Vincent W. Hevern, S.J., Ph.D

1419 Salt Springs Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13214, USA
Le Moyne College

EmailHevern@lemoyne.edu
Phone: 315-445-4342
Webpagewww.hevern.com

Vincent Hevern is Professor of Psychology at Le Moyne College and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, upon graduation from high school, entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1966. More than four decades later, he is still a Jesuit. He completed his undergraduate work in Philosophy and European History at Fordham College and studies in Theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he earned an M.Div. degree. After his 1976 ordination as a Catholic priest, he completed a year-long urban pastoral internship in Somerville, MA and, then, returned to Fordham University where he finished a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. In 1983 he established a clinical consulting office at New York’s Regis High School. There he provided a wide range of assessment, treatment, and consulting services to students, their parents, and the school’s staff. He has been licensed as a psychologist by New York State since 1985.

In 1991 Vinny moved to Syracuse, NY where he joined the Psychology Department of Le Moyne College. In the early 1990s he began to explore the narrative perspective in psychology – what the psychologist Ted Sarbin has termed “the storied nature of human conduct.” Simultaneously, he became absorbed with the prospects for the brand new World Wide Web (WWW) to become a medium assisting teachers, scholars, and students in their pedagogical, research, and learning endeavors. His early online guide to information in his field, PsychREF, was among the first 25,000 web sites on the WWW. He followed soon thereafter with Narrative Psychology: Internet and Resource Guide. He was the first Internet editor for the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), Division 2 of APA. He is currently associate & managing editor for the International Journal for Dialogical Science, a peer-reviewed online publication.

Vinny’s research interests focus particularly upon the theoretical and historical foundations of the narrative perspective in psychology, dialogical aspects of identity development, and the role of emerging Internet environments in the construction of the self. In addition to STP, his active in Cheiron, the International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the International Society for Dialogical Science. 

Vinny believes that these teaching, scholarly, and service interests reflect in their diversity two underlying themes: first, understanding human behavior requires a synthetic integration of the biological, sociohistorical and imaginal lifeworld of individuals and, secondly, cyberspace continues to emerge as an historically pivotal, powerful, and transformative “human digital ecology.”

Vinny is an avid amateur nature photographer whose work has been exhibited in Syracuse’s Everson Museum of Art. And, while his tenure in Central New York has been the longest single assignment of his Jesuit life, Vinny sees himself as a quintessential New York City guy who can still give visitors to Manhattan an excellent “insiders” tour of its neighborhoods.