When Healing Looks Like Justice: An Interview with Harvard Psychologist Joseph Gone (from Mad in America, 10/8/19)

Photograph of Joseph Gone
Joseph Gone, Photograph Provided by the Author

Community Psychologist, Joseph Gone considers historical trauma and the role of Indigenous healing in mental health. Listen to his podcast from Mad in America (10/8/19) here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/10/healing-looks-like-justice-interview-harvard-psychologist-joseph-gone/ Also included is a full transcript of the podcast.

Joseph Gone is a professor of both Anthropology and Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University. He is a clinical and community psychologist by training, and he conducts participatory research projects with community partners in Native American communities. His projects aim to rethink traditional mental health practices and incorporate Indigenous-healing practices. His work includes both the critical analysis of psychological theories and concepts, such as indigenous historical trauma, as well as original research on new mental health programs such as the Blackfeet Culture Camp for the treatment of addiction.

As an undergraduate, he became interested in psychology because the field approaches the question of human experience from so many diverse vantage points — taking up questions from the workings of the brain to what it means to be human. His love for ideas and his desire to contribute to the American Indian communities (as a member of Aaniiih-Gros Ventre tribal nation) led him to get a doctorate in clinical psychology. However, his experience is not simply that of a clinical psychologist or psychotherapist who addresses mental health at the individual level — because sometimes, he explains, the remedies that help people “look less like healing and more like justice.”

Learn more about Community Psychology here.

There are lots of Community Psychologists you can meet on our page. You could start with Craig Kwesi Brookins or Meg Bond.

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