Psychology notes on readings
Four African psychologies – Ratele
What is African Psychology
- African psychology is of concern to all those with interest in psychology in relation to
African societies
- It challenges the imperial and colonial foundations of psychological knowledge
- There are efforts to advance African psychology and make it less western and more
transnational
- Nwoye an Ratele disagreed on the fact that
o Nwoye believed that African psychology is a discipline
o Ratele viewed it as a set of orientations
- African psychology was first developed in America by African American psychologists
- According to Nwoye, “African Psychology can be taken to refer to the systematic and
informed study of the complexities of human mental life, culture and experience in
the pre- and post-colonial African world”
- African psychology indicates all psychology in Africa, while Africa(n)- centred
psychology is a distinctive orientation within and towards psychology and Africa
- Having reconciled that they are psychologists and are experientially, culturally, and
materially located in Africa, part of the task is to redefine the relation between
psychology and Africa, locating Africa within psychology and psychology as
unalienating African
The call for African psychology in Africa
- He feels that study of psychology at university in south African is mainly if not mostly
based on mainstream psychology
- Nwoye main objective was to contribute to need for improves understanding of
African psychology in African universities
- Nwoye’s contribution is dismissive of years of work done by black scholars around
these same questions and to develop African psychology
Nwoye regards as shaping the need for and emergence of African psychology
- Nwoye calls for the formal study of African psychology in universities of Africa to
enrich and extend the contribution of this discipline of psychology and to break away
from colonialism
o Process of decolonization
, - He wants to interrogate and challenge the meaningful relevance of western ideas in
Africa
o Western approaches do not promote meaningful theoretical engagement
with the psychological significance of important African cultural traditions
o African psychology aims to enlarge the space of researchable reality in the
study of psychology in Africa
- He wants to eliminate and correct the misconception and negative, self-serving
images of Africa found in the western sciences
o African psychology as a protest psychology
o Reconstruct african image
o He felt as if some of the images created by westernised psychology reflected
africans in a negative light, these images and ideas were created by European
thinkers
- The recognition that previous efforts by some western-educated African academics
in psychology were largely imitative of the contributions made by western
psychological theorists and practitioners
o Standing to far away from their African cultural perspective
o Few attempts to determine the extent to which theories could find
expression and application in African context
o Entrenching African psychology into curriculum would help change this
Delineating the four African psychologies
- Differentiated by the way the ideas of Africa and psychology are implicitly or
explicitly understood and approached by different researchers, teachers, and
therapists
- Not entire fields by themselves but rather orientations, approaches or stances to
Africa and psychology
- Not subdisciplines
-
Four African psychologies – Ratele
What is African Psychology
- African psychology is of concern to all those with interest in psychology in relation to
African societies
- It challenges the imperial and colonial foundations of psychological knowledge
- There are efforts to advance African psychology and make it less western and more
transnational
- Nwoye an Ratele disagreed on the fact that
o Nwoye believed that African psychology is a discipline
o Ratele viewed it as a set of orientations
- African psychology was first developed in America by African American psychologists
- According to Nwoye, “African Psychology can be taken to refer to the systematic and
informed study of the complexities of human mental life, culture and experience in
the pre- and post-colonial African world”
- African psychology indicates all psychology in Africa, while Africa(n)- centred
psychology is a distinctive orientation within and towards psychology and Africa
- Having reconciled that they are psychologists and are experientially, culturally, and
materially located in Africa, part of the task is to redefine the relation between
psychology and Africa, locating Africa within psychology and psychology as
unalienating African
The call for African psychology in Africa
- He feels that study of psychology at university in south African is mainly if not mostly
based on mainstream psychology
- Nwoye main objective was to contribute to need for improves understanding of
African psychology in African universities
- Nwoye’s contribution is dismissive of years of work done by black scholars around
these same questions and to develop African psychology
Nwoye regards as shaping the need for and emergence of African psychology
- Nwoye calls for the formal study of African psychology in universities of Africa to
enrich and extend the contribution of this discipline of psychology and to break away
from colonialism
o Process of decolonization
, - He wants to interrogate and challenge the meaningful relevance of western ideas in
Africa
o Western approaches do not promote meaningful theoretical engagement
with the psychological significance of important African cultural traditions
o African psychology aims to enlarge the space of researchable reality in the
study of psychology in Africa
- He wants to eliminate and correct the misconception and negative, self-serving
images of Africa found in the western sciences
o African psychology as a protest psychology
o Reconstruct african image
o He felt as if some of the images created by westernised psychology reflected
africans in a negative light, these images and ideas were created by European
thinkers
- The recognition that previous efforts by some western-educated African academics
in psychology were largely imitative of the contributions made by western
psychological theorists and practitioners
o Standing to far away from their African cultural perspective
o Few attempts to determine the extent to which theories could find
expression and application in African context
o Entrenching African psychology into curriculum would help change this
Delineating the four African psychologies
- Differentiated by the way the ideas of Africa and psychology are implicitly or
explicitly understood and approached by different researchers, teachers, and
therapists
- Not entire fields by themselves but rather orientations, approaches or stances to
Africa and psychology
- Not subdisciplines
-
