Community Psychology In Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists

Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is a unique examination of how community psychology evolved through the years. Five highly respected community psychologists recount their personal histories telling how they went from academia to careers disseminating principles of community psychology. Newer members to the field of psychology can trace how these leaders came to pursue careers in community psychology. As these respected experts tell their own stories in accessible narrative form, the reader gains a clear understanding of how applied community psychology intertwines with history, context, social movements, and individual personalities is revealed.

Each career story in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists illustrates how societal events such as wars, economic depressions, the civil rights movement, and discrimination shaped personal philosophies and ultimately lead to their decision to become applied community psychologists and practitioners. Each contributor was asked to discuss their stories from four experiential dimensions: personal, contextual, intellectual, and ideological. The various viewpoints reveal how each one’s ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and academic background affected how they experienced the history of community psychology. Three eminent scholars from the fields of community psychology, history, and business psychology discuss the narratives to provide further insight.

The narrative studies in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists include:

• Anne Mulvey
• John Morgan
• Irma Serrano-Garcia
• Tom Wolff
• Carolyn Swift.

Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is an encouraging, stimulating look at community psychology that is valuable to community psychologists, historians of psychology, researchers, industrial organization (IO) psychologists, educators, and students.