A CHARACTERIZATION OF SOUTH-AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY (1948-1988) - THE IMPACT OF EXCLUSIONARY IDEOLOGY

The deliberate and sometimes unwitting complicity of psychology with a partheid social formations has received limited attention in the psych e-historical literature. This paper, in an attempt to break the silenc e, offers a descriptive characterisation of South African psychology. Details obtained from a content analysis of seven journals show South African psychology, between 1948-1988, to be characterised by five fea tures. Firstly, white males affiliated to the historically while unive rsities dominate knowledge-production in the discipline. Secondly, Eng lish is the majority language in publications. Thirdly, although the m ajority of analysed articles are empirical in nature there is an incre ase in the production of articles that scrutinise the ideological prem ises of the discipline. Fourthly, empirical studies tend to select bot h male and female research subjects who are mainly white. Fifthly, jou rnal publications are dominated by conventional areas such as psychome trics? research methodology, industrial psychology and educational psy chology. The more recently developed sub-areas such as community psych ology and the psychology of oppression receive marginal attention. The findings of the content analysis are interpreted from within two pers pectives, thus yielding a nuanced characterisation of South African ps ychology. When the findings are initially reviewed from within the res pective journals' editorial objectives, research and theoretical enqui ry within the discipline may be viewed as varied and diverse. However. at a more profound level, when the findings are contextualised within the argument that South African psychology is an extension of the col onial and western ethnoscientific enterprise, psychology is shown as n eglecting the black psychosocial experience and alienating blacks and women from the processes of knowledge production.