Using Psychology to Promote Human Welfare
A Conceptual Analysis of the Role of Community Psychology
LEONARD D. GOQDSTEIN Arizona State University
IRWIN SANDLER Arizona State University
ABSTRACT: The several approaches by which psy-
chology can be used to enhance human welfare are
analyzed according to a conceptually developed matrix.
The approaches include clinical psychology, community
mental health, community psychology, and public
policy psychology. In each case the approach is
analyzed in terms of the intended target, the content
of the intervention, the process involved in the inter-
vention approach, and the knowledge base necessary
for attempting such interventions. The present analy-
sis highlights the differences between community psy-
chology and community mental health and concludes
that community psychology should disengage itself
from the community mental health movement if it is
to fulfill its most important functions of interfacing
with the social systems of deviance control and of
socialization and support.
A myriad of societal concerns ranging from social
injustice to energy utilization urgently require at-
tention. Although some psychologists question
whether our discipline can contribute adequate,
psychologically based solutions to these problems,
others have plunged ahead vigorously, especially
those who identify themselves as community psy-
chologists.
Community psychologists have been very busy
during the past decade developing this specialty
area, and there are many tangible signs of an
emerging identity: an APA division, two new jour-
nals, a marked increase in doctoral-level training
programs (Barton, Andrulis, Grove, & Aponte,
1976), and a recent national conference on new
directions in graduate training (Iscoe, Bloom, &
Spielberger, 1977).
Such indexes of organizational health coexist
with important unresolved issues that give rise to
concern about the continued vitality of this vigor-
ous infant specialty. One such issue is the dis-
crepancy between promise and product. Col-
leagues voice legitimate concerns, admiring our
goals while demanding evidence of achievement.
882 • OCTOBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Ight 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
i-066X/78/3310-0882$00,75
Such a question becomes rather critical when a
content analysis of a major journal in the field
reveals only 10 articles over a 7-year period with
the word prevention in the title (Cowen, 1973)
and when psychologists themselves produce "dif-
fuse and confused" examples of psychology's con-
tributions to the process of primary prevention
(Cowen, 1977).
A second issue that is a cause for concern is the
time-bounded nature of the field. A field that
defines itself in terms of its relevance to current
societal conditions is vulnerable, by definition, to
a changing society. Levine and Levine's (1970)
psychosocial history of the helping services de-
scribes earlier social innovations that were swept
under by historical forces. Thus, the question,
Can community psychology be both relevant and
long-lived?
The third critical issue, the most important of
all, is the inability of the field to define itself, to
delineate its scope and boundaries. While there
have been several attempts to do this (Bennett,
Anderson, Cooper, Hassol, Klein, & Rosenbaum,
1966; Iscoe et al., 1977), we feel that there re-
mains a reluctance to identify the primary tasks
and the boundary conditions for our field.
The purpose of this article is to provide a con-
ceptual model for describing community psychol-
ogy by comparing it with other psychological in-
terventions. Such a model should provide both
an inclusive (what the field is) and an exclusive
(what the field is not) definition of community
psychology.
The alphabetical listing of the authors does not ade-
quately reflect that this article is truly a joint enterprise
with completely shared responsibility.
Requests for reprints should be sent to either author at
the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University,
Tempe, Arizona 85281.
 A Model of Utilization of Psychology
to Promote Human Welfare
For analytic and expository purposes, we have
organized four different intervention strategies—
clinical psychology, community mental health,
community psychology, and public policy psychol-
ogy—into a single comprehensive matrix involving
four different elements. As shown in Table 1,
these four elements are (1) the target, (2) the
content or activities involved, (3) the style or
process, and (4) the knowledge base involved.
The first element is the target or immediate
object of the change. Ultimately, all interventions
must affect the lives of individuals. The immedi-
ate object, however, may be a person, one or
more significant others, the social system in which
the person lives, or whatever. The target of an
intervention will depend upon the conceptualization
of the problem. For example, Ryan's (1971) ar-
gument against "blaming the victim" for problems
associated with poverty can be seen as a call for
moving the level of the target from the individual
to the social system.
The second element is the content of the inter-
vention or the activities involved to bring about
change—psychotherapy, consultation, social action,
and so on. At any given level of intervention, the
content of the planned intervention ordinarily will
be determined by one's technical skills and pre-
ferred mode for work at that level. Professional
psychologists typically have devoted more of their
energies to explicating within-levels intervention
strategies, such as behavioral versus psychody-
namic approaches to individual therapy, than to
considering the level of the intervention. Because
of psychology's preoccupation with the individual
level, it is not surprising that there is little psy-
chological theory or research to guide us in de-
termining the content of interventions at other
levels. One of the reasons for the emergence of
community psychology has been a growing aware-
ness of the limitations of this focus (Reiff, 1968;
Sarason, 1974).
