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Through the stories we share, the Admissions Team at Baylor University hopes to inspire and educate future leaders in social work.

5 Things To Know About Anti-Oppressive Practice in Social Work

As social workers, our ultimate goal is to promote social justice and enhance the well-being of all individuals and communities. But, we need to work to acknowledge, address and ultimately dismantle the systemic oppression in our society to ensure our goal is achieved.

What is Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice?

Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) in social work is a critical framework that guides us in challenging and dismantling oppressive structures and practices. It requires social workers to critically reflect on their values, beliefs, and biases and actively work to eliminate oppressive systems and practices. 

5 things future social workers should know about anti-oppressive social work

1. oppression is pervasive.

Oppression exists in all aspects of society — even within the social work practice. Social workers must recognize and understand how oppression operates and affects their clients, colleagues, and communities.

2. Intersectionality matters

People hold multiple intersecting identities that shape their experiences of oppression and privilege. Social workers need to consider how different forms of oppression, such as racism , sexism, ableism, and heterosexism, intersect and compound to create unique experiences of marginalization.

3. Self-reflection is critical 

Social workers must continuously self-reflect to identify and challenge their biases, assumptions, and privileges. They must be willing to examine how their identities and experiences shape their worldview and how they interact with clients.

4. Empowerment is key

Anti-oppressive social work aims to empower clients by recognizing and building on their strengths, skills, and knowledge. Social workers must collaborate with clients to identify their goals and support them in advocating for themselves and their communities.

5. Activism is necessary

Anti-oppressive social work involves challenging and changing oppressive structures and practices inside and outside the social work profession. Social workers must engage in activism and advocacy to create social change and promote equity and justice for marginalized communities.

By reflecting on their own biases and assumptions, empowering their clients, and engaging in activism and advocacy, social workers can create meaningful change in their communities. The Garland School of Social Work is dedicated to training future social workers that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, and offers valuable resources to students who seek to engage in anti-oppressive practice. 

Want to know more about equity and social justice in social work? Explore our guide, How Social Workers Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion . 

We are the admissions team at the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, at Baylor University. We believe social work is about service and justice; it is about the dignity of individuals and the power of relationships; it is about integrity and competence, and our mission here is preparing social workers to do these things well. We hope you find our resources helpful and informative as you explore and pursue a degree in social work!

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Rethinking Anti-Discriminatory and Anti-Oppressive Theories for Social Work Practice, Christine Cocker, Trish Hafford-Letchfield (eds)

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Richard Ingram, Rethinking Anti-Discriminatory and Anti-Oppressive Theories for Social Work Practice, Christine Cocker, Trish Hafford-Letchfield (eds), The British Journal of Social Work , Volume 52, Issue 4, June 2022, Pages 2427–2428, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcaa243

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This edited book was first published in 2014 and the varied and informed contributions from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland have a continued resonance in 2021. Anti-Discriminatory Practice (ADP) and Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) have become so familiar and central to the social work profession that they can be regarded as givens and part of the fabric of what we do and how we do it. The need for the profession to strive to curb discrimination and address the oppression of individuals, groups and communities is not a passive or static activity. This book positions itself as reminder and prompts to consider the complexity of these perspectives and the need to consider the intersections of these across theoretical, philosophical, practical and professional spheres.

The book looks to the work of Michel Foucault as a foundation stone and to provide a structural framework. The drivers behind this theoretical positioning are varied but are rooted in a post-structuralist acceptance of a range of ‘truths’ encountered in social work that require what Foucault might term an archaeological examination of the nature and evolution of power that may impact upon individuals, groups and communities. The book takes four key Foucauldian themes: Power, Discourse, Subjectivity and Deconstruction as its section headers and rewardingly the contributions maintain a focus on the practical application of what can be experienced as rather dense theoretical terrain. In terms of ‘power’, the authors build on Foucault’s interests in the relations of power between individuals and the state. This helpfully opens the way to discussions of such facets of social work a selfhood, reflexivity and practice. The section on ‘discourse’ shines a light on the power of language, received wisdom and ‘truths’ that can be cascaded through policy through to frontline practice. In doing so illuminating the construction of difference and who articulates, perpetuates or questions this. This is expanded by the examination of ‘subjectivity’ and an acknowledgement of the multiple identities and subjectivities that evolve through individual and collective histories and can be critically explored through biographical approaches and an awareness of intersectionality. The book concludes with an examination of ‘deconstruction’. Having laid the foundations in the aforementioned sections, the book’s finale encourages the reader to not only question but be willing to destabilise and rethink the origins, meanings and uses of language and power in relation to ADP and AOP.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Anti-Oppressive Practice

Introduction, foundational resources.

