This article argues for an African-conceived ‘psychology’ and ‘psycho-therapy’. The thesis to be defended is that the dominant Western paradigm in terms of the definitions and practices of psychology and psychotherapy in their current form is at variance with the African experience and culture. African indigenous ways of knowing and doing, including the treatment of illness, derive from a non-transferable but communicable experience giving rise to an independent epistemology. To be consistent with the African epistemological paradigm Africans have the right to adopt and use indigenous concepts that congruently capture and represent their ways of knowing and doing. This applies to the teaching of psychology and psychotherapy in South African universities. Their curricula should include the concept of moya, an indigenous African concept that is crucial to the understanding of psychology and psychotherapy from the African viewpoint. We adopt a critical conceptual approach to the elaboration of our thesis.
Date:
2009-08-25
Type:
Thesis
Abstract:
To date, the vast literature on theories of psychology, and psychology as a practice, still remains a reflection of Western experiences and conceptions of reality. This is so despite “psychology” and “psychotherapy” being studied and implemented by Africans, dealing with Africa’s existential issues, in Africa. In this context, a distorted impression that positions psychology and psychotherapy as irreplaceable and irrefutable Western discoveries is created. This perception creates a tendency in which psychotherapists adopt and use universalised, foreign and imposed theories to explain and deal with African cultural experiences. In recent years, African scholars’ quest to advance “African-brewed” conceptions, definitions and practices of “psychology” and “psychotherapy” is gaining momentum. Psychologists dealing with African clients are increasingly confronted with the difficulty, and in some instances the impossibility, of communicating with, and treating local clients using Western conceptions and theories. Adopting the dominant Western epistemological and scientific paradigms constitutes epistemological oppression and alienation. Instead, African conceptions, definitions and practices of “psychology” and “psychotherapy” based on African cultural experiences, epistemology and ontology are argued for. The thesis defended in this study is that the dominant Western paradigm of scientific knowledge in general and, psychology in particular, is anchored in a defective claim to neutrality, objectivity and universality. To demonstrate this, indigenous ways of knowing and doing in the African experience are counterpoised against the Western understanding and construction of scientific knowledge in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. The conclusion arising from our demonstration is the imperative to rethink psychology and psychotherapy in order to (i) affirm the validity of indigenous African ways of knowing and doing; (ii) show that the exclusion of the indigenous African ways of knowing and doing from the Western paradigm illustrates the tenuous and questionable character of its epistemological and methodological claims to neutrality, objectivity and universality. Indeed the Western claim to scientific knowledge, as described, speaks to its universality at the expense of the ineradicable as well as irreducible v ontological pluriversality of the human experience. This study’s aim is to advance the argument for the sensitivity to pluriversality of be-ing and the imperative for wholistic thinking.
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