The process oj intervention, or the style in-
volved in the delivery of the service (content),
constitutes the third element. Process, or style of

TABLE 1

A Conceptual Model for Using Psychology to Promote Human Welfare

Conceptual elements
Strategy Target Content Process or style Knowledge

Clinical Troubled individuals Individual assess- Passive style ; professional Individual differences; personality;
psychology ment and behavior accountable to fulfill contract withpsychopathology; individual
change individual client assessment and behavior change
Community Catchment area Planning, organizing, Accountability to residents of Program planning and development;
mental health delivering, and catchment area and funding administration and management;
evaluating relevant sources facilitating community involve-
services ment ; evaluation research; program
Troubled individual Clinical services Active marketing of service ; evaluation ; specialized clinical
within catchment relevant to catch- accountability to consumer groups services; selection and training of
area ment area paraprofessionals ; supervision
Significant others in Consultation ; train- Role definition and clarification ; Methods of consultation and training
catchment area ing ; education ; professional gatekeeper in helping relationships; under-
coordination of standing of other social agencies
effort and community resources;
organizational dynamics; psycho-
pathology ; cultural differences
Community Systems of deviance Analysis of system ; Critic of system ; advocate of change ; Systems analysis; program design;
psychology . control technical ad- facilitator of self-examination by evaluation research ; consultation
vocacy; creation system ; developer of planned methods; advocacy strategies
of settings ; change strategies
organizational de-
velopment ; evalu-
ation research
Systems of Restructuring Organizational consultation outside Systems analysis; organizational
socialization and organizations to of mental health; advocacy of theory; planned change strategies;
support facilitate healthy social change; resolution of social planning; environmental
personal func- professional-client value assessment; stress theory
tioning discrepancies
Public policy Government policy- Technical advice in Adversary system; agent of control Knowledge of policy formulation and
psychology makers, including formulation of or countercontrol ; participant in implementation; broad knowledge
administrators, public policy ; political process of other relevant social sciences
legislators, and social action on (e.g., economics) ; understanding
judges a broad front ; of the political process and the
program evalua- law; evaluation research
tion; expert
witness

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • OCTOBER 1978 • 883

 delivery, is best defined in role-theory terms as
the intervenor's place in the social ecology (Sarbin,
1970). Thus, denning the reciprocal role of the
intervenor and the target constitutes the core of
the process issue. Specific components of the issue
include (a) how the agent goes about identifying
the target of change, (b) whether the agents are
passive—waiting for problems to be presented—
or active—seeking out problems needing solution,
(c) what the rights and obligations of the agents
and targets are to each other, (d) how the goals
of change are determined, and (e) how and by
whom goal achievement is assessed. Current
issues, such as accountability, cultural bias in
service delivery, right to treatment, and so on, all
illustrate process concerns. Psychologists, like
most other professionals, have traditionally either
ignored these issues or unilaterally resolved them.
These typical solutions, however, are increasingly
being challenged by both governmental and con-
sumer pressures and are a major element differ-
entiating strategies of intervention.
The fourth element involves the body of knowl-
edge utilized in the intervention. What are the
theoretical and empirical underpinnings of what is
attempted? On what basis do we proceed with
our intervention? What are clear differences in
the knowledge bases involved in our various inter-
ventions?
As can be seen from Table 1, each of the four
change strategies can be defined in terms of the
four elements. Let us consider each of the four
strategies in turn.
Clinical Psychology
Target. The target of clinical psychology is an
individual with a life-adjustment problem, re-
gardless of whether the problem is defined as a
mental illness, a behavioral disorder, or an existen-
tial crisis. The primary level of analysis is an
individual one. Ryan (1971) has characterized
this approach as exceptionalistic: "Problems . . .
occur as a result of individual defect, or unfortu-
nate circumstances; and they must be remedied
by means that are particular and, as it were, tail-
ored to the individual case" (p. 640).
Content. The content of the clinical interven-
tion involves the assessment of the individual's
problem and the development and implementation
of a plan to ameliorate it. Although there are
occasional efforts to involve significant others, as
in family therapy, the approach is typically in-
dividualistic.
884 • OCTOBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Process. The passive nature of the traditional
clinical interaction has been previously character-
ized (Cowen, 1967; Rappaport & Chinsky, 1974)
as waiting for the client to identify the need for
service and then to identify the practitioner as
appropriate for providing those services.
The relationship between the client and the
psychologist is the second important process issue.
