Empowerment in mainstream psychology: Legitimacy, obstacles, and possibilities.

Argues that if the concept of empowerment is to expand beyond the field of community psychology into more traditional areas of psychology (e.g., social, personality, clinical, and school psychology), its moral and psychological foundations should be more clearly articulated. To advance this proposition, an integrative conceptual model of empowerment is presented. Within this framework, ethical and therapeutic legitimacy of empowering practices, obstacles for their inclusion in mainstream psychology, and possibilities for their future development are explored. Some of the benefits to be derived from the adoption of the concept of empowerment in academic and applied psychology are outlined. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)