The Divergent Paths of Behavior Analysis and Psychology: Vive la Différence!

Twenty years ago I suggested that behavior analysts could effect a quiet and covert takeover of the American Psychological Association (APA). I gave as precedents the operation of similar initiatives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Darwinian-inspired X-Club, and the psychoanalytically-oriented Secret Ring. Though a conscientious program of working within established APA bylaws and rules, behavior analysts could ensure that behavior analysts were nominated for every significant elective position within the APA, and move to get their colleagues placed in appointive positions, such as journal editorships, review boards, and major committees. This would be one approach to remake psychology along behavioral lines, which was an early ambition of B. F. Skinner. The community of behavior analysts ignored my suggestion, and instead pursued the path of creating an independent discipline of practitioners, one with its own degree-granting programs, conventions, journals, and legal regulation. This effort has been immensely successful, although much critical work remains to be done. In retrospect, I was wrong to suggest changing psychology from within, and I have been delighted to witness the emergence of our new and independent field.     

Reflections on the Future of Community Psychology from the Generations after Swampscott: A Commentary and Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of U.S. community psychology in Swampscott, Massachusetts in 1965. The issue includes commentaries from a cross‐section of community psychologists educated in community psychology training programs established after Swampscott, in the 1970s or later. The contributors, who vary in their involvement in community‐engaged research, training, and practice, offer a diverse set of perspectives on the field. Each was asked to reflect on the future of community psychology based on their own training and experiences. After providing some background to the Swampscott Conference and the era in which it took place, I offer a few of my own reflections on community psychology's future growth and development. I then introduce the 15 commentaries that follow.     

Pastoral care is evangelism

Conclusion I consider the years which I spent in the study of pastoral psychology as the wedge which opened the door to genuine ministry for me. I doubt if I would have stayed in the pastorate without it. Furthermore, the disciplines of that study have been the basis for continued growth. I am conscious of the need to constantly develop deeper understandings of human nature, of the methods by which people can be helped, and to become more effective in using the resources of religion in meeting human need. I am aware of the importance of supervised examination of my own early experiences in order that I may understand their relationship to my pastoral and administrative work.Pastoral psychology has helped me acknowledge the relationship between my personal emotional handicaps and my vocational function. Furthermore, I am learning to remember that most religious learning is not conceptual but experimental. Faith is caught, not taught. If persons are to know the love of God, then they need a pastor whose maturity of faith, spirit of consecration, and integrity of life incarnate God's love.     

A future for community psychology practice

Community psychology has never really looked at its practice as a profession, though many of us as students came to the field with high expectations that we could learn how to make a difference in communities. This article discussed what I think about community psychology practice and how I have tried to approach it. I thank and recognize several people: Paul Florin for his colleagueship, friendship and his contributions to what I have done in the field; Tom Wolff for never letting me give up on the field; Bob Newbrough for his consistent support, encouragement and as my teacher; and Julian Rappaport for his comments on an earlier draft. I thank my colleagues at Rutgers for helping make the dream come true. This article is dedicated to students, past, present, and future.     

Theoretical Hubris and the Willingness To Be Radical: An Open Letter to James J. Gibson

J.J. Gibson's direct perception thesis is the cornerstone of ecological psychology. Not to understand this is not to understand ecological psychology. Beginning in the summer of 1968, when I first met Gibson, and after working with him for the next year at Cornell, I underwent a conversion crisis. I came to appreciate his thesis through a few philosophical insights that I here share with the reader through an open letter to Gibson, where I seek to illuminate the reasons for my conversion from being a Miller-Chomsky psycholinguist and a Piaget devotee to a radical Gibsonian. This conversion has influenced my work even until the present. Indeed, I am still working through its implications in all that I attempt. I share this intimate portrait of my relationship to Gibson and his profound ideas in hope that others who have struggled with his thesis might be helped along their way as I was.     

You Can Get Here From There

This paper is a review of my development from psychology intern and research assistant to the psychoanalytic tester and theoretician David Rapaport at the Menninger Clinic in the 1940s, through my career in psychological testing, my psychoanalytic training in the Western New England Institute, and my working successively at the Austen Riggs Center, Yale Department of Psychiatry, Yale Student Mental Health Center, Cornell Department of Psychiatry, and eventually private practice in New York City. During this period, I rose to the academic rank of Professor and the analytic position of Training Analyst. I have written extensively: first on testing, then more or less in turn on psychoanalytic ego psychology, action language for psychoanalysis, feminist issues, narrative in psychoanalysis, and the contemporary Kleinians of London. This memoir traces the intellectual continuity that characterizes these writings and my continuing development as a psycho-analyst—my first ambition and great love.     