Menninger (19S8) described this prototype rela-
tionship as a contractual, dyadic one in which an
individual in distress, who recognizes this distress
as being psychological, purchases a relationship
with a therapist. Therapists are obligated to be
qualified and to perform those activities that they
believe will achieve some alleviation of the client's
distress. Clients are to pay for the relationship
and to actively provide verbal material with which
to work. The relationship is purchased in a free
marketplace by clients who identify it as the most
desirable treatment to alleviate their distress. This
description appears to typify much clinical work,
particularly that done in independent practice.
Knowledge. Ideally, the knowledge base of
clinical practice is an integration of the clinical
and scientific literature. The clinical literature,
based upon observation from experience, identifies
the strategies and techniques, while the scientific
literature provides an empirical base upon which
to modify those observations.
Community Mental Health
From its inception, the community mental health
center movement has been an expression of a na-
tional social policy toward the treatment of men-
tal illness. This policy has evolved over time,
through the successive revisions of the Community
Mental Health Centers Act (Bloom, 1977), and
has been marked by intense bureaucratic struggles
for control (Snow & Newton, 1976). The de-
velopment of a national public policy for treating
the mentally disturbed was itself a major process
innovation, one that serves as a precursor to the
current development of a more general national
health delivery system. It is worth noting that
the several activities mandated by the various
community mental health center acts are quite
varied and, in many cases, less innovative than
the mere existence of the legislation itself.
Target. Spurred by the goal of providing com-
munity-based care as an alternative to the insti-
tutionalization of the mentally ill, community men-
tal health centers were established to serve geo-
 graphically defined catchment areas. On one level,
the catchment area—a questionable administra-
tive representation of a community—is the target
of service. Both the scope and quality of services
to be delivered within the area were specified, and
there was an initial expectation that the movement
would revolutionize the treatment of the mentally
ill.
A more careful analysis, however, suggests that,
within each catchment area, services are to be de-
livered to two different targets. The primary tar-
get is the troubled individual, and here the goal
is to improve the availability and range of clinical
services (inpatient, outpatient, emergency, and
partial hospitalization) for these persons. Sec-
ondary targets are such significant others as clergy,
physicians, and teachers, who are regarded as im-
portant in their natural role relationship with the
distressed (Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960). Al-
though primary and secondary prevention were
key concepts in the promise of community mental
health, such services were actually mandated and
provided only to a very minor degree. Several
analyses of the services actually provided by the
community mental health centers (e.g., Bloom &
Parad, 1977; Snow & Newton, 1976) rather clearly
indicate that clinical service is the primary prac-
tice of community mental health.
Content. Catchment areas are directly served
by the planning for, organizing, delivering, and
evaluating of mental health services. The com-
munity mental health center, through its staff,
serves as the administrative unit to provide these
services and as the community's interface with
governmental and other planning and funding
agencies.
At the individual level, the content of the ser-
vices provided overlaps considerably with that of
the services provided by the clinical strategy. The
difference is that such services in community men-
tal health are selected on the basis of their per-
ceived relevance to the needs of a particular set of
consumers. The effectiveness of these services is
measured in terms of the numbers of needy clients
served, cost-effectiveness, consumer satisfaction,
and, to a much lesser degree, the alleviation of
suffering.
The style match between services and the needs
of the residents of the catchment area is a special
issue that bridges both the content and process
categories of our matrix. When this issue was
addressed, the long-neglected but prevalent prob-
lems of drug abuse and alcoholism, the community
treatment and aftercare of the previously institu-
tionalized, and the delivery of services to previ-
ously underserved minorities were highlighted. The
increased demand for service in relation to the
limitations of professional resources led to the
development of more cost-effective intervention
strategies using indigenous paraprofessionals, crisis
intervention, and brief therapies as part of the
emerging service delivery program.
Facilitation of the helping role played by sig-
nificant others is the goal of the services offered
to them, primarily through education and con-
sultation. In working with the natural support
systems of the troubled, a systems orientation was
implicitly communicated in addition to specific
mental health knowledge and the enhancement of
helping skills. Specifically, teachers, police, clergy,
and others were unaware of how their helping ac-
tivities were related to those other services avail-
able in the community, and they had not seen
themselves as an integral part of an integrated
service delivery system. The coordination of these
informal helping efforts (including the facilitation
of referral from the informal helpers to the com-
munity mental health center) is a second charac-
teristic of community mental health targeted at
significant others.
Process, The critical concept in the process of
delivering service to the catchment area is ac-
countability. Service providers are expected to
be accountable to the catchment center's policy
board, which in turn is representative of the resi-
dents of the catchment area. The professional
service providers, educated and socialized in the
norm that "the doctor knows best," have found
this new power relationship difficult to accept.
