Emancipatory Brief Therapy—Liberating Self from Oppression within and without.
EBT is a treatment approach designed to help persons free themselves psychologically and behaviorally from social, political, or relational systems that undermine their well-being, compromise their integrity, diminish their potential, and/or leave them stuck in pathological states of learned helplessness and unwitting cooperation with oppression, subtle or blatant. Although benefiting from time-tested and cross-cultural therapeutic approaches for changing human behavior, this approach stands in contrast to the established Euro-American approaches that, at best, ignore or minimize the pervasiveness of oppression in interpersonal and social life and, at worse, justify or promote it in therapy and everyday living. Building on the seminal insights of Dr. Frantz Fanon and other critical thinkers, Emancipatory Brief Therapy rests on a conceptual model analyzing oppression in everyday living. It selects foci and sequences of self-liberating action suitable to each person’s goals and life situation. The approach has individual, family, group, and public health applications. Cognizant of the well-documented alienation and high dropout rates of the non-European populations from Eurocentric treatment modalities, EBT is designed to be relevant, effective, and brief in number and length of sessions, leaving options for subsequent booster or consulting sessions.
Prof. Hussein Bulhan
Professor Hussein A. Bulhan is a graduate of Boston University’s Clinical Psychology Program and Harvard University School of Public Health. While serving at Boston University Medical Center and the Boston City Hospital, he taught at Boston University’s Clinical Psychology Program for 12 years. Still, he resigned after earning tenure in protest to its President’s racist and pro-Apartheid public declarations. He subsequently developed a thriving health consultant firm in the United States, later returning to his country of origin in the throes of war and war trauma to help promote peace and treatment of victims.