The article provides a critical account of the way in which a group of South African psychologists and other mental health workers sought to use their professions as instruments of resistance to apartheid. Through recounting the history of the Durban branch of the Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa (OASSSA), a progressive anti‐apartheid “social service” organisation, the aims of the paper are two‐fold: firstly, to suggest some of the ways in which the practice of this broad‐based mental health and social service organisation challenged mainstream psychological thinking and began to develop some progressive psychological practices within the conditions of apartheid repression and violence; and secondly, to note some of the difficulties and contradictions that arose in OASSSA's work with working class communities, given that the organisation's membership was largely made up of middle‐class academics and professionals. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the extent to which the group succeeded in achieving its goals of (i) service delivery, (ii) the political mobilisation of psychologists, and (iii) the challenging and critical redefinition of the terrain of psychological practice in South Africa. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Psychology's silence is noted in some of the major debates in the philosophy of science at the moment. It is suggested that psychology's participation in issues of the philosophy of science could meaningfully contribute to a critical theoretical psychology. This article focuses on the question of ideology. Two ways of addressing ideology in psychology are identified: a critical dimension and a substantive dimension. The article develops the substantive dimension which tries to account for the operations of ideology at the level of the individual. This is an important corrective as theories of ideology, derived mainly from social theory, have been weak in explaining the operations of ideology at the level of the individual. It is suggested that Althusser's work is able to contribute, if read in a psychological way, to an understanding of the operations of ideology in its more individual manifestations. After a brief presentation of Althusser's work, four central aspects of his theory of ideology are critically discussed. It is argued that a critical understanding of Althusser's theory of ideology opens up theoretical and empirical space for a psychological analysis of the constitution and development of human individuality.
The critique of the practice of psychotherapy offered by Schmid (2012/2014) calls upon the notion of politics as "the consequence of an image of the human being" (p. 4) as being pivotal in arguing for the inherently political nature of (person-centred) psychotherapy. Following Carl Rogers, Schmid also locates human suffering in the alienation that people experience in their everyday social lives. In responding to Schmid's argument I suggest that his analysis is over-determining of the role of the political in our lives, and in the work of psychotherapy. I also argue that it is useful to conceptualise the realms of the political and the psychotherapeutic as "relatively autonomous" from each other. This view is advanced with reference to the work of Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler. Through the work of Rancière a more complex understanding of the political is put forward, and with reference to Butler a social theory of vulnerability is advanced. These two theorists allow for an opening up of the concept of the political beyond what Schmid proposes, as well as offering a social and moral account of human vulnerability.
The presence of psychoanalysis in a country is usually adjudged by the existence of an internationally recognized training institute. In other words, psychoanalysis is usually coterminous with its clinical or therapeutic manifestation. Psychoanalysis in South Africa has been around in some form or other for the past 70 years. This article gives a brief history of psychoanalysis in South Africa, and especially with regard to attempts to establish an internationally recognized training of psychoanalysts. While not denying the value of clinical psychoanalysis, an argument is made for a social role for psychoanalysis. It is suggested that a psychoanalytic social theory could be developed to help us make sense of the `social terrors' that populate the human landscape in post-apartheid South Africa. Two such social issues are discussed, namely `race' and HIV/AIDS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.