Main description:

What transformation would happen if we could combine the best of liberal politics with psychology?

Awakening our Faith in the Future investigates the avenues for creating a new branch of psychology, a transformative political psychology. In the past, political psychology has focused directly on analysis and knowledge acquisition, rather than on interventions that transform self and culture. A transformative political psychology combines the best of traditional social science with the transformative intent of clinical psychology in order to create a new political culture.

Peter T. Dunlap suggests that while liberals focus intently outside of themselves on changing the world, those with psychological interests focus much more internally on changing themselves. In this book, he argues that by combining political liberalism and psychology, and encouraging psychologists to develop cultural learning practices based on ideas of self-knowledge, there is opportunity to transform our political culture.

Divided into five parts, this book explores:

stories of political destiny
questions of development
opportunities for political development
a speculative theory of cultural evolution
practices of a political psychologist.

This scholarly text uses personal experiences and the stories of progressive political leaders as pathways for addressing political problems, making it ideal reading for professionals and students in the fields of both politics and psychology as well as for activists interested in the future of liberalism.

Contents:

Part I: Stories of Destiny. The Liberal's Emotional Body Opens Our Faith in the Future. Consolidating the Felt-sense of the Future into the Capacity for Destiny. Stories of Destiny. Part II: Questions of Development. From Political to Psychological Liberalism: Freedom in Psychological Development. The Variety of Uses of the Idea of 'Development.' From Image to Institution. Part III: Opportunities for Political Development. Political Development and Emotion. The Rhythms of Political Development. Part IV: A Speculative Theory of Cultural Evolution. A Theory of Cultural Evolution and a New Story of Liberalism. A Theory of Cultural Evolution and the Advent of Psychological Liberalism. The Current Liberal Identity and the Emergence of the Psychological Citizen. Part V: Practices of a Political Psychologist. Imagining a Transformative Political Psychologist and a Psychological Citizen. Attending to the Prejudices of Liberalism. Deepening the Conceptual Frame for a Public-psychological Liberalism.