• Links to Aligned Professional Literatures
• History of the Field
• AOP-Rooted Programs
• How to Effectively Prepare Students for AOP
• Uptake in Human Services
• Critical Reflexivity and Knowing Self
• Micro-level AOP and Counseling
• Mezzo-level AOP within the Profession of Social Work
• Mezzo-level AOP at the Organizational Level
• Mezzo-level AOP at the Community Level
• Macro-based AOP that Influences Public Policy and Dominant Discourses
• AOP Research
• Working with Specific Populations
• On Expertise and Epistemology
• On the Value of AOP for Racial Disparities and Cultural Competency
• On Postmodernism’s Impact on Constructions of Identity
• Advanced Ethical Issues
• Critiques of the Construct of Intersectionality
• Thoughts on What Comes Next for AOP

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Anti-Oppressive Practice by Ann Curry-Stevens LAST REVIEWED: 25 February 2016 LAST MODIFIED: 25 February 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389678-0203

Anti-oppressive practice (AOP) has taken root in social work as an effort to raise social justice commitments in the profession, and to improve outcomes for those it serves. AOP’s influence is strongest in Canada, the United Kindgom, and Australia (where it has been a feature of social work education for more than fifteen years), and to a much lesser degree in the United States. An abundance of writing on AOP exists and has been drawn upon for this chapter, and the field has been consolidating and strengthening since 2010. Now being articulated are the research dimensions of the field, and the evidence base of outcomes from AOP interventions are just beginning to show up in the literature. In its most accessible form, AOP is a lens through which experience is understood. The AOP lens is that of power based on group identities or affiliations (such as race, class, gender, and sexual identity), and when practitioners notice group identities, they can anticipate—for that client, their family, or their community—an array of experiences that are associated with positive or negative life outcomes (such as health, income, education, marginalization, violence, status, and social inclusion/exclusion). The simplest directive for AOP practice is to minimize power hierarchies, by assisting to build the power of those who hold a marginalized identity and/or reducing the unfair power of those of privileged status. The larger social and political context of the last generation that gave impetus to the emergence of AOP is the deepening of globalization and the rise of neoliberal policies, including cuts to social programs, rising inequality, and dominant discourse that blames individuals for their distress. In this deteriorating environment, social work has retained its divide of a more clinical orientation that is strongly aligned with counseling and psychology, and a more social justice orientation to practice that focuses attention upstream on causal and contributing features to downstream distress. That said, one of the exciting additions since around 2005 has been the articulation of more micro-oriented AOP that provides interventions for working at the individual level in ways that are aligned with the principles of AOP. Formally, the definition of anti-oppressive practice has been articulated by Lena Dominelli: “Anti-oppressive practice embodies a person-centered philosophy; an egalitarian value system concerned with reducing the deleterious effects of structural inequalities upon people’s lives; a methodology focusing on both process and outcome; and a way of structuring relationships between individuals that aims to empower users by reducing the negative effects of hierarchy on their interaction and the work they do together” ( Dominelli 1996 , cited under History of the field , p. 170). The field has numerous related frames for practice that includes structural social work, critical social work, radical social work, feminist and anti-racist social work and, more recently, the service user movement. The commonality for these fields of practice are their focus on rectifying injustice, building power of the powerless, and centering the needs of communities that hold marginalized identities, namely people of color, those in poverty, women, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized communities. While this field has mostly “grown up” around issues of gender, racism, and white privilege (and it took longer for issues of privilege to be implicated in dynamics of oppression as the essential corollary and driving feature of the issue), the work being developed in this field has relevance for various forms of oppression. Some may view this work as simply a return to the social action and community organizing efforts of both the settlement house era and, later, the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s that gave rise to structural and radical social work. Unique, however, is a more sophisticated understanding of power and its multiple dimensions, including a growing willingness of practitioners to identify their personal and political privileges. AOP holds significant implications for the professional identity of the social worker. Within AOP, social work as a profession is implicated as a part of ruling relations, and social workers themselves can no longer simply position themselves into some form of resistance practice and then believe that this choice has rendered them “innocent” as a practitioner. Anti-oppressive practice now requires all practitioners to understand themselves as implicated in sustaining relations of domination, as benefitting from the status quo, and as part of a profession that similarly is reliant on serving the interests of privileged groups, be they the ruling classes, white, heterosexual, or other communities of privilege. This understanding has been deeply informed by postmodernism and its focus on subjectivities, epistemologies, the authoring of knowledge, and knowledge claims. While this effort is more fully integrated within critical social work, the two fields (AOP and critical social work) are deeply aligned, and while AOP tends to not have as sophisticated an understanding of these issues, those on its leading edge are embracing this analysis. Issues such as the construction of identity and of expertise, as well as essentialism (and the corresponding anti-essentialist proposals), are stretching the field of AOP in important and challenging ways. These issues are addressed at the close of this chapter. The mandate for social justice practice is integrated within codes of ethics around the world, including Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. A full listing of codes of ethics around the world can be found on the website of the International Federation of Social Workers . Social work’s International Code of Ethics holds a strong orientation to both human rights (including explicit adherence to specific United Nations conventions) and social justice. With these heightened expectations in place, providing students and practitioners with practice theories and skills to uphold these obligations is required. AOP fulfills this implicit directive.

