“where there is no vision, the people perish”
(proverb, 29:18)
Our future depends on cultivating a shared vision of our humanity. The clinical project focuses on healing values and is very effective within the confines of the clinic. Those of us who identify as ‘progressive’ focus on justice values, while emergent, they provoke retaliation and a hate-filled retreat into authoritarianism. Perhaps there is time to fight the good fight but war, the deterioration of democracy, and climate catastrophe warrant a heart-felt pause, breath, and our curiosity. Is there some third approach that brings healing and justice values together, attending to rather than provoking hatred?
A new type of psychocultural practitioner extends the scope of psychotherapeutic practice, bringing together healing and justice values by focusing on our shared becoming. This practitioner is learning to integrate group theory and practice with community engagement practices to cultivate a new type of community leadership. Such leadership focuses simultaneously on the inner work of healing and the outer work of justice, valuing difference without indulging it. It attends to and cultivates what we have in common. Human beings develop individually but, we can also engage in the practices that activate our group and political development.
