Community Psychology: In Pursuit of Liberation and Well-being

Canadian Psychology, Aug 2005 by O'Neill, Patrick

GEOFFREYNELSON and ISAAC PRILLEITENSKY (Eds.) Community Psychology: In Pursuit of Liberation and Well-being New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005, 450 pages (ISBN 0-333-92281-6, US$80.00 Hardcover, ISBN 0-333-92282-4, US$27.95 Paperback)

Community psychology has its roots in community mental health, and its practitioners, researchers, and theorists differ over whether they see mental health as the core issue of their subdiscipline, as it is for clinical psychology.

Similarly, books about community psychology vary along a dimension according to how much they emphasize "mental health" as opposed to other community matters from sense of community to social change.

This new book by Nelson and Prilleltensky is at the nontraditional end of the spectrum. As their subtitle suggests, the authors are concerned with many matters beyond a mental health focus. They argue that "Community Psychology has focused more on personal and relational values, such as well-being... than on collective values, such as social justice" (p. xxvi). That criticism has been advanced by a number of community psychologists, who point out that focusing on the personal actually defines problems in a way that distracts us from collective concerns (e.g., O'Neill, 2005).

The book begins with a frank invitation to readers, especially students, to become agents of social change. The authors argue that the pull for psychology, including community psychology, to be scientifically respectable, has privileged facts over values. They believe that values are at the heart of the enterprise, and that community psychology must serve as the social conscience of the broader discipline. This spirit drives the whole book - as one would expect from the previous work of these two well-known activist community psychologists.

Although they modestly describe themselves as "editors," Nelson and Prilleltensky actually wrote most of the book, with only Parts 5 and 6 devoted to the work of others. In Parts 1 through 4 they include short commentaries by others to supplement their own work on each chapter. One of their goals is to provide an international perspective, and their commentators and chapter authors are chosen, in part, with that in mind. The authors also want to tie community psychology to other disciplines, and their chapter authors and commentators are often from allied fields. For instance, Maritza Montero who has the task of writing the concluding chapter, received her PhD in Sociology in Paris, has taught in Europe and Latin America, and is now a professor of social psychology and community social psychology in Venezuela. This sort of breadth makes the book a welcome change from the usual community psychology texts still grounded in community mental health and seeing social problems almost exclusively from a U.S. perspective.

In Part I, the authors introduce their project for community psychology, offering "issues, values, and tools for liberation and well-being." They point out that a discipline's problems are carried into the present from the past, but that values and ideals tell us where we want to be in the future. Isaac Prilleltensky has outlined, in various writings, a set of values that he feels are appropriate for community psychology -these values inform the text. They include holism (focusing on the whole person and his or her social context); health; caring, compassion, and support for community structures (including the importance of structures that facilitate the pursuit of personal and communal goals); self-determination (the opportunity and power to direct one's life as one wishes); participation (individuals meaningfully contributing to their communities); social justice (fair and equitable allocations of resources and obligations); diversity; accountability to oppressed groups.

Tools for Action and Research

In Part II, "Values, Principles, and Conceptual Tools," the authors talk about sources of values and the way values are chosen to inform research and action. Then, moving to ground that may be more familiar in community psychology, they present a chapter on ecology, prevention and promotion. Another chapter focuses on community and power, and another on commitment, accountability, and inclusion.

Part III, "Tools for Action," is devoted to interventions at various levels: social, organizational, small group, and individual. Here, the authors give examples of interventions and possible roles for the community psychologist. They organize their examples in three categories of setting: human services, alternative settings, and social change settings. Examples of human service settings include community mental health centres, departments of community services, departments of public health, school boards, child and family services. In such settings the community psychologist might develop, manage or evaluate programs, manage human resources, and so on. Examples of alternative settings include women's shelters, self-help groups run by community members, resource centres for people with HIV/AIDS, advocacy centres for refugees. Here, the community psychologist might be social advocate, community developer, group facilitator, or even board member. Examples of social change settings include social change movements, political parties, unions, and social policy institutes. Roles include organizer, researcher, policy developer, writer, public speaker. The authors point out that community psychologists can work from within or without, but if they work on the inside they have to consider whose interests are (really) being served by the organization.