Beverly Greene, Ph.D., ABPP, Professor in the Department
of Psychology, has recently won two awards for her many
achievements throughout an eminent career. St John’s University
bestowed on her a 2008 Outstanding Faculty Achievement Medal and
the Association for Women in
Psychology (AWP) presented her with their highest accolade, a
2007 Distinguished Career Award. Founded in 1969, AWP is an educational feminist organization
dedicated to reassessing and re-conceptualizing the role of
psychology within women's lives. It challenges traditional
assumptions and practices that limit the understanding of women and
men, or that may promulgate negative divisions between women based
on race, ethnicity, age, social class, sexual orientation,
disability or religious affiliation. Dr. Greene is renowned for her outstanding contributions to the
psychology of women, African Americans and the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, authoring nearly 100
peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters.
Always pushing limitations and questioning gaps in service that
fail to achieve the highest quality and compassionate care for
marginalized populations, Greene has pioneered significant inroads
into understanding the complexities of identity through
multiple as opposed to single identity paradigms. Greene worked for 10 years in the mental health public sector
which she described as the front lines of professional mental
health work. “In the public sector I was encountering all kinds of
dilemmas confronting marginalized people that my training never
addressed. The resources are relatively few and people’s problems
are serious and complicated.” However, Greene enjoyed and values
this early part of her career because it continues to inform the
nature of her teaching and scholarly research. “I had a sense of where people are ill treated in the system and
how the discipline neglects an awareness of itself as a discipline
that is not culturally neutral, but is one that has a
subjective cultural position,” explains Greene. “Understanding the
nature of people’s marginalization is essential to understanding
their dilemma which is essential if you want to talk about treating
their problems.” Greene credits her flourishing research to St. John’s support
and the “vibrant, productive, stimulating Department of
Psychology.” She elaborates, “These are very friendly, collegial
people. That also facilitates getting this kind of work done.” Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D., Dean and Professor of Psychology
reciprocates, “We are fortunate to have Dr. Greene. Through her
writings and numerous presentations, Dr. Greene has made
psychologists aware of how prejudice and poverty affect
individuals, and she has helped the profession understand that
their approaches to interventions cannot be based on a ‘one size
fits all’ model.” Greene has three books in progress. The first, A Minyan of
Women, is a compilation of narratives by Jewish
psychotherapists that includes contributions from a few of her
students. The second book is a textbook for professors on how
to teach cultural competence and sensitivity in graduate mental
health courses. This is a guide and resource for teachers on the
designing and teaching of courses in cultural competence to mental
health practice trainees. The third, Phenomenal Women, is an analysis of
psychological resilience and vulnerability in high-achieving black
women, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Toni Morrison. Greene believes her current book projects offer a historical and
cultural context which can help people understand themselves and
the challenges that not only confront them, but the problems we
face on a global level. “Part of understanding yourself is to understand where you’ve
been. If you don’t know your own history, then you tend to repeat
it,” explains Greene. “The way to avoid the mistakes of the past is
to identify them and develop new strategies for those problems for
which the old strategies didn’t work. This generation is estranged
from history. It’s impossible to understand what is happening in
current events, if you don’t understand the historical context that
gives such events meaning in the present. ” |