Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

This is actually correct. According the MBTI, which I have taken and administer to clients from time to time, I am an ENFJ. :) Pretty cool.

Truth or Dare

So, I asked for it and now I got it! So, I'll answer you the questions and satiate your morbid curiosity.

From Insane Preschool Mom
Pepsi or Coke? Neither. I drink Diet Mt. Dew. Yum.

Psychology is a science. Yes or no. Yes...and an Art.

It's okay for people to pretend their pets are really their children?
Only if they actually have no children. I think that if your kids think fido is just as important as they are, they're gonna have issues.

ninjanun said...

1. How did you and your husband meet?

This is funny. We were both in our undergrad at the same school but we didn't know one another. And I received this random instant message from this guy who had found me by looking for others who went to the same undergrad on AIM. And I thought he was weird, and I blocked him. But eventually, I unblocked him. We started talking via email and instant messenger, and we figured out that we lived one block apart in two different dorms, and that we knew some of the same people. So, thinking this is silly, we should meet, we met at the library on campus one night and went to see "Gone in 60 Seconds." We kissed during that movie, and got married two years later. The funny thing was I wasn't expecting anything to happen with Kevin, he was just this guy I was going to meet. So I had a date with a different guy the next night. That one didn't go too well, and there was never a second date. :) How's that for random and bizarre?

2. Describe your dream house

Huge old restored George Barber designed home, painted some deep shade of blue. With original hard wood floors, wrap around porch, and stained glass windows. Fireplaces, a library, some bay windows, a big flat yard. Something like this.

3. What are some good movies you'd recommend watching?
The Family Man, I Heart Huckabees, Garden State, Rize, Crash, Memento, Requiem for a Dream, Bowling for Columbine, Thirteen, Pieces of April, It's a Wonderful Life, The Apartment

Dave said...

1). How old are you? 25 years old

2). Where did you first have sex? The back seat of a 1988 Chevy Cavalier
3). What's your biggest regret? First having sex in the back seat of a 1988 Chevy Cavalier with someone other than my husband.

And as I asked the other blogger - why on earth would you want to answer questions in public?

I'm a psychologist, so for me it totally plays into what I do every day. And as far as answering publicly, I am who I am. I'm embarrassed by some things I'm done, and proud of others. But one of my goals in life is to be known and to be known truthfully and honestly. So I think something like this is fun instead of intrusive. And if one of my clients ever finds it, or my mother ever actually reads this, we'll have one hell of a good conversation.

Hurricane Katrina, Community Psychology, and Being Really Pissed Off

Today, in my community psychology class, we discussed our upcoming project. It's taking form slowly but surely. The class typically participates in a community psychology context at Lawndale Christian Health Center, an ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged clinic on the near west side of Chicago. But this year, our class is going to somehow, some way, reach out to Katrina evacuees in the Chicago area. Sure, it's hard to conceptualize, hard to know what's needed, and hard to do so when we're all just learning about community psych ourselves.

But part of our training is to figure out what types of experiences have evacuees experienced, so that we can better design interventions that will meet their needs. Evacuees have lost their homes, been traumatized, seen others die, been treated like animals,watched water trucks pass by when they were literally dying of thirst, feared for their lives in more than one context, so on and so forth.

So, in class today we listened to this broadcast from This American Life. About 4 minutes in, the stories of three people who experienced different aspects of Katrina tell their stories. The real stories. Not the hyped up media bullshit. Not the talking points and agendas of the "blame game" (yes, I said it).

So did you know that gang members procured guns, instituted their own security, and then looted a Rite Aid so that they could provide juice for babies, medications for the elderly, and then they even organized themselves by taking matching color ponchos so that they could easily be identified? They were the ones protecting women from being raped, people from being hurt, and babies from dying of dehydration.

While the National Guard protected the affluent neighborhood of Algiers...preventing people from leaving the Convention Center?

200 tourists at a paramedic convention pooled money to charter busses after being stuck at the Hotel Monte Leon (which I stayed at about 4 years ago) for days, and the government comandeered those busses, and left them with nowhere to go, no food, no water, and then told them that they were on their own for getting out of New Orleans. They were then promised that there were busses on the bridge, the Ponchatrain Expressway, two miles away. So they started walking, and other people started following, so they numbered 800 by the time they reached the bridge. And armed sheriffs began firing on them with no explanation when they got there...

Sad story after story...person after person...you should really listen and be moved. Weep for the injustice and the pain. That's all I know to do.

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

Insane Preschool Mom teased me with the following meme, and I had to take her up on it. Now I must subject my self to the same abuse.



1. Ask me 3 questions. Any 3, no matter how personal, private or random.

2. I have to answer them honestly. I have to answer them all.

3. In turn, you post this message in your own blog or journal and you have to answer the questions that are asked of you.

