Dr. Beverly Greene

Dr. Beverly Greene, a Walden University faculty member and contributing scholar in the School of Psychology, will receive the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Society of Clinical Psychology’s Florence Halpern Award at the APA convention this August in New Orleans, La.

The Florence Halpern Award is presented annually to a professional who makes distinguished theoretical or empirical advances in psychology leading to the understanding or amelioration of important, practical problems in the field. Previous recipients of the award include Evelyn Hooker, Erik Erikson, Arnold Lazarus, George Stricker, and current APA president Gerald Koocher.

Greene, a professor in the Department of Psychology at St. John’s University in New York City (Queens), is a leader in advancing multicultural and minority awareness in the field of psychology. She is the author of more than 75 publications, including seven psychology books.

Her research interests include the interplay of institutionalized racism, sexism and heterosexism in the development of multiple minority status and the role of psychology and psychotherapy in helping clients who are victims of marginalization.

“I have always had an interest in people's ‘stories’ and understanding how they become who and what they are.... My research focus is a function of wanting to know about the people whose concerns were left out of the discourse in psychology—whose omission was obvious in the course of my own training,” Greene says.

She notes that her research had its origins in her desire to be professionally competent when working with these populations. “Such competence,” she says, “includes understanding the contributing role of social injustice to mental health problems.”

Greene recently co-authored What Therapists Don’t Talk About and Why: Understanding Taboos That Hurt Us and Our Clients. Written with psychologists Kenneth S. Pope and Janet L. Sonne and published by the American Psychological Association, the book was created to help therapists and therapists-in-training explore myths and taboo topics—feeling incompetent,  making mistakes—that weaken their practice and cause anxiety, discomfort and confusion.

Greene sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy and Women & Therapy: A Feminist Quarterly, and is a new board member of the Division 29 journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice. Greene holds a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology and is also a fellow of seven divisions of the American Psychological Association.

Archived Features front page