The implementation of community accountability
has been a strong source of professional discom-
fort (Hersch, 1968; Sarason, 1974) and has been
unevenly accomplished (Schiff, 1970; Snow &
Newton, 1976).
The major innovation of the individually tar-
geted services was the adoption of an active, out-
reach mode of service delivery (Rappaport &
Chinsky, 1974). In contrast to the clinical model,
services were marketed so that they would be
promptly available when needed. Storefront set-
tings provided physical proximity to the population
and were more psychologically approachable than
the more formal clinic building. Crisis interven-
tion provided for a prompt response to distress.
The use of needs-assessment measures, case-finding
strategies, and the identification of high-risk groups
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • OCTOBER 1978 • 885
 all suggest an aggressive and active strategy for
identifying potential consumers and bringing ser-
vices to them. Collectively, these process strate-
gies are more like those of the marketing of prod-
ucts in the business world than the professional
aloofness of the clinical model.
The process issue involved in working with the
significant other is initially one of role definition
and clarification. Police (Zacker & Bard, 1973),
teachers (Glidewell & Stringer, 1967), and physi-
cians (Caplan, 1974) all have their own role defi-
nitions and their own hierarchy of role tasks, as
do other professionals. Rarely do these role defini-
tions include serving as a support system to emo-
tionally troubled individuals. Rather, police pre-
fer to catch robbers, teachers to educate chil-
dren, and so on. Further, these professionals
operate within systems whose values, ideologies,
and culture reinforce these role definitions and
provide little encouragement for the supportive
role conceptualized for them in the community
mental health model. Thus, the initial process
task involves staking out an area of mutual con-
cern, legitimizing the supportive role, and subtly
changing the role expectations and the culture of
these professionals.
For instance, the training of police as family
crisis intervenors by Bard and his colleagues
(Zacker & Bard, 1973) was the culmination of a
series of interventions to change police definitions
of their own role as well as to formalize or insti-
tutionalize these changes. Once these role changes
or clarifications are accomplished, mental health
professionals can move into a training or sup-
portive relationship with these significant others.
A second, related role also involved in working
with these support systems is that of gatekeeper.
Mental health professionals serve as the filter
system through which those individuals who are
not adequately functioning within the normal so-
cialization and support systems must pass. These
professionals regularly decide whether or not per-
sons are to be withdrawn from society and placed
into a system that is separate and different from
that of the nondeviant—mental hospitals, training
schools, prisons, and so on. By regulating the cri-
teria for passage through this gate (the band width
for acceptable behavior), the mental health pro-
fessions implicitly establish norms for the type of
behavior the community should and must accept,
highlighting the supportive role tasks of the other
social systems. Prescribing that a troublesome
child should remain in a regular classroom im-
886 • OCTOBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
plicitly defines the range of behaviors that teachers
must accept as part of their role. Thus, the
implicit message is that the teacher's role is not
simply to educate but is also to socialize the
child to the demands of the education system. The
psychologist's role is not simply to diagnose and
segregate but to support the teacher in a broad-
ened role task.
Knowledge. The knowledge base for working
with the catchment area directly involves admin-
istrative and research skills. Effective communi-
cation with both the residents of the catchment
area and the professional staff is a critical need.
Planning, organizing, budgeting, fund raising, and
politicizing follow closely behind. Psychologists
have little history of training for these functions,
and these professional skills are still not recog-
nized as important.
Individually targeted services are the most fa-
miliar ones for psychologists. The changes in
service content discussed above are probably more
compatible with the values and training of psy-
chologists than with those of most of the other
professions involved. For example, the behavior-
ally oriented therapies are generally briefer, more
cost-effective, and more in keeping with client ex-
pectations than are other approaches and are thus
quite congruent with the expected content of a
community center. The historical commitment of
psychologists to the evaluation of their work is
also consistent with the community center concept
of accountability.
The knowledge base for working with significant
others includes consultation and training skills and
the special expertise needed to work with the
topical concerns of these others. Clearly, these
consultation and educational activities have a long
tradition within psychology (Goodstein, 1978;
Sarason, Levine, Goldberg, Cherlin, & Bennett,
1966); for instance, the training of others in
such activities as effective listening, empathy, and
the management of contingencies is quite familiar.
Psychologists' knowledge about psychopathology,
personality theory, and other related matters
makes them a readily identifiable resource for
significant others and provides a convenient entry
point for psychologists into these other support
systems.
Community Psychology
Psychology entered the field of human welfare
through its direct involvement in organized sys-
 terns for the control of behavioral deviance—men-
tal hospitals, prisons, homes for the retarded, and
so on. In these settings, problems are analyzed
at an individual level and the task is individual
behavior change. This task focus precludes con-
sideration of other levels of intervention (Caplan
& Nelson, 1973; Rappaport, 1977). Long-term
solutions of human welfare problems require a
social-systems level of analysis, thus providing the
focus of community psychology. Two community
systems should be included as the primary targets
of community psychology—systems of deviance
control and systems of socialization and support.
While community mental health represents some
movement in this direction, we insist that this
model can never escape its built-in preoccupation
with individual service delivery and the process
traditions of the mental health system.
Target. One target of community psychology
is the reform of our existing systems for the con-
trol of deviance and the development of new, more
socially responsive systems. While our concern
here is still with deviance control systems, the
principals are change agents and reformers rather
than direct service deliverers. It should be noted
that there are two interrelated issues involved in
such interventions, the nature of the control sys-
tem itself and the articulation of that system to
the surrounding community. Thus, we may be in-
terested in the prison as a social system, in the
processes by which persons are incarcerated within
that system and later resocialized into society, or
in any subset of these processes.
Up to this point, psychologists operate in fairly
familiar ways—with the deviant, their families,
and the community agencies charged with their
care and treatment. When we move to society's
formal systems of socialization and support, we, as
professional psychologists, are on less familiar ter-
ritory and our task also changes. Here we work
with families, schools, churches, community or-
ganizations, work settings, and the like in order
to enhance healthy human functioning. We insist
that the goal of community psychology in this
case should not be the mere prevention of emo-
tional disturbance but the far more ambitious task
of developing effective human beings.
We are not original in arguing this position.
Sanford (1972) has argued that the concept of
prevention naturally suggests the reduction or
elimination of dysfunction rather than the further-
ance of health and is thus a less preferred goal.
Iscoe (1974) has taken a similar tack in insisting
that the aim of community psychology should be
the development of competent communities rather
than the prevention of mental disorders in these
communities. By competent communities, Iscoe
means communities that have the resources, skills,
and power to satisfy their wants, as these wants
are self-defined by these communities.
In accomplishing this ambitious goal of en-
hancing human functioning, we propose that the
primary target be the formal structures of our
society—the institutions themselves rather than
the people that live in them. Dohrenwend (1978)
suggested that community psychology concern it-
self with strengthening those factors that mediate
environmental stressors and that these can be
found either in the person or in the environment.
This suggests that augmenting competencies can
be approached at the individual as well as at the
social structural level. Such an approach misses
one critically important point, at least from our
vantage point. Society has evolved highly articu-
lated social structures to accomplish its tasks, and
these structures interrelate in a complex system
that constitutes our social environment. The con-
sequences of social-systems change will be larger
in both scope and magnitude than any individually
targeted change.
Content. Intervening in systems of deviance
control involves exposing the deficiencies, inhu-
manity, and failures of these systems, especially
in light of their stated goals. Further, interven-
tions are aimed at creating a climate of change in
the system, especially to make the system more
humane, more accountable to the general society,
and more cost-effective. Also, interventions can
be aimed at the creation of alternatives to com-
pete with existing systems that appear too resistant
to change. Finally, interventions can be aimed
at the relationship between the system and the
society in which the system is embedded in order
to decrease their isolation from each other.
Exposes of the system found in the work of
Beers (1908), Stanton and Schwartz (1954), Goff-
man (1961), and Rosenhan (1973) have all pro-
vided impetus for attempts at system change. As
exemplified by the work of Clifford Beers, such
exposes need to be followed up by the creation of
advocacy groups that have as their primary mis-
sion the elimination of the conditions exposed.
Efforts to create a change of climate in the
system can be found in the development of a
token economy in a juvenile correctional institu-
tion (Reppucci & Saunders, 1974.) Such an effort
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • OCTOBER 1978 • 887
 can be seen as an attempt to change both staff and
"inmate" roles within the system by affecting
decision-making processes and task and role re-
sponsibilities, by making the system's goals more
explicit, and by clearly committing the system
to the "inmates' " eventual reabsorption into the
community.
Often, system-change interventions lead to or
are accompanied by the development of alterna-
tive systems that are thought to be more functional
for the reintegration of the residents into outside
society. Goldenberg's (1971) development of a
group residence for "hard-core" juvenile delin-
quents illustrates an alternative to the traditional
correctional facility.
All efforts to change systems of deviance con-
trol must involve some reconsideration of the
process by which the larger community defines
deviance and decides which of its members require
segregation into the deviance control center. Ef-
forts to modify the isolation of these centers, to
reduce the stigma of spending time in such places,
and to change the social consequences of this
segregation—for. instance, later job discrimination
—are an integral part of changing the system of
deviance control.
