Community Psychology in the '60s Posted on March 19, 2007 Edward Seidman (bio) talks about his work in the early days of community psychology.

I was trained as an ego analytic clinical psychologist in the late 60s and did my early research in psychotherapy and matching patient and therapist personality characteristics to try to improve the matches in therapy. And it was in the late 60s and I interned in Madison, Wisconsin in '68/ '69 which was a time of considerable upheaval.

And, while I was there, I was immersed in family therapy and, at the same time, when I got to Madison, there was a race riot in the high school on the Friday night before I arrived and that Friday, the Dane County Association of Clinical Psychologists had turned in a proposal to the mayor to run rap groups between blacks and police and ADC moms and police and students and police and so I ended up being launched into that project as research director and riding around in police cars on Fridays and Saturday nights and running these groups, things of that nature.

And that was also the year that there were 10,000 National Guards in Madison. And at the same time, I was doing lots of family therapy and once you take on a family systems perspective and you're interested in poor people, which was always my concern, you can't really stop at the family system and then you begin to look at larger. So I got catapulted into sort of becoming a community psychologist basically.

« Back to Article