The Foundation for Psychocultural Research is a 501 nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that supports and advances interdisciplinary and integrative research and training on interactions of culture, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology, with an emphasis on cultural processes as central. The primary objective is to help articulate and support the creation of transformative paradigms that address issues of fundamental clinical and social concern.
Participants in the FPR’s inaugural interdisciplinary workshop at Ojai in June 2001 advocated research strategies that recognize and integrate multiple levels of analysis – from biological processes like postpartum olfactory learning, to psychological concepts like attachment, to social, cultural, economic, and political conditions affecting mother-infant interactions – and provide a better understanding of culture and context, including local variations in environments, behaviors, beliefs, and experiences. The FPR was a key supporter of the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the FPR-Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development. The FPR CBD programs were designed to foster integrative, cross-disciplinary research that focuses on how culture and context interact with brain development. In 2009 the FPR created a program for Culture, Brain, Development, and Mental Health. The primary objective of CBDMH, which was co-directed by psychological anthropologist of UCLA and cultural psychologist of USC, was to establish a strong program in cultural psychiatry, with an emphasis on integrating neuroscience and social science perspectives. The research initiative was based around ongoing, sustainable field sites and programs in various locations across the globe. A training component was embedded within each of the ongoing research projects.
Workshops and conferences
Through a series of planning workshops and conferences, the FPR continues to bring together scholars, researchers, and clinicians with overlapping interests to think across disciplinary boundaries in order to address social and clinical issues. To date, the FPR has hosted six international, interdisciplinary conferences at UCLA: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Approaches to Trauma's Effects Four Dimensions of Childhood: Brain, Mind, Culture, and Time ; Seven Dimensions of Emotion ; Cultural and Biological Contexts of Psychiatric Disorder: Implications for Diagnosis and Treatment ; ; and A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior. Participants from these meetings have contributed papers to three published volumes linking several fields, including developmental psychobiology, cultural and biological anthropology, the study of psychological trauma, transcultural psychiatry, and social neuroscience: Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives, edited by cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, and physician/neuroscientist Mark Barad ; Formative Experiences: The Interaction of Caregiving, Culture, and Developmental Psychobiology, edited by biocultural anthropologist Carol M. Worthman, developmental psychobiologist Paul M. Plotsky, child psychiatristDaniel Schechter, and FPR project director Constance A. Cummings; and Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health, edited by Laurence Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, and Constance A. Cummings
Current activities
The FPR is currently focusing on Culture, Mind, and Brain research. CMB is an integrative approach to understanding human evolution, cognition, emotion, self, agency, ritual, religion, and other concepts that are not confined to any one scientific discipline. Crucially, advances in one discipline can redefine work in others, compelling researchers to bridge disciplines with new models that depict interactions between brain, mind, development, the social world, and cultural diversity.