Psychoanalysis at the Millennium: A Personal Odyssey

A review of my development from psychology intern and research assistant to the psychoanalytic tester and theoretician David Rapaport at the Menninger Clinic in the 1940s, through my career psychological testing and my psychoanalytic training in the Western New England Institute and my working successively at the Austen Riggs Center, Yale Department of Psychiatry, Yale Student Mental Health Center, Cornell Department of Psychiatry, and eventually private practice in New York City. During this period, I rose to the academic rank of Professor and the analytic position of Training Analyst. I have written extensively: first on testing, then more or less in turn on psychoanalytic ego psychology, action language for psychoanalysis, feminist issues, narrative in psychoanalysis, and the contemporary Kleinians of London. This memoir traces the intellectual continuity that characterizes these writings and my continuing development as a psychoanalyst—my first ambition and great love.     

Children's Resilience as Assets for Safe Schools

In this article I argue that employing positive psychology conceptions in research allows for a continuum of findings for educational psychology. I illustrate my contention by means of a participatory action research (PAR) survey-based case study in which methodological decisions were informed by an asset-focused resilience conceptual framework. First I provide a rationale, as well as contextual information for the article. Then I explicate asset-focused resilience as a conceptual framework. Subsequently, I present the methodological background of the PAR survey-based case study, after which I align the scope of the findings to the contention of my article. I conclude that the choice of a positive psychology theoretical stance enriched the scope of the findings.     

Computers, criminals, an eccentric billionaire, and APA: a brief autobiography

In this invited autobiographical account, I sum up what life has been like for me personally and professionally. For most of the first 50 years of my life, I lived in Alabama. During my years at the University of Alabama, my professional activities included developing a computer-based system to interpret the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943), managing a national and international continuing education program for psychologists, involvement in a class action suit that resulted in the deinstitutionalization of Alabama's mental hospitals, organizing a team of professionals to reclassify all of the inmates of Alabama's prison system, and conducting a psychological autopsy on Howard Hughes. I was the American Psychological Association (APA) president in 1988 and served from 1989 to 2003 as APA Chief Executive Officer. Since my time at APA, I have been engaged in work with international psychological organizations.     

This is Not a History Lesson; This is Agitation: A Call for a Methodology of Diffraction in US‐Based Community Psychology

Agitation, as deployed by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), occurs when imaginations and curiosities are piqued, and self‐interest is made visible. In this framework, agitation is a step in creating change. In this paper, I outline two agitations within US‐based community psychology. I then describe a third agitation that is underway; I add my voice and call for a methodology of diffraction as a contribution to critical reflexivity practices within US‐based community psychology. Consistent with the IAF framework, I do not provide solutions. I write this paper as a provocation to help us think imaginatively and creatively about our actions and future, so that we can consider the paradigm shifts needed to move into critical ways of understanding connection, responsibility, accountability, and creating change—of interest during Swampscott and today.     

Culture and self: An empirical assessment of Markus and Kitayama's theory of independent and interdependent self-construals

In this paper, I critically evaluate the logic underlying Markus and Kitayama's (1991) theory of independent and interdependent self-construals, and examine the evidence that directly tests its major assumptions. On the basis of my review of the studies they cite, and literature from three other sources, I conclude that the evidence severely challenges the validity of their theoretical framework for explaining observed national differences in psychological phenomena. I offer some ideas about alternative methodologies for research in this important area of psychology that may aid in developing and testing theories of culture and self in the future.     

The twelfth Bartlett memorial lecture: The role of single neurons in the psychology of perception

I feel deeply honoured by your invitation to give the Bartlett lecture, and am especially glad to do so in Holland, the home of so many distinguished psychologists of sensation and perception. And there is a third reason why it has given me much pleasure, for Sir Frederick Bartlett was one of those who had an important influence on the direction of my career some 40 years ago. I had to decide whether to spend my last year at Cambridge reading psychology or physiology, so I attended a short course of introductory lectures he gave in July. About half a dozen of us sat on upright wooden chairs circled around him as he sat in an armchair, smiling benignly. The first thing he did was to tell us to close our notebooks, for he was not going to say anything that would help us to pass any exams. And I believe the very last words of his last lecture were, “So you see it is all very difficult”. I was very glad he said that, for I had in fact found it all very heavy going: my brain seemed always to be lost in clouds of uncertainty when “remembering”, “thinking”, or “perceiving” were mentioned, because there was no conceptual framework for these processes except the words themselves and others spun around them. What I was looking for were the definable quantities of physics, chemistry and even physiology, these I could handle conceptually in their geometric and functional interactions, whereas I always find a purely verbal argument about abstractions difficult to follow and impossible to believe. So this lack of any nonverbal conceptual framework was very painful.

There was one phrase I think I recall him using that particularly aroused my interest-“the effort after meaning”; intuitively this seemed to be very important, but however much effort I made the meaning never quite emerged. I had almost decided that my mistrust of words made me unsuited to a career in psychology, but all the same I put my problem about “physiology or psychology” directly to Bartlett. After finding out that I was mainly interested in problems of sensation and perception, he said he thought that E. D. Adrian's research over the last 20 years had made more difference to that subject than any results obtained from within psychology itself.     