When we shift our focus to changing the in-
stitutions of socialization and support, the com-
plexity and difficulty of the task sharply increase.
One model of attack involves the humanization of
these social structures by helping them attend to
the effects of their organizational milieu on the
people who live and work in them, as well as on
the products and services that they produce. The
work of McGregor (1960) in humanizing business
management, of Sarason (1974) in humanizing
schools, and of Sommer (1974) in humanizing
physical environments can all be seen as advanc-
ing this conceptualization of community psychol-
ogy. The research of Moos (1973) on the as-
sessment of the social environment in a variety
of physical settings appears to be the beginning
of a technology useful in implementing this
strategy.
It is clear that there are only a few examples
of community psychologists adopting this ap-
proach (Rappaport, Davidson, Mitchell, & Wilson,
1975), although the literature on organization de-
velopment is rich with examples of organizational-
industrial psychologists using this model with
considerable success in work settings (Katz &
Kahn, 1978). We suggest that the prime reason
for this state of affairs is the historical alliance of
888 • OCTOBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
psychology with the mental health movement.
Our technology is such, however, that a closer
affiliation with systems involved in work, play,
education, and social welfare, while requiring some
retooling, will enable us to make a much larger
contribution to the development of community
competence and health.
Another model of intervention involves political
action and advocacy. In this approach, the de-
velopment of a competent community is seen as
requiring a redistribution of power so that there
is more equity of access to those resources that
lead to both physical and psychological well-being
(Rappaport, 1977). Perhaps the single best ex-
ample of this approach is found in the work of
the late Saul Alinsky (1969). While Alinsky him-
self was not a psychologist, his approach to com-
munity organization and community action has
certainly influenced psychology in providing a dif-
ferent model for community restructuring.
Process. Changing the systems of deviance con-
trol requires a role change for psychologists. It is
no longer enough for the professional psycholo-
gist to work competently and humanely with in-
dividuals needing help; professionals must work
to change the norms, values, and structures of
systems. Since these kinds of changes are diffi-
cult, if not impossible, for workers within the
system to bring about, this role as a change agent
most often falls to an external consultant or to
those who create alternative settings.
The process by which an external agent or in-
tervention agent can introduce such changes in
systems of deviance control has been spelled out
by Reppucci (1973) and by Fairweather, Sanders,
and Tornatzky (1974), among others. Reppucci
suggests six general requirements for such changes
to occur: (1) a guiding philosophy jointly de-
veloped between the consultant and members of
the organization; (2) an appropriate organiza-
tional structure that promotes cooperation, com-
munication, and consistency between staff and in-
mates; (3) the assignment to tasks on the basis
of skill and ability rather than credentials; (4)
involvement of staff in all decisions; (5) active
involvement of the external community; and (6)
the establishment of a reasonable time perspective
for change.
What needs to be underscored here is that the
nature of the change and the process of change
are a function of the relationship between the
change agent and the system. Process determines
product! The change agent does not bring about
 the expected change on the basis of his or her
authority or power but rather facilitates the pro-
cess of change by involving the staff in its own
process. The traditional authoritarian structure of
many established systems of deviance control
sharply resists such an approach, but this is one
case in which norms, and their underlying values
about the doctor always being right, must be
changed.
The process issues involved in facilitating the
creation of more effective and humane systems of
socialization and support, in producing more com-
petent communities, are extremely complex and
involve critical value dilemmas. Who is to define
a competent community? How are we to decide
what constitutes humanization? Who measures
the effectiveness of a single system of socializa-
tion? Specifically, who decides whether or not
our school, our church, our park, or whatever is
effective or humane? All of us, regardless of our
prior work as community psychologists, recognize
almost immediately the complexity of these ques-
tions. One point, however, can be made. In con-
trast to the somewhat more secure role of the
psychologist as an expert in the more traditional
mental health areas, the expertise of the psycholo-
gist in community matters is virtually certain to
be challenged.
Perhaps the more important issue to recognize,
however, is that the definitions of effectiveness or
competence in the community are clearly depend-
ent upon the values of the definers, and profes-
sional psychologists cannot expect their values to
be accepted as better than those of the members
of the client system. The value differences be-
tween the community psychologist and the client
system and how these differences are to be man-
aged become a process issue of primary impor-
tance. For example, how does the community
psychologist intervene in a highly authoritarian
but rather competent school system or business
organization? Can psychologists invite themselves
in? Should they wait for an invitation? On what
grounds can such an invitation be expected? Once
invited in, how can these value issues be ad-
dressed? Clearly, there are no easy answers to
these questions.
