Community Psychology in the United States: History

1
Community Psychology in the United States
History Future

• Prof. Douglas D. Perkins
• Community Research Action
• Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
• Director, Center for Community Studies
• d.perkins_at_vanderbilt.edu

2
INTRODUCTIONS EXERCISE

• 1. Introduce yourself
• 2. Where have you lived?
• 3. What do you feel is your "community?" How
  would you define it? (this is individually and
  subjectively defined there are no right or wrong
  answers)
• 4. What is your community's most pressing
  problem? (What are the problem's psychological or
  behavioral components?)
• 5. What are your communitys strengths or assets?

3
Definitions of Community Psychology

• the psychological study solution of community,
  social mental health problems
• OR
• the applied study of the relationship between
  social systems individual well-being in the
  community context

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Tenets or Themes of Community Psychology

• CP is both an applied social science vocation
• AND
• an analytical perspective.
• applicable to any field, career, or life in
  general

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Tenets or Themes of Community Psychology contd

• Also extremely central to CP an action
  orientation, i.e. social innovation, change,
  evaluation.
• "real world" utility of applied research (e.g.,
  program or policy evaluations) in community and
  organizational settings, not "ivory tower"
  laboratory
• praxis the process of translating an
  intellectual idea, theory, or lesson into the
  lived reality of practice, action, and
  experience.

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More Themes of Community Psychology

• CP acknowledges our humanity thus our values
  Positivism is dishonest in pretending to be
  value-free.
• CP challenges traditional modes of thought and
  authority healthy skepticism of established
  truths, the powerful, experts.

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Community Psychology helps you see the world
ecologically (as an interconnected system)

• CP person-environment fit change the setting to
  fit the person
• multiple levels of analysis intervention
• dynamic, naturalistic process

Complexity must match reality units interact
within and across levels
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The meaning of ecology and related concepts

• Bio-ecology, social ecology, human ecology study
  of organisms and groups in context of multi-level
  interdependent systems and their evolution over
  time
• Oikos (Greek) house
• Habitat the place or type of site where a plant
  or animal naturally or normally lives and grows
  (Websters)
• Ecosystem the complex of a community and its
  environment functioning as an ecological unit in
  nature
• Kurt Lewin "action research," Bf(P,E)
• Other ecological concepts
• behavior is nested in a series of concentric
  contexts
• a phenomenological (subjectively perceived)
  orientation
• person-environment "fit"
• reciprocal action between person environment
  (coping mechanisms)

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Bronfenbrenner (1996)

• Ontogenetic individual level of development

• Microsystem immediate social environment
  (family, classroom, peer group)
• Mesosystem relational links between microsystems
  (eg, work influence on personal life)

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Kelly's 4 ecological principles for planning
community interventions
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Levines (1969) 5 Ecological principles of
practice in community psychology

• A problem arises in a setting or in a situation
  factors in the situation cause, trigger,
  exacerbate and/or maintain the problem.
• A problem arises because the problem-resolving
  (i.e., adaptive) capacity of the social setting
  is blocked.
• To be effective, help has to be located
  strategically to the manifestation of the
  problem.
• The goals and values of the helping agent or
  service must be consistent with the goals and
  values of the setting.
• The form of help should have potential for being
  established on a systematic basis, using the
  natural resources of the setting, or through
  introducing resources which can become
  institutionalized as part of the setting.

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Ecological Research Methods Example (Perkins
Taylor, 1996, AJCP)

• Multiple Measures (sources of data) to
  cross-validate/triangulate
• Block Environmental Inventory
• Resident (or Organization Member or Leader)
  Survey
• Qualitative Methods (Open-ended interviews,
  Content Analysis)
• Archival data (e.g., organizational records,
  police crime reports)
• Census and Other Large Sample Surveys
• Focused on Context at Multiple Levels
• Individual
• Individual Relative to Group
• Aggregate truly contextual units (Organization,
  Community)
• Multilevel Analysis (eg, HLM, Contextual
  Analysis, GIS)
• Over Time
• Longitudinal designs, time series

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More Themes of Community Psychology

• 2nd-order change fundamental change in the
  systems structure, goals, or values.
• CP appreciates cultural diversity individual
  rights, freedom, justice, dignity.

