On behalf of NSPA, I’d like to welcome all of you. It is my hope that NSPA can become an even more active and relevant partner for you in your professional activities.

I have chosen to emphasize building community as my focus for the year. I see that as “through diversity” because it is our diversity as a profession, as professionals, and as people that enriches our organization. It is all too easy for our differences to become divisions, rather than strengths. I want to build on our differences to make this a strong and richly textured organization that can support all of us in our daily professional life.

So

• for all of you who are students, pre-docs, post-docs, new or experienced psychologists;
• for those in private practice, or working for a State agency, University or Community College, a healthcare facility, the justice system, a federal agency, or a business;
• for all of you who work with young children, older children, adolescents, adults or seniors;
• for those who work with individuals, couples, families, groups, and systems;
• for those who do therapy, assessment, evaluation, counseling, administration, teaching, research, and consultation;
• for those who use the theories of behavior, cognitive behavior, analysis, client centered, systems, self-psychology, hypnosis, and many, many more;
• for those who work with the poor, the well-off and the in-between;
• for those in cities and in the rural areas;
• for those who are of different races, nationalities, cultures, religions, and sexual preferences.

We’ll do our best to connect you to each other, to learn from and with each other, to talk about our hopes and concerns, our differences and the ways in which we are like one another, to help each other, to speak together for the profession, to see each other as less “other” and more of a community.

If you are a psychologist, becoming a psychologist, or interested in psychology, then NSPA is for you and about you. Help me make it even more so.

Judy Phoenix, Ph.D.
President, NSPA 2006-2007