Chapter 6: Psychosocial Accompaniment

Summary of Chapter:

Chapter six will focus on describing alternative methodologies for research utilizing the value of psychosocial accompaniment, or actively engaging with and building/strengthening relationships with community members.^[1] We will describe the process of intentional unlearning, relearning in community, and engagement in socially responsive and responsible research that can produce social change. We will highlight how to share and negotiate power with communities in research design and methodology, rather than taking a power-over, control-focused approach in which researchers make decisions unilaterally, set the terms of participation, and prioritize their agendas. By shifting toward shared decision-making and collaboration, research can recenter the voices, lived experiences, and concerns of those on the margins.

You will engage in activities such as proposing psychosocial accompaniment-focused projects and documenting their communities through art, videos, graphic novels, and more. You can also reimagine and redesign assessment tools from a decolonizing and liberatory perspective. You will use a critical lens to explore what obstacles exist in attempting to engage in psychosocial accompaniment, as well as the benefits of this approach.

Learning Objectives:

• Acquire knowledge of contextual influences on human behavior and diversity of perspectives, including those related to race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, nationality, and culture.
• Engage in critical reflection on research methodology
• Increase understanding of community-focused research

Create an Embodiment Practice and Affirmation:

This workbook may evoke a variety of thoughts and emotions. You likely already have strategies that help you manage these experiences. To support you further, we offer an embodiment practice designed to help you stay grounded, be present with the material, and cope with any thoughts or feelings that arise.

Affirmations are statements that we can create or find and say to ourselves. Affirmations can shift our perspectives, help us focus on our strengths and hopes, and encourage us to think about what we want to be present in our lives. Repeating these deliberate thought processes and affirmations can make it easier to have these thoughts in the future.

Steps on how to write affirmations from: How to Effectively Write Affirmations and Practice Them + Examples

1. Start with “I am”
2. Use the present continuous tense
3. Create a statement that connects to what you want to work on or what your goals are
4. Repeat them

Examples for student life:

1. My mind’s ability to learn and remember is increasing every day.
2. I make a positive impact on other students’ lives.
3. It’s okay not to know everything. I can always learn.
4. I am building my future.
5. I can change what needs to be changed.
6. I am worthy of deep connections.
7. I am curious and open to learning from others.
8. I am not alone. I have a community, or I can build a community.

History/Context:

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”― Lilla Watson, Aboriginal Activist, Elder, and Artist.^[2]

(6.1) What is the purpose of research? Why do psychologists engage in research?

What can research look like when it occurs with the people who are the focus of research?

As psychology students, have you ever been asked to question the reasons behind the type of research we conduct? In textbooks, assignments, and class presentations, research is frequently cited to support various perspectives, and this research typically leans towards a quantitative approach. Instead of merely focusing on what the research investigates, have you considered why quantitative research is often prioritized? Why is the experimental method regarded as the gold standard? Why is there an emphasis on having research conducted by an objective researcher? Are you provided with detailed information about other research methods and what they have to offer?

In this section of the workbook, we will not only explore a different type of research but also take an alternate approach to understanding why we engage in research in the first place.

Franz Fanon, whom we have referenced in previous chapters and who we will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 7, stated that “we need a model, schemas, and examples” that allow people to engage in “projects and collaboration with others that strengthen man’s totality”.^[3] We argue that in more cases than we have now, we need to center models of research that support true collaboration between researchers and those they engage in research with, in a way that centers the complexity and totality of human experience. Liberation psychologists offer a response and a model in the form of psychosocial accompaniment.

