Biographical Information:
Joe Currier joined the psychology faculty at Fuller in 2010. Following the completion of doctoral studies at the University of Memphis in 2008, Currier went on to clinical internship and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Memphis Veterans Administration Medical Center. Prior to moving to Memphis, he had earned an MA in clinical psychology from Wheaton College in 2001 and worked for several years as a psychotherapist on the south side of Chicago.
In terms of research, Currier is broadly interested in the psychological/spiritual issues faced by persons who experience bereavement, military combat, and other types of potentially traumatic events. To this point, his work has focused largely on evaluating the effectiveness of psychotherapies for bereaved persons and advancing understandings of risk and protective factors associated with adjustment following a range of highly stressful life events, e.g., loss of loved one by violent death, death of a child, cancer, military combat.
The author of over 20 peer-reviewed articles, Currier’s research is heavily influenced by positive psychology and emphasizes the role of constructing meaning and making sense of extraordinarily challenging life events. In keeping with his research interests, Currier’s clinical specialty involves adult psychotherapy for difficulties related to trauma, bereavement, and other types of loss.
He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Areas of Expertise, Research, Writing, and Teaching:
Psychodynamic and narrative-constructivist psychotherapies, bereavement and complicated grief, trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder, meaning-oriented issues following experiences of loss and trauma, research design and statistics, meta-analysis