Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons

by Mary Watkins, George Lipsitz (Foreword), G. A. Bradshaw (Contributor)

A landmark book that maps a radical model not only for the “helping” professions but for the work of solidarity
 
This timely and pathbreaking volume maps a radical model of accompaniment, exploring its profound implications for solidarity. Psychosocial and ecological accompaniment is a mode of responsive assistance that combines psychosocial understanding with political and cultural action. Accompaniment—grounded in horizontality, interdependence, and potential mutuality—moves away from hierarchical and unidirectional helping-profession approaches that decontextualize suffering. Watkins envisions a powerful paradigm of mutual solidarity with profound implications for creating commons in the face of societal division and indifference to suffering.

376 pages, Hardcover

Published June 25, 2019

About the author

Mary Watkins, Ph.D., is a core faculty member, Co-Chair of the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology specialization of the M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology Program, and founding Coordinator of Community and Ecological Fieldwork and Research at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the author of Waking Dreams, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, the co-author of Toward Psychologies of Liberation, Talking With Young Children About Adoption, a co-editor of Psychology and the Promotion of Peace, and essays on the confluence of liberation psychology and depth psychology. She works at the interfaces between Euro-American depth psychologies and psychologies of liberation from Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has worked as a clinical psychologist with adults, children, and families, and with small and large groups around issues of peace, envisioning the future, diversity, vocation, immigration and social justice. She is a Peacebuilding Associate of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and is a member of the national Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR).