consciousness-raising

[ kon-shuhs-nis-rey-zing ]

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.

consciousness raising

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of consciousness-raising¹

An Americanism dating back to 1970–75

Example Sentences

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

It was very exciting to be there, and the series as it evolved through the difficult year of 1968 and into 1969 fit into my life; it was in its way educational and consciousness-raising.

From Los Angeles Times

Former Jezebel staffer Kate Dries, who penned the publication’s obituary earlier this month for the Los Angeles Times, likened the site to “consciousness-raising circles” that took root in second-wave feminist movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

From Los Angeles Times

In that piece about Cosmo I wrote that, “We can think of blogs like Feministing and Jezebel, then, like consciousness-raising circles: one hopes we reach a point where they’re no longer a necessary antidote to a flawed system, but simply a cohesive part of an improved landscape.”

From Los Angeles Times