Community Social Psychology helps people to understand and modify their social realities. This work, that compromises those individuals and also the psychologist, is many times a challenge to his/her professional identity. The aim of this research is to discuss a particular experience on the association of professional and academic formation in Community Social Psychology inside a private university in Brazil. During a year we conducted an ethnographic research among people from some shantytowns situated in São Paulo and six community leaders were asked about shantytowns histories. The results show how the relationship between leaders psychosocial characteristics and neighborhood spatial features are important to understand community dimensions. Community Social Psychology interventions associated with research and university academic formation have a decisive role within the constitution of a critical professional identity, keeping psychologists as important actors in Brazilian social context.
Community Social Psychology; shantytown; community; higher education in Psychology