Over the years, leading scholars have served to consolidate the field. This set of texts share features of practice at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of intervention, with a healthy portion of the text defining the theoretical base of anti-oppressive practice. Recent contributions tend to be more informed by postmodernism, with complexities on identity and subjectivities incorporated into the approaches. The edited collections tend to encapsulate a broader range of dimensions of AOP. For teaching, undergraduate courses are likely to favor Bishop 2002 ; Carniol 2010 ; Mullaly 2002 ; Shera 2003 ; Allan, et al. 2003 ; and Adams, et al. 2010 ; while graduate programs will find the following texts more complex: Baines 2011 , Dominelli 2002 , Fook 2002 , and Morgaine and Capous-Desyllas 2015 . Instructors looking to deepen students’ development of a critical perspective will likely find these texts most relevant: Bishop 2002 ; Carniol 2010 (particularly with Canadian students); Mullaly 2002 ; and Adams, et al. 2010 . While all have some practice elements integrated, Baines 2011 ; Dominelli 2002 ; Shera 2003 ; Fook 2002 ; and Allan, et al. 2003 are most directly tied to preparing social work students for AOP engagement in social work settings.

Adams, M., W. Blumenfeld, R. Castaneda, H. Hackman, M. Peters, and X. Zuniga. 2010. Readings for diversity and social justice . 2d ed. New York: Routledge.

Snapshots from leading authors in the field are organized to cover several axes of oppression and privilege. With an introductory chapter on conceptual frameworks, a concluding chapter on strategies for change, and introductions to each section, the work comprehensively details the causes, impacts, and resistance practices that many learners need in this process. Its strength is in its diversity of voices on these topics and its accessibility for students.

Allan, J., B. Pease, and L. Briskman, eds. 2003. Critical social work: An introduction to theories and practices . Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin.

This Australian text envisions the profession as one that challenges oppression and privilege, and deeply integrates the political and macro dimensions of the micro experience into all arenas of practice. The fields covered in this text include working with immigrants and refugees, postcolonial work with indigenous Australians, feminist services, family practices, mental health with women, and grief work.

Baines, D., ed. 2011. Doing anti-oppressive practice: Social justice social work . 2d ed. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

Baines’s collection significantly advances practice frameworks, building upon the earlier works of Dominelli and Mullaly. This text articulates AOP across multiple sites of practice, including at the microlevel and among mandated clients (refuting the perspective that AOP has no role with involuntary clients). The text attends to postmodern constructions of identity and the importance of a “politics of recognition” in social work.

Bishop, A. 2002. Becoming an ally: Breaking the cycle of oppression . 2d ed. London: Zed Books.

Bishop outlines the “ally model” to define the roles for privileged people in struggles to advance social justice. While not as well informed by postmodern contributions to AOP, the work astutely configures ally roles that support marginalized communities and neatly configures practice in ways that simultaneously address one’s own experiences of oppression, while also addressing privilege.

Carniol, B. 2010. Case critical: Social services and social justice in Canada . 6th ed. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Frequently an introductory text for Canadian students. Carniol details the moral imperative for social justice, implicating the power holders in relations of domination, and astutely linking these to the lives of social work clients. The text is ripe with current research, exploration of various axes of oppression, and the history and current debates in social work practice.

Dominelli, L. 2002. Anti-oppressive social work theory and practice . Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dominelli is roundly recognized as the leading scholar in AOP. Her text continues to be an excellent basis for teaching at an introductory level on this topic. This text’s forte is its pragmatic and applied elements, including focus on individuals, groups, and organizations. The introductory chapters can serve to deepen practitioners’ commitments to the centrality of oppression and privilege, and the promise that AOP provides for advancing social justice.

Fook, J. 2002. Social work: Critical theory and practice . London: SAGE.

Interspersed with critical reflection questions and abundant case examples, this text tends to structural, post-structural, and postmodern dimensions of oppression. Fook uses her own work to enliven critical reflection in the moments of engaging with the text, and thus models the critical reflexivity. Although written a decade ago, it retains a cutting edge for its focus on epistemologies and postmodern emphases on voice, authorship, and power.

Morgaine, K., and Capous-Desyllas. 2015. Anti-oppressive social work practice: Putting theory into action . Los Angeles: SAGE.

Chapters identify core practices that AOP brings into different client populations: individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities, policy, social movements and global practices. Its forte is in providing the integration that authored texts provide, alongside comprehensive insights in how AOP informs each dimension of social work practice. A short set of narratives from practitioners accompany each chapter.

Mullaly, B. 2002. Challenging oppression: A critical social work approach . Don Mills, ON: Oxford.

Mullaly brings thoughtful clarity to understanding dynamics of oppression. His text covers theory and practices at both the interpersonal and structural levels (following a similarly useful model as that his 2007 text The New Structural Social Work integrates), and expands to include the impact on oppressed bodies with an expansive chapter on internalized oppression and privilege.

Shera, W., ed. 2003. Emerging perspectives on anti-oppressive practice . Toronto: Canadian Scholars.

