| Abstract: | A recent sortie into the history of presidential addresses in C.P.A. turned up an interesting sidelight. Two of the first 4 presidents had chosen to discuss directly psychology's responsibilities to society (Line, 1945; Bernhardt, 1947); since 1947, presidential addresses have shown a predominant concern for scientific aspects of psychology with internal organizational matters of the Association receiving lesser but still substantial attention. This struck me as being curious. If it can be assumed that presidents reflect, to some extent at least, the concerns of the Association, it might be expected that there would have been more attention paid to psychology's obligations to society. Very clearly, the founding fathers saw C.P.A., not as an ivory-tower retreat, but as an organization with deep social responsibilities. Is Northway (1968) right in her contention that, following the War, many powerful psychologists retreated to their ivory labs and that the ivory labs have become ivory skyscrapers? Have we consciously changed our objectives since the 1940's, or have I misread the omens? My questions stem from doubts about our contribution to pressing social issues in the world or, in a more restricted way, about Canadian psychology's contribution to pressing Canadian problems. I don't, for a moment, accept the claim, put forward by a colleague, that C.P.A. is still playing tunes on its old Galton whistle. But, it does seem that, as a discipline concerned with the behaviour of individuals and groups, psychology in Canada has been unduly quiet about a number of social issues on which it has something important to contribute. What is more distressing is the number of social issues to which psychology should have more to contribute than it has. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