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4 Key Community Psychology Concepts

• SPEC Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment,
• Changing Community Conditions
• Strengths
• individual community strengths competencies,
  not weaknesses, handicaps, pathology (medical
  model)

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4 Key Community Psychology Concepts

• SPEC Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment,
• Changing Community Conditions
• Prevention
• CP intervenes earlier in the problem development
  process to be both more effective more
  efficient
• crisis intervention -gt early detection
  intervention -gt primary prevention

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4 Key Community Psychology Concepts

• SPEC Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment,
• Changing Community Conditions
• Empowerment
• voice choice
• people participating in and taking control over
  the institutions that affect their lives
  professionals scientists as partners or
  collaborators, not experts.

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4 Key Community Psychology Concepts

• SPEC Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment,
• Changing Community Conditions
• Changing Community Conditions
• CP gets at root causes of problems by addressing
  the underlying community conditions
• Dohrenwend applied these ideas in a comprehensive
  stress intervention model (see Levine et al.
  Chapter 3)

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Exercise/DiscussionSplit into 4 groups

• Each group take a different SPEC concept
  Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment, Changing
  Community Conditions and brainstorm real or
  hypothetical examples of intervention strategies,
  programs, or policies that apply your concept.
  How is it/could it be implemented? What public
  /or private sector partners organizations,
  institutions, community groups should be
  involved? How?

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THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED
STATES

• The Limitations of Clinical, Behavioral, Social,
  Testing Psychology

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Historical Influences on the Development of
Community Psychology in the U.S.
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Community Psych as a Paradigm Shift

• "paradigm" theoretical or methodological model,
  or a conventionally accepted way of looking at,
  understanding, or doing things (Kuhn)
• "paradigm shifts" caused by faith, values,
  politics, esp. in social sciences human
  services

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Each group discuss what you know (or think you
know) about one of the following branches of
psychology

• clinical psychology/mental health care (study
  treatment of social, behavioral, emotional
  dysfunction)
• behaviorism/classical operant learning (study
  application of control of animal human behavior
  through extrinsic reinforcersrewards
  punishment)
• social psychology (study of interpersonal group
  perceptions, behavioral interactions, and
  attitudes)
• psychometrics/testing psychology (measurement of
  human intelligence, aptitudes, personality,
  performance)
• Examples of historical current research topics
  and practices?
• What does it have to offer a psychology dedicated
  to solving the problems promoting the strengths
  of people in communities?
• What are its problems limitations both in
  general and in its implications for/applications
  to community psychology?

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Problems with behavior theory and research for
Community Psychology

• Operant psychology - based on lab study of
  single, nonhuman organisms
• fails to address power relationships, operation
  of social institutions
• power to control both positive negative
  reinforcers open to abuse
• behaviorism fails to allow for individual
  cultural diversity,
• community, institutional, or societal
  behaviorism world of conformity docility,
  technology without values (Orwell's 1984 rather
  than Skinner's Walden II)

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Problems with behavior theory and research for
Community Psychology 2

• behaviorists have not shown how human or animal
  behavior occurs naturally (anthropology,
  ethology), only how it can be manipulated in a
  laboratory, workplace, or similarly controlled
  institutional setting
• behaviorism unable to account for creativity
  culturally-specific behavior (ignores activities
  that are intrinsically reinforcing in favor of
  extrinsic reinforcers, such as money or tokens)
• ignores structural institutional constraints,
  so may be used to justify or maintain the status
  quo of social inequality

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The History Ideology of Social Psychology

• cyclical history of social psychology more
  applied during climates of social upheaval
  reform. In between for the last 20 years,
  social psychology has focused on laboratory
  studies of intra-psychic (cognitive) factors in
  the social behavior of individuals small
  groups.
• Conclusion social psychology has become less
  less "social" with regard to
• 1. the over-reliance upon laboratory research
  methods,
• 2. the exclusive focus on the individual (or
  dyadic) level of analysis,
• 3. the social irrelevance of the matters studied
• Why community psychologists have been so
  concerned with
• recognizing embracing their own values,
• concentrating on field research of relevant
  extra-individual behavior in the social
  environment from an ecological systems
  perspective

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Limitations of psychometrics (testing psychology)
from a community perspective Social Darwinism,
eugenics

• Sir Francis Galton, Darwins cousin no
  coincidence that father of testing also a
  eugenicist
• American psychologists used Alfred Binet's IQ
  test to
• label children limit educational opportunities
  to them,
• to isolate people in institutions
• to limit immigration of undesirables
• Some of the most distinguished American
  psychologists were behind such ventures. For
  example, Henry Goddard used 'mental tests' to
  examine large numbers of immigrants concluded
  that 83 of Jews, 80 of Hungarians, 79 of
  Italians, 87 of Poles Russians were "feeble
  minded."

