Oppression Psych, Resilience, and Social Work Practice

The Oppression Psychology of Frantz Fanon 

• recognize the significant differences in degrees and types of oppression experienced by clients 

• we must be cautious in how we think about the impact of oppression, because we might inadvertently ignore the significant strengths and resiliency demonstrated by oppressed clients and communities 

Internalized Negative Self-Images 

• Repeated exposure to oppression, subtle or direct, may lead vulnerable members of the oppressed group to internalize the negative self-images projected by the external oppressor, or the oppressor without. 

• oppressed people may develop a victim complex, viewing all actions and communications as further assaults or simply other indications of their victim status. This is an example of “adaptive paranoia” seen among the oppressed.  

Oppression Models and Inter- and Intracultural Practice 

• For the White worker with a client of color, the male worker with a female client, the straight worker with a gay or lesbian client, and so forth—what I refer to as intercultural practice 

• we work with people who are like us—what I call intracultural practice 

• It has been my observation that social work education focuses on intercultural practice and often ignores the even more difficult and often painful issues associated with intracultural practice. 

Indicators of Oppression 

• all situations of oppression violate one’s space, time, energy, mobility, bonding, and identity 

Resilience Theory and Research 

• Rak and Patterson (1996, p. 369) identified four major groupings of protective factors associated with the buffering hypothesis—that is, variables that may provide a buffer of protection against life events that affect at-risk children: 

  • The personal characteristics of the children (e.g., an ability from infancy on to gain others’ positive attention); 

  • Family conditions (e.g., focused nurturing during the first year of life and little prolonged separation from the preliminary caretaker); 

  • Supports in the environment (e.g., role models, such as teachers, school counselors, mental health workers, neighbors, and clergy); and 

  • Self-concept factors (e.g., the capacity to understand self and self-boundaries in relation to long-term family stressors such as psychological illness). 

Developmental Psychology Theory and Research 

researchers identified 201 vulnerable children (30 percent of the surviving children) as high risk if they encountered four or more risk factors by the age of 2 (severe perinatal stress, chronic poverty, uneducated parents, or troubled family environments marked by discord, divorce, parental alcoholism, or mental illness). Two-thirds of this group (129) developed serious learning or behavior problems by the age of 10 or had delinquency records, mental health problems, or pregnancies by the time they were 18. 

• They identified several constitutional factors as sources of resilience (e.g., high activity level, low degrees of excitability and distress, high degrees of sociability, ability to concentrate at school, problem-solving and reading skills, and effective use of their talents). They also identified the following environmental factors: 

  • Coming from families with four or fewer children; 

  • Spaces of two or more years between themselves and their next siblings; and 

  • The opportunity to establish a close bond with at least one caretaker who provided positive attention during the first years of life. 

• These resilient children were found to be “particularly adept at recruiting such surrogate parents when a biological parent was unavailable or incapacitated” (Werner, 1989, p. 108). These children were also able to use their network of neighbors, school friends and teachers, church groups, and so forth to provide emotional support in order to succeed “against the odds” 

Resilience and Life-Span Theory 

• developmental reserve capacity - Refers to an individual’s resources that can be activated or increased. 

• Life-span theory suggests that development throughout life is characterized by the joint occurrence of increases (gains), decreases (losses), and maintenance (stability) in adaptive capacity  

• Baseline reserve capacity is the individual’s current maximum performance potential with existing internal and external resources. 

• Plasticity can be both positive and negative 

• The life-span theory argues that, as reserve capacity increases, so does the potential for positive plasticity.