This essay in liberation psychology shows how everyone in an oppressive society participates in creating and re-creating oppression, and, consequently, can also act to undo the clinch of oppression. How people manage their social-emotions in transactions is central to the installation of dominance-submissive relations and also to the movement toward democratic forms of social life. By studying and evaluating clinical work that includes wholesome and unwholesome forms of supporting and taking in others, and by analyzing productive and limited patterns in social struggle, this work contributes to social activism for our times.

Philip Lichtenberg is Mary Hale Chase Professor Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College where he taught for over 35 years. Among the courses he offered were: “Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory,” Gestalt Therapy,” and “Change and Resistance to Change.” He was one of the founding members of The Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia, and served as one of its Directors from 1983 to 2010. He continues as a Faculty member of the Institute. Philip published six books, including Psychoanalysis: Radical and Conservative, Community and Confluence, and Encountering Bigotry (as senior author). He has published many articles and chapters, and continues to lead workshops in the United States and abroad.