Twenty-eight contributions are detailed in this Canadian collection, illustrating the reach of AOP within the profession. The text reaches into theory, fields of practice (including child welfare, child care, street youth services, workplace accommodations for those with disabilities, mental health, and gerontology), and deeply into social work education. Issue-based chapters focus on identity, therapeutic discourses, empathy, cultural competence, technology, and community and global themes.

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Remaking Social Work by Applying an Anti-oppressive Lens

• First Online: 31 August 2022

Cite this chapter

• Elena Allegri   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2775-0675 3 ,
• Barbara Rosina   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3552-5267 3 &
• Mara Sanfelici   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6588-5338 4  

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Anti-oppressive social work has become a central topic among social work scholars, guiding the analysis of practices, services, and policies. Both theoretical and empirical studies highlight the importance of raising awareness about the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, mandates of social workers, guiding a process of reflexivity on challenges and ethical dilemmas. As the literature on anti-oppressive practice in social work is scarce, this research has two aims: (1) analyzing the social workers’ opinions about their role in fighting against oppression and discrimination and in enacting a “political role”; and (2) exploring the types of oppression and discrimination in the everyday practice within social work agencies. The wider purpose is to foster a debate on this topic, contributing in raising awareness and advancing knowledge about processes that can promote or hamper anti-oppressive ways of practicing social work. The aim is also to coconstruct knowledge about transnational sources of injustice, contributing in moving the conceptual apparatus of social work practice forward, while understanding the complex interaction between transnational actors. We think this is a way to rethinking social work in a global world, providing new frames to empower social workers and people, standing together for social justice and social change.

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Acknowledgment

Funding support from Department of Law, Political, Economic and Social Studies, University of Eastern Piedmont, Alessandria, Italy. Grant ID: FAR Fondi di Ateneo per la Ricerca 2019 is acknowledged.

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Allegri, E., Rosina, B., Sanfelici, M. (2022). Remaking Social Work by Applying an Anti-oppressive Lens. In: Tan, N.T., Shajahan, P. (eds) Remaking Social Work for the New Global Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08352-5_3

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The Handbook of Counselling Psychology

Student resources, towards anti-oppressive practice in counselling psychology.

THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

SPECIAL GROUP IN COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY

FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY: COMING OF AGE

TOWARDS ANTI-OPPRESSIVE PRACTICE

IN COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY

Sheelagh strawbridge.

Published in  Counselling Psychology Review , 9(1).

I was shaken out of my usual slothfulness and moved to respond to a letter in  The Psychologist  (Honeyford, 1992) warning against Charles Husband’s (1992) call for the adoption of a clear anti-racist policy by the BPS. My energy came from anger generated by my experience in supporting one of my students who, at the time, was a target of racial harassment by other students within my institution. My anger was fuelled by fear and distress aroused by my awareness of increasing racism on a world scale. This paper is a development from my letter in  The Psychologist  (1993). It is not written from any claim to particular expertise, but by way of developing and sharing my own thoughts and as a contribution to what I hope will become a commitment of the SGCP to develop an explicitly anti-oppressive policy and guidelines for practice.

Multiculturalism Is Not Enough

Husband argued, supporting CCETSW’s policy, that ‘multiculturalism’ which recognises cultural difference and promotes ‘ethnic sensitivity’ in professional practice does little to address the exploitative and oppressive power relations endemic within white society. ‘Anti-racism’, on the other hand, recognises that effective opposition to racism must be grounded in an understanding of the structured relationships of power which permeate our culture and social institutions.

We cannot ignore the wealth and variety of research which identifies racism working at all levels of white society, from those of gross discrimination and inequalities in socio-economic opportunities to the deeper psychological levels of identity formation. Historically it is, perhaps inevitably, those who suffer oppression who place it on the agenda, so black people, Jewish people and women have led the opposition to racism, antisemitism and sexism. However, in these and other areas of discrimination and oppression the burden of responsibility must fall on the oppressor. White people must accept responsibility for racism because racism is fundamentally a problem of white society and as such implicates all white people. However, it goes beyond prejudice, an ugly but personal psychological distortion and anti-racism requires more than a personal and professional moral stance. This does not involve allocating personal blame but accepting responsibility does imply a commitment to understanding and addressing the social processes at work in ourselves, our interpersonal relationships, our culture and social institutions. Husband need make no apology for the political nature of anti-racism. Racism, in common with other forms of oppression – for example on the basis of class, gender, sexual orientation, impairment, or age – is a relationship of power, and this places it firmly in the political arena.

Anti-racism and Anti-oppression

Husband focuses our attention on anti-racism, however, whilst not wishing to detract from this agenda, I think that it is important to consider the character of oppression in general and to consider the broader implications of anti-oppressive practice as well as the more specific demands of particular oppressions. Phillipson (1992) and others have noted the complexity of the term ‘oppression’. It encompasses structural differences in power as well as the personal experience we all have of being agents and targets of oppression; separate domains of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age and impairment, as well as the interrelationships between them. For example, whilst racism and sexism have specific characteristics, they cannot be analysed in isolation from each other or from other factors such as class, which interact in the experience of black women.

