Decolonisation of Psychology

Decolonisation of Psychology

• Involves a critical analysis of psychology's knowledge production over time
• Focuses on colonial interests inherently tied to psychological knowledge used both in the past and present

Reasons for Decolonising Psychology

• Mainstream psychological knowledge carries colonial assumptions and ideals
• Some systems of knowledge are preferred over others
• Psychological knowledge makes truth claims about human life
• Psychologists are re-evaluating knowledge, theoretical models, and ideas in their practice

The Decolonisation of Psychology

• Currently a relevant topic in South African psychology
• Considered a buzzword within psychology

Key Figure: Frantz Fanon

• Fanon is a key postcolonial writer.
• Major works include "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952) and "The Wretched of the Earth" (1961)

Colonialism vs. Postcolonialism

• Colonialism: The relationship between an indigenous majority and a minority of foreign invaders
• Postcolonialism: The state of affairs after colonialism.
• Postcolonialism considers how one race/culture (Western/European) controlled another's life and self-perception over a prolonged period.
• Postcolonial studies examine the colonial relationships between colonizers and the colonized
• Postcolonial refers to the continuation of colonialism even after its formal end

Post-Colonial Studies & Psychological Effects

• Focuses on colonial relations between colonizers and the colonized
• Fanon was interested in the psychological impacts of this relationship from both perspectives
• The psychological effects of the colonizer-colonized relationship manifest as a master-slave dyad, representing an unequal power relation and a racial dyad
• Black/white distinctions go beyond skin color, embodying meanings cemented over centuries
• Western/Eurocentric psychological theories often privilege colonizer/master consciousness while devaluing colonized/slave consciousness

Colonial Legacy in South Africa

• The history of psychology exposes a colonial legacy
• Colonial violence is attached to the knowledge psychology produced
• Colonial violence acts as psychological violence, impacting identity and mental colonization
• Native people experienced deep-seated inferiority complexes related to skin color, identity, and ethnicity

Decolonising Psychology: Conceptual Resources

• Adams et al. (2015) propose liberation psychology and cultural psychology

Liberation Psychology

• It's a movement within psychology
• It is influenced by contexts with colonialism histories like South America and South Africa
• The main goal is social justice
• There is an emphasis on perspectives, interests, and knowledge of the oppressed

Three Tasks of Liberation Psychology

• De-ideologising everyday realities
• Recovering historical memory
• Privileging marginalized perspectives

De-ideologising Everyday Realities

• Ideology is a set of beliefs, values, or norms attributed to a person or group within institutions like the church, state, university, psychology, etc.
• Everyday experiences contain ideologies that construct versions of reality
• The goal is to reveal and disrupt these ideologies
• Everyday assumptions about the world are constructed for people

Recovering Historical Memory

• The recovery of repressed historical memories that were replaced by the colonizer's understandings
• Aims to counteract institutional denial, raise awareness of alternatives to colonial violence, and promote identity reconstruction

Privileging Marginalised Perspectives

• Involves understanding the realities of the oppressed
• It gives the oppressed a voice and authorship of their experiences
• Shifts the knowledge, views, and perspectives of the privileged
• It represents a challenge to authoritative discourses and experts
• Localised knowledge is produced by and for people on the margins

Cultural Psychology

• Considers the relationship between the mind and culture as mutually constituted
• This relationship operates in two directions: the sociocultural constitution of psychological experience and the psychological constitution of sociocultural reality.

Using Cultural Psychology to Decolonise Psychology

• Normalizing other experiences
• De-naturalising conventional scientific wisdom

Normalising Other Experience

• Normalising the experiences of the marginalised and oppressed portrayed as abnormal
• Recognizing local experiences without needing Western/Eurocentric enlightenment
• It affirms the intellect and humanity of people in marginalised spaces

De-naturalising Conventional Scientific Wisdom

• Questioning the relevance and standards of conventional scientific knowledge
• Scientific knowledge is inherently Eurocentric/Western, therefore it's relevance needs to be de-naturalised, especially where colonised

The Decolonisation of Psychology Project

• Aims to resurrect the experiences and voices of those forgotten, silenced, marginalised, and/or oppressed
• The discipline of psychology in South Africa implicitly and explicitly supported the European colonisers which was expressed through the apartheid regime’s racist and oppressive ideology.