Today it’s an honor to have Richard Katz on the podcast. Dr. Katz received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught there for twenty years. The author of several books, he has spent time over the past 50 years living and working with Indigenous peoples in Africa, India, the Pacific, and the Americas. He is professor emeritus at the First Nations University of Canada and an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His latest book is Indigenous Healing Psychology: Honoring the Wisdom of the First Peoples. Author royalties will be given back to the Indigenous elders whose teachings made the book possible.
In this episode we discuss:
- How being an outsider allows you to see the limitations of the world you are living in
- Richard’s friendship with Abraham Maslow
- Setting the record straight: The real influence of the Blackfeet Nation on Maslow’s theory of self-actualization
- How modern day psychology has oppressed the verbal-experimental paradigm
- The limitations of modern measurement
- The tension between the scientific method and the narrative approach to psychology
- Are all modes of the scientific process valid?
- How indigenous people are misunderstood, under-respected, and under-appreciated
- What the field of psychology could be if it incorporated indigenous ways of being
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