The focus of psychology, on intra- and inter- personal dynamics, tends to obscure the wider social and political context within which we practice but our profession is not immune from the forces at work there. The structures and institutions within which we practice – our conditions of employment, the ways in which our research is funded, the broader political culture and dominant models of knowledge – all help to define our professional identity and practice. Although some of us may feel uncomfortable stepping outside the traditionally defined boundaries of our discipline, if, as individuals engaged in research and professional practice and as a Special Group within the BPS, we intend seriously to address the socially and personally destructive forces of oppression we must begin to meet the challenge of developing an anti-oppressive policy and practice guidelines for all levels of our scientific and professional work.

Thompson’s ‘PCS’ Model

Neil Thompson (1993) has proposed a useful way of conceptualising the working of discrimination and oppression on three levels (P, C and S) which are closely interlinked and constantly interacting:

• P refers to the  personal  or  psychological ; it is the level of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and actions. It also refers to  practice , individual workers working with individual clients, and  prejudice , the inflexibility of mind that stands in the way of fair and non-judgemental practice.
• C refers to the  cultural  level of shared ways of seeing, thinking and doing. It relates to the  commonalities  – values and patterns of thought and behaviour, an assumed consensus about what is right and what is normal; it produces  conformity  to social norms and  comic  humour acts as a vehicle for transmitting and reinforcing this culture.
• S refers to the  structural  level, the network of  social divisions ; it also relates to the ways in which oppression and discrimination are institutionalised and thus ‘ sewn in ’ to the fabric of society. It denotes the wider levels of  social forces , the sociopolitical dimension of interlocking patterns of power and influence. (p. 19–20)

Following Thompson’s model the development of anti-oppressive practice in counselling psychology will involve us in addressing interconnections between issues of power within the therapeutic relationship and the cultural and sociopolitical contexts. I want to focus in this paper on the cultural and personal levels rather than looking directly at the structural level, although the interconnections are clear – for example, in the way our position as a Special Group within the BPS is linked to sociopolitical struggles over the definition of knowledge, legitimated forms of professional practice, professional boundaries and issues relating to equality of opportunity (see for example Burman, 1990 and Parker and Shotter, 1990).

Counselling: A Model for Anti-oppressive Practice?

I have argued elsewhere (1992) that the traditional paradigm of scientific psychology is premised on a logic of domination implicit in the classical model of science which, whilst claiming objectivity and value neutrality, seeks to predict and control nature and human behaviour in the interest of increasing productivity. Counselling, on the other hand, can offer to psychology the possibility of an alternative model. The core conditions of acceptance, empathy and genuineness commit counselling psychology to a clear value base, as a knowledge discipline as well as a professional practice, through the internal linking of caring with coming to know. It is a practice led model based on: co-operative inquiry; the valuing of feelings; a respect for the reality of differing universes of experience and meaning; and the preserving, fostering and releasing of potential.

In my view this alternative model offers a basis for anti-oppressive forms of practice and it is my concern that, as counselling psychology ‘comes of age’ within BPS, professional recognition is gained through its development rather than by increasing adaptation to the more standard ‘scientific’ models of the ‘mature’ divisions. I say that our model offers a basis for anti-oppressive forms of practice because it is at an early stage of development and we have much to do in working through its potentialities. Moreover, we must look carefully at the ways in which even this model is implicated as part of the problem rather than the solution.

‘Normalizing’ the Individual

In common with all knowledge disciplines, psychology is itself a social and political practice and participates in the construction of the identities it seeks to describe, measure and explain. It defines normality and sets standards of behaviour, intelligence, mental health and so on. (see, for example, Rose, 1989) Paralleling psychology’s part in developing conceptions of normality, the therapeutic enterprise has, from the start, been linked to the aims of adjustment and rehabilitation within parameters described by the norms. It can be placed in the wider context of a technology of social control characterised by surveillance, confession and the ‘normalizing’ gaze of scientific, medical and educational practitioners (Foucault 1975, 1977). David Smail has compared this technology of control to what Christopher Lasch calls the ‘tutelary complex’, the instrument of the ‘managerial discipline’ of modern industrial societies. It:

... both reflects and contributes to the shift from authoritative sanctions to psychological manipulation and surveillance – the redefinition of political authority in therapeutic terms – and to the rise of a professional and managerial class that governs society not by upholding authoritative moral standards but by defining normal behaviour and by invoking allegedly non-punitive, psychiatric sanctions against deviance. (Smail, 1987: 58)

Invoking the core conditions of the therapeutic relationship we can easily anaesthetise ourselves to its ideological function. We can overlook the way in which its value base, quite rightly grounded in a respect for persons and a belief in the possibilities of self-awareness, autonomy and personal growth, focuses on the individual and simultaneously deflects attention from culture and social structures. Professionally we are inclined to treat psychological distress as the result of individual emotional, cognitive or perceptual distortions or of some biographical misfortune, such as abuse, located at the level of interpersonal or family relationships and, as Smail argues, ‘Encapsulated in our belief that the reasons for our conduct are to be tracked down somewhere inside our own skulls, most of us assume that, if life becomes uncomfortable, it must be some individual’s “fault”.’ But:

