Critical-liberation psychotherapy: Unsettling hegemonic power toward liberatory practice

Can psychotherapy support liberation? Critical and liberation psychologies have long critiqued psychology's relationship to power. Analyzing power draws attention to the inbuilt cultural assumptions and values that have shaped theory and practice in psychology. Mainstream psychotherapy, for instance, risks functioning to preserve rather than disrupt an oppressive status quo that contributes to clients' distress. We conducted a critical analysis of hegemonic power in mainstream psychotherapy and its embeddedness in moral, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. In this article, we identify impediments to liberatory psychotherapy, and we critique psychotherapeutic imperialism as the standard of care. Moving beyond critique, we have stewarded and described a Critical-Liberation Psychotherapy (CLP) model. CLP is decolonial in nature, developed out of a mutual accompaniment process that recenters marginalized views and practices from within and outside of psychology. CLP addresses intersectional power dynamics in psychotherapy. Through radical relationality and by facilitating the exploration of clients' lived experiences in context, CLP aims to promote critical consciousness. We outline and illustrate CLP approaches to clinical formulation and distinctive in-session practices. Finally, we review its limitations and underscore how CLP functions to support refashioning subjectivities and modes of relating that expand liberatory possibilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).