Reflections on calling and careers in community psychology

The current essay discusses the narratives of five community psychologists from the perspective of a career "calling." Each of the essays highlight different components of a calling: employing deep discernment to know the right path for oneself; experiencing a calling to do one's work, an invitation to which we choose to respond; serving community; discovering your quintessential self or "genius"; and using your gifts for the common good. Moreover, the author discusses how the essays not only illustrate calling, but also the emergence of confidence and the subjective career.     

Home as a Locus of Work and Career

SUMMARY

In response to contemporary work environments and the increased availability of technologies, individuals and organizations are experimenting with alternate forms of work located in the home. This article examines the complex and creative intersection of “home” and “work.” From 1990-1997, the number of individuals classified as home-based workers nearly tripled, reaching 9.3 million. Areas explored in the present study include emerging patterns in the work-at-home arena, the critical success factors that facilitate development of work and career in the home, and the opportunities afforded to individuals, families and communities when home is the locus of work. Directions for future research and debate in this area are presented.     

Community Psychologists who Go Beyond the Profession

SUMMARY

A “calling” is typically a compelling sense of purpose that arises from a place different from the calculus that leads to a choice of profession. Yet in the case of community psychology, the five people profiled in this essay have both an impressive professional portfolio and a sense of social mission. This essay explores the two sides of their work, and more broadly the challenges facing those who work as agents of change, while at the same time advancing and achieving notable accomplishments in systems that are at once sources of social problems and resources for solving them.     

Empowerment and Synergy

Abstract

This paper suggests an alternative to the commonly-held “scarcity paradigm” of thinking about valued human resources, which assumes individuals must compete because resources are scarce. The alternative-the “synergy paradigm”-is empitomized in “synergistic community,” where valued human resources are renewable and expanding, and distributed equitably to members, so that what is good for one is good for all and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Three field studies present cross-cultural evidence for the functioning of empowerment within a synergistic paradigm. Empowerment is considered as access to and control of valued resources; the specific valued resource focused upon is community healing. The studies suggest that community healing resources can become renewable and expanding, as can the process of empowerment which accesses them. Community members share these resources, combining conflicting resources into unexpectedly effective treatment packages. Given present inequities in resource distribution, transformative education is offered as one means to support a shift in thinking toward synergy.     

Putting a Toe in the Water

SUMMARY

This article describes the author's experience entering a second career in community psychology in mid-life. The issues relating the author's first career and community psychology are discussed, as are his current activities, interests and reflections.     

Reactions to collective stress: Correlates of active citizen participation at love canal

Abstract

Events at Love Canal, beginning in the spring of 1978, are described as an environmental crisis leading to acute collective stress. As the crisis unfolded, Love Canal residents’ perceptions of the situation, and the actions they took, were monitored through interviews with a sample of 58 families in fall, 1978. Of these, 39 were reinterviewed in spring, 1979. Among interviewed families, 24 (41%) had at least one “activist” member, someone who became personally involved in a community organization formed to help resolve the crisis. This study compares the social characteristics of “activist families” with “non‐activist families,” their Love Canal‐related problems, sources of help, and general views of the impacts on their personal lives, and on interpersonal relations. Activists relied on government and crisis‐related organizations for help, while non‐activists had more family support. Neither group utilized the mental health services provided by the community's “crisis center.” Activists felt better about themselves, and had a stronger feeling of personal efficacy in affecting government decisions. They perceived that the crisis had brought about positive personal changes, and changes in relations with others. The major implication for intervention is that several different approaches to assisting members of a community in crisis must be undertaken.     

团体心理辅导应用于大学生职业生涯教育的个案研究——以“筑梦之旅”工作坊为例

团体心理辅导应用于大学生的职业生涯规划教育是现代教育理论的创新与实践。"筑梦之旅"工作坊以"立足职业定位,实现人生梦想"为主题组织实施特色辅导活动,通过自我认知、团体融入、团体互动、团体辅导等过程与环节,对学生进行自我认知、探索职业世界等方面的教育,帮助大学生进行自我认知,从而树立正确的世界观、人生观、价值观。团体心理辅导已成为大学生职业生涯规划教育的有效载体,有利于提升大学生就业力和职业发展能力。     

Advocacy for prevention: The role of the mental health association in Michigan

SUMMARY

This paper describes the application of such community psychology principles of empowerment and systemic interventions in a variety of applied settings, including school systems, a university campus, and a community hospital. The consistent application of such principles illustrates one way in which a viable career as community psychologist can be maintained in settings that do not have community psychology positions per se.     

