In South Africa, dominant psychology is based on Western, Eurocentric ideas about mental health. This means that the services provided by mainstream psychology in the field of mental health benefit only white, middle-class people, ignoring the needs of South Africa's majority black population. The appropriateness of psychology in South Africa has thus been examined, because it is not relevant to all of this country's diverse people, ultimately leading to black people feeling alienated. We can evaluate why it is important to question psychology's relevance for the South African context by looking at how Apartheid shaped the history of psychology, the process of knowledge production and how it influenced how psychology is taught and practiced in South Africa, and finally the strengths and weaknesses of psychology as a science.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa that lasted from 1948 to the early 1990s. This system benefited white South Africans, while ultimately causing the 'negative other' to suffer. Apartheid played a significant role in shaping the history of psychology. Racism was viewed as a political ideology.
To assess the extent to which Apartheid influenced the history of psychology in South Africa, it is necessary to acknowledge that the origins of psychology are intrinsically Eurocentric. South African psychology reflects the country's ongoing colonial influences, which favor Western values over indigenous perspectives, because psychology was founded on positivist-empirical ideas in a Western environment (Cooper, 2012).
During the establishment of the Apartheid system in 1948, psychology was used as a political weapon to instill and enforce the National Party's policies. According to Cooper and Nicholas, this is evidenced by the founding of SAPA (South African Psychological Association), the country's first professional psychology association, immediately after the Party came to power, as well as the exclusion of non-white psychologists from society (2012). This allowed for the perpetuation of segregating modes of thinking in psychology, such as the underrepresentation of non-white individuals in available psychological knowledge, racially characterized diagnostic practices, the prioritization of white poverty, and the popularization of eugenic theory to justify the objectification of non-white people as a negative 'other' to white society. These fears were heightened by the fact that black people were denied access to higher education and that research critical of the Apartheid regime was censored. According to Painter and Blanche (2004), racism and capitalist motivations fueled psychology during this period, as the vast majority of practicing psychologists were white and middle-class, unwittingly benefiting from the regime's policies, compounding the fact that psychology failed to resist the government's racist policies.
The reproduction of positivist approaches contributes to psychology's unreliability to individuals who do not conform to the hegemonic ideal in psychological theory, as this perspective only accepts information produced in controlled, observable environments as appropriate theory.
According to Naidoo (1996), positivist research methodology allows psychology to oppress or emancipate various groups of people. The inferiority model, the genetic deficiency model, and the cultural deprivation model are all used in South African psychology to isolate people of color, particularly black people. The inferiority model holds that various racial and ethnic groups are less evolved than white people and thus incurably inferior. This is closely related to the genetic deficiency model or the eugenics movement, which argues that people of color are biologically and incontrovertibly subordinate to white people. This movement was openly supported by many leading South African psychologists, including Hendrik Verwoerd, and thus played a role in the establishment of the Apartheid regime. The cultural deficiency model was developed as an attempt to reform the eugenics movement, and it contends that an individual's upbringing and environment are to blame for any shortcomings, rather than genetically inherited characteristics due to their racial expression. The model hypothesizes that these issues can be resolved through intervention and exposure to acceptable culture, specifically a Western way of life.
These research models, in conjunction with the inherent perpetuation of Eurocentrism, are designed to isolate racial groups as a positive white reality and the negative 'other' perspectives of people of color. The establishment of a divide between what is normative, acceptable, and Western, in contrast to the unfavorable reality of other perspectives, casts people of color in a negative light on an institutional, professional, and personal level, allowing negative associations to be internalized and contributing to the exclusion of alternative perspectives.
South Africans continue to face racial discrimination as a result of the Apartheid regime's institutional oppression, as well as the hegemonic influences of Western society. The continued prioritization and favoring of white realities, as well as the continued categorization of South Africans into racial categories, are dehumanizing because they reduce an individual's unique experiences to the restrictive experiences assumed by their race. This allows harmful stereotypes to be reproduced and perpetuated on an institutional, professional, and personal level. This is exemplified by the Nieuwoudt et al. (2019) study, in which subconscious assumptions about colored women influenced the direction of the research and the manner in which the information was presented. The article is based on the assumption that black women are more likely to be uneducated and overweight. This reflects poorly not only on the researchers but also on the validity of the knowledge produced. This example of institutionalized racism, which is still present in psychology, demonstrates the persistence of discrimination.
The hegemonic ideal that is ingrained in South African society benefits not only white people but also men. This reflects the normalization and acceptance of gender as a fixed difference, as well as the view that masculine traits like assertiveness and aggression are praised, while feminine traits like sensitivity are viewed as signs of weakness. This behavior contributes to the perpetuation of misogyny on institutional and personal levels, as evidenced by the high rates of gender-based violence.
As a science, psychology has an advantage in the deconstruction and decolonization of its practice. Psychologists have the opportunity to conduct research and publish information on the effects of institutional racism and Apartheid on South Africans of color, and they can rely on psychology's scientific authority to influence and change the way South Africans think as a community. A weakness, however, is that the knowledge production system rejects research that deviates from traditional and comfortable perspectives.
Similarly, through research, psychology has the scientific authority to condemn misogyny. This is exemplified by Eliot's (2010) article, which addresses the sexist misconception that there are fundamental structural differences in adolescent male and female brains that justify misogynistic behavior toward children. Although research like this directly challenges conventional wisdom, sexist structures are deeply embedded in South African culture, and the information is easily dismissed.
Psychology is a science that can be both liberating and dictatorial, depending on the motives and biases of those who control knowledge production, thus influencing the projection of the reproduction of racial and gender discrimination. This, combined with the history of psychology's role in the formation of such structures, creates the need to consciously question the validity, motives, and overall relevance of psychological knowledge in the South African context.