Community psychology and politics

If community psychology is to profit from its experience to develop an accurate and consistent theory of the effect on individuals of societal pressures, it will need to review reflexively its own position in relation to politics and empowerment. Despite an inspirational and at times positively grandiose rhetoric, psychologists are in fact in no particularly powerful position to influence the factors which cause personal distress, and should not, through a pretence of therapeutic potency, ‘psychologize’ the notion of ‘empowerment’ and reinforce therapeutic ideals which are in fact destructively normative. Without attempting to appropriate politics, community psychology can, however, offer an essentially scientific analysis of power and distress, which may have therapeutically ‘demystifying’ qualities as well as important political implications for the wider society.     

Community psychology in Thailand

Conclusion It appears that, though the medical model will predominate in the health field for a long time to come, community psychology is slowly taking shape and laying down its foundation in Thailand. Increasing numbers of health professionals are becoming aware of the paradigm shift and the limitations of the conventional approach.With gradually accumulated experiences and more formal training, which Thai psychologists will be able to avail themselves of in the future, the results should be a better quality of community programs, with more systematic evaluation, and better research. The goal would be to develop innovations utilizing existing resources within the unique Thai culture and environment. With such progress, Thai community psychologists will be able to improve their status from the present auxiliary role to equal partnership and move into much better positions to make significant contributions in the field of community psychology.     

Community psychology in Hong Kong: Past,present, and future

The expansion of mental health services during the 1960s from a single remote mental hospital to centers and clinics in mainstream communities fostered the development of community psychology in Hong Kong. Few psychologists were initially involved in the local community mental health movement, but its momentum resulted in increasing numbers of practitioner psychologists working in community-based service settings. Community psychology in Hong Kong today consists primarily of service delivery, but also includes applied research, community organization/consultation, and community education. Despite having many parallels with the American situation, key concepts underpinning the practice of community psychology in the Territory possess their own character as a reflection of nuances in the local scene. Prospects for the continued development of community psychology in Hong Kong appear favorable. Of special relevance is the field's potential contribution to a better understanding of the psychological phenomena associated with the Territory's sociopolitical transformation in 1997.     

Parallel lives: Community psychology in Latin America and the United States

Comparing the history of community psychology as it developed in the U.S. during the 1960s with the community psychology that developed 10 years later in Latin America, one is reminded of the title of Plutarch’s masterpice,Parallel Lives. Although there was very little contact or communication between the first community psychologists in these regions, very similar principles and orientations evolved. These similarities are particularly striking given the many ways in which the U.S. and Latin American contexts and histories differ. Since most readers are expected to be familiar with the history of community psychology as it developed in the U.S., this paper focuses primarily on the development of community psychology in Latin America in order to highlight areas of convergence as well as divergence from the U.S. experience. This paper is based on an address presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference, Society for Community Research and Action, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association, William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1993. The author acknowledges the valuable help received from J. R. Newbrough and from the referees in the revision of this paper.     

Community psychology values and the culture of graduate training: A self-study

In this self-study of an M.A. program in community psychology, the authors focused on evaluation of training goals related to the values of collaboration, empowerment, and diversity. Employing quantitative and qualitative methods, the evaluator, a thesis student in the program, cooperated with a stakeholder committee and other student, staff, and faculty members of the program to construct the methods and interpret the findings. Although the converging sources of data showed that the program was meeting its process goals to some extent, several key issues in the culture of training, such as the status of women, the psychological sense of community, and a supportive learning environment, needed improvement. The authors interpret the findings in terms of the impact of the university system and patriarchal norms on training in community psychology. This study is based on the first author's M.A. thesis, which the second author supervised. Judit Alcalde works in health promotion with the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Community Health Department. She presented an earlier version of this work at the conference of the Canadian Psychological Association, Calgary, Alberta, June 1991. We are grateful to the thesis committee members for their support and guidance, to our colleagues for their participation, to Paul Davock, and to the reviewers and editor for their helpful comments.     

Community psychology into the 1990s: Capitalizing opportunity and promoting innovation

Political and social changes during the last decade and their implications for community psychology research and practice are discussed. Shifting responsibility for social problems, economic considerations, and levels of citizen concern and involvement in community problem solution are considered stimuli for new opportunities for innovation and change. The discipline is challenged to renew efforts in the promotion of innovation and to develop and disseminate interventions that result in modification in the role relationships characterizing the ecology of social problems.     

Community psychology and injustice in the criminal justice system

In this short paper, we consider the partnership between psychology and the criminal justice system in Western societies and critically reflect on the notion of criminal justice as expressed in such a system. Focusing on how the criminal justice system operates in the UK, and in particular in Scotland, we consider the way the system criminalizes those who previously have been socially and economically disadvantaged. We ask whether community psychology has become negligent in the attention it brings to such a pernicious form of victim blaming and as such has shown insufficient critical engagement with systems that create social harm, and whether it is paying enough attention to the impact of a criminal justice system that is contributing to the creation of a more punitive, fractured and unjust society. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The midstream order deficit

The relative order of an auditory sequence can be more difficult to apprehend when it is presented repeatedly without pause (i.e., cycling) than when it is presented only once (Warren, Obusek, Farmer, & Warren, 1969). We find that this phenomenon, referred to as the midstream order deficit (MOD), can also occur with visual stimuli. The stimuli need not form separate perceptual "streams," and the effect can occur with presentation rates as slow as five items per second, even though the identification of individual letters is very accurate at this rate. However, if the first item of the sequence is visually very distinct from the preceding items, relative order reports can be as accurate in the cycling condition as in the single-presentation condition. Our results suggest that the MOD is not due to masking, attentional blink, repetition blindness, Reeves and Sperling's (1986) order illusion, memory limitations, or decision criteria. The MOD may reflect an attentional cost to the initiation of order encoding, which is distinct from the allocation of attention is required in order to detect and identify individual items. To initiate order encoding successfully, one's attention must be set for, or captured by, an initial salient event.     

Health psychology and clinical psychology: a comparison through content analysis.

Extension of a previous analysis of articles published in two journals representative of health psychology and two in health education showed some similarities and differences. The present analysis of 100 papers from two journals in health psychology and 495 from two in clinical psychology clearly shows health as a subspecialty of clinical psychology.