consciousness-raising

American  

[kon-shuhs-nis-rey-zing] / ˈkɒn ʃəs nɪsˌreɪ zɪŋ /

noun

1. Psychology. a group-therapy technique in which the aim is to enhance the participants' awareness of their particular needs and goals as individuals or as a group.

2. any method for increasing interpersonal awareness or sensitivity by teaching people to experience a situation or point of view radically different from their own.

   The women's group has tried to change macho attitudes through consciousness-raising.

3. an act or instance of increasing the awareness of one's own or another's needs, behavior, attitudes, or problems.

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consciousness raising British  

noun

1. 1. the process of developing awareness in a person or group of a situation regarded as wrong or unjust, with the aim of producing active participation in changing it

   2. ( as modifier )

      a consciousness-raising group

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Etymology

Origin of consciousness-raising

An Americanism dating back to 1970–75

Example Sentences

“No other community on the face of the globe has given rise to half as many mystic, philosophical, psychological, occult, consciousness-raising, therapeutic and alternative creeds as 20th century L.A.,”

From Los Angeles Times

The play rewinds to the 1970s, to a local rec center in Ohio, where a few pioneering women with little in common, beyond the everyday sexism that has hemmed in their lives, form a consciousness-raising group.

From Los Angeles Times

But for most of the play Ms. Flood’s Lizzie is a character based on Ms. Wohl’s mother, who 50 years earlier started a consciousness-raising group for women in Ohio.

From The Wall Street Journal

In 1970s New York, as painting and sculpture gave way to a gold rush of conceptualism, environments, performance and politics, the Ohio-born Dennis, fresh from art school in Minnesota and Paris, tuned into consciousness-raising women’s groups and devoted her craft to unsettlingly frank resemblances of buildings.

From New York Times

In the most ironic of setbacks for a consciousness-raising pop star, Bono’s shot vocal cords left him unable to sing through much of the band’s set list.

From Los Angeles Times