“Accompaniment: to deviate from other pathways for a while (and then forever), to walk* with those on the margins, to be with them, to let go. Accompaniment is an idea so radical and difficult for us to comprehend that its power and significance reveal themselves to our Western and Northern minds only slowly and with great difficulty”.^[4]

Psychosocial accompaniment is about keeping company on a journey, and often a journey focused on healing the hardships, trauma, oppression, and social and economic deprivation that a group of people face. You do not have full control of where this journey is taking you or how you will proceed on the journey. Instead, this pathway depends on the needs, desires, wishes, and goals of those accompanied by those of the accompanier (researcher in this case). The accompanier can hold multiple roles: individual and community witness, solidarity in the context of social movements, provider of assistance, resources, and networking, researcher, facilitator of political education spaces, and more.^[5] The accompanier is in a relationship with the community they work with, and their part in this relationship “becomes close and continuous, involving listening, witnessing, and the offering of specific, flexible, and strategic support. They are clear that accompaniment demands our capacity and willingness to experience the pain and struggle of those we accompany, and that we need to refrain from strategizing on behalf of those accompanied, proposing solutions to their problems, instead of listening intently to their emergent strategies”.^[6]

This journey asks you to intentionally engage with the lived realities of those you are engaged with in research or clinical work, in a way that leads you to understand community members’ experiences and how they are impacted by connected systems of oppression. “Acompañamiento is being, doing, and feeling with and in the company of others”.^[7]  Instead of a distanced and unquestioningly hierarchical relationship of researcher (or expert) and research subject, the relationship between the two is one where power is named and examined, where there is mutual learning and respect, accountability is centered, and research is guided by the communities who are the focus of the research. The goal of this type of research is to “transgress and transform systems of power toward the fulfillment of liberation”.^[8] The goal of this form of research is social justice, social action, and social change.

To engage in psychosocial accompaniment, researchers need to engage in a process of decolonization. They need to make the shift from the role of an expert whose focus is more on professional elevation and success ^[9] to an accompanier who is more focused on the impact and meaning of their work. This involves the process of intentional unlearning and relearning in the community. And it is not easy work. As stated by Sara Ahmed (2009), “When we have to think strategically, we also have to accept our own complicity…If we are not exterior to the problem under investigation, we are the problem under investigation. Diversity work is messy, even dirty, work”.^[10]

Part of psychosocial accompaniment demands that the researcher look at themselves and at how they have contributed to the problem under investigation. What are our biases? Why and how have they developed? What will we do about them? How have we supported systems of oppression? There is a need to question what we have learned, unlearn it, and relearn. And we need to answer the questions with others; for accountability, for community support, for community wisdom. When engaging in accompaniment, researchers are asked to unlearn, to interrogate power dynamics and what is considered the “norm,” to replace conscious and unconscious oppressive beliefs that society provides us with about the inferiority of oppressed groups, with beliefs that reflect the complexity of the group’s experiences, which include strengths, resilience, and liberation.^[11] Researchers are then asked to relearn, in community, to create opportunities for counternarratives of different communities as to why a problem or issue exists and how to heal or transform the issue,^[12] to learn new ways of ethically engaging with knowledge, particularly knowledge led by Black and Indigenous people.

Psychosocial accompaniment involves:

• Directly engaging with, challenging, and changing power dynamics-letting go of complete control over the process
•  Holding a vision of how a situation could be different and using that vision to guide, inspire, and engage in action that creates a different social reality
• An understanding of how inequities, injustices, and oppressive dynamics contribute to a situation
• Research and consciousness-raising efforts that ensure that knowledge is available and accessible to the maximum number of people, and able to transform the oppressive status quo
• Listening to individual or community experiences, analyzing and understanding those experiences in a global context
• An interdependent understanding of both psychological and community health and well-being, holding and understanding  individual experiences in the context of social, cultural, economic, and historical contexts
• Witnessing and not moving away from suffering, particularly suffering that has been marginalized or excluded by larger society
• Interrogating and exploring the social identities, privileges, and power of the person doing the accompanying
• Sustained connection and attention “to the roots of suffering”.^[14]

An accompanier understands that they need to:

• Wait patiently to be invited to the community space, and then enter with humility
• Value working alongside other people in a mutually supportive, mutually respectful, and mutual learning environment
• Be transparent, honest, and vulnerable about their involvement, privileges, goals, motivations, how they will benefit from accompaniment, and what they are sharing
• Be someone who is a reliable presence in a community, someone who makes “consistent and respectful” visits or who lives with the community, who engages in dialogue, and focuses on the needs of the individuals and the community
• Engage in solidarity work and respect the strengths, cultural resources, and healing resources of individuals and the community without exploiting those resources
• Know how multiple forms of violence and oppression (individual, community, structural, direct, and indirect) disconnect people from themselves, one another, community, and spirit.
• Know “…how to resist leading when it is important that others do so”.^[15]
• Know that they, too, are being observed, studied, and reflected on
• Be willing to leave their comfort zone and “…discover things about herself she never imagined, or only feared. What privileges she enjoys are not invisible, far from it. By leaving her comfort zone, she may find that what she has taken for granted about herself and her life is thrown into question. She may feel shame, guilt, and embarrassment. She risks a rupture of her own certainties”.^[16]
• Bear witness, listen, and stay with suffering and also with strengths, beauty, and joy
• Be willing to stop their research if the community asks them to
• Be willing to leave if the community asks them to

Review key concepts 

(6.2) Have you ever heard of a research approach called “psychosocial accompaniment”? If so, where? If not, why do you think that is the case?

There are different ways of engaging in psychosocial accompaniment in psychological research. Participatory action research (PAR) is a well-documented method that aligns with the principles of psychosocial accompaniment. “Of all the forms of psychological research, participatory action research (PAR) is most resonant with the idea of accompaniment”.^[17] PAR is a form of psychological research where a researcher engages in a collaborative partnership with a group, organization, or community to provide support for the questions that the group is asking. Its goal is  “to balance interests, benefits and responsibilities between the [researchers and the community] concerned, through a commitment to equitable research partnership (World Health Organization Report)” The community holds the questions and the researcher provides their skillset to help mutually create the answers with the community-the researcher works in service of the community as opposed to the community serving the needs of the researcher. The researcher shares their knowledge, and community members are supported in creating research questions, facilitating interviews, engaging in data analysis, and identifying methods to disseminate findings. PAR values the power and authority of direct experience: “PAR values the expertise generated through experience, claiming that those who have been marginalised or harmed by current social relations have deep experiential knowledge of those systems, and deserve to own and lead initiatives to change them”.^[18]

Participatory research is a process that involves collaboration between researchers and the people researched or otherwise affected by the research. It endeavours “to balance interests, benefits, and responsibilities between the [researchers and the community] concerned, through a commitment to equitable research partnership.” CITATION?

In this collaboration, all partners are involved in the entire scope of the research project through the planning, implementation, data analysis, and reporting stages. Guidelines for participatory research need to reflect this sharing of leadership, responsibility, and decision-making for both the researchers and the Community.

The main goal of participatory research is “to empower research subjects to assume ownership of the research process and to use the results to improve their quality of life.”6 It is research for the purposes of reciprocal education, taking action, and/or effecting social change as a result of research questions that are relevant to the community.

We think the following can be used as an example of how to use the technique of PAR to engage in psychosocial accompaniment. Though we do not have the full details of the project, and if it aligns with all of the principles of psychosocial accompaniment, it is a powerful example that suggests the possibilities of psychosocial accompaniment. We invite you, the reader, to review this example and identify principles of psychosocial accompaniment.

The Young Women’s Empowerment Project’s (YWEP’s) project, entitled “Girls do what they have to do to survive,” is a community-directed example of engaging in PAR. The Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP) was created in 1998 by a group of young women and girls of color who were part of the sex trade and their allies. They came together as radical feminists and harm reductionists who created an activist organization to address the root causes of participation in the sex trade, give girls opportunities for leadership development, and speak to the dialogue about the sex trade. As stated in their report, “This research is a response to all of those researchers, doctors, government officials, social workers, therapists, journalists, foster care workers, and every other adult who said we were too messed up or that we needed to be saved from ourselves”.^[19] They continue to say, “Social justice for girls and young women in the sex trade means having the power to make all of the decisions about our bodies and lives without policing, punishment, or violence. Our community is often represented as a “problem” that needs to be solved, or we are portrayed as victims that need to be saved by someone else. We recognize that girls have knowledge and expertise in matters relating to our own lives that no one else will have. We are not the problem—we are the solution”.^[20] The young people involved in this project clearly state their ownership over the process, their goal of engaging in direct pushback against oppressive systems in support of social justice, creation of counter-narratives based on their lived experience, their ability to identify and solve their problems, and their strength and resilience.