It should be noted that psychologists are often
invited into such organizations as content-matter
specialists to help the organization with fairly spe-
cific tasks—to help design a needs assessment, to
provide a training program for more, open com-
munication among members of a congregation,
and so on. This can be a crucial point in de-
veloping a different role relationship with the
organization. Once psychologists have demon-
strated their expertise and interest, their useful-
ness to the client system in other ways can be
explored.
Even if there is a positive client response, how-
ever, there is still the serious question of how
the differing values of the client and psychologist
are to be addressed. One approach, proposed by
Goodstein (1978), is for the psychologists to make
their values explicit and, at the same time, to
model these values in relating to the client. The
importance placed upon open communication and
the direct confrontation of value differences by
the psychologists in their relationships with the
client provide both an articulated set of values for
the client to examine and a process for doing so.
But, when there are irresolvable, important value
differences between client and psychologist, then
that psychologist is inappropriate for that organ-
ization or that community.
Rappaport (1977), in another context, suggests
the importance of the psychologist's holding cul-
tural diversity or pluralism as an important value
in dealing with clients. More specifically, the
community psychologist cannot be an effective
change agent unless there is clear respect for the
values of the community or organization in which
the changes are to be effected. Community psy-
chology must thus reject the notion of a single
mold to which the psychologist can help people
conform.
Knowledge. The relevant knowledge base for
changing systems of deviance control includes so-
cial psychology (theories of group process, lead-
ership, decision making, planned social change, and
the like), organizational behavior, social-systems
theory, and the sociology of deviance. For chang-
ing the systems of socialization and support, we
would add community and social organization, en-
vironmental and ecological psychology, and or-
ganizational development, to name but a few rele-
vant cognitive skills. It is interesting to note that
each of these areas is itself an emerging one. Our
expectation, and our hope, is that this knowledge
base will grow rapidly as psychologists involve
themselves in situations where such understanding
is critical.
Public Policy and Social Issues
Target. In rapidly changing times beset by
complex social problems, decisions on the social
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • OCTOBER 1978 • 889
 issues confronting our society are continuously
made at the legislative, judicial, and administra-
tive level of government. While the variables af-
fecting these decisions are most often political,
ideological, or financial, psychology has or can
have an important role both in influencing the
shape of these decisions and in carrying out the
consequent actions. To say that psychology has
an important role to play is not to say that the
role has been actualized. Lack of consensus on
the content of social issues that psychology can
meaningfully address (Rappaport & Kren, 1975)
and an unfamiliarity with the process by which
these inputs can impact the decision makers have
served as major barriers to psychologists' becom-
ing directly and openly involved in the social
policy decision-making process.
The difficulties of these issues notwithstanding,
in an increasingly technological age beset with
social problems, psychologists cannot help but be
involved in these policy decisions. Either by
actively providing input into policy formation or
by passively accepting and carrying out existing
policies, psychologists are involved in social policy
questions (Rappaport, 1977). Questions such as
care of the elderly, discrimination in educational
and employment practices, and the problems of
crime and violence in society have a strong be-
havioral component. The question to be addressed
is what courses of action psychologists might take
to address such public policy issues.
Content. Van de Vail (197S) has suggested
four models that are useful for conceptualizing the
utilization and methodology of applied social re-
search. Although his models confound content
and process issues described previously, his de-
scriptions of a "macro" and a "meso" model are
useful for conceptualizing the content of applied
social research in the social policy area.
At the macro level, van de Vail suggests that
behavioral scientists provide information that can
serve as a feedback mechanism between deliverers
and consumers of goods and services in society.
He suggests that as society decreases its reliance
on the free marketplace in the delivery of goods
and services, the regulation of supply and demand
of goods and services will need to be accomplished
by substitute feedback mechanisms (i.e., data col-
lected by behavioral scientists). This feedback
role is illustrated by Goodwin's (1971) suggestion
that the public's readiness for changes in the social
security system (as assessed in his survey) be used
to formulate such changes. Another illustration of
890 • OCTOBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
this role is the emerging area of evaluation re-
search for assessing consumer satisfaction with
social services (Ellsworth, 1975) as well as the
effectiveness of social programs in accomplishing
their stated objectives (Suchman, 1967).
At the meso level, van de Vail suggests two
roles that are relevant to the content of psychol-
ogy's involvement in social policy. First, psy-
chologists may be involved in the planning of
change programs (diagnosis of the problem, de-
signing and implementing change programs). Es-
sentially, van de Vail is suggesting the concept
of experimental social innovation (Fairweather,
1967). Within this context, the behavioral sci-
entist may assess the needs of the consumer (e.g.,
via the use of social indicator analysis, surveys,
and so on), involve the consumer in designing the
service project (e.g., through group or community
organization techniques), and use knowledge of
behavior change techniques to design and imple-
ment the program. A good example of this is the
income maintenance experiment (Kershaw, 1972).