Phenomenology and Critical Social Psychology: Directions and Debates in Theory and Research

There has been significant growth in critical approaches to social psychology in recent years. Phenomenological, discursive and psychoanalytically informed perspectives, amongst others, have become increasingly popular alternatives to ‘mainstream’ cognitive social psychology. This paper describes the fundamental philosophy and methodology underpinning phenomenological psychology along with discussion of a number of key issues in qualitative research in social psychology. In particular, I discuss the role of interpretation, the turn to language and need for political engagement within critical social psychology. More recently, there has been a growth in phenomenologically informed narrative theories and methodologies and in this paper I introduce my own development of a critical narrative analysis. In the process I discuss some of the most pressing debates about research within the phenomenological tradition and provide rebuttals, solutions and possible future directions for phenomenological theory and research that may lead to yet greater recognition for this social psychological perspective.     

Teaching Clinical Psychology Trainees about Weight Bias

Abstract

As an assistant professor who teaches clinical psychology trainees about social aspects of behavior, I devote one week to the topic of weight bias. In this class, I rely on the research literature to challenge common myths about “obesity,” demonstrate the pervasiveness and harm of weight bias, and offer recommendations to trainees to apply to their own professional and personal lives. I encourage trainees to shift focus from weight and weight loss to health and well-being and to engage in self-reflection on the role of weight bias in their interactions with others. Here, I describe my weight bias seminar and outline common questions and my responses to them (e.g., Do you actually believe that “obese” people can be healthy?). Weight bias is a neglected topic in most clinical psychology training programs. Weight bias must be addressed in clinical psychology programs to produce culturally competent graduates who are aware of diversity issues.     

“That's Not Analytic”: Theory Pressure and “Chaotic Possibilities” in Analytic Training

Hoping to create my own analytic voice, I experienced complex pressure to conform to the venerated rules of American ego psychology. I could find myself looking over my shoulder, and my training could become saturated with received ideas. Using complex systems theory as a ground, I contrast the constricting pressure to conform that I experienced with three supervisors with the openness that I found with my fourth. I propose that analytic training is a nonlinear, complex developmental process that occurs in a space of “chaotic possibilities” (Glatzer-Levy, 2004)     

The past thirty years of emotion research: appraisal and beyond

ABSTRACT

For this Special Issue, I highlight the past and present importance of appraisal theory as well as the challenges to its status as a total theory of emotions from the other functions of emotions: associative learning, self-regulation and social communication. This theoretical view applies both to emotion research in general and the specific fields of my interest in the emotions of moral judgment and intergroup processes. Methodologically, developments in analyses of large and more naturally occurring data sets will give an opportunity to square psychology’s structural models of discrete emotions with the more complicated reality that exists. Both for the field and for individual researchers picking up the study of emotions, my advice is to pay special attention to measures, their assumptions and their context.     

Reflections on intersections between cognitive and social psychology: A personal exploration

I appreciate the opportunity offered by the editor to reflect on the relationship between cognitive and social psychology. This topic has interested me my entire professional life, because I was admitted to graduate school to study social psychology and then eventually migrated to cognitive psychology. The organization of this paper is as follows: I first relate my (somewhat puzzling) personal experiences that led me to wonder about relations between cognitive and social psychology. I suggest that, for many topics, the placement of a topic of study in one field or the other is arbitrary. Next I selectively review some common historical influences on the development of both fields, ones that have made them similar. Both grew from common seeds, which include Gestalt psychology as it became applied to a wider array of topics, experimental psychologists becoming interested in attitude change during and after World War II, and Bartlett's famous book on Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Next I review some research from my lab that picked up themes from Bartlett's work and that, in some aspects, combines cognitive and social approaches. I also discuss the issue of memory conformity or the social contagion of memory, and conclude with thoughts about how social and cognitive psychologists might collaborate on an exciting new arena, creating empirical studies of collective memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ethical significance of gratitude in Epicureanism

ABSTRACT

Many texts in the Epicurean tradition mention gratitude but do not explicitly explain its function in Epicurean ethics. I review passages that mention or discuss gratitude and ingratitude and consider what they have to say about its importance for a good Epicurean life. I argue that, for Epicureans, gratitude functions as something like a virtue, developed as a disposition of character through regular reflection and practice, that focuses attention on present goods, consolidates memories of past pleasures, and thus provides resources for facing the future confidently and joyfully. I also suggest that recognizing the role of gratitude in Epicureanism can provide a more expansive interpretation of an Epicurean life, one that includes both openness to variety and philanthropic concern. If my interpretation is right, Epicureans anticipate findings from recent positive psychology showing strong links between gratitude and happiness.     

Have PhD, will travel

This autobiography contains some of the clinical and research highlights of my career in the context of my personal odyssey and my appreciation of science as a potential check on political and economic forces in psychology. Typically, my research arose from clinical problems encountered at work and from my disinclination to rely on methods that lacked prior demonstrated validity for the type of problem and client in question. Otherwise, I feared my recommendations were no better than those based on common prejudices and biases, which I encountered throughout my work life as a dark-skinned, outspoken, non-Christian from the Bronx.