Slowly one becomes led to see that the hostile defensiveness which so often characterizes our relations with each other, the heartless ways in which we exploit and use each other, the extent to which we accept and reject ourselves and each other as commodities, entirely inescapably reflect the culture in which we live. One can no more easily opt out of a culture than one can opt out of a physical environment, and a poisonous culture will affect one just as surely as will a polluted atmosphere. (Smail, 1987: 19)

In developing anti-oppressive forms of practice we need to address seriously the ways in which social forces operate through individuals by constructing us as identities cast in social relationships of oppression between classes, between women and men, between black and white people and so on. Whilst there is a large and growing body of literature which does address these issues, it is a long way from being widely assimilated within mainstream psychology which generates a myriad of texts which fail even to begin to question white, male, middle class, heterosexist, able bodied assumptions.

Conceptions of Self and Moral Development

Our own emphasis on autonomy, personal growth and responsibility is rooted in a model of self and moral development defined by male norms (e.g., Gilligan, 1982) and one could add white, western, bourgeois, individualist. As a model of development it places value on being ‘grown up’. Women generally attain lower levels of moral development, defined and measured in these terms, and are less likely to appear grown up. Gilligan argues that generally women have a sense of self and morality which is more relational, than that defined by the model, and that this can be construed in terms of strength rather than weakness. We can locate Gilligan’s work in an ongoing historical struggle against the ideological process of infantilisation whereby women, black people, working class people and other oppressed groups are defined as in some way immature. The title of the radio programme ‘Does He Take Sugar’ expresses well this attitude towards people who have a physical or mental impairment. All this should alert us to the way in which the humanistic values at the centre of the counselling model can themselves be oppressive, if accepted uncritically. We need, at least, to be open to questioning our own norms and to exploring the implications, for our therapeutic relationships and practices, of culturally different conceptions of the self, developmental processes and ways of valuing.

Empowerment and its Depoliticisation

In stressing the egalitarian values of counselling, rooted in the tradition of self-help and linked to opposition to the medical model in psychiatry, we have borrowed the concept of ‘empowerment’. ‘Empowerment’ keys into the positive dimensions of power which link it to the potency of the therapeutic relationship and its capacity to energise, strengthen and release potential. However, we can too easily forget its wider political force. It can:

... act as a ‘social aerosol’, covering up the disturbing smell of conflict and conceptual division. ... The language of empowerment trips too lightly off the tongue and is too easily used merely as a synonym for enabling. (Ward and Mullender, 1993: 147–8)

In a society where the sources of many problems, experienced by individual people, reside in the advantages enjoyed by the powerful and the institutional arrangements which perpetuate them, empowerment implies recognising and, where possible, challenging oppressive aspects of existing power relationships. In so far as our practices fail to recognise or serve to obscure these relationships then we are contributing to the depoliticisation of social problems.

Our dominant theoretical models do not readily direct our attention outside personal and family contexts and it is no accident that, despite a somewhat radical history, counselling is gaining professional status in a political climate which favours the personalisation of the political.

There is a long and well documented history of the role of psychology and psychiatry in the development of a variety of ‘scientific’ versions of racism (see for example Fernando, 1991; Littlewood and Lipsedge, 1989) and recently:

In a context where public images, fostered by the media and police, associate race with drug abuse and attribute the anger of black youth to their use of cannabis, value judgements attached to drug abuse, the need to ‘pathologise’ the anger of black people and perhaps a pragmatic need to avoid the diagnosis of schizophrenia all seem to come together in the diagnosis of ‘cannabis psychosis’ – a British diagnosis that is given almost exclusively to Blacks. (Fernando, 1993: 56)

Working against this tendency feminist work, over many years, has drawn attention to the political nature of the personal and recent books (e.g., Miles, 1988; Showalter, 1987; Ussher, 1991) have traced the misogynies of psychology, psychiatry and various therapies. All locate many of the problems which women face, and which result in common psychiatric diagnoses, firmly in the sociopolitical arena. We might also note work in the area of disability (Finkelstein, 1993; Oliver, 1990) which argues that disabled people are disempowered by the medical model of health care professionals which locates disability within the individual’s personal impairments. Relating disablement to the powerlessness of people with impairments living in environments designed by people with ‘able’ bodies raises awareness of its political dimensions.

Consciousness Raising?

