A Publication of the Society for Community Research and Action

American Journal of Community Psychology, 2016

The 50th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting, The Consultation Center at Yale, that was formed in response to the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the 1965 Swampscott Conference. The Center has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training for 39 of the 50 years since Swampscott. Its creation and existence over this period offers an opportunity for reflection on the types of settings needed to sustain the field into the future. The 50 th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting that has existed for 39 of those 50 years: The Consultation Center at Yale. The Center was formed in the crucible of the 1960s that resulted in the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the Swampscott Conference, and has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training ever since. Its creation as a setting and sustained existence over this period provides those of us at the Center a unique opportunity for reflecting on the future of the field, and the types of settings needed to sustain it. Since its inception in 1976, the Center has been a collaborative endeavor of three entitiesthe Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine; the Connecticut Mental Health Center, a state-funded community mental health center; and The Consultation Center, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization. The mission of the Center is to promote health and wellness, prevent mental health and substance abuse problems, and advance equity and social justice (www.consultationcenter.yale.edu). With eleven full-time psychology faculty in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, the Center serves as a multidisciplinary training site for psychology pre-doctoral interns and postdoctoral fellows as well as master's students in social work, nursing, education, divinity, and public health (Tebes, Kaufman & Chinman, 2002). A hallmark of the Center's work is close collaboration with community stakeholders to effect social change.

The course will emphasize orienting frameworks and historical discourse regarding problems in living and social intervention within the field of community psychology. Broadly speaking, this course will explore ecological and social factors related to human behavior and social intervention. Concepts from community, organizational, and social psychology will be explored as they relate to understanding and addressing problems in living. This course will emphasize multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual, community) and intervention (e.g., individual, organizational, and systems change). Finally, this course will explore the methods, practice, and ethics of community-based research and social intervention.

American journal of community psychology, 2002

What a genuine pleasure to be celebrating Rhona. Many of you think of Rhona's professional life as beginning in 1973 when she joined the faculty at Berkeley. However, there is always a "before the beginning," and my task is to focus on that time. I met Rhona at Yale in 1968 when she began her career as a graduate student and I as a new faculty member. Those years were special and formative for both of us. As she described it recently: "A heady time-the best time! And I am still mourning its passing." We were both enamored of Seymour Sarason and the learning environment known as the Psycho-Educational Clinic that he had created. Rhona was intense, meticulous in dress and manner, caring and exceptionally intelligent, although at times, prone to embarrassment and easily flustered by off-color comments. Her goal was to understand and change the environment of schools as a way of enhancing the well-being of children. She met regularly with Seymour and was strongly influenced by his expansive creation of settings overview and his "piercing insights." Working on school environments with Ed Trickett, she focused on diversity issues and the ecological perspective. She was supervised in the field by Kate McGraw, our resident school action guru, and Ira Goldenberg, our resident agitator. Both Kate and Ira helped her to understand how schools work and how decision-making is actually accomplished. Terry Saunders,

American Journal of Community Psychology, 2005

Following a developmental analogy, community psychology may be experiencing a "mid-life crisis" as it enters "middle age." The field needs to determine where to go from here. This paper argues that the field should attempt to expand. Expansion can best be accomplished by celebrating the diversity of orientations within the field (e.g., those emphasizing prevention, empowerment, and the ecological perspective) and the wide range of human problems of interest to community psychologists. To promote expansion of the field, community psychologists need to seek out relationships with diverse groups, such as the international community, those working in applied settings, ethnic minorities, and students and early-career professionals.

American Journal of Community Psychology, 2005

Journal of Community Psychology, 2008

Forty years since the seminal Swampscott Conference, the principles of community psychology transcend multiple areas of action and research, as well as international boundaries. The extensive development of community psychology offers an opportunity to examine from where the field has come and where it is going. Yet, a systematic approach to creating a history of community psychology is required to avoid distorting or excluding the voices of its diverse members. This special issue provides eight articles that highlight the importance of a pluralistic approach to historical analysis of the field. Of particular importance is the recognition of often-underemphasized members of community psychology, including the important role of women, ethnic minorities, applied community psychologists, and international influences on the field.

American journal of community psychology, 1999

American Journal of Community Psychology, 1988

Join me in my flux capacitor; it makes time travel possible. Let's go back just over two decades. Date: May 4-8, 1965; Place: Swampscott, Massachusetts; Event: the Conference on Education of Psychologists for Community Mental Health. What happened there? Quoting directly from the conference proceedings, A deep stirring and metamorphosis was seen as being in process. The conference participants, while holding diverse views on how to interpret these changes, decided to expand the conference mandate and move toward the conception of a new field tentatively labeled "Community Psychology." (Bennett et al., 1966, p. 4) The diverse views that were noted at the conference have continued throughout the short history of Community Psychology and serve as a sign of the discipline's ultimate vitality. For too many, the deep stirrings have become quiescent. But, 1 sense the reemergence of these stirrings on a larger ~Presidential address presented to the Division of Community Psychology at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in New York, NY, August 30, 1987. I wish to express my appreciation to the many former graduate students and my friend and colleague, Julian Rappaport, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who over the last 15 years, helped me develop the seeds of many of the ideas expressed in this address (see, for example, Seidman & Rappaport, 1979). During 1987, the students in my graduate seminar on Intervention and Social Change, both at New York University and the University of Hawaii, gave me substantial assistance in clarifying these evolving notions. Finally, I am indebted to Tracey A. Revenson who labored over multiple iterations of this manuscript enabling me to crystallize these ideas in a more compelling and understandable fashion.

The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology

for The Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Psychology] 1 The Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Psychology Chapter 28: Community Psychology