Second, the behavioral scientist can also be in-
volved in the control of such programs through
evaluation of the process by which they are con-
ducted and through evaluation of their impact.
The techniques of cost-benefit and cost-effective-
ness analysis and the use of management informa-
tion systems are particularly relevant here.
Process. Probably the major barrier to the de-
liberate involvement of psychology in the public
policy arena involves process rather than content
issues. Reiff (1968) points out that, historically,
one can identify periods of time (e.g., World War
II) when psychologists put aside their reservations
and actively engaged in developing and implement-
ing public policy. He suggests that the operative
variable determining the level of involvement was
the presence of a popular war that minimized con-
troversy over the values inherent in implementing
a social policy.
Rappaport (1977), however, suggests that one
cannot avoid furthering a set of values as a psy-
chologist and that the appropriate role is to openly
and publicly acknowledge one's values and act
accordingly. For illustration, one can look at van
de Vall's (1975) concepts of the behavioral sci-
entist as an agent of social control or of counter-
control. The most potent example of the psycholo-
gist as an agent of countercontrol is Kenneth
Clark's role as an expert witness in the 1954 Su-
preme Court case on school desegregation. Clark,
along with a team of social scientists, testified on
 the negative consequences of the existing policy of
segregated education. In a process sense, it is
notable that the testimony was presented as part
of a judicial proceeding, by its nature an adversary
process (Stephan, 1978).
A second process issue is the style-match prob-
lem. Behavioral scientists are accustomed to deal-
ing with complex issues, in a thoughtful, sys-
tematic way, over a prolonged period of time.
They are rewarded for the cogency of their in-
sights and the empirical evidence they generate
to support their ideas (using the rules of evi-
dence accepted by the scientific community). Pub-
lic policy, however, is developed in a very political
world in which the rules for decision making in-
clude variables (e.g., the power of interest groups)
with which psychologists are unaccustomed to
dealing. The pace of decision making and the
social environment in which decisions are made
differ radically from the psychology laboratory.
In sum, public policy is developed in an environ-
ment that may appear to be illogical and may ac-
tually be frustrating for psychologists.
Knowledge. Psychologists do possess the skills
and knowledge that are relevant to shaping public
policy, although they have not been widely used as
yet. There are technical skills such as data pro-
cessing, experimental and quasi-experimental de-
sign, and measurement of attitudes and behavior
that are clearly relevant for providing feedback
to decision makers for the design, control, and
countercontrol of programs. The application of
these skills is presently evident in the emerging
areas of needs assessment and program evaluation.
The extent to which psychologists possess ecologi-
cally valid knowledge that is relevant to public
policy issues certainly depends on the particular
question at hand. It is suggested that as psy-
chologists pay attention to the ecological validity
of concepts they consider relevant to public policy
and learn to integrate their knowledge with that of
other disciplines, the contribution that this knowl-
edge will make to society will be an important one.
Some Concluding Comments
The intent of this article was to provide a con-
ceptual framework for understanding the contrast-
ing strategies psychologists use to alleviate human
distress and promote social well-being. Boundaries
have been suggested between different strategies
in an attempt to delineate the primary focus of
community psychology.
Perhaps the most important distinction we have
made is that between community mental health
and community psychology, where we have argued
that there are basic differences in philosophy, tar-
get, content, process, and knowledge base. We
further insist that community psychology cannot
prosper within the community mental health move-
ment because of these basic differences, a con-
clusion we have not reached lightly. The role we
defined for community psychology—interfacing
with those social systems concerned with deviance
control and socialization and support—will require
creating alliances with new constituencies, develop-
ing working relationships with different disciplines,
and moving away from our traditional dependency
upon the mental health establishment.
We argue that there is considerable evidence
that our society is ready for bold, innovative ap-
proaches to problems of human welfare. Witness,
for example, the recent legislation restricting the
institutionalization of those convicted of "status
offenses" (juvenile acts treated as crimes only be-
cause of the age of those involved, such as smok-
ing tobacco or being truant from school). Our
belief is that as our society struggles with seem-
ingly intractable human problems, there will be
a large increase in opportunities for community
psychologists to play a significant role in the crea-
tion of these new approaches, providing that the
necessary changes in perspective and modification
of skills have occurred. The challenge we face is
to develop our competencies and our record of
achievement so as to maximize these opportunities.
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