What then are the implications of all this work for our direct work with people? At the very least it must raise questions about the levels on which we hear, reflect and validate their experience. We may be well tuned in to messages which convey feelings or give clues to family dynamics, but the dominant models with which we work do little to sensitise us to messages about the sociocultural and political dimensions of oppression. Moreover, whilst the therapeutic context is not one of direct political action we do have to address the thorny problem of ‘consciousness raising’. Developing awareness and insight are central aims in most forms of counselling and psychotherapy. To this end we have a broad spectrum of legitimated areas of exploration ranging from the personal unconscious, biography, family history and the dynamics of family systems to ‘universal’ processes embedded in myths and archetypes. Perhaps strangely, there appears to be a reluctance to engage with the middle ground of the cultural unconscious, although this seems to me to be no different in principle from working with other hidden or unconscious processes. Indeed the notion of a cultural unconscious might be seen as the contribution that therapeutic thinking has made to our understanding of ideological processes and consciousness raising its contribution to political action. There are important issues concerning the place, if any, of direct interpretation in therapy, and these should not be glossed over, but they apply equally at all levels. Again I can see no difference in principle between an intervention offering a psychodynamic and one offering a sociocultural interpretation.

In working towards a more general understanding of anti-oppressive practice feminist and black perspectives have much to contribute. For example, Maye Taylor (1990), writing from a feminist viewpoint, suggests one way of locating the wider roots of women’s emotional distress and misery by encompassing personal psychopathology, family pressures and sociopolitical factors within a Maslow-type hierarchy of five levels comprising:

• Existential, i.e. life choices;
• Personality, i.e. psychopathology;
• Interaction, family relationships, etc.;
• Predicament, the person’s immediate situation;
• Material deprivation, money, shelter, food.

She links this with the need to understand and work with the ideological practices of masculinity and femininity on all five levels. Like Thompson’s ‘PCS’ model this suggests one possible framework within which we might address the gaps in current mainstream therapeutic approaches and provides a way of encouraging and legitimating work which recognises and validates experiences of oppression.

Change? The Limitations of Counselling

Of course, counselling is often seen primarily as a practice which facilitates change and the depoliticisation of the concept of ‘empowerment’ is, I suspect, in part, a result of a reluctance to confront our own powerlessness. The question of anti-oppressive practice confronts us directly with the limitations of therapy, and perhaps with our own despair, in the face of daily encounters with child abuse, sexual violence and ‘ethnic cleansing’. We well know that denial is a common defence and, if we refuse to bring the pain of our own powerlessness into consciousness, we can easily collude in oppression, by failing to hear and by overextending our faith in therapeutic practices to effect change. Recognising our limitations we can, nevertheless, acknowledge the significance of the work of validation which in itself can affirm and encourage. As counsellors we are often working with coping strategies and much of the time must be content to support those who, like ‘the women men don’t see’ in James Tiptree Jr’s story, survive, living by ones and twos in the chinks of the world machine (Tiptree Jr, 1973).

Power within the Counselling Relationship

The level at which we can work most directly with both the positive and negative dimensions of power is, of course, that of the counselling relationship itself. As noted above, the notion of ‘empowerment’ keys into the positive side of power but we must also examine its damaging potential. There are, no doubt, those who enter our profession with the intention to exploit. Most of us are inspired by more worthy motives and it is painful to confront our own potential as agents of oppression. Our emphasis on facilitation, personal choice and responsibility along with a general antipathy to forms of ‘helping’ which disempower, by failing to encourage ‘self-determination’, can obscure the power which we undoubtedly possess as counsellors. Nevertheless, the very process of professionalisation, in which we are vigorously engaged, is one which enhances our own power in relation to the people with whom we work. The recognition of professional power and its potential for abuse is manifested in such things as the development of codes of ethics and practice and demands for regulation. However, it is difficult to establish clear criteria for the application of requirements to set and monitor boundaries between counselling and other relationships and to refrain from financial, sexual and emotional exploitation. It is consequently difficult to distinguish clearly abuses of power. The issues are as complex here as at other levels and for the same reasons.

In addressing issues of sexual exploitation, Janice Russell draws attention to the dynamics of power relationships. Power is not a static commodity, it is ascribed as well as taken and may vary from situation to situation:

... many clients allow therapists to have power over them, some therapists exercise a power over a client, and some abuse power in relation to their clients. (Russell, 1993: 77)

She usefully distinguishes ‘authority’, ‘influence’ and ‘force’ as dimensions of power and discusses the ways in which authority and influence, as structural aspects of the professional relationship, may contribute to a therapist’s conscious or unconscious capacity to exploit. Authority and influence combine with the degree of trust, invested by clients in counselling relationships, to produce an imbalance of power so great that the egalitarian intentions of the contract may seem impossible to fulfil. Indeed, Masson (1988) has argued that the power invested in therapeutic relationships is such that they are inherently exploitative. Of course, I have a clear interest in disputing this claim. I do, however, believe that we have a responsibility, as individual practitioners and as a professional body, to raise our awareness of the power dynamics of the counselling relationship and to improve our codes of ethics and practice and complaints procedures. This will not be an easy task but one important contribution that we have already made in this area is to insist, against the BPS grain, on the requirement for personal counselling as a component of our new Diploma. We are, at least, committed to learning by putting ourselves on the receiving end, although our understanding of the process must affect our experience as clients, particularly in respect of the dynamics of power.

