice. The 12 essays in this volume provide insight into this vision of a liberation psychology born of the author's having lived the terror and repression of the Salvadoran conflict alongside the campesinos. Taken as a whole, the chapters communicate a vision and practice of psychology predicated on the assumption that human experience and its psychological dimensions are products of social agents acting within particular, if not unique, sociohistorical realities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)