The American Psychological Association awarded Lesley University Assistant Professor David M. Goodman with the Sigmund Koch Early Career Contribution to Psychology award.
Goodman, who lives in Cambridge, received the award for his “promising contributions to theoretical and philosophical psychology.” The accolade, which is given annually to a psychologist within 10 years of earning his or her Ph.D., recognizes Goodman’s work to bring together psychology and the humanities by inaugurating the Psychology and the Other Conference at Lesley University, which drew hundreds of psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, social workers, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians and others last year.
The award is named for psychologist and philosopher Sigmund Koch, one of the first theoretical and critical psychologists who sought to build a bridge between psychology and the humanities. Koch was a professor at Boston University and passed away in 1996.
“I feel quite honored to be receiving this award from persons that I respect so deeply and who have paved the path upon which I can now walk,” said Goodman. “Simultaneously, I’m overwhelmed by the rapid medicalizing trends in the psychological discipline and discouraged by the difficulty I had finding conversation partners who valued philosophy and the humanities.”
The award is provided by the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, which is Division 24 of the American Psychological Association, which has more than 137,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.
“In light of his accomplishments relatively early in his career, the executive committee deemed it altogether appropriate to recognize Dr. Goodman’s achievements in the field,” said Dr. James Lamiell of Georgetown University, a member of the awards committee. “Most are familiar with his recent and forthcoming contributions to theory and psychology and, most especially, to the “Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology,” the official publication of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, and a forthcoming book sure to garner much attention. The late Sigmund Koch would approve of Dr. Goodman’s selection.”
Earlier this year, Goodman published “The Demanded Self: Levinasian Ethics and Identity in Psychology” with Duquesne University Press, in which he explores the work of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as it pertains to morality and selfhood in modern psychologies.
Goodman is entering his third year at Lesley University, where he is an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Psychology and Other Institute in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences. He has written more than a dozen articles on Jewish philosophy, social justice and psychotherapy, and he founded and co-directs a Theoretical, Historical and Philosophical Psychology Research Lab, leading a team of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate researchers -- with members from Lesley, Boston University, Harvard, Smith College and Assumption College -- in the study of the psychological discipline, including critical psychology, moral developmental theory, intersubjectivity and relational psychoanalysis, and the interfacing of religious/theological and psychological theories of selfhood.
He is also a teaching associate at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School.