Psychology
Introduction to the Commons
Thursdays, 5:30 - 7:00pm
July 7 - Aug 18
Location: the Students Cooperative on 1721 University Avenue SE
(it's located across the street from the University of Minnesota Bell Museum)
This will be a study group centered around a few core readings: From Garrett Hardin to Elinor Ostrom.
"The commons" refers to resources that are collectively owned or shared among populations. It can include everything from natural resources and common land to software.
Psychology and Community Activism
Wednesdays 7:00-8:30pm, starting June 22nd and ending August 31st
Location: probably U of M Psychology Department
This class will explore the ways in which theory and research from the field of psychology may inform, and be informed by, efforts of community activists. The work of community activists, neighborhood organizations, and non-profits are vitally important to improving the well-being of people locally and globally. The field of psychology has produced some insight into issues relevant to activism efforts, though the knowledge may not always be spread to those that may be best suited to use it. The Psychology and Community Activism EXCO class aims to improve dialogue between social scientists and community activists, in a method that is reciprocal and sustaining.
Location
Introduction to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Myers Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI) is a personality inventory to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful.
The MBTI is used for communications,personal development, team building, raising children, and relationship enhancement. It answers four questions:
How do you direct your energy and attention?
How do you prefer to take in information?
How do you prefer to make decisions?
How do you orient to the outer world?
The class will include lecture, exercises, handouts, Powerpoint slides, music, cartoons, question and answer periods and group discussions. Each person will receive an assessment of their MBTI type after they take the Indicator along with written explanations.
Location
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, and Death: Our Existential Predicament
LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, AND DEATH:
OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT
Have you noticed a loneliness that cannot be solved by love?
Are you sometimes aware of a depression not caused by circumstances?
Do you have free-floating existential anxiety?
Is your 'fear of death' out of proportion to the actual threat?
These 4 and 7 other similar phenomena will be explored in this electronic group.
Our method of exploration is looking deeply into ourselves.
This cyber-seminar will take place by means of an already-established Yahoo Group
called The Existential Freedom Group.
Each month, beginning as soon as 10 people have the book and are ready to discuss it,
we will read and discuss one chapter from a book called:
Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, and Death.
Over 50 pages from this book can be read on the Internet.
Just click the title above.
Students and faculty at the University of Minnesota
will find this book in Wilson Library.
And the publisher—Existential Books—offers to donate this book
to any public or academic library that will agree to put it on the shelves.
(Here are the details about this offer of free books for libraries.)
Readers who would prefer to own a copy
should buy it directly from the publisher.
A comprehensive course description will appear if you click those words.
Locations
Changing the Narrative of our Mental Illness
Through the use of storytelling we will explore our experiences with mental illness. Then with the group process we will explore the individual and collective meanings that uphold the meanings of our mental illnesses. We will then be listening for an alternative story that can tell us about our preferred way of being.
This class is both a self healing class and an exploration of social justice issues through the eyes and minds of those of us coping with mental illness.
I will be listing the readings here as they become available:
1. Trafficking in the World of Possibilities
2. The Narrative Construction of Reality
Location
