EDUCATION
(58:50:Hieu: .........…..you didn’t go to graduate school right away after you graduated from Hollins.
Brinton: No I did. I went to Divinity school. I went to Harvard to do a master program right after I graduated from Hollins.
Hieu: In psychology?
Brinton: NOOP!
Hieu: Oh, I thought you got Doctorate in psychology.
(59:21)Brinton: Yes! I did. But ……..I graduated from Hollins 1970, and then…um… I went to Harvard and got a master in Divinity. And I worked there from 73 to 78 and then I went into PH.D program from 78 and got PHD in 84. And…..you’re right. And that ‘s a very unusual to do PHD in psychology if you haven’t studied psychology…previous to that….and that was a very challenging a decision to make.
Hieu: Why did you just like….. turn…..completely….to…..
Brinton: Well, I didn’t totally turn right…..
(both were laughing….)
(59:55)Brinton: ….because….. it was……what a case …..may be……because what happened when I was in Divinity school …was….I went thinking I was going to study religions, so the academic study of religions. And when I got involved in with…counseling….psychology…..or psychology and religion. So I took courses at (1:16)Harvard graduation educations…at the time there were course …doctoral program interdisciplinary program between the Divinity school, school of education and public health.
(1:00:25)Hieu: I see, uh huh.
Brinton: And so I took a …pastel of counseling course, ….I worked in something called the women counseling and resource center.,….and I did something called the clinical path of education internship …….which …..I worked at Boston State Hospital…day hospital, mental hospital during that period of time. And I did an independence study with a local group of pesters??, doing a need of assessment?? from the pastor's point of view of counseling. And I volunteer in a local housing project setting up a house clinic with people that would provide help and mental health services. So, I had a lot of exposures ….to do psychology and more counseling and mental health issues than actually I ended up going to. And ..was really …working at Boston State Hospital in the summer, in the clinical pastel education program that got me interested in community psychology, because at the time it was in the early 70’s and during a period of time ….when there was a broad set of a reform that’s interesting …...that introduced to the congress….in terms of mental hospital services for the country. And there was…..a (rulement???)…called THE institutional organization moving people out of mental institution and setting up local community mental health services. And the population that I had to work with that summer was… from a part of ……called South Boston and they were white working class people and a lot of things that I …..able to work in the hospital and to get to know the community mal-help center. …..South Boston. And why I kept noticing it was ……the hospital was like …a revolving door…....people would come in, they would get drug and sent out on the street , they would have some sort of break down again …..and they… be back in. The second thing is I worked with VIET NAM veterans who had gotten …..um …one of another form of…. trauma or self-shock from being in Vietnam. And that also raised for me structural isometric about imaging mental illness ……..so interested in psychology but I was interested it from social point of view…..and from structural point of view. (1:02:50)
The other thing was…happen when I was at Divinity school……was…….. started at Hollins when I was senior. Um..Lary Becker …brought …..a woman …name…Ch (unclear).. ..African…to the campus…...she was a southerner but a radical feminist. And she was much more radical than I was that state of my life ……but when I was at Harvard, divinity school, I was …a part of a… Catholic students’ center. Where there were a numbers of women who bond us …..consciousness ….racing… groups, they were called at the time. And we began to do …..we wrote a book together, we interviewing other women about their experiences with them from the Catholic church. The book that never published on my desk but ….. um…..
(01:03:30) Hieu: The title sounds very interesting?
Brinton: It was story of women from different social class back ground in different ethnic and racial groups about how their experiences in Catholic Church. And it was the time to tell our own stories to each other. We were all university faculty,
When ..um….it was a way of beginning … to…for me it was a process ….where I began to see social oppression ….not just as the oppression of other people. I had been involved… in this sort of the margin of what civil rights movement…. was about ….I had seen what class oppression…what it‘s about in French . I had seen what the antiwar movement looked like ….and I never thought of myself as a victim. I’ve always thought it privileged just having….a affirmative..
Hieu: Wow!
Brinton: When I got evolved with woman movement, I began to see that there were some limits on what I could do. And constraint placed on me as a woman that I never been aware of…as…in my growing up, I always been looking at myself in terms of my responsibility for other people. So I had in kind of incorporated in the mind sense of self. The idea that I chose…had...been marginalized I chose which being exclusive in certain aspect our resources under decisions making and that as a white of a middle class, upper class female. I was…..on the one hand privilege, on the other hand marginalized and excluded…