Testimony Therapy: Decolonizing Mental Health for Black Therapists and Clients

Summary

Centering Black culture and community for liberating, anti-racist therapeutic practice.

This innovative book lays out the journey of family therapist Makungu Akinyela in developing testimony therapy—a healing practice rooted in Black cultural traditions of testifying and storytelling. This book argues that traditional Eurocentric approaches to therapy often perpetuate colonial oppression in the lives of Black clients, and that decolonizing mental health requires centering African American cultural knowledge, history, and community.

Drawing from thinkers from the Black radical critical tradition like Frantz Fanon and W. E. B. Du Bois, Dr. Akinyela frames testimony therapy as a narrative practice grounded in Ubuntu (the African communal self) and the oral traditions of African diasporic peoples. Testimony Therapy maps out theory, practices, and supervision approaches that help therapists support clients in resisting internalized racism, reclaiming self-definition, and nurturing liberated Black identities. Ultimately, this work is a call for Black therapists and clients to engage therapy as cultural resistance—a pathway to repair our souls and build collective freedom beyond Eurocentric limitations.