When getting emotional is OK
Lauren Abramson
From the neuroscience of emotions to crime and punishment, from psychosomatic symptoms to conflict resolution—Lauren Abramson is an expert in community justice-building. And she’ll be at Skidmore to deliver a free public lecture, “Tales from Baltimore: Restorative Justice, Healing, and Transformation,” on March 23, at 7:30 p.m., in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.
Abramson has worked with children and families for 25 years. She is the founding director of Baltimore’s Community Conferencing Center and a faculty member in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
While conducting her academic research and working to build on-site mental health services at Head Start agencies, she heard about community conferencing in Australia. “They bring together victims and the young offenders and their family members. They all sit in a circle and they get a chance to say how they were affected by what happened and they figure out how to make it right,” Abramson told The Good Society journal. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is a way for people to be healthy emotionally with each other, and not necessarily in an office with a professional.’” [Click here for link to video talk]
Abramson was eager to take the conferencing idea back to Baltimore. After some training in the technique, she said, “I was just hooked by the power of this process” to empower individuals and communities to resolve conflicts and keep young people out of courts and prisons.
Since 1995, her Community Conferencing Center has been breaking new ground by engaging various sectors and stakeholders in community-based conflict resolution. She says the work has taught her that transformation happens through meaningful emotional sharing. She told Good Society Journal, “I really believe that we need to be emotional with each other,” expressly adding, “in ways that are helpful—not in the Jerry Springer kind of way.”
Her campus visit is sponsored by the Skidmore College Project on Restorative Justice, directed by sociology professor David Karp, and co-sponsored by the student-run Fight Club and Speakers Bureau.
