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People don’t exist as isolated entities, and social programs, movements, or data analytic methods that assume they do are not aligned with reality—and may be doomed to fail. We all know that providing therapy or tutoring to a child may be less effective than hoped if the child’s parents, peers, school, and neighborhood are not also operating in a way that’s conducive to the child’s growth and well-being.
I am sure that there are some who still proclaim that psychology’s greatest achievement is buried somewhere in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic papers, whereas others will reject the focus on early childhood memories in favor of present day Skinnerian contingencies of prediction and control. Still others might vote for a self-actualizing, Maslowian humanistic psychology, which has been more recently branded as positive psychology. Having studied in all three of these areas in my lifetime, I have found these models to be hopelessly individualistic and ecologically incomplete.
Regretfully, piecemeal and person-centered approaches have dominated these psychological world views, particularly when it comes to treatment and rehabilitation. For example, our massive investments in prisons has done little to protect us, but rather has stigmatized and victimized a generation of our most vulnerable citizens. Just think, hundreds of thousands of people are locked up for petty, non-violent crimes, often involving drug usage. Being warehoused in total institutions only serves to unwittingly teach prisoners how to become seasoned criminals. When inmates exit these desensitizing settings, they are given one-way tickets back to the networks, associates, and ineffective programs that often further cement hopelessness and demoralization. Formerly incarcerated individuals need safe housing and decent jobs, but are only provided dehumanizing shelters and dead end job training programs. As a consequence, most psychological models perpetuate programs that are expensive, ineffective, and fail to address the social environments that provide so few constructive opportunities or resources.
Drug overdose by Sam Metsfan (Apartment in New York). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Our efforts to curb violence have had similarly disappointing outcomes. We know that adolescent violent behavior, for instance, is positively related to factors outside of the adolescent, such as peer behavior, family conflict, and exposure to community violence. Our youth are exposed to media saturated with violence, where negative consequences for aggressive behavior are rarely depicted. The ready availability of guns further fuels an erosion in the social fabric of neighborhoods. A tipping point arrives when schools with the greatest needs are provided the fewest resources and where illegal gang activities provide the best job prospects. And yet our therapeutic models continue to ignore these contextual barriers and risks, and the failure to embrace more preventive frameworks dooms our efforts to control or eradicate crime and violence.
Psychological models that attempt to eliminate deficits and problems for individuals rarely address the causes that contribute to those problems. Such models often only produce cosmetic change that provides, at best, short-term solutions. These interventions are alluring because they promise to solve the most deeply-rooted problems with simple solutions, yet they fail at the most basic levels due to ignoring the “elephant in the room” of racism, neighborhood disintegration, and poverty. Such interventions can render people powerless to overcome their oppression or unable to break out of a cycle of crime or addiction.
Fifty years ago, the field of community psychology emerged out of a comparable crisis in the 1960s, a time of turmoil involving the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Although not well known among the public, community psychology’s vital ecological model provides a far richer framework for solving our nation’s problems than those involving psychoanalytic, behavioral, or positive psychology. This new field offers the powerful message of prevention as an effort to move beyond attempts to treat each affected individual. The field also promotes collaboration, actively involving citizens as true partners in efforts to design and implement community-based interventions. This discipline further rejects simplistic linear cause and effect ways of understanding social problems and instead adopts a more elegant, complex, systems approach that seeks to understand how individuals affect and are influenced by their social environments. In other words, community psychology provides a unique framework from which to examine contextual influences that have been absent from prior models dominated by thinking of problems as resting solely within individuals. As a field, community psychology is a contribution that stirs the imagination by charting a course that can provide structural, comprehensive, and effective solutions to our most pressing problems.
Are art and science so different? At the deepest levels, the overlap is stunning. The artist wakes us from the slumber of ordinary existence by uncovering a childlike wonder and awe of the natural environment. The same magical processes occur when a scientist grasps the mysteries of nature, and by doing so, ultimately shows a graceful interconnectedness.
The intuition of the artist is no different from the hunches of a scientist. Both draw from unconscious realms where inner voices and soaring images provide sustenance for the imagination. Distractions and blind alleys often prevent the grasping of new visions or unraveling of complex social problems. Instincts and other primordial sources can break these intellectual and emotional barriers, and provide unparalleled insights into the vital nature of reality.
Both artist and scientist are revolutionaries, trying to change our perceptions and understanding of the world. Sometimes the fuel is no more than an outrage that “this must change”. Their paths often begin with a gnawing realization that something is askew in nature, which sets the traveler on a journey into the unknown to find what is missing, such as bringing about a more just and humane society.
Pansy (Viola x wittrockiana) at the Winterthur Country Estate. Photo by Derek Ramsey, (c) 2007. GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.
The bane of artists and scientists is existing paradigms and ideologies, which represent conventional and at times suffocating norms. The status quo is interwoven with concentrated power, which can corrupt and defeat attempts to overthrow dominant values, philosophies, and social inequities. Financial benefactors offer rewards that reinforce a social hierarchy resistant to change. Therefore, when peering into the world with new lenses, like Galileo, radical new insights and discoveries are often challenged and opposed by those reifying mainstream standards and mores.
Artists and scientists use similar strategies and tactics to confront power structures that perpetuate institutional stagnation. Resources need to be identified and mobilized to buttress dreams and inspiration, to weather the assaults of critiques and forces inimical to new perspectives. Focus and commitment against seemingly insurmountable opposition can be sustained and validated by nurturing coalitions, including professional colleagues, friends, and family members. These cadres of supportive counter-change agents often provide a life-affirming antidote to the isolation and even animosity that can be engendered by radical transformative ideas and solutions to aesthetic and social issues. New professional and community coalitions can provide alternative sources of meaning by challenging existing reference groups and standards, and by validating innovative ways of approaching formerly intractable problems.
Suffice it to say, scientists and artists are often greeted with suspicion, disbelief, or even outright disdain for their offerings. Some retreat whereas others persist in sharing their new insights and knowledge in the public domain, regardless of the ego injuries and accruing disrespect. These prophets often feel as if they are lost in a dense fog or dark forest, but their enduring resolve to pursue an unconventional line of research or provide an alternative glimpse of reality represents a sustaining force. It is not fleeting happiness nor a drunken sense of wild abandon that uphold these commitments, but rather a deep sense of conviction and faith about one’s liberating vision.
Finally, learning, experimentation, feedback, and refinement are the backbone of both the sciences and the arts. Decades of painstaking analysis and observation were critical in the development of Darwin’s grand theory of evolution. The dissection of corpses and countless sketches polished and unleashed Michelangelo’s genius in capturing the human spirit in exquisite detail. Sweat and toil nurture the fertile imagination and fine tune the ability to peer through nature’s veil and uncover eternal truths that lead to Eureka moments of exhilarating discovery.
Spectacular gifts await us as we work to unravel the DNA of equality, faith, love, and compassion, and thereby usher in a world saturated with meaning, surrounded by creative rapturous forces. True research has a soul of an artist.
Leonard A. Jason is a Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at DePaul University, and the Director of the Center for Community Research. For 38 years, he has been studying the interplay between creative forces and the process of community change. He is the author of Principles of Social Change (2013), published by Oxford University Press.
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