The young people engaged in a multi-year project starting in 2006 with a grant, where they met an activist, researcher, and trainer who taught them participatory action research methods. They identified 3 questions to find out more about harm reduction in their communities, who their allies were and were not, and how girls responded to other girls in leadership positions. They did a literature review, facilitated focus groups, and collected over 300 surveys from outreach they engaged in across Chicago and Illinois. The findings they gained from this process led to the development of their “first youth developed, led, and analyzed research project”,^[21], which then led to the final report. As a collective, they identified their learning questions after months of meetings, they took another 6 months to talk through their research ideas, and then they started to collect data via focus groups and narrative data from outreach workers. Young girls who were part of the organization collected and coded important, but hard-to-hear data. As such, YWEP decided that they would intentionally check in with data collectors, hold sister and healing circles, take breaks, and use aromatherapy to support their resiliency and strength. Peer researchers, in consultation with their professional research consultant, then engaged in data analysis of the qualitative data collected. Peer researchers were composed of youth staff, youth membership, interns, and outreach workers. Through this process, they identified how girls in the sex trade experienced multiple forms of violence and how they resisted it at both individual and institutional levels. They highlighted the girls’ resilience, their harm reduction strategies, and the direct actions they took to support themselves. They also noted the overlap between the experiences of girls in the sex trade and those of poor women more broadly. And they wrote their report: Girls do what they have to do to survive: Illuminating methods used by girls in the sex trade and street economy to fight back and heal. YWEP also identified how they will be using the findings from their report to distribute a toolkit to other girls in the sex trade, hold a formal press release, launch a social justice campaign, train outreach workers in women’s and trans health, create further connections with allies, and address violence and police misconduct.

Another example of psychosocial accompaniment comes from psychologists from Colombia^[23][24]. They called themselves Social Bonds and Peace Culture. These social, political, and clinical psychologists from the Pontifical Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia, have provided support to people who were displaced from the countryside to the capital by paramilitary forces and experienced multiple forms of violence and the murder of family members. These psychologists left the halls of the university to work directly with the people they were accompanying. They learned new skills and searched for resources they did not originally know much about. In their writing about their work, the psychologists who engaged in psychosocial accompaniment describe their desire to make concrete their understanding of a commitment to social change by developing daily practices of supporting those they accompany. With the community, they collected oral histories, co-created support groups, and valued community resources, creating relationships of trust amongst the groups. The participants also clearly identified another area where they most wanted psychosocial accompaniment-families wanted public records to reflect that the people they loved were falsely assumed to be guerrillas. They also wanted to know where the bodies of their family members were so they could be properly buried. Many in the field of psychology might have said, “That’s not my job; I am here to provide emotional support.” However, in the spirit of accompaniment, these psychologists learned how to effectively engage with judicial and public authorities to meet the needs of those they were accompanying. They believed, and acted on the belief that true accompaniment meant centering the desires of those they accompany and that recovery from suffering needs to encompass systemic changes in the social, economic, and political aspects of a country. These psychologists have been continuing their work to create “cultures of
peace in Colombia”.^[25]

(6.3) What possible principles of psychosocial accompaniment did you find in the above example?

A research technique that can also be used to support psychosocial accompaniment is Photovoice. Photovoice is a research technique or tool that has been used in a range of research approaches, including PAR. Utilizing photovoice does not automatically mean one is engaging in PAR; however, if you stay with the principles of PAR, such as addressing power (who has it, who does not, and how the community should hold the power along the entire research process) and community engagement, Photovoice can be a helpful tool. Photovoice uses photo-journaling to reflect lived experiences. In a photovoice project, community members are given cameras, and people utilize photos they take to document both the strengths and concerns of the communities they are a part of. These visuals and accompanying descriptions can be used as vehicles to convey their viewpoints and demands to policymakers. They can also be used to discuss aspects of the community with groups of people, in a way that promotes sharing of knowledge, critical thinking, and critical dialogue.^[26] The steps for engaging in a Photovoice project can be found on the Photovoice website.

