Introduction

The chapter outlines the case for persistent and pervasive environmental disadvantage resulting in kinds of suffering which have previously gone unrecognised in the clinical literature. In attempting to adequately account for this kind of suffering, the chapter proposes that the customary priority of psychological over social explanation needs to be periodically reversed. This move makes necessary a revision to the theory of the Parent ego-state. The chapter also recommends a complimentary second inversion in moving clinical attention away from the Child ego-state towards the mature psychological structure of the Parent and Adult ego-states to better account for crucial deficits and failures in later socialisation. The second part of the chapter proposes that the development of a social and political identity accompany the acquisition of necessary outsight into the social origin of distress. Departing somewhat from the critical psychotherapy tradition which often recommends the introduction of pre-determined political conclusions into the therapy process, the chapter suggests instead that therapy should simply seek to create the conditions under which various kinds of fully realised political identities might emerge.