Bound by Infinities: Technology, Immediacy and Our Environmental Crisis.

This paper explores the relationship between human desire, technology, and imagination, emphasizing (1) the phenomenology of this relationship, and (2) its ontological and ecological ramifications. Drawing on the work of Bion and Winnicott, the paper will develop a psychoanalytic container for attitudes contributing to our current climate-based crisis, paying special attention to the problematic effect technology has had on our sense of time and place. Many of our technologies stunt sensuous engagement, collapse psychic space, diminish our capacity to tolerate frustration, and blind us to our dependence on worlds beyond the human. In short, our technologies trouble our relationship to our bodies and other bodies. The paper argues that omnipotent fantasies organizing our relationship to technology, to each other, and to the nonhuman world, have cocooned us in a kind of virtual reality that devastates a sense of deep obligation to the environment.

Methods for Influencing Social Policy: The Role of Social Experiments.

Research methods in community psychology have grown more diverse since the Swampscott conference, but rigorous social experiments maintain a place among the multiplicity of methods that can promote community psychology values. They are particularly influential in policy circles. Two examples of social experiments to end homelessness for different populations illustrate their role. Both studies show that offering extremely poor and disenfranchised people autonomy and the resources they seek works better than "helping" them to overcome deficits in ways designed by well-meaning service providers. Experiments are neither the first nor the last method community psychologists should employ, but are a critical part of the field's armamentarium for systems change.

Bio-psycho-social correlates of the perceived crowding in different contexts / Correlatos bio-psico-sociales del hacinamiento percibido en diferentes contextos

BACKGROUND: This paper analyzes the experience of crowding through a biopsychosocial approach to human behavior which empirically joins different dimensions that the literature has analyzed separately. The main aim consists of identifying factors involved in perceived crowding from (a) the emotional response and affective meaning (BIO dimension); (b) the perception of psychological well-being and personality traits (PSYCHO dimension), and (c) sociodemographic characteristics (SOCIO dimension). METHOD: 761 adults completed an online questionnaire that included an assessment of images representing four high- and low-density functional and residential contexts. The data were analyzed through four hierarchical regressions, one for each spatial context. RESULTS: Although the results vary depending on the contexts analyzed, the prevalence of the variables from the BIO dimension in functional contexts, as opposed to residential contexts, is highlighted. The latter spaces show greater heterogeneity regarding the explanatory power of the experience of crowding. CONCLUSIONS: The response to crowding experienced in residential environments shows a greater range of variables involved, supporting the idea of these spaces' greater complexity, insofar as they are psychologically adaptive

ANTECEDENTES: esta investigación analiza la experiencia de hacinamiento mediante una perspectiva bio-psico-social del comportamiento humano que contemple distintas dimensiones que la literatura ha analizado empíricamente de forma independiente. El objetivo principal consiste en identificar factores implicados en el hacinamiento percibido provenientes de: a) la respuesta emocional y el significado afectivo (dimensión BIO); b) la percepción del bienestar psicológico y los rasgos de personalidad (dimensión PSICO); y c) las características sociodemográficas (dimensión SOCIO). MÉTODO: 761 adultos respondieron a un cuestionario online que incluía la evaluación de imágenes representativas de cuatro contextos funcionales y residenciales de alta y baja densidad. Los datos fueron analizados a través de cuatro regresiones jerárquicas, una por cada contexto espacial. RESULTADOS: aunque los resultados varían en función de los contextos analizados, cabe destacar la prevalencia de variables provenientes de la dimensión BIO en contextos funcionales frente a los residenciales. Estos últimos muestran mayor heterogeneidad en la capacidad explicativa de la experiencia de hacinamiento. CONCLUSIONES: la respuesta a la experiencia del ambiente en los espacios residenciales muestra una mayor amplitud de variables implicadas en la vivencia, percepción y adaptación a estos entornos, reforzando la idea de una mayor complejidad de estos espacios, en tanto que psicológicamente adaptativos