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Dear everybody, I am thick skinned enough these days to ignore people who are being rude. I've had too much practice. But Craig's question as to why anybody should employ community psychologists is actually a good one. By and large the current answer is that they do not, excepting university teachers. But it is not just me, or even primarily me, who Craig is attacking. After all, I am not being paid to practice or teach community psychology: many other members of this group, and members of the new Community Psychology Section are so paid. The people leading the initiative to set up a Community Psychology Section clearly do believe that there should be a place in society for community psychology, which means that somebody needs to pay for it. Further, if community psychology is useless, why teach it? These are serious questions that were to some extent addressed (in my view perhaps not very adequately, because a lot of the proposal was arguably university teachers trying to protect their career interests) in the proposal for a Section - which the BPS accepted, Craig. But they need to be addressed much further as the new Section, and in particular its Interim Committee, develops a programme to forward the interests and concerns of Community Psychology. You might say that it is the BPS Section that is on a pedestal. I have never had the opportunity to climb one, which is why I can at present make observations from the cold outside. My previous post put forward a few ideas from one individual. As I said in my post, they are up for constructive and thoughtful debate. Craig does raise a good point for psychology generally when he asks what we do that other related groups do not. One answer is that as psychologists we aim to address mental wellbeing using knowledge and techniques that are different from those of practitioners and academics in other disciplines. But this is indeed problematic. It is also problematic for other sub-disciplines: for instance, what can occupational psychologists do that human resource specialists cannot. And it must be said that to a considerable extent Occpuational Psychology is losing this argument at present - witness the size of the CIPD compared to BPS' DOP. This problem relates to philospohical and methodological questions about psychology which have not been, as things stand, adequately addressed by psychologists. A minor point. I have given up bridge: I have issues about the social atttitude of many bridge players, amongst other more serious problems I have found in the game of bridge that I will not go into here. But it should be said that bridge is an example of a game which keeps many older people, for instance, active, and which enables people to meet socially in a largely atomised society. Leaving aside the specific case of bridge, a game which in the UK has done itself no favours in relation to its social and politcal environment, Britain should be purring resources into grassroots activites that promote psychological and social wellbeing at local level, which successive governments have deplorably failed to do. My politics are not those of Polly Toynbee, but when she writes about this she is correct. Given his response to me, I wonder why Craig is interested in Community Psychology. Perhaps Craig Community Psychology is for Craig simply an intellectual exercise. Maybe he would like to enlighten us. And for the rest of the Group:- 1. Do you think people will, or could, employ community psychologists in future? If so, who will become such employers and for what will they employ community psychologists? 2. If at present the number of community psycholgists in the UK is almost negligible, what is the point of having a BPS Community Psychology Section, of teaching community psychology in universities, or of clinical, counselling, educational or occupational psychologists considering community psychology as part of their work? I look forward to some more constructive discussion. Best wishes all, Frederic Stansfield ___________________________________ The Community Psychology List has a new website/blog at: http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/ There is a threaded discussion forum: http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi There is a twitter feed: http://twitter.com/CommPsychUK To post on the website blog, forum or twitter feed, contact Grant or David at the email addresses below. David Fryer ([log in to unmask]) or Grant Jeffrey ([log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe or to change your details on this COMMUNITYPSYCHUK list, visit the website: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=COMMUNITYPSYCHUK