Memories

SUMMARY

The Hawaiian Studies Program (HSP) integrates the learning of Hawaiian culture with more traditional secondary curriculum in science, social studies, and English. Students also participate in weekly community service-learning sessions. Fifty-five HSP students and 29 peers (who were not involved in the program), completed a survey measuring: students' connection to, pride in, and responsibility for their community; civic attitudes; and career knowledge and preparedness. HSP teachers, community members, and students were also interviewed about program outcomes. Compared to other peers, HSP students tended to report feeling more connected to their community and school and to agree that they had career-related skills. Participants believed that service-learning contributed to these outcomes by making connections between school and community life and by exposing students to a variety of careers.     

Synergy and Healing

Summary

There is a crisis in health care resulting from the scarcity of resources and the inequitable distribution of those resources toward those most able to pay. Two paradigms for the generation and distribution of resources are discussed. The scarcity paradigm, in which individuals must compete for scarce resources, dominates Western care and expresses and supports that crisis. The synergy paradigm, in which individuals share resources which are renewable and expanding, is rare in the West but could help alleviate that crisis. Three case studies of synergy in Western health care are presented, illustrating the nature and functioning of “synergistic community.” Dilemmas remaining in the introduction and maintenance of synergy within Western care are discussed.     

Psychology in the community: a community psychologist looks at 30 years in community mental health

I review my 30 years in the community mental health field, emphasizing the personal and historical context that shaped this career. I especially highlight the origins of the values that guided significant career decisions, including family, neighborhood, religious and educational influences. The core guiding value was the belief that public service is both a privilege and an obligation, and that righting social injustice through such service is a noble calling. I trace the evolution of my thoughts and actions reflecting this value, from an early desire to "help children," through preparation to become a child psychologist, and ultimately to practice in a public community mental health setting and a career dedicated first to primary prevention and then to broader safety net services for those in need. I highlight a corresponding intellectual evolution as well, a progressive change in identity from "clinical psychologist in the community" to community psychologist.     

The inner “I”

SUMMARY

Many community psychologists have the educational and professional backgrounds which make them potentially valuable resources for the disabilities field. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) call for greater community inclusion, empowerment, and self-determination for persons with disabilities. Community psychologists with interests in these concepts, as well as in interdisciplinary training, collaboration, community-driven research, and political action are needed as leaders in the disabilities field. This paper explores the development of one community psychologist's career working with persons who have disabilities and the institutions that support them.     

Where Love Flies Free

SUMMARY

Several definitions of “home,” drawn from dozens provided by the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language underscore how a large urban county jail becomes many forms of home for the women detainees there. Drawing on the women's poetry and the mechanics of creative writing workshops facilitated by the author for the last seven years at Cook County Jail, this essay describes some of the realities of the criminal (injustice system and how the women's writing becomes a way of writing against the grain of official discourse, thus altering certain definitions of this “home.”     

Children's After School Arrangements

SUMMARY

Developmental correlates of children's after school arrangements were examined with suburban seventh graders and their mothers. Self-care children identified as unsupervised and “hanging out” had more difficulties than supervised children or unsupervised self-care children “at home” in terms of school achievement, susceptibility to peer pressure, self-reported behavior problems, and experimentation with alcohol. The study failed to identify any benefits of leaving children unsupervised after school in terms of adaptive behavior or competence. The findings have implications for providing more supportive services to working families as a means of increasing family competence.     

