Mary Watkins and Host Michael Lerner

Toward Psychologies of Liberation: Literal and Metaphorical Migrations in the Polycrisis

As increasing global economic disparities, violence, and climate change provoke a rising tide of forced migration, many countries and local communities are responding by building walls—literal and metaphorical—between citizens and newcomers. Join depth psychologist, professor, and author Mary Watkins in conversation with Host Michael Lerner about the cultural and community transformation happening in these times.

Mary Watkins, PhD

Mary was trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and was an early member of the archetypal/imaginal psychology movement. She has worked in a wide variety of clinical settings and with groups on issues of peace, diversity, social justice, reconciliation, immigration, and the envisioning of community and cultural transformation. She is the author of Waking DreamsInvisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons, co-author of Toward Psychologies of LiberationTalking with Young Children about Adoption, and Up Against the Wall:  Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border, and co-editor of Psychology and the Promotion of Peace.

Host Michael Lerner

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).