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Limitations of psychometrics 2

• Lewis Terman, in his famous book The Measurement
  of Intelligence (1916), suggested that children
  of genetically "inferior races...should be
  segregated in special classes... They cannot
  master abstractions, but they can often be made
  efficient workers... There is no possibility at
  present of convincing society that they should
  not be allowed to reproduce, although from a
  eugenic point of view they constitute a grave
  problem because of their unusually prolific
  breeding (quoted in Ryan, 1976, p.306).
• Similarly, the renowned experimental
  psychologists Robert M. Yerkes Carl Brigham
  used the results of the U.S. Army's WWI testing
  of recruits to argue that Blacks Southern
  Europeans are intellectually inferior to those of
  Nordic descent. (It is worth noting that, not
  coincidentally, it was the same Carl Brigham who
  later developed the Scholastic Aptitude Test
  served on the College Entrance Examination Board.)

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Limitations of psychometrics 3

• We now know that tests of mental ability were
  culturally linguistically biased (Q Are they
  still?) that, in any case, they do not measure
  purely innate intelligence.
• In the 1920s 30s, however, the conclusions of
  testing psychologists were used to keep out
  "undesirable" immigrants, hundreds of thousands
  of whom would suffer die because of the
  holocaust, which was simply Nazi-style eugenics.

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Conclusions re testing

• For community psychologists, there are four
  important points to note in the preceding history
  of psychometrics
• psychology based on the study of individual
  differences is often misused when drawing
  conclusions about groups
• fairness to individuals disadvantaged groups
  should come before institutional/scientific
  interests
• scientists must remain alert to the easy
  misinterpretation misapplication of their data
• experimental professional psychologists have
  never been isolated from social political
  influence, so should not hide behind a false
  mantle of scientific or professional authority

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The "Progressive" View of The History of Mental
Health Care

• 4 Revolutions in MH Care --gt (population
  encompassed)
• Pinel, Dix "Moral Treatment" (1800) -------gt
  (psychotics)
• Freud insanity continuum (1900) ---------gt
  (neurotics)
• Community MH Centers (1963) --gt (victims of
  social pathology)
• Milestone Primary Prevention (1970s, 1980s) ----gt
  (everyone)

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PROGRESSIVE THEMES in history of psychopathology
MH care

• locus of causality internal (intra-psychic)?
  external (environment)
• causal determinism religious/moral? genetic
  (Social Darwinism)?cultural (Lewis)?social
  construction of pathology (Szasz)

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PROGRESSIVE THEMES in history of psychopathology
MH care 2

• treatment approach burning-gtimprisonment-gt
• therapy-gtprevention
• treatment orientation deficit(deviant,
  weakness)/labels-gt competency, strengths
• corresponding ideology discriminatory-gt
• humanistic/civil rights/ equality

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PROGRESSIVE THEMES in history of psychopathology
MH care 3

• prevention stage
• tertiary-gtsecondary-gtprimary
• intervention age adult-gtteen-gtearly
  childhood-gtpre/peri-natal
• level of analysis/intervention
• individual-gtgroups, families-gtorganizations-gt
  institutions, communities

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The "Revisionist" View of the History of Mental
Health Care

• "progressive" view encourages the temporal bias
  of "presentism
• Revisionist history shows inconsistent progress
  a more cyclical pattern of reform concern over
  environmental causes (e.g., during settlement
  house movement) alternate with periods of
  conservative retrenchment intra-psychic or
  moralistic determinism (Levine Levine, 1970),
  i.e., approach to solving social mental health
  problems related to political climate of the
  times

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The "Revisionist" View of the History of Mental
Health Care 2

• poor "deviant" removed from society for whose
  "protection"? (Erikson, 1966 Wayward Puritans)
• poor more likely to receive "physical" treatments
  neglect (Grobb, 1973 Hollingshead Redlich,
  1958)
• other cyclical patterns periods of genetic,
  intra-psychic /or cultural determinism
  tendency to "oversell" new treatments policies
  as panaceas (or cure-all "fads")

