Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Community psychology is a psychological discipline that is usually categorized within applied psychological disciplines.According to Dalton, Elizabeth, and Wandersman (2001), community psychology deals with the relationships between individuals, communities, and societies.Through collaborative research and interventions, community psychologists seek to understand and enhance quality of life for individuals, communities, and societies.To better distinguish community psychology from other psychological disciplines, it is useful to describe the differences between it and other related disciplines (Levine, Perkins, & Perkins, 2005).Unlike in clinical psychology, the goal of community psychology is to promote human health and quality of life within the social environment.In contrast to social work, community psychology puts great emphasis on the rigorous investigation of social problems.And, in contradistinction to social psychology, community psychology emphasizes the application of psychological knowledge to solving social problems.Despite most official historical resources identifying the beginnings of community psychology in the Swampscott Conference in the United States in 1965, they can in fact be traced back to the work of Marie Jahoda and her colleagues in Central Europe in the 1930s (Fryer, 2008).In Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1933) in particular, Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeisel deal with the social and psychological impact of unemployment on a small community in Austria.In this work, one can clearly identify the community perspective and the emphasis on the positive, not just the negative, characteristics, which are the key values in community psychology.It is somewhat paradoxical that community psychology originated in Central Europe as it has not developed much in Slovakia or the surrounding countries.Therefore, I consider it particularly important to promote community psychology in this region through the organization of annual conferences and workshops which provide the time and space for researchers and practitioners from various areas of community psychology in
Source: Human Affairs
Author: Júlia Halamová
Institution: Comenius University Bratislava
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2914693304