An example of Photovoice comes from college students at the University of Nebraska Omaha: “Beyond Words: Using Photovoice to Explore College Student Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” As noted in the article about the exhibit, research has been conducted on students returning to campuses after nearly a year of remote learning. However, most of the research does not incorporate the perspective of students. In this case, photovoice offered an opportunity for nine undergraduate college students to take photographs, write journal entries about their everyday life as they returned to campus, and present their experiences to the broader community.

In this example, Photovoice is used as a vital tool to develop narratives and counter-narratives based on individuals’ lived experiences. It helps to create meaning, inform, clarify, critically engage with one’s environment, and prioritize the knowledge of those who are most affected.

It can also be used to support social action and the shifting of policies. In Skoy & Werremeyer (2019), researchers reported on a study where 17 college students who experienced mental illness engaged in a photovoice project. They were given cameras and asked to take photographs of their lived realities in relation to living with mental illness as college students. Students participated in focus groups to discuss their photographs, and a qualitative analysis of these discussions identified key themes: experiences with campus services, the need for increased understanding and knowledge within the college community, support needs, and barriers to improvement. Students then presented these findings to campus stakeholders to inform and influence policies affecting students with mental health challenges.^[27]

(6.4) What are your reactions to the above example of photovoice? Looking at PAR as a tool, if you were to engage in a PAR project, what community issue would you like to explore? And/or what community strength would you like to document?

Assumptions in Psychological Research

We need psychosocial accompaniment because of many of the assumptions that influence research. Instead of solely focusing on research being neutral, objective, and finding “universal” phenomena, we need space to advocate for lived experience to be centered in research. Lived experience is subjective, complicated, and one person’s or group’s experience may not reflect another person’s. The difference between an objective and subjective view of research is also one of the differences between traditional psychological research and its emphasis on quantitative research and psychosocial accompaniment, and its emphasis on qualitative data and research. Quantitative, objective research is often described as the gold standard of psychological research. While qualitative research has something to offer, the over-focus on it reflects a colonization of the field*. Limitations of quantitative research have been well documented, particularly as it relates to the experiences of BIPOC folks. Quantitative research trends to essentialize groups of people. Researchers will use a label of a racialized group, such as “Black,” and assume that all people with that label share experiences that are uniform and fixed, minimizing the fact that Black can refer to African-Americans, Africans, Caribbeans, and more, groups with different cultural experiences. Once people are grouped into “Black”, people are often compared, often negatively, to the dominant culture.^[28] It is not to say that having people identify as Black is the issue or problem; it is to say that when research lacks acknowledgement of the complexity, nuances, and differences, then research can support stereotyping, rather than speaking to the real experience of people within the label.

Another assumption that impacts psychological research is the belief that research findings can be applied to populations globally. However, much of the quantitative research conducted often reflects the beliefs and perspectives of WEIRD societies, those that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. As a result, a significant portion of psychological studies relies on American undergraduate students as participants, which limits the generalizability of the research findings and tends to reflect assumptions primarily derived from WEIRD contexts, particularly within the United States.

A survey in 2008 found that although WEIRD societies represent 12% of the world, 96% of the subjects in psychology journals were from WEIRD societies. It has been noted why this overuse and overemphasis are problematic. It encourages the assumption that everyone, across all cultures, groups, societies, and nations,  shares “most fundamental cognitive and affective processes, and that findings from one population apply across the board”.^[29] This assumption does not bear out to be true as people from WEIRD societies have been found to score significantly differently on several important psychological dimensions and measures. The scores from WEIRD societies are often found at the extreme of global responses. WEIRD societies “tend to be more individualistic, independent, analytically-minded and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting strangers) while revealing less conformity, obedience, in-group loyalty and nepotism”.^[30] Even in WEIRD societies, there are considerable psychologically relevant differences and variations.^[31] For example, Americans and Canadians score high on engaging in analytic reasoning strategies (for example, separating objects from their context and using rules to explain and predict behavior)  to solve problems. Americans use analytic reasoning strategies more than European nations, while Asian nations tend to use holistic reasoning (for example, explaining behavior in terms of its context). Yet, most psychological research centers and emphasizes the use of analytic thinking^[32] to the degree that it is often considered the “right” way to explain and predict behavior. Psychosocial accompaniment offers us the opportunity to understand people’s experiences, motivations, needs, beliefs, and interactions from their voices and not from assumptions of WEIRD societies.

