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Subscribe to our email discussion group. Then log on. Then add yourself to the new Contact List. Please!
When RadPsyNet began in 1993, many of us who were critical of mainstream psychology's support for an unjust status quo struggled to find others to work with on common projects. We felt pretty isolated.
Since then, as we've noted over the years, our efforts, along with those of many others, have made it easier for radical and critical psychologists to find one another. Unlike 13 years ago, today critical psychologists have an array of books, journals, conferences, courses, blogs, websites, and other resources. Organizations such as Psychologists for Social Responsibility and Psy-Act -- often with the key participation of RadPsyNet members -- focus attention on a variety of theoretical, methodological, and political issues.
As similar forums arose and as technology changed, RadPsyNet moved from our original paper newsletter to an Internet Gopher system (remember them!?) and then to this website and our discussion group. We've met at conferences from time to time, and helped spawn the first North American Critical Psychology Conference in 2001 (the third one takes place in a few weeks in Toronto). Members have worked together in varying combinations on research, writing, organizing, and of course discussing. And we've even had fun along the way.
One significant project has been the online Radical Psychology Journal. Despite the difficulty of maintaining a regular publication schedule, the journal (with Shlomit Schuster as the primary editor) attracts favorable attention. Recently EBSCO Publishing asked us to include the journal in its database, which is accessible from thousands of university and public libraries around the world. Although we don't expect the minimal royalties they send us to pay even the cost of our website, we are glad to have another way to get our work to students and researchers who don't yet know we exist and who may not be aware of critical perspectives within psychology at all.
Over the years RadPsyNet has also had a variety of membership and coordination structures. Most important for many of us has been the Membership Directory. The most recent version listed more than 500 members in three dozen countries. Many of us have used this directory to find like-minded people around the world.
As demands for our time and attention shift and as we find other outlets for our energy and our work, maintaining RadPsyNet as a membership organization has become difficult. The time has come to shift gears once again.
For now, with some reluctance, we are ending RadPsyNet's membership component. That means we will no longer ask people who find us on the web to "join" and we will stop updating the directory. Instead, we encourage you to subscribe to our RadPsyNet-Members email discussion group. We no longer require people to send us location information in order to join our discussion.
Our discussion site (now hosted at YahooGroups) includes a Contact List that will replace our old Membership Directory once we all sign on. Please remember to add your contact information! Subscribing to the discussion list does not automatically add you to the Contact List -- you must do this on your own. We can only use this list to find one another if we add ourselves to it. If you don't want to post your address and phone numbers, please at least list your name and location.
If you're not already part of our discussion group, the easiest way to join is to send a blank email.
However, a much better way is to register online. Once registered at the discussion group site, you can:
Once subscribed, you can send email to the group to this address: RadPsyNet-Members@yahoogroups.com
If you have problems subscribing, contact Colleen Loomis, our discussion moderator.
Please help us make this work! If you are already subscribed to the email list, remember to log in at the yahoogroup site and add your name and other information to the Contact List (listed under Database on the left side ). You can also add links, including links to your own website if you have one. If you've never logged on before, the process is pretty straightforward.
One more note: RadPsyNet member Tod Sloan is co-editor of a new online journal, the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology. Social Action is a joint project of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (represented by Tod) and Counselors for Social Justice (represented by the other co-editor, Rebecca Toporek).
That's about it for now. Over the years I've met many of you (thanks in part to that Directory) and have been pleased to see so many of us active in so many different arenas. I look forward to continuing our work together.
Best of luck.
Dennis Fox
