How I Got Here

Abstract

I could not be more pleased to say “hello” as the new Editor of JSCP, but I also find the journey to this point to be just a little odd. My interest in the interface of social and clinical psychology began in the summer of 1977 when I was a first year clinical doctoral student at the University of Alabama. I was working on a paper for Ron Rogers’ social psychology course and ran across Sharon Brehm’s (1976) The Application of Social Psychology to Clinical Practice in the library. It was also in Ron’s course that I read Albert Bandura’s first article on self–efficacy theory in the Psychological Review. I later read the chapters on social psychological approaches to psychotherapy by Goldstein and Simonson (1971) and by Stan Strong (1978) in the first and second editions of Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. My official association with JSCP began as a coincidence so perfect that it’s almost hard to believe when I look back at it. In September of 1981, I started my first academic job as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Texas Tech University. Soon after I arrived there, I learned that a new department chair had been hired and would be arriving at the beginning of the spring, 1982 semester. That new chair was social psychologist John Harvey. Shortly after he arrived, John mentioned that he was starting a new journal devoted to the interface of social and clinical psychology. I could hardly believe my luck. John invited me to be on the Editorial Board in time for the inaugural issue in 1983 and asked me (along with Cal Stoltenberg) to write a commentary article for the fourth issue (Maddux & Stoltenberg, 1983). Three years later he put even greater trust in me by asking me to become an Associate Editor, just before he stepped down and passed the job along to Rick Snyder. Rick and I did not even know each other at the time, so I was more than a little surprised that he asked me to stay on. Last year he asked me if I was interested in becoming the next Editor. My answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” Rick’s nomination of me as the new Editor is just one of many ways he has been my booster over the years, and I can’t thank him enough for this and other votes of confidence. He’s done a great job with the journal, and I hope I can do at least half as well. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2002, pp. 221-225