As many people experience, and research supports, culture influences our psychology-what we feel, think, and the actions we take. Muthukrishna et al. (2020) ask, “Just how psychologically different are the nations of the world compared with each other and with the over-scrutinized United States? Many hard drives have been filled with how China and Japan differ from the United States and Canada, but just how psychologically distant is the culture of China from Japan, the United States from Canada, or Azerbaijan from Zambia?” Muthukrishna et al. (2020) developed a measure to quantify differences across cultures and nations, a tool to measure cultural distance. They utilized a variety of psychological dimensions (For example, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions which include levels of individualism and interdependence,  Gelfand’s tightness–looseness which refers to range of strong societal norms and societal acceptance for deviance from norms, and Five factor model of personality, amongst others) to create a scale that gave a score for cultural distance or closeness. When looking across a variety of psychological dimensions, they had findings such as, “…Japan and Norway are similarly culturally distant from the United States… but are not necessarily similar to each other, just as Colombia and the United Kingdom are similarly geographically distant from the United States but nowhere near each other…many countries are close to neither the United States nor China (and are not necessarily culturally close to each other).”^[33] These findings support that culture matters-it influences how we experience the world. Even if there are generalizations to be made about the human experience, it does not make sense to base those generalizations on one group of people, with very particular experiences, and very particular ways of understanding the world. It is also very important to highlight that while the US is understood as WEIRD, it is common knowledge that the US is made up of immigrants and children of immigrants who do not necessarily reflect WEIRD values and assumptions.

Review Key Points

Continuing the critical analysis of quantitative methods in psychology, Watkins (2015) points out a common trend in social science research: it tends to “study down”, which is focusing on individuals and communities experiencing economic or social disadvantage, rather than studying “sideways” or “up” toward those who are materially privileged.^[34] This tendency reinforces existing power structures by centering the experiences of marginalized people without examining the roles of those in positions of advantage. In response, psychosocial accompaniment offers a way to deepen our understanding of why people think, feel, and behave as they do, not by reinforcing assumptions, but by challenging systems of oppression.

Many oppressed communities have voiced frustration that their struggles are often linked to the actions and lifestyles of more advantaged groups. They call for research that shifts focus toward those contributing to structural inequalities. By engaging in meaningful accompaniment of both privileged and marginalized groups, across dimensions like class, race, gender, language, and citizenship, we can gain a more complete understanding of the systems that create suffering, and how to transform them. To follow this line of thinking, we would need to better examine those who hold power. This calls for moving beyond hierarchical models of control, models that aim to “fix” people through the authority of an expert, and toward approaches that honor the lived knowledge and contributions of all individuals involved.

(6.5 ) Have you ever read psychological research that explicitly focuses on those who are economically or socially privileged? If so, what did you learn? If not, would you like to see this type of research? Why or why not?

While using participatory action research (PAR) to engage in psychosocial accompaniment offers many strengths, there are also limitations. Both psychosocial accompaniment and PAR present complications related to power dynamics, identities, and responsibilities. Lykes, Hershberg, and Brabeck (2011) highlight several of these challenges, noting the complexities that arise when navigating these factors in PAR projects. The university based researchers worked with Central American local immigrant groups in the northeast to document how the communities were impacted by a deportation policy. Their paper discusses how the goal of PAR is to center the voices of those who are marginalized and oppressed by society, but how this tool, in the hands of researchers with more relative power, can increase the vulnerability of an already vulnerable group of people. Like all forms of research, methods must be carefully chosen to protect and respect people and communities. Power dynamics exist within all research, and so researchers are responsible for understanding and managing the impact of their work.^[36]

(6.6) What are your reactions to what you read? What questions do you have?

Chapter Review Questions

The following activity consists of 7 multiple-choice questions designed to assess your understanding of key concepts discussed in this chapter.

• Click the option you believe is correct.

• After selecting your answer, the next question will automatically be displayed.