Community & Ecological Fieldwork & Research

In the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Indigenous Psychology, and Eco-Psychologies specialization, we underscore how initiatives to promote social, economic, and environmental justice, dynamic peace and reconciliation, and ecological sustainability help to build the foundations of psychological and community health. We also acknowledge the personal and community restorative and supportive work that is required in the face of ongoing violence, exploitation, and injustice. We are keenly aware of the importance of dialogical relationships, consensus building, and the arts to nourishing critical resistance.

Each student, in conversation with a fieldwork mentor, discerns the area(s) of their passionate interest, and engages in two fieldwork immersions (one each summer) to deepen their understanding of work being pursued in the area of their interest and to contribute to the ongoing work of their setting. We hope students’ participation in these contexts will make contributions to individual, community, and cultural restoration, and that they will help us revise and refine our theory and practice of a critical and libertory eco-community psychology. We situate such explorations as dialogical collaborations between the depth psychologically-minded student and those in the fieldwork context one is invited to join, not as an “application of depth psychology” from “outside” or “above.” The coursework curriculum supports students in developing the insight and skills that allow them to move between levels of organization: i.e., the intrapsychic and personal, the interpersonal, group, intergroup, city, bioregion, and policy levels.

Close attention is given to the historical, cultural, and ecological contexts of the issues and the group one is working with. Students learn to witness and to work with the transferential aspects of their relationship to the fieldwork they are doing, and to observe and reflect on the images, defenses, and borders that are stirred up through their community work in its social, historical, and ecological context. During the second fieldwork experience, students are encouraged to engage in a piece of research, hopefully of a participatory nature, contributing to addressing an issue or concern which the community and they think is important to study. This work enables students to contribute and to hone research and program evaluation skills, including asset mapping and appreciative inquiry.

Multi-Media Presentations of Student Community Fieldwork and Research

For the last twenty years the M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology Program has been committed to nourishing the public practice of psychology that arises through an understanding of the interdependence of psychological, familial, community, environmental, and cultural well-being. Students have externed in 100’s of community settings, acting as bridges between the knowledge developed by ecological and cultural workers and the theories of depth psychology, community psychology, indigenous psychologies, liberation psychology, and ecopsychology.