ABSTRACT
Community psychology as a subdiscipline within psychology began in the mid-1960s as an expression of the social justice movement in the United States (Tyler 1996). The name ‘community psychology’ was chosen to designate a concern for people in settings that needed improvement, and to move beyond the treatment of problematic individual behaviour (Bennett et al. 1966). The field grew out of an individualistic clinical orientation and addressed the need for social interventions for mental health problems. It was a newly emergent form of psychology, becoming broader than social psychology and more socially action-oriented than clinical psychology. At the same time, it did not give up its scientific grounding and has been working at keeping a strong connection with science. In this way, community psychology has continued to follow a scientist-professional model inherited from clinical psychology, and has appropriated action research as a way to operationalize that model.
