The spirit and substance of community psychology: Reflections

Abstract

PREFACEI grew up on a rural dairy farm in upstate New York. After completing my BA in anthropology at Cornell University, and an MA and PhD in rehabilitation at Syracuse, I began working with people in a range of activities that has been marvelous. I have worked with people who were unemployed, intellectually handicapped, physically impaired, and emotionally disturbed. I have worked with people caught up in the drug scene, those relegated to prisons, and those whose lives were poverty-stricken. I have been a researcher, community activist, program designer, program director, and writer. Minors in psychology and other study led me to licensure, and registration in New Zealand as a psychologist. Postdoctoral study at Duke Medical Center's Depart ment of Psychiatry enabled my wife Janet and me to engage in fieldwork in a Mela- nesian culture, where I studied one of the classic "cargo cults." We have experienced the enriching albeit disorienting effects of crosscultural work, not just once in Melanesia, but twice, by going to work in New Zealand nearly 20 years ago. I have also had a neurological disability~Guillain Barre Syndrome!, and that personal experience has profoundly changed my views and priorities. Most recently, I have been busy absorbing ideas and information from the Internet.Three daughters and three grandchildren and a small walnut-tree farm, have given me cause to consider the future far more carefully in recent years. The result of this on-going life-long learning endeavor is that I find myself speaking out more and more about the confluence of the population increases, the global environmental decline, and the emergence of a narcissistic elite seemingly unwilling and unable to include the human masses in the global society. I believe we are heading towards both environmental and social collapse, unless strong action is taken immediately.Consequently, I look to community psychology and related disciplines, and to people generally, to wake up, to become aware of our precarious situation, and to move rapidly and firmly to face and deal with the hard issues. Among these are an unsustainable population and population increase, environmental destruction, the rich-poor gap, the decline of easy energy sources, the disparities in political and military power, vested interest groups, the marginalization and devaluation of millions of people, and the emergence of technology that could all too easily, devastate us. It seems to me that community psychologists could now, like the early pioneers in this field, rally those in related fields to look at our situation, then use their expertise to bring about needed social and political changes. No other discipline has the same potential and capability, based on accomplishments already made and the spirit already demonstrated by the pioneers. These strengths include the ability to empower, to use the prevention paradigms, and to build social supports and networks.I acknowledge many intellectual exchanges I have been privileged to hold with my community psychology stude...

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