ABSTRACT
This chapter examines points of overlap and tension between therapy and activism by posing a series of questions for reflection by practitioners. Assuming an activist stance from within a profession calls for a vigilance of insidious invitations to assume forms of purported expertise or neutrality—stances that ultimately contribute to the very injustices they may seek to address. The chapter offers a reminder that therapeutic practice always happens in larger contexts—economic, political, historic—which constitute the backdrop to all interactions between practitioners and the persons who consult them. The authors propose the situating of a collective ethics at the heart of all dialogic exchanges, oriented to seeking justice by attending to historical legacies and systemic inequities.
