Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era - Hardcover

by Elena Mustakova-Possardt (Editor), Mikhail Lyubansky (Editor), Michael Basseches (Editor)

This book explores the concept of "socially-responsible psychology in a global age" and how it might be used to organize, integrate and bring enhanced focus a field that has the potential to contribute to solutions to the world's most pressing problems. In this volume, the editors explore the central and defining features of socially-responsible psychology, challenges that this work would face, and the mechanisms and processes by which psychological work could be synergistically integrated with the work of other disciplines. For this purpose, the volume also examines a variety of factors currently that limit psychology in carrying out this goal.

Back Jacket

The progression is a logical one: in keeping with an era noted for advances toward greater equality and an irreversible trend toward globalization--but also marked with bigotry, persecution, and environmental destruction-- psychology has developed the potential to heal large populations as well as individuals.

Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era describes the changes necessary to address the systemic problems affecting an increasingly distressed world. This path-breaking resource challenges readers to rethink the basic and implicit assumptions of psychology, reframing the field in terms of its responsibility as a healing science and force for social justice, and elucidates the context that makes this paradigm shift so necessary. Contributors analyze not only central issues shaping the field, but a practical framework for a redefined discipline, with concepts such as socially responsible inquiry and clinical practice, and strategies for working with like-minded communities and institutions toward key objectives, among them:

• Achieving a sustainable future.
• Developing clinical practice suited to a global community.
• Attaining global consciousness in the context of societal health.
• Overcoming racism, sexism, and poverty.
• Healing the causes of human suffering and environmental harm.
• Conceptualizing and actualizing justice restoratively.
• Achieving a psychology of nonviolence.

A volume with a clear moral vision, Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era is an affirmation of purpose and a call to action for psychologists to bring greater relevance to their profession towards building a shared just, humane and sustainable future

Author Biography

Elena Mustakova-Possardt, Ed.D., LPC, is an independent scholar and developmental psychologist in clinical practice in Arlington, VA. Former tenured Associate Professor of Psychology at University of West Georgia, she has published, lectured and taught widely, in cultures as diverse as Switzerland, Zimbabwe, United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, and the U.S. She works with diverse forms of oppression worldwide and explores paths to cultivating an emancipated and truly liberated consciousness. Her re-thinking of moral development won the 1995 Dissertation Award of the Henry A. Murray Research Center for the Study of Lives at Harvard University, and the 1998 Outstanding Dissertation Award of the Association for Moral Education. Her book Ontogeny of Critical Consciousness: Study of Morality in a Global Age (Greenwood/Praeger 2003) was also published in Bulgarian (Sofia University Press 2004). Her cross-cultural community development work with Latino immigrants won the Carter Award for Campus and Community Initiatives. She can be reached at elena.mustakova@gmail.com or at www.elenamustakova.net.

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where, among other courses, he teaches Psychology of Race and Ethnicity and a graduate-level restorative justice practicum based at a youth detention center. Since 2009, he has been a practitioner of Restorative Circles, a restorative practice developed in Brazil. In addition, Mikhail also has a long-standing interest in race and racial dynamics and writes a blog about race for Psychology Today called Between the Lines. Born in Kiev, Mikhail immigrated to the United States with his family as a child in 1977. He currently lives in Urbana, IL with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 10. He can be reached at Lyubanskym@gmail.com.

Michael Basseches, Ph.D., Professor, Department ofPsychology, Suffolk University, is a life-span developmental and clinical psychologist whose academic and professional work has been devoted to conflict resolution. He has practiced psychotherapy since 1985. He has published two books, Dialectical Thinking and Adult Development (Ablex, 1984), and (with Mascolo) Psychotherapy as a Developmental Process (Routledge, 2010). Michael has also taught on the faculties of Swarthmore College, Cornell University and Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Born in New York City, he is married to Angela Brandão, and has two sons, Joshua and Benjamin Basseches. He can be reached at mbasseches@gmail.com.

Julie Oxenberg, Ph.D., MALD, is a clinical psychologist with a master's degree in International Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is co-founder of Spiritual Psychology Associates, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Psychotherapy and Spirituality at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP). Founding member of the Psychology of Peace Initiative at MSPP, she has served on the New England and National Advisory Boards of the Tikkun Community associated with Tikkun Magazine. Julie is involved in several intercultural dialogue and conflict transformation procedures, including Beyond Words, an Israeli-Palestinian organization working with women in the Middle East, One by One, a Berlin-based organization working with dialogue processes between descendants of Holocaust survivors and descendants of Nazis, and the Public Conversations Project in Boston, MA. She can be reached at Julieoxenberg@gmail.com.