Decolonial Approaches to Treatment & Training

In psychotherapeutic training and treatment, it often seems that one first has to learn something called “the basics” of a particular treatment model, and later in clinical training learn something called “cultural competence” to effectively work with patients across racial, gender, class, and sexual orientation difference. This distinction, although well-intentioned, often creates a bifurcation in clinical practice where it becomes unclear how and when to address personal and interpersonal dynamics, and how and when to address social and cultural contributions to the patient’s struggles.

Drawing again from Frantz Fanon’s insights as a practicing therapist working from a decolonial lens, we are developing scholarship to explore the nuances of effective clinical practice that integrates the sociocultural as part of everyday clinical work. We are looking both at psychotherapy as such, as well as clinical training, to reimagine both beyond this bifurcation. Examples of some of our scholarship can be found below:

Gaztambide, D. J., Ealey, D., & Meraj, B. (2022). Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Training in a New Key: Adapting a Race-Class Lens for the Helping Professions. In Developing Anti-Racist Practices in the Helping Professions: Inclusive Theory, Pedagogy, and Application (pp. 391-419). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Gaztambide, D. J., Feliciano-Graniela, F. E., Luiggi-Hernández, J., & Escobar, E. V. M. (2024). Decolonizing psychoanalysis: Anti-Blackness, coloniality, and a new premise for psychoanalytic treatment. In L. Comas-Díaz, H. Y. Adames, & N. Y. Chavez-Dueñas (Eds.), Decolonial psychology: Toward anticolonial theories, research, training, and practice (pp. 321–343). American Psychological Association.

We are also working on examining psychological theories foundational to much contemporary psychotherapy such as attachment theory. Specifically, we are examining how different theories of attachment and child development can betray a “dyadic” (mother-child focused) bias that does not account for how child-rearing and development takes place in much of the global south. By integrating relational and sociocultural factors in child development, we hope to clarify how developmental theory is used in psychotherapy to better serve diverse populations.

Aside from our papers, Dr. Gaztambide has published a new book entitled Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon’s Couch that integrates contemporary psychotherapy research and psychological science with a novel rethinking of psychotherapeutic theory and technique that integrates the social as a matter of course.