Psychology and the Community

Abstract

Intense, candid, and task-oriented small group discussion at the beginning of the Conference led to a strongly expressed recognition that the participants were occupied not only with an interest in the community mental health movement, but more importantly, with a general sense that the time had come to expand psychology’s area of inquiry and action. Participants referred to psychologists’ participation in such diverse areas of national life as the Peace Corps, the anti-poverty effort, a broad movement into the field of education, and the development of the consultation function in an array of settings, as evidence of the fact that both knowledge about, and competence in, social change activities have developed in psychology over the past several decades. A deep stirring and metamorphosis was seen as being in process. The Conference participants, while holding diverse views on how to define and interpret these changes, decided to expand the Conference mandate and move toward the conception of a new field, tentatively labeled “Community Psychology.”