Towards Anti-oppressive Practice

Reading through the above I am left feeling daunted by the complexities of the task and my powerlessness in the face of the ‘world machine’. On the other hand, I am encouraged by the thought that even a broad statement of intent can be a powerful action. Moreover, despite my reflections on the limitations of counselling and its capacities to contribute to oppression, I do hold to the view that, enshrined in its egalitarian tradition and intent and the core conditions, is the belief that good practice is anti-oppressive practice and that, carefully thought through, counselling can offer the basis of a model of anti-oppressive practice to psychology more generally.

I have suggested a number of areas around which we might begin to develop a policy and outline guidelines for good practice:

• Explicitly recognising the structural and cultural contexts of practice;
• Explicitly recognising the oppressive dimensions of power relations at all levels of our society;
• Developing awareness of cultural norms embedded in concepts of self, models of development and humanistic values;
• Developing understanding of sociocultural processes and building this into our theories and practices e.g. by more informed listening at this level and resisting the tendency to personalise the political;
• Defining and acknowledging the limitations of counselling, particularly in its claims to effect change, whilst recognising its value in validating experience, affirming and encouraging;
• Developing understanding of power dynamics within the counselling relationship and addressing issues of power and the abuse of power by developing improved codes of ethics and practice and complaints procedures.

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Finkelstein, V. (1993) ‘From curing or caring to defining disabled people’, in J. Walmsley, J. Reynolds, P. Shakespeare and R. Woolfe (eds),  Health, Welfare and Practice: Reflecting on roles and relationships . London: Sage/Open University.

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• What is Anti-Oppressive Practice?

Anti-Oppressive Practice is both a theory and an approach that has a very broad scope. When defined as an approach to social issues, it focuses on how larger systems create and protect the unearned privilege and power that some groups have while at the same time creating, maintaining, and upholding difficult and unequitable conditions for other groups of people (Baines, 2017). These inequitable conditions created by larger systems lead to power imbalances between them. Anti-Oppressive Practice centres the experiences of equity-deserving groups in order to build structures and systems that work for everyone.

Anti-Oppressive Practice vs Anti-discriminatory Practice

Anti-discriminatory Practice is an approach which calls for people to be treated with respect and holds that people should not be treated badly or unfairly because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, impairment, class, religious belief or age. It also champions the implementation of policies that fight against discrimination (Okitikpi & Aymer, 2012).

Anti-Oppressive Practice recognizes the oppression that exists in our society/space and aims to mitigate the effects of oppression and eventually equalize the power imbalances that exist between people. It also recognizes that all forms of oppression are interconnected in some way, shape or form (Aquil et al., 2021).

Anti-Oppressive Practice primarily traces its roots back to the realm of social work where it has been applied at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels in order to do things like mitigate power imbalances between social workers and their clients as well as the power imbalance between their clients and society at large. As it is a broad concept, Anti-Oppressive Practice draws on several different disciplines in order to deepen our understanding of the world and enable us to think more critically. These disciplines include areas like anti-racism, decolonization theory, feminism, queer theory and disability justice among others. Anti-Oppressive Practice strives to use these disciplines to give people the tools needed to better understand how power and privilege work within society at all different levels (Aqil et al., 2021). It also supports the development and facilitation of programs and practices that can shift our societal dynamics in ways that decrease and eliminate oppression (Aqil et al., 2021). Like many theories, Anti-Oppressive Practice is one that is continually evolving. In as such, it is a theory that requires continuous learning and engagement.

Equity deserving groups

Equity deserving groups are communities that identify barriers to equal access, opportunities, and resources due to disadvantage and discrimination, and actively seek social justice and reparation. This marginalization could be created by attitudinal, historic, social, and environmental barriers based on characteristics that are not limited to sex, age, ethnicity, disability, economic status, gender, gender expression, nationality, race, sexual orientation, and creed.

Oppression works at three interacting levels within our society – structural, cultural and personal (Scammell, 2016).

Sources: Baines, 2017; Scammel, 2016.

Anti-Oppressive Practice also aims to help those who engage in it to improve their skills in critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is the combination of critical action and reflection (Aqil et al., 2021). It requires that we step back and think about our practices or policies and ask probing questions about how they impact those around us and those we work with and then act on the conclusions of these thoughts in tangible ways (Department of Education and Training – Victoria, 2007). Through this sort of practice, we see changes occur not just in systems, but within individuals as well.

Microaggressions

Microaggressions are everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups (Nadal in Limbong, 2020). Although these actions are labeled as being micro, they can have an extensive impact on a person’s life and can happen towards any equity deserving group.

Anti-Oppressive Practice - Part 1

• How Does Anti-Oppressive Practice Intersect with Student Mental Health?
• Why Should We Be Using Anti-Oppressive Practices to Support Student Mental Health on Campus?
• Some Helpful Terms in Anti-Oppressive Practice
• Contributors
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Reflective Essay on Discrimination and Anti-Oppressive Practices

Added on   2022-12-09

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