BIO

Louis Hoffman Introduction: I am a faculty member at Saybrook University and serve on the board for the Society for Humanistic Psychology. Much of my work with indigenous psychology has been through involvement with the psychology of religion and existential psychology in China. I am working with several colleagues as part of a Templeton Foundation grant to develop the psychology of religion in China, which has focused a great deal on identifying indigenous Chinese psychology embedded in its religious traditions. I have also worked with colleagues from China in identifying and developing indigenous Chinese approaches to existential psychology, which was part of motivation for the book Existential Psychology East-West.

Regarding ways to proceed, I like the idea of a goal of eventually getting to a book. For now, I wonder if it would be good to keep that in our consciousness while beginning with working on conference focused presentations. A symposium at APA would be great, but the would likely be a year and a half out given how soon the 2011 deadline is coming up. For conferences, we could also think of trying to get a focus or theme of one of the upcoming Division 32 conferences on Indigenous psychology. Maybe as a preface to starting an organization, we could start a listserv or something similar to begin discussions and, hopefully, generate interest. Another starting point could be to write an article on indigenous psychology that could serve as a call to action on indigenous psychology, and hopefully launch many of the possibilities.

Preparation for a lot of work with little (evident) reward, that sounds a lot like humanistic psychology in academia!

Louis Hoffman 11/23/10