The Way of a Pilgrim

This week, boys and girls, Nicole wrote a paper on The Way of a Pilgrim. And she had such a hard time with the notions and ideas in the book that her paper doesn't make much sense. So, instead you're getting instead, an integration piece about psychology and Christianity that I wrote for my Community Psychology class.

Without some knowledge of the field, it will probably bore you to tears. But try, if you must...

This week’s readings on the professional role of doctoral level psychologists, viewed in the light of the proven effectiveness of preventive interventions for children, support that there is a distinct need for psychologists to reevaluate our professional identity within the field. Levine & Perkins make a strong case that the number of individuals experiencing some form of life stress or psychiatric event in any given year is larger than the current population of helping professionals can hope to address using only individual psychotherapy. While psychotherapy can be effective on an individual level, the limited number of resources precludes the availability and viability of such a model. Humphreys implies this to mean that the advent of independently practicing master’s level clinicians requires a re-imaging of our professional role in new and creative ways apart from psychotherapy. Humphreys advocates pioneering new ways of training doctoral students in order to provide internship experiences that promote innovative competencies that support the shift of the psychologist’s role away from individual psychotherapy toward addressing the somewhat forgotten areas of psychology, such as public policy, community service, and action. But the findings of Johnston Kruse & Schwer Canning entreat psychology training programs to also increase training experiences that introduce students to underserved populations. Combating the perceived lack of fulfillment in working with underserved populations seems to be key in moving psychologists out of the affluent private practice clinic into new realms that address the systemic concerns of the underserved in psychology practice.

Few authors go so far as Albee, who advocates the abolition of reimbursement for individual psychology interventions. In his aptly titled, “The Futility of Psychotherapy,” the author suggests primary prevention to be the answer and a better distribution of limited mental health funds. Albee’s support of primary prevention is reasonably validated, considering positive effects found by the meta-analysis of such interventions with children by Durlak & Wells. Together, the readings support a shift from a focus on individual psychotherapy, which is available to the affluent more than other populations, toward systemic and community interventions. Such a shift in focus must then be reflected in psychology training programs and in the attitudes toward the populations that psychologists serve.

I, too, have often felt disillusionment with the efficacy of individual psychotherapy to make any sustained, systemic change. However, the powerful journeys of change that I have experienced with some individual clients make me hesitant to completely abandon individual psychotherapy all together. I agree that there is a paucity of training that equips students to deal with the community side of psychology or for the challenges of underserved populations. However, I feel Albee’s suggestion that we eradicate all reimbursement for individual therapy is irresponsible. To say that there is no medical cause to certain psychological problems, and therefore no rationale for treating them, leaves many suffering individuals with no course of treatment, more victims of the medical model. Our goal should be to view individuals more holistically, and to grow away from our dualistic notions of a separate biological and mental self.


As I learned in psychopathology, it seems that conceptualizing psychology as biopsychosocial (biological, psychosocial, sociocultural) is the best framework for addressing all aspects of persons. The research showing the effectiveness of community and preventive interventions is undeniable. However, there will always be individuals who need the help of psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and other individual interventions. In addition to the push to conceptualize psychological service more systemically, I think that making quality individual psychotherapy services available to underserved populations is also key. From a Christian perspective, it is important to seek a creative “third way” of conceptualizing psychology as service. Traditional evangelical culture is focused on the individual and his or her actions, decisions, and faith. However, I feel that we have much to learn from the community based approaches of more mainline and Anglican traditions. Our God is personal, acting in the lives of individuals through a relationship with Him. Our God is also concerned with the least of these, and Jesus himself challenged the social and community structures of his day. The joining of these two approaches seems most effective and powerful, but also the most difficult approach.


In my professional development, I am grappling with these issues. Why am I pursuing my doctorate, which is not what I have anticipated? I absolutely adore individual therapy. It is gratifying, effective, and mainly useful with a fulfilling subset of clients. Yet, I could have stopped with my M.A. if that were all I desired to do professionally. But because my goal is to start a community mental health agency in rural East Tennessee, I must acknowledge that my role will not primarily consist of individual therapy. I also want to develop a specialty with adolescent girls. So, the question before me is how do I best invest my time while in graduate school for the greatest result for my future clients? I feel overwhelmed by all the subject areas that seem essential to succeeding at what I feel is a calling of God. I want to learn all I can about community psychology, adolescent therapy, individual therapy, child development, rural psychology, research, and teaching. Adding the Christian integration piece seems to be the only thread holding the thing together. I can not help but ask myself, “How I can serve the greatest good of the greatest number of people with my training without sacrificing the therapeutic nature of individual relationships?”