Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
97 - Tenets of psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
Summary
The need to understand the existential significance of having Africa at the centre applies to cognitive psychology, to psychopathology, to social psychology, to neuropsychology; it applies to health psychology, political psychology, feminist psychology, positive psychology, psychology of men, work and organisational psychology; it applies to all of psychology.
It has never been clearer why we need to understand the importance of African-centredness, but also how immense the task is of weaning ourselves from Euroamerican-centrism.
To disalienate ourselves we have to come up with not just ideas, but methods, models, behavioural tests, therapies, explanations and technologies in African-centred psychology. We have to find and create ways of conducting work and teaching informed by such a psychology in the African communities or groups of interest to us. We have to contribute towards a framework for being in, engaging with, understanding and writing Africa as the default in psychology teaching, research and theory-making. We have to conscientise ourselves towards being disenchanted with any kind of psychological knowledge and practice that does not centre Africa.
African-centredness in psychology begins and ends with a number of tenets.
It is focused on social relationships – of Africa and Africans to psychology. It is inspired by the interactions and identities it is motivated to study, and by the desire to make these understood by the interactants (persons interacting) and identities in question.
Within the university it aims to raise the social consciousness of students and it is open to learning from students.
In the field of research, an African-centred psychological investigator, beginning with the questions she poses, and having made and explained her findings, would want to empower those who had participated in her studies and would become further educated by the knowledge of the participants.
African-centred psychology would liberate us, the psychologists, from the European and US ‘authorities’ in the discipline and our lives.
Above everything else, African-centred psychology would fully embed itself in the realities of Africa, its histories and traditions, economies and cultures, politics, religions, multiple temporalities and modernities, even though it must always be looking at and responding to the world at large.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The World Looks Like This From HereThoughts on African Psychology, pp. 199 - 200Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019