Forging a psychological solidarity: from the community mental health movement to Latinx life coaching in the South Bronx

The therapeutic modality of life coaching has been frequently associated with white middle and upper-middle classes and an attempt to align “the self” with neoliberal expectations. Drawing from archival work and virtual ethnographic fieldwork among a Latinx life coaching program and its participants during the COVID-19 pandemic, I consider an alternative form of life coaching that attracts women of color across classes and racial backgrounds. In this essay, foregrounding historical and contemporary politics of psychological care and wellness practices among Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx, I demonstrate the lingering influence of the 1970s community mental health movement on Latinx life coaching, a field that has experienced a monumental increase in the last two decades or so. I propose the concept of “psychological solidarity” to describe how this program’s participants have turned to Latinx life coaching modalities to articulate gendered perspectives on colonial subjectivity and sociality.