Writings for a Liberation Psychoanalysis: Politicizing the Unconscious from the Core of a Crumbling Empire

In Writings for a Liberation Psychoanalysis, Robert K. Beshara establishes a groundbreaking framework that links the Freudo-Lacanian tradition directly to transmodernity and decoloniality. Traditional psychoanalytic institutions have long been tethered to colonial logic, often pathologizing the marginalized rather than challenging the structures that oppress them, but Beshara shows how psychoanalysis can be a tool for liberation.

By re-thinking psychoanalysis from the Exterior perspective of the oppressed, Beshara argues that the radical seeds of liberation are extimate or already present within the praxis―waiting to be activated through ethical listening and free association. This work synthesizes the transformative insights of scholars such as Edward Said, Paulo Freire, and Enrique Dussel to develop a “Psychoanalysis of the Oppressed” or “Liberation Psychoanalysis.” More than just a theoretical intervention, this book offers a roadmap for liberation as an analectical materialist praxis―a way to theorize oppression and prefigure a concrete utopian horizon by politicizing the unconscious from within the core of a crumbling empire.

This book is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and professionals interested in psychoanalysis, liberation, and decoloniality. It would be particularly suitable for courses on Liberation Philosophy, Liberation Psychology, Decoloniality, Postcolonialism, and Radical Psychoanalysis.

Robert K. Beshara is the founder of the Critical Psychology website, www.criticalpsychology.org. In addition to being an Associate Professor of Psychology and Humanities at Northern New Mexico College, he is a psychoanalyst-in-formation with the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis. He is also the author or editor of numerous books, Decolonial Psychoanalysis: Towards Critical Islamophobia Studies (Routledge, 2019), Critical Psychology Praxis: Psychosocial Non-Alignment to Modernity/Coloniality (Routledge, 2021), and Radical Humanism: Decolonizing Perspectives in Critical Psychology (Routledge, 2026).