ABSTRACT
The end of the 20th century is approaching, the American Psychological Association (APA) recently celebrated its first 100 years, and the country is in the throes of a debate about the proper role of government and the scope of public and private responsibility, not least as these issues concern the health and well-being of the citizenry. This seems an appropriate time to examine the contribution of psychology. How well have we identified, prioritized, and addressed major problems? What are the strengths and limitations of our principal intervention strategies? In the first section of this chapter, I describe the growth of applied psychology, discuss concerns about the nature of that growth (specifically, that dominance by clinical psychology has severely restricted the range of applied psychology interventions), and then briefly outline an alternative paradigm (i.e., community psychology). In the second section, I provide an overview of several forms of violence in order to make several key points: that these very serious problems have elicited a limited response from applied psychology and that the distribution of these problems indicates the need for ecological models of explanation and intervention—a shift from dominant intrapsychic clinical models. In the third and final section, I suggest some alternative intervention strategies for dealing with various forms of violence. Given the current state of relevant theory, research, and intervention, the illustration of these strategies is necessarily general: It is too early to provide a detailed description of demonstrably successful tactics; I merely argue for a shift in strategy—interventions designed to tend social ecologies.
