Hip-Hop Psychology as a Global, Experiential, and Expressive Approach to Psychotherapy and Medicine

• In Event: Roundtable Session 100
  In Roundtable Session: Remaking Hip-Hop-Based Education: From a Source for Social Reproduction to a Pedagogy of Liberation

Abstract

Hip Hop Psychology (HHP) is a school of philosophical inquiry which seeks to use the artistic components of Hip Hop (movement and kinesthetics, visual art, spirituality, emceeing and verbal art, and music production) as a means to provide a culturally sensitive, multi-linguistic way of expressing in a therapeutic or medical context.

HHP is also praxis – a complex cyclical activity involving theory, application, evaluation, reflection and further theory which builds upon the metanarrative of Hip Hop, as the catalyst for a renaissance of emotional expression and transformative social change, in order to bridge gaps, pursue humanization and diplomatically work towards conflict transformation by using the best of capitalism and socialism to diminish power differentials and pursue a path towards emancipatory therapy and liberating education in order to achieve a dialectic or reconciliation.

Hip Hop Psychology (HHP) as praxis builds upon the metanarrative of hip hop, and acts as a catalyst for a renaissance of emotional expression and transformative social change by fostering the next generation of global urban intellectuals to develop expressive acumen in order to critique and transform social inequity. By utilizing theoretical traditions of critical psychology and Freirean critical pedagogy, we seek to complicate notions of pathology within educational settings focusing on non-polemic intricacies of individuals and communities in order to understand and utilize educational spaces as therapeutic spaces. We build upon case studies, literature reviews, and content analyses, in order to propose a new theory of education reform termed, Hip Hop Psychology Liberatory Education (HHPLE), a culturally competent framework, which can be used by counselors and educators alike in order to provide therapeutic and liberatory educational services.

Authors

• Lauren M. Gardner, The Graduate Center at the CUNY

• Debangshu Roychoudhury, CUNY