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An Important Example of a Revisionist Cycle and
Unintended ConsequencesDeinstitutionalization

• reduction of hospitalized psychiatric population
  ( other kinds of institutions, e.g., mentally
  retarded, prisons reform schools) through
  release of long-term, "warehoused" patients into
  the community, shorter stays for all admissions
  fewer admissions
• placement in alternative community settings
  (e.g., "half-way houses," supported employment,
  outpatient services, crisis intervention) is more
  feasible, may be more effective certainly more
  efficient than hospitalization

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Causes of deinstitutionalization

• change in involuntary commitment laws (effective
  treatment, "danger to self or others")
• psychotropic medications
• CMH Centers Act (1963)

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Effects of deinstitutionalization

• more humane effective treatment
• greater quality use of their lives
• BUT, also
• increased homelessness (1/3 mentally ill, 1/3
  alcohol drug abusers, 1/3 un/under-employed)
• inadequate "aftercare
• "revolving door" phenomenon

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Conclusions about the history of Mental Health
Care

• social change made old approaches to mental
  health care inadequate
• ideology determined treatment laws
• economic political concerns killed humane
  efforts led to "warehousing"
• legal, economic, political factors continue to
  shape the changes in mental health care
• From both historical perspectives (Progressive
  Revisionist), the history of mental health care
  points to need for prevention more humane
  treatment "empowerment" of the broadest variety
  of disadvantaged populations.

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Foreword to Principles of Community Psychology by
Seymour Sarason

• Prior to this edition, this book was unrivaled
  for its scope and depth of the obvious and
  not-so-obvious psychological implications of what
  American communities are what problems they
  face, how they do and do not change.
• What this new edition makes abundantly clear is
  that what we call a community is glaringly
  porous in the modern, highly technical, mobile
  world, a community is affected by events near and
  far from its borders, events that are
  psychological, sociological, economic, political,
  and legal

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The Future of Community Psychology

• International Community Psychology
• Interdisciplinary Community Psychology, but using
  what paradigm?
• Same 2 CP options of the past 4 decades but
  applying international and interdisciplinary work
  more systematically
• Psychosocial stress process (prevention) model
  (Dohrenwend, 1978).
• Comprehensive, interdisciplinary model for
  ecologically psycho-politically valid
  action-research (Prilleltensky Christens
  Perkins, in press) (empowerment-plus)
• Which paradigm should CP choose? If neither,
  what should be the paradigm for CP in the future?
  Does CP need a paradigm?

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Figure A model of the process whereby
psychosocial stress induces psychopathology and
some conceptions of how to counteract this
process (from Dohrenwend, 1978).
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Discussion Question

• Where do poverty, unemployment, and related
  social problems fit into Dohrenwends model? How
  can psychology in general and CP in particular
  address such problems?

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Discuss in pairs you dont have to share this
with class

• Describe a major or minor stressful life event
  you have experienced anything you dont mind
  discussing.
• What were the personal factors personality,
  resilience, skills, knowledge, habits, needs,
  etc. that led to the event or helped or
  hindered your stress response?
• What were the environmental factors
  social/people, physical, cultural, political,
  economic that caused the stress /or added to
  it?
• What was the outcome of the event and its
  negative /or positive impact on you?
• Opportunities for Intervention Based on Above
  Dohrenwend
• Did you receive any crisis intervention of any
  kind? Did/would it help?
• How could you have coped with, or adapted to, the
  stress psychologically or behaviorally?
• What kinds of social or material supports might
  have helped you cope with the stress situation?
  Were they available to you?
• Do you have any personal psychological
  characteristics that increased the likelihood of
  the stressful event? What kind of intervention
  could address those characteristics to prevent
  the event?
• What situation in the environment increased the
  risk of the stressful event? How could that have
  been dealt with or prevented?

