Projects and Initiatives
Cura Psychologia: Cultivating a More Virtuous Psychological Science
The Cura Psychologia Project fosters a collaborative network of 18 faculty ambassadors from six Jesuit Catholic Universities—Boston College, the College of the Holy Cross, Fordham University, Georgetown University, Loyola Marymount University, and Seattle University—to inspire transformative change within their psychology departments. This initiative aims to broaden psychology's scope at Jesuit institutions, focusing on character virtue formation, ethical reasoning, and moral discernment.
Psychology & the Other Conference
The Psychology & the Other Conference is an annual event that revitalizes psychology through interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, theology, and the humanities. Established in 2011, it unites diverse perspectives from clinicians, academics, philosophers, theologians, and more, focusing on human identity, suffering, and potential. The conference uniquely pairs speakers from various disciplines to encourage innovative discussions.
Date:
September 19 -
September 21, 2025
Location:
Boston College and Online
Psychological Humanities & Ethics Research Group
Made up of academics, clinicians, researchers, and students, the Center for Psychological & Humanities Ethics Research Group is a multidisciplinary community of learners that meets weekly during the academic year to produce scholarship, conference presentations, and shared research opportunities for persons invested in the fundamental questions of human life. Projects range from theoretical analyses in moral philosophy to clinical research in psychology, aimed at addressing contemporary ethical challenges in healthcare, education, and society at large.
Members
Boston College
Private Practice & Boston College Counseling Services
Boston College
Boston College
Boston College
Northwestern University
Boston College
Boston College
Boston University
Boston College
Boston University
Boston College
Boston College
Psychological Humanities Minor
Interested in deepening your insights into the human condition by exploring themes of suffering, identity, potential, and the pursuit of the good life? Join the Psychological Humanities Minor program today.
If you are eager to minor in Psychological Humanities, we invite you to submit your application through this form.
After submitting your application, relevant faculty members will conduct a review.
Upon concluding the review, faculty members will email decision notifications. Accepted students will see their transcripts updated to include the new minor.
Overview
Explore the intersection of psychology and humanities by delving into thought-provoking questions about suffering, identity, potential, healing, meaning-making, character formation, and the pursuit of the good life, gaining a unique perspective that goes beyond traditional psychological science.
The minor is designed to broaden students’ understanding of psychology and the closely related ethical, spiritual, and existential dimensions of human life.
Requirements
3 credits
The first course every student will take upon beginning the minor is our new Introduction to the Psychological Humanities through the Department of Formative Education.
9 credits
Students will choose three electives, one from each category: the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Electives are organized so as to enliven a deeper appreciation for the transcendentals (Good, Beautiful, True) and how each informs our understanding of human mental life, the constitution of subjectivity, ethical development, and flourishing.
3 credits
Students will participate in one formative seminar which is meant to foster growth in students’ spiritual, ethical, psychological, and professional discernment.
3 credits
Students will conclude the Minor by completing a capstone course which culminates in a project that integrates elements from their previous Psychological Humanities coursework.
Additional Resources
Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund
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 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.
About the Fund
Through Philip Cushman’s teaching, research, mentorship, and practice, he called for a rigorous interrogation of the relationship between our configurations of self and the socioeconomic and political realities which they frequently reflect and reinforce. He called for psychology to develop the capacity to more closely consider fundamental human questions of justice and morality in its descriptions of human identity and its treatments for psychological suffering. Phil’s passion for teaching had everything to do with his belief that future generations must receive the type of investment, care, and challenge which would enable them to rise above being “maintainers of the status quo.” For good to be done in this world, particularly through the field of psychology, we must be engaged in a multigenerational project that upsets the complacency of and complicity of this helping profession and calls it to a deeper and greater standard.
Toward this end, and in honor of Phil’s memory, the members of the Cushman family established the Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund. Housed in the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, the Fund fosters the work to which Phil dedicated his life. Aiming at significant impact upon clinical training programs, academic departments, and the formation of a next generation of clinicians, the Fund supports academic scholarship and develops offerings which examine the moral, socioeconomic, and political questions at play within the field of psychology.
The goal of the Fund is to carry forward Phil’s commitment to theoretical, interdisciplinary, and moral inquiry through public facing offerings and student-oriented training programs. Several examples include the Center hosting an annual Philip Cushman Lecture, offering public lectures and workshops engaging areas of inquiry aligned with Phil’s aims, supporting students on an interdisciplinary research team dedicated to scholarship kindred to Phil’s work, and funding the dissemination of students’ research at conferences which are impactful upon the field of psychology. We anticipate these activities and offerings will reach a minimum of 8,000 students per year, carrying forward the concerns that Phil explored in his scholarship, teaching, and practice.
Division 24 Spring Meeting 2024
The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (STPP-APA Division 24) will hold its annual Spring Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA from April 26–28, 2024. The purpose of the conference is to build community and share ideas related to the theory, practice, and reimagining of psychology as a discipline and agent for social change. The presidential theme for this year is "Fostering Progress Toward a Flourishing Theoretical Psychology".
Event Gallery
2024 Annual Meeting for the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP) is thrilled to announce the upcoming annual meeting, which will take place June 14-16, 2024, at Boston College.
We invite scholars, practitioners, and students to contribute to a vibrant discussion that challenges the status quo and reimagines psychological knowledge. The field of psychology stands at a critical juncture, where the imperative to reflect on and address its historical underpinnings in racism and colonialism is undeniable. We specifically encourage submissions that engage critically with psychology's racist and colonial past, offer reflexive qualitative research, and propose paradigms or methods that foreground knowledge from historically underrepresented or marginalized communities.
Conference At a Glance
Friday, June 14 -
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Boston College Campus
Event Gallery
Hosting Art: A Guestbook Project Collaboration
Hosting Art with Diana Boros is an original online video series created and hosted by Diana Boros, which is supported by a joint venture of the Guestbook Project and the Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics at Boston College. Hosting Art employs the medium of dialogue to bring together the greatest minds making, promoting, theorizing about, and educating about, public and social practice art today.
Specifically, the series focuses on discussions about the transformative capacities of art-the ability of art to encourage critique and introspection-and accordingly, the value of art in society and democracy. It explores how artistic communication and collaboration can create and deepen ties between people and within communities, and how socially engaged, or social practice, projects can serve as vehicles for “hosting” interactions, dialogues, and relationships. This project aims to become a resource for all those interested in these ideas by creating a collection of conversations that each tackle different dimensions of the complex relationship between art and political life.
Diana Boros is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Political Theory at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a public liberal arts institution and the national public honors college. Previously, she worked for the United States Senate, as well as for several senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, and was also teaching professor of political science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Video Library
Hosting Earth: A Guestbook Project Collaboration
The Hosting Earth initiative brings together a group of psychologically sophisticated thinkers to speak on the topic of the psyche’s relation to the earth and how we both consciously and unconsciously play guest and host to the world in which we live. From Marjolein Oele’s reflections on the dirt at our feet to Sean McGrath’s speculations on the future of our species, from James Morely’s humanistic ecology to Donna Orange’s unearthing of our most inhuman practices, from Ed Casey’s artistic hospitality to Matthew Clemente's aesthetical musings, these dialogues are rife with insight, openness, imagination, and hope.