Drawing on the writings of diverse authors, including Jean Baker Miller, Bell Hooks, Mary Daly, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ignacio Martin-Baro, as well as on women's experiences, this book aims to develop a 'liberation psychology'; which would aid in transforming the damaging psychological patterns associated with oppression and taking action to bring about social change. The book makes systematic links between social conditions and psychological patterns, and identifies processes such as building strengths, cultivating creativity, and developing solidarity.

Drawing on the writings of diverse authors, including Jean Baker Miller, bell hooks, Mary Daly, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ignacio Martin-Baro, as well as on women's experiences, this book provides a new exploration of the feminist phrase "the personal is political." The book describes patterns associated with oppression such as sense of inferiority, self-doubt, fear, anger, shame, problems in relationships and difficulties with direct action. These are linked systematically to social conditions associated with oppression in a "cycle of oppression."

The first edition of this book was a pioneering work in the newly emerging field of liberation psychology, which is now making its mark in many areas related to psychology and social justice. This revised and updated edition retains the argument and structure of the original edition, charting a journey from the personal to the political. The book draws on foundation writers in feminism and postcolonialism such as Frantz Fanon, Jean Baker Miller and Ignacio Martin Baro, on research and experience in the Irish context, and on the latest international developments in liberation psychology, feminist psychology, critical and community psychology. It provides a structural analysis of oppression that recognizes diversity and globalization and that can be readily adapted to diverse contexts. Exploring psychological aspects of oppression in detail, it then sets out practices for liberation at the personal, interpersonal and political levels.