Tapping the Talents Within

Abstract

Goodman, Liang, Helms, Latta, Sparks, and Weintraub identify principles that drive the social justice work of the faculty and students at Boston College. Significantly, they present concrete examples of the successes, personal struggles, and institutional restrictions that are encountered in this work. An extremely valuable contribution of the authors is that they stimulate thinking about counseling theory relative to its application to mental health practice in oppressive societies. In encouraging the development of social change agents in counseling psychology, we build on the contribution by emphasizing the relevance of (a) instruction on philosophy to inform theory development and research on social justice, (b) racial identity theory as a framework for explaining and tackling oppression, and (c) anthropological approaches to gain an understanding of the contexts in which social justice research and practice are conducted. Implications of these recommendations are addressed in the conclusion.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W.M. Kurtines & J.L. Gertiz (Eds.). Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bulhan, H. A. (1985). Frantz Fanon and the psychology of oppression. New York: Plenum.

Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New York: Routledge.

Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Fine, M. (1994). Working the hyphen: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 70-82). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Foucault, M. (1989). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (2000). Power. New York: New Press.

Fox, D. , & Prilleltensky, I. (1997). Critical psychology: An introduction. London: Sage.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

10.

Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

11.

Goodman, L. A. , Liang, B. , Helms, J. E. , Latta, R. E. Sparks, E. , & Weintraub, S. R. (2004). Training counseling psychologists as social justice agents: Feminist and multicultural principles in action. The Counseling Psychologist, 32(6), 793-837.

12.

Habermas, J. (1996). The Habermas reader. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

13.

Helms, J. E. (1990). Black and White racial identity: Theory, research, and practice. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

14.

Helms, J. E. (1994). The conceptualization of racial identity and other “racial” constructs. In E. J. Trickett , R. J. Watts , & D. Birman (Eds.), Human diversity: Perspectives on people in context (pp. 285-311). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

15.

Helms, J. E. (1995). An update of Helms’ White and people of color racial identity models. In J. G. Ponterotto , J. M. Casas , L. Suzuki , & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 181-198). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

16.

Helms, J. E. , & Cook, D. A. (1999). Using race and culture in counseling and psychotherapy: Theory and practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

17.

Heppner, P. P. , Casas, J. M. , Carter, J. , & Stone, G. L. (2000). The maturation of counseling psychology: Multifaceted perspectives, 1978-1998. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (pp. 3-49). New York: John Wiley.

18.

Kincheloe, J. , & McLaren, P. (1994). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 138-157). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

19.

Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

20.

Nobles, W. W. (1991). African philosophy: Foundations for Black Psychology. In R. L. Jones (Ed.), Black psychology (3rd ed., pp. 47-63). Berkeley, CA: Cobb & Henry.

21.

Stanfield, J. H., III. (1994). Ethnic modeling in qualitative research. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp.175-188). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

22.

Thompson, C. E. (1997). Facilitating racial identity development in the professional context. In C. E. Thompson & R. T. Carter (Eds.), Racial identity theory: Applications to individual, group, and organizational interventions (pp. 33-48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

23.

Thompson, C. E. , Murry, S. L. , Harris, D. , & Annan, J. R. (2003). Healing inside and out: Promoting social justice and peace in a racially divided us community. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 25, 215-223.