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Daniel Fishman

The best method is the one that works: “Should be read not only by professional psychologists but by anyone interested in the future of mind-related science.” —John Horgan, author of The End of Science
 
 A cursory survey of the field of psychology reveals raging debate among psychologists about the methods, goals, and significance of the discipline—psychology’s own version of the science wars. The previous unification of the discipline has given way to a proliferation of competing approaches, a postmodern carnival of theories and methods that calls into question the positivist psychological tradition.
 
 Bridging the gap between the traditional and the novel, Daniel B. Fishman proposes an invigorated, hybrid model for the practice of psychology–a radical, pragmatic reinvention of psychology based on databases of rigorous, solution-focused case studies. In The Case for Pragmatic Psychology, Fishman demonstrates how pragmatism returns psychology to a focus on contextualized knowledge about particular individuals, groups, organizations, and communities in specific situations, sensitive to the complexities and ambiguities of the real world. Fishman fleshes out his theory by applying pragmatic psychology to two contemporary psychosocial dilemmas —the controversies surrounding the “psychotherapy crisis” generated by the growth of managed care, and the heated culture wars over educational reform.
 
 Moving with ease from the theoretical to the nuts and bolts of actual psychological intervention programs, Fishman proffers a strong argument for a new kind of psychology with far-reaching implications for enhancing human services and restructuring public policy.

NYU Press

Early American Places

The Case for Pragmatic Psychology

Ousmane K. Power-Greene

How, and why, free blacks resisted relocation to Liberia: “A fine contribution to the story of African colonization movements in early American history” (The Journal of American History).
 
Against Wind and Tide tells the story of African Americans’ battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony, Liberia. Although ACS members considered free black colonization in Africa a benevolent enterprise, most black leaders rejected the ACS, fearing that the organization sought forced removal. As Ousmane K. Power-Greene’s story shows, these African American anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true “black American homeland.”
 
 In this study of anticolonization agitation, Power-Greene draws on newspapers, meeting minutes, and letters to explore the concerted effort on the part of nineteenth-century black activists, community leaders, and spokespersons to challenge the American Colonization Society’s attempt to make colonization of free blacks federal policy. The ACS insisted the plan embodied empowerment. The United States, they argued, would never accept free blacks as citizens, and the only solution to the status of free blacks was to create an autonomous nation that would fundamentally reject racism at its core. But the activists and reformers on the opposite side believed that the colonization movement was itself deeply racist and in fact one of the greatest obstacles for African Americans to gain citizenship in the United States.
 
 Power-Greene synthesizes debates about colonization and emigration, situating this complex and enduring issue into an ever-broader conversation about nation building and identity formation in the Atlantic world.

Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement