Africa, it is true, tends to be a shadowy figure in mainstream global psychology, and for this reason if nothing else I have to be part of a resurgent project to centralise Africa in all areas of psychology in Africa. In my pursuit of this goal, Africa and the many meanings it attracts from foe and friend – some colonial, pejorative, racist, stereotypical, others nativist or mythological, and still others emancipatory, but always dense and elusive – are central figurations in my attempts to understand boys, men and masculinities (in Africa and elsewhere). I have to appreciate that Africa has been tremendously affected by the wars – armed, structural, cultural and symbolic – waged on its ordinary people by European and US imperialists, colonialists, home-grown dictators, army generals and capitalists. I am therefore keen to understand Africa itself as an actor, a dynamic entity on its own, an object of interest, and a place of knowledge-making, that needs thinking about within all studies, teaching and psychotherapy. In my case it means that in thinking about men and women and other genders, I have to think about them from where I am located and where they are positioned in a place in Africa. Psychological African studies as an orientation emerges from the need to use psychological tools to understand subjects as positioned in a world within Africa. As one of the four orientations within African psychology, psychological African studies at the basic level is primarily a transdisciplinary orientation towards Africa, Africans and psychology. In that sense it also has one foot in Western psychology and another in African studies. However, whereas Western psychology is defined as the study of individual behaviour, African studies refers to those studies whose object is Africa. Psychological African studies thus is defined as psychology aimed at integrating the theories, tools and insights of psychology, including tools from psychoanalysis, in order to study Africa (Ratele 2017a).

Psychological African studies includes tools from psychoanalysis. An appreciation of the potential contribution and development of psychological and psychoanalytical African studies begins with an understanding that psychology or psychoanalysis was never one of the core disciplines in African studies.