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Comprehensive Ecological Model for Analyzing
power Dynamics across 4 Domains of Capital 3
Levels
Consequence or stage of empowerment/wellness
Oppression Liberation/Empowerment
Wellness (state)
(process) (outcome) Domain of
Political POLITICAL
CAPITAL Environment/Capital Economic FINA
NCIAL CAPITAL Physical
PHYSICAL CAPITAL Level of
Analysis/ Intervention Socio-cultural
SOCIAL CAPITAL
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Think about your research /or intervention
interests or a project you have worked on
consider the following Questions related to
oppression

• The following questions need to be repeated for
  the 3 levels of analysis and can be applied to
  any one of the 4 environmental domains. Your
  research may lend itself to one or more of the
  environmental domains, in which case you would
  ask these questions to all applicable domains.  
• What are the power relations present at the
  macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis?
• Who are the players in the relationship? There
  may be multiple relationships at play. Some
  players may be oppressors in one setting and
  oppressed in others.
• What exchanges take place over time among the
  various players at the various levels?
• How do people in various power positions interact
  with each other. What are the dynamics operating
  here? How do people in various power positions
  engage with each other? What techniques do people
  use to oppress others or to resist oppression?
• What are the consequences of these power
  relations at the various levels of analysis?
• What are the effects of power relations at the
  different levels for the multiple players
  involved? What are the repercussions of
  oppression for the various individuals or groups?

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Questions related to liberation/empowerment

• We are conceptualizing liberation and empowerment
  as a process. This process may be naturally
  occurring in the environment, without external
  intervention, or it may be the result of a
  planned intervention.
•  1. What strategies are being implemented at each
  level of analysis to change the oppressive power
  relations?
•  What are the formal and informal strategies
  people use to resist oppression and pursue
  liberation? These may be naturally occurring
  processes or generated by a planned intervention.
  If you are studying a social phenomenon, there
  may be resistance processes taking place in the
  environment already.
•  2. What inhibiting and facilitative factors
  influence the strategies and change processes
  discussed in question 1 above?
•  Here we would like to know what factors help or
  hinder strategies to empower and liberate
  individuals and groups. What kinds of conditions
  enable people and groups to resist? What
  circumstances block the development of
  consciousness and empowerment actions?
•  3. What tactics are used to strengthen the
  facilitative factors and to reduce the inhibiting
  factors?
•  Once you have identified inhibiting and
  facilitative factors, we would like to know what
  tactics individuals and groups use to address
  them. How do they overcome barriers? How do they
  reinforce positive directions toward liberation?

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Questions related to wellness

• We are conceptualizing wellness as an outcome.
• What was the ideal outcome of your overall
  strategies in terms of power relations?
• As a researcher, what do you consider the ideal
  outcomes of empowering and liberation processes?
• What was the expected immediate outcome of your
  tactics in terms of power relations?
• Whereas 1 refers to the best ideal scenario, 2
  refers to your more realistic expectations of
  what can be achieved under the existing
  circumstances.
•  What were the obtained or actual outcomes of
  your tactics in terms of power relations?
• Looking at natural and/or planned change
  processes, what were the actual outcomes for the
  people involved? Did they last? If so, for how
  long did the effects last? Was there an
  improvement in terms of wellness because of power
  equalization across people, groups, communities,
  nations?
• How do you explain the outcomes?
• How do you explain potential gaps between actual
  and ideal or expected outcomes. What is your
  theory for explaining how wellness is or is not
  achieved at the various levels of analysis? Is it
  possible that wellness is easier to achieve at
  the lower levels of analysis than at higher
  levels? How does power equalization affect
  wellness at various levels of analysis?

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Final Questions

• Can Community Psychology survive in the future
  within departments and organizations of
  psychology?
• Should it become a more truly interdisciplinary
  field (community research action)?
• What are the possible costs and benefits of 1
  and 2?

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Where to find full text explanation argument
for the last model

• http//www.powercommunity.blogspot.com/
• Prilleltensky, I. (in press). The role of power
  in wellness, oppression, and liberation the
  promise of psychopolitical validity. Journal of
  Community Psychology. http//people.vanderbilt.edu
  /isaac.prilleltensky/power.htm
• Christens, B., Perkins, D.D. (in press).
  Transdisciplinary, multilevel action research to
  enhance ecological and psycho-political validity.
  Journal of Community Psychology.
  http//www.people.vanderbilt.edu/douglas.d.perkin
  s/ChristensPerkins.JCP7.rtf
• Center for Community Studies http//peabody.vander
  bilt.edu/ccs/
• Monterey Declaration of Critical Community
  Psychology http//www.people.vanderbilt.edu/dou
  glas.d.perkins/ccpdecl.htm