The Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics promotes conversation between the psychological sciences and humanities to advance our understanding of the enduring ethical questions at the heart of human existence.

Upcoming Offerings

Liberation Psychotherapy
Liberation Psychotherapy
Thursday, September 18th
9:00 a.m. - 4 p.m. EST
X
Liberation Psychotherapy

Liberation Psychotherapy

Thursday, September 18th

9:00 a.m. - 4 p.m. EST

Join Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., licensed psychologist and Assistant Professor at William James College, for a Psychology and the Other pre-conference workshop exploring Critical-Liberation Psychotherapy (CLP). Drawing from critical and liberation psychologies, CLP challenges dominant therapeutic models that reinforce dehumanization and alienation. Participants will examine seven core assumptions embedded in mainstream psychotherapy and engage with practices that recontextualize healing as a relational and liberatory process. Through case vignettes and dialogue, this workshop invites clinicians to imagine therapy as a site for resistance, transformation, and the cultivation of critical consciousness.

Learn more about the conference and registration here

Augustine for Clinicians: The Psychology of a Restless Heart
Augustine for Clinicians: The Psychology of a Restless Heart
Thursday, September 18th
9:00 a.m. - 4 p.m. EST
X
Augustine for Clinicians: The Psychology of a Restless Heart

Augustine for Clinicians: The Psychology of a Restless Heart

Thursday, September 18th

9:00 a.m. - 4 p.m. EST

Join Matthew Clemente, Ph.D., Director of Research & Curriculum at the泭Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics泭and Assistant Professor of the Practice in Formative Education at Boston College, for a pre-conference workshop exploring Augustines泭Confessions泭through a psychological lens. Reading Augustine not as a philosopher but as a proto-psychotherapist in the lineage of Socratic inquiry and psychoanalysis, participants will examine core concepts such as guilt, shame, desire, faith, and confession. Drawing links between Augustine and Freud, the workshop engages泭Confessions泭as an early meditation on the restless human psyche. Through close reading and discussion, participants will reflect on Augustines enduring relevance to psychological thought.

Learn more about the conference and registration here

Riding with Oedipus: On the Other Side of the Middle Passage
Riding with Oedipus: On the Other Side of the Middle Passage
Thursday, September 18th
5:00 p.m. EST
X
Riding with Oedipus: On the Other Side of the Middle Passage

Riding with Oedipus: On the Other Side of the Middle Passage

Thursday, September 18th

5:00 p.m. EST

Decades ago, Frantz Fanon suggested that the Oedipal complex was far from coming into being among Black folk of the Antilles; perhaps tongue-in-cheek, Fanon nevertheless intends to signal in this passage from Black Skin, White Masks that traditional psychoanalytic theory and praxis cannot be applied wholesale, or without radical revision and correction, to Black life under the complicated circumstances of the post-colonial, post-slavery Western worlds. This inquiry aims to explore both the idea of the Oedipus complex, as well as Fanons commentary on it, in reference to life on the other side of the Middle Passage as it engendered the African Diaspora centuries ago. The primary concern here is finding a way to articulate an Oedipal cycleor the transfer of authority from one generation to the nextthat has been interrupted or deferred (as it was in the Atlantic slave trade) and what this might look like; the classic model of the complex brings us up short in understanding what this deferral might mean not only in reference to the transfer of power from parents to children, but the configuration of relations between siblings, or the entire field of contemporaries. Riding With Oedipus attempts to read the broad movement of the generational across six centuries of Black human becoming.

Psychology and the Other Conference
Psychology and the Other Conference
September 18-21, 2025
Boston College and online
X
Psychology and the Other Conference

Psychology and the Other Conference

September 18-21, 2025

Boston College and online

This years conference will feature a keynote address by Hortense Spillers, six plenary speakers, eight invited addresses, and a wide range of breakout sessions. Arrive a day early to take part in one of three pre-conference workshops. The 2025 tracks include: Psychological Humanities and Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Virtues and Flourishing in Psychology, Global Wisdom, Narratives of Liberation, Lack and Flesh, and Children and War.

Learn more and register today!

Call for Proposals

Journal of Humanistic Psychology (JHP) Special Issue

The Journal of Humanistic Psychology invites submissions for a special issue on Liberation Psychologies and Transformative Praxis. Inspired by Ignacio Mart穩n-Bar籀s vision of a psychology for liberation, this issue explores how psychology can critically engage with oppression, resist dehumanization, and foster transformative action for collective healing.

We welcome theoretical papers, empirical studies, narrative testimonios, critical translations, and arts-based contributions that foreground psychopolitics, liberatory praxis, and decolonial thought. Submissions may engage with themes such as critical consciousness, de-ideologization, historical recovery, aesthetic reclamation, and liberatory mental health practices.

Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2025

Journal of Humanistic Psychology Cover

Honoring Philip Cushman

Philip Cushman, a moral and political luminary in the field of psychology, died on August 22, 2022, the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

A beloved teacher, scholar, and clinician, Phil is remembered for his泭rich analysis of how the self has been conceptualized in the field of psychology, along with his historical and critical exploration of the moral and political horizons of psychotherapy.

With the establishment of this endowed Fund, created to honor Phil and foster his moral imagination for the field of psychology, we will continue this critically important work for generations to come.

Philip Cushman
The argument over the question of whether or not psychology is or is not a philosophical science is, for psychology, a struggle for its very existence.
~ Wilhelm Wundt

Stay Connected