Practicing What We Preach

SUMMARY

This paper describes the creation of a “Job Club” at Michigan State University to facilitate employment searches in Community Psychology. The goal of the Job Club was to provide a setting where graduating Ph.D. candidates could gain the skills necessary to be successful in both academic and non-academic job searches. The Job Club was student-driven, and emphasized principles of community psychology such as collaboration, network development, social and instrumental support, and empowerment. The importance of small group size and the ongoing commitment of a senior faculty mentor are highlighted. A curriculum for Job Club was created that included: resource allocation; network development; document development (vitae, resumes); practicing job talks, teaching demonstrations and interviews; and accepting the offer. Successes, lessons learned, and suggestions for creating Job Clubs in other settings are offered.     

领导力发展视角下的职业女性工作-生活平衡策略研究

职业女性诞生之初就遭遇到家庭角色与社会角色冲突的挑战。尽管知识经济时代两性在体力上的差异对职业选择和发展的影响越来越小,职业女性的规模与影响力都在持续上升,但由女性双重角色冲突而导致的工作与生活平衡困难并未明显减弱,不仅阻碍职业女性的高层发展道路,甚至束缚了年轻女性的职业选择。本文提出从领导力发展的视角探索职业女性工作与生活的平衡策略,从个人层面和组织层面两个角度分析了如何借助领导力效应帮助职业女性走出角色冲突困境、建构工作与生活的平衡机制,同时享受生活的快乐与工作的成就。     

Facing Aliens Under Globalization

SUMMARY

This paper is concerned with changing meanings of home for Taiwanese employers of foreign domestics under globalization. Shifting sense of home occurs for Taiwanese employers as well as foreign domestics in the process of labor migration. The author argues that Taiwanese employers, facing aliens at home, have adopted various rhetorical strategies to redefine their relationships with foreign domestics and deployed diverse practices of management within their households. As foreign domestics do housework at home, Taiwanese employers also do their own “homework,” struggling to understand and cope with the process of becoming and being household employers. Their “homework” is an integral part of the globalization of domestic service.     

Undergraduate Courses and Graduate Programs in Community Research and Action

SUMMARY

The days when psychotherapy was practiced as a lone endeavor are nearly gone. Today therapists, particularly family therapists, interface with a variety of other community professionals; many of these professionals are from our legal system. Judges, attorneys, and guardians are calling on the expertise of family therapists to assist with difficult cases. A relatively new population of clients being seen by family therapists are parents involved in the divorce process who are struggling to work out issues regarding their children. Court-ordered therapy is now required for many divorcing couples. The authors describe their work with parents who are court-ordered to therapy for issues regarding the well-being of their children. In addition to describing their working assumptions and therapeutic techniques, the authors explore the common pitfalls of working with families court-ordered to family therapy.     

An Examination of Oversight and Review in the Child Welfare System

Abstract

Child welfare agencies are accountable to the community not only because they spend public dollars, but also, most critically, because they are charged with protecting vulnerable children. Over the past three decades multiple oversight processes have been initiated as part of an effort to improve accountability in public child welfare. In agencies around the country an array of advocates and monitors regularly review the performance of individual caseworkers. While caseloads grow in number and complexity the ranks of the workforce have not kept pace. The result is too many people watching too few workers serve too many vulnerable children and families.

This paper examines the cumulative effect of five groups of “watchers” that oversee child welfare services. It suggests that every group of watchers should be able to demonstrate that their activities contribute directly to the achievement of system goals.     

On Becoming a Community Psychologist

Abstract

Recounts the author's professional life history in the context of his personal life story. Reflects on the ways in which history and autobiography combine to create life pathways that are experienced as individually chosen, yet historically determined. Recounts the author's family life, neighborhood experiences, early education in the Philadelphia public schools, and the impact of post-World War II government programs including the GI Bill and the establishment of United States Public Health Service fellowships. Considers the influence of African American writers and the civil rights movement, as well as women returning to school, the culture of medical schools and the influence of mentors in the formation of a professional identity. Recounts the discovery of the community mental health movement and the search for a social justice agenda that led to Community Psychology. Ultimately, the author views himself as an “insider/outsider,” whose personal and professional identity crosses traditional boundaries and welcomes paradoxical, narrative and qualitative approaches to research and practice.