Tag Archives: South African Psychology

From The Monitor: Decolonizing Psychology in South Africa

Journals, , ,

The APA’s Monitor on Psychology features a compelling article in their November issue by  Rebecca A. Clay on the work currently being done by psychologists in South Africa to become accountable for the discipline’s violent history there, and to change the field in a responsible and functional way moving forward, focusing on revision of assessment practices, and on professional and student training.

Highlights include: debates about the ‘Africanization’ of theory and methods; the inclusion of critical psychology perspectives in the classroom, research, clinic, and psychologists’ worldviews; the current realities of discrimination in the academy experienced by students and faculty; and the efforts made to ensure these processes of change do not become ‘top-down’ and end up reiterating colonial conceptualizations rather than promoting self-determination on the part of psychologists and their clients in collaborative ways.

It’s an excellent summary of a complex and sensitive situation; read the article here.

New Book: A History of ‘Relevance’ in Psychology

Books, ,

image002Another new book is available out of the Palgrave Macmillan stable: A History of Relevance in Psychology. Written by Wahbie Long at the University of Cape Town, is described by the publishers as follows:

This book represents the first attempt to historicise and theorise appeals for ‘relevance’ in psychology. It argues that the persistence of questions about the ‘relevance’ of psychology derives from the discipline’s terminal inability to define its subject matter, its reliance on a socially disinterested science to underwrite its knowledge claims, and its consequent failure to address itself to the needs of a rapidly changing world.

The chapters go on to consider  the ‘relevance’ debate within South African psychology, by critically analysing discourse of forty-five presidential, keynote and opening addresses delivered at annual national psychology congresses between 1950 and 2011, and observes how appeals for ‘relevance’ were advanced by reactionary, progressive and radical psychologists alike.

The book presents, moreover, the provocative thesis that the revolutionary quest for ‘social relevance’ that began in the 1960s has been supplanted by an ethic of ‘market relevance’ that threatens to isolate the discipline still further from the anxieties of broader society. With powerful interest groups continuing to co-opt psychologists without relent, this is a development that only psychologists of conscience can arrest.