African Psychology

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Abstract

This book aims to serve as a basic literature in the new field of African psychology as presently constituted in continental Africa. The book is designed to fill a huge void that exists with the persistent absence of a foundational text that evolves from the situated knowledges and experience of continental African realities and postcolonial concerns and is devoted to defining and charting the content and scope of this new field for scholars within and outside Africa. The book consists of a coherent and organically cohesive selection of the author’s key essays, the majority of them published between 2000 and the present in premier international psychological journals on various aspects of continental African psychology, understood as a postcolonial academic discipline. Some of the book’s chapters are new as well. These have been written to anchor and provide a conceptual unity to the book. In terms of content, the book consists of four parts. Part I presents the background to the book. It proposes the Madiban tradition as a framework of inclusion for the study of psychology in African universities. Part II focuses on the epistemological, methodological, and theoretical perspectives in African psychology. Part III introduces the reader to the field of African therapeutics, while Part IV aims to highlight the healing rituals and practices provided to the traumatized in contemporary Africa. The ultimate objective of the book is to give postcolonial Africans a fresh vision of themselves and their psychology and culture.