What attracted you to community psychology?
As a Norwegian psychologist I was fortunate to be attracted by the national pioneers in community psychology (CP) during my early student years in Bergen. University of Bergen had a more eclectic profile than Oslo, with influences from Europe. The very first professors in Bergen were my teachers. Bjørn Christiansen (3rd row, fifth from left in the photo) was one of those who attracted my attention and became my supervisor. My graduation thesis was a follow up on his ongoing research on the role of psychologists working in the community.
These people and their knowledge are what attracted me to CP. The notion that «it takes a community to raise a child» is evident when looking at the photo of my teachers and mentors who I met in early student years. Later on, I was fortunate to be part of the very first post graduate community psychology training in Norway. The program lacked teachers, so we had to import scholars from Europe, which put me in touch with colleagues I still enjoy contact with today.
Please tell us about an event that was formative for your interest in community psychology.
After graduation my thesis became a reference to ongoing reforms in the post graduate training of psychologists. For me it was formative to experience that psychological knowledge can have a direct impact on health services planning and policies.
I discovered early how CP provides insights to achieve social justice, placing the cultural and political context at the heart of what psychologists do. I wished to orient myself further towards a systemic view of social and psychological problems, and my first job was in a remote community isolated by fjords on three sides! I was given a great deal of trust and equivalent responsibilities.
Working close with the rural youth, gave huge inspiration and meaning for me as a young clinician and school psychologist. The position gave a free mandate to fill according to personal preferences. The first meeting of partners in this project was a major formative event for my growing interest in CP. When I asked the boys dropping out of school what their preferred activity was, the responses gave an impulse to a community project still growing after 35 years.
The early formative years were probably long before my professional years began. Born in the 1950s UK with a psychiatrist and a nurse as parents, the choices of profession were already made. I grew up in a caring environment dominated by the asylum ward next door to the doctors flat. Being a student of Dr. Anna Freud, my father was influenced by the early psychoanalysts. This gave me an opportunity to develop a critical position to the dominating power relationships in clinical settings. My brother and sister both graduated at the same medical college as my father Dr. R.B. Carr, the renowned St. Bartholomew College in London. The opposition role in discussions about mental health has been formative from my early years. I deeply respect my father’s work in prisons during his late years, providing therapy for prisoners doing life-time sentences for murder, having no rights for mental health care services.
As a practitioner more than a researcher, I have taken the odd jobs as a student in major psychiatric institutions to learn how the system functions. There I was confronted with class inequalities inside the hospital. I have never forgotten the less privileged patients from these days.
What makes community psychology special?
The multidisciplinary origin and the diversity of CPs around Europe is a strength for any profession. Personally, I have developed a strong identity and connection, making CP special to me by going beyond the professional role. I see CP as a way of thinking more than a discipline within psychology. It connects to a value-based psychology in order to address the underlying causes of mental problems. Teaching CP on how to analyse determinants of participation and sense of community gave me access to an active professional network in the 1990s.
I began to see the psycho-social processes through which inequality and injustice impact on communities’ health and well-being. This has been crucial in my suicide prevention work, adding a supplying perspective to the individual suicide prevention strategies.
The key message and what makes CP special to me, is that CP challenges the idea that human crisis affects only the individuals, and promotes the idea that well-being is always connected to social and political contexts. By strengthening the bonds, trust and sense of belonging between people and institutions, CP helps communities to recover and give hope after the crisis. Why some communities recover quicker than others, is related to resilience and togetherness. I have always been more interested in the strengths than the weakness of people and communities.
I believe CP can play a crucial role in facilitating growth and resilience during our ongoing global crisis. I feel comfortable in my role as coordinator between people and institutions to increase participation and civic engagement. Working with youth in schools, addiction and mental health services has given me huge pleasure in facilitating and moderating human growth in groups, volunteer organisations and communities. I have a strong perception that CP is welcomed in almost every other discipline of psychology, and we are thereby able to be generous and give CP away.
What is the future of CP in Europe?
As a growing discipline, in contact with real life problems, such as climate change, war in Europe and after effects of the pandemic, I believe we can play an important role in future Europe.
In the songs from the film «Searching for Sugarman» there is a longing for something beyond knowledge, a human experience of connectedness between people. I see a paralel story to this film in the way CP is coming back from the US to Europe, being rediscovered in countries where the ideas originated. The album «Cold Fact» which the film is based on, never sold in the US, but became a cult classic in South Africa. Kids in school could recite the song texts, and the album became a huge inspiration among youth in their struggle against apartheid. Rodriguez’s family came over from Mexico, and he grew up in Detroit. Rodriguez was loyal to his heritage and working class background, and was never interested in making a commercial success.
The most important future challenge is to connect with the multi-disciplinary field of climate change research and action. Looking at the APA Climate Advisory Group in the U.S., the CP perspectives are clearly missing. To fill in the gap, CP approaches can play a significant role by bringing in participation research, communiy resilience, transforming and building communities, climate justice and global sense of community. As a citizen in Norway, a country responsible for the worlds highest carbon emissions I feel a personal responsibility to take part in the fight against climate change.
What is the most important piece we are missing in community psychology in Europe?
I do not think we miss anything specific, as we are extremely diverse with many traditions and cultural backgrounds. What we need in order to have a greater impact in a European context is a unifying element in our different associations. We have for a long time been fragmented and not well connected in professional networks. After 1996 in Rome we saw the first step towards a unifying network across national borders with the ENCP. In 2006, the European Community Psychology Association was formed, which hosted biannual international events. Then in 2011, European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) launched a Task Force, developing into a permanent Standing Committee in 2013. This year in Brighton we are witnessing nothing less than a turning point for European CP. For the first time in the ECP history, the congress is waving a high profile on CP in the official program. The signs are very clear; CP is one of the main thematic tracks, the Scientific Committee has a CP member, the Interdisciplinary Topics are typical CP research areas, a community psychologist is giving a keynote, and the CP pioneer Marie Jahoda will be presented in a historical panel session.
From a position outside EFPA, not well known in mainstream psychology circuits, CP has established itself in the centre of EFPA activities, with an influence on other fields of psychology and society on the whole. This is only the beginning, now we need to build CP as a EuroPsy field of practice and develop CP training at all major universities in Europe. This is what we are missing.
Please offer us a song that, for you, symbolizes what community psychology is about.
The song «Cause» is from Rodriguez’s second album «Coming from Reality».