Psychology - History of SA

Question 1

What does this mean for South Africans now that we adopted this type of psychology.

Answer 1

There is a tendency to decontextualise your experiences and subjectivities, should you fail to question and interrogate from where this knowledge comes, in the first place, and its usefulness for your current social reality.

Question 2

What are the main features of SA psychology pre-1994?

Answer 2

1. An apartheid state.
2. Psychology took up a humanitarian role.
3. Psychology authorised racism.
4. Psychology documented white people’s lived experiences while ignoring black people.
5. Psychology generated a racially skewed process of knowledge production and training.
6. Psychology produced racially defined diagnostic systems - bantu hysteria vs depression.
7. Psychology objectified black people as the negative ‘other’.
8. Psychology’s major concern - ‘poor white people’.

Question 3

Pre-1994: Why did psychology not resist apartheid (8)?

Answer 3

1. SA psychs were indoctrinated into systems of knowledge and ideologies that left them little room to criticise and challenge racism.
2. The majority of psychologists were white and middle class, and they benefitted from apartheid’s racism.
3. Black psychologists represented under 10% of registered psychologists, and so they did not have a significant number to create a strong resistance.
4. The eugenics movement embraced and supported by psychology during apartheid = ideas that black people are genetically inferior to white people.
5. Access to the best unis in terms of funding and resources reserved for white students only.
6. The psychology curriculum was complicit in reproducing in racism.
7. The Psychology Institue of the Republic of South Africa had a say in the content and curriculum of psychology programs at unis.
8. Banned more than 18000 books from unis because they encouraged critical thinking that could challenge apartheid and racism.

Question 4

Post-1994: Context of the country
.

Answer 4

1. SA’s first-ever democratic election.
2. The end of apartheid and institutionalised racism.
3. A period of hope and much-needed change.
4. Expectations for psychology to implement changes to its practices.

Question 5

Post-1994: main features.

Answer 5

1. Psychology side-stepped the subject of race and racism.
2. Reforming psychology - at a professional and institutional level.
3. Removing organised psychology from any ties with apartheid racism.
4. The creation of new organisations - PsySSA (the Psychological Society of South Africa).
5. Academic reform through research and publishing - shifting the production of knowledge to represent voices that were silenced, marginalised and excluded during apartheid.
6. New forms of marginalisation.
7. The continued use of Western/Eurocentric knowledge in psychology.
8. The racialised nature of professional psychology training programs.

Question 6

Post-1994: What were the new forms of marginalisation?

Answer 6

1. Low rates of publishing from the minority of black academics - influx of students.
2. black academics stationed at disadvantaged universities where research and publications are not given priority.
3. Black academics were burdened with an influx of students which left them little time for research and publishing.
4. English was the main language in all regards.

Question 7

Define psychology.

Answer 7

The scientific study the mind, mental processes and human behaviour.

Question 8

Why is it important to discuss the history of psychology in South Africa?

Answer 8

Allows us to engage with how the past comes to shape and influence the present.

Question 9

What is knowledge production?

Answer 9

The process by which new information, theories, and insights about human behavior, cognition, emotions, and mental processes are generated.

Question 10

What does Naidoo argue the issue is regarding the knowledge produced by psychology?

Answer 10

• Steeped in Western/Eurocentric values.
• Promotes positivistic-empirial mode of scientific investigation.

Question 11

Define Eurocentric values.

Answer 11

Knowledge that reflects the interests and ideas of white, heterosexual, middle class and educated American and European societies.

Question 12

Define positivistic-empirial science.

Answer 12

Knowledge is only considered scientific, valid, true and factual when it is produced under conditions that are observable, objective, highly controlled and quantified.

Question 13

What does this mean for South Africans now that we adopted this type of psychology?

Answer 13

is the knowledge psychology produces relevant to your life, with respect to your race, gender, class position, sexuality, nationality, political views, religious affiliation, ethnicity etc.