Chapters - History of Community Psychology - 2008

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Compleat: Unisa Press
Interiors: A History of Psychology in Southern Africa Van Ommen and Painter
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Contents
1. Introduction: Approaching the histories of Psychology

Clifford van Ommen and Desmond Painter
Section 1: Themes

2. Writing the histories of South African Psychology
Clifford van Ommen
3. The triangulated development of South African Psychology:

Race, scientific racism and professionalisation
Mohamed Seedat and Sarah MacKenzie
4. Critical psychology: A historical overview

Don Foster
Section 2: Movements

5. Bodies and behaviour: Science, psychology and politics in South Africa
Werner Böhmke and Tshepo Tlali
6. Historical perspectives on psychometric testing in South Africa

Cheryl Foxcroft and Caroline Davies
7. A history of psychoanalysis in South Africa
Grahame Hayes
8. Existential-phenomenological psychology
Rex van Vuuren
9. A history of systemic thinking and cybernetic approaches in South Africa
Corinne Oosthuizen
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Interiors: A History of Psychology in Southern Africa
Section 3: Fields

10. Fools and ships: Psychopathology and colonial experience in South Africa,
1818--1930
Sally Swartz
11. South African research on child development: A history of bias and neglect
Linda Richter and Andrew Dawes
12. Social psychology in South Africa: Towards a critical history

Brett Bowman, Norman Duncan and Tanya M. Swart
13. Neuropsychology in South Africa: Past, present and future

Ann Watts
14. A history of community psychology in South Africa

Jeffery Yen
15. Prologue to a future psychology

Anita Craig
16. Abbreviated histories: Some concluding remarks

Desmond Painter and Clifford van Ommen
List of abbreviations

List of contributors
List of texts detailing the history of Psychology in South Africa
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Chapter 14
A history of community psychology

in South Africa
Jeffery Yen
Introduction
The field of community psychology, as we know it today, has had a very short
history relative to the discipline of psychology both internationally and in South
Africa. Internationally, it has only been formally recognised as a sub-discipline
of psychology for roughly 40 years. In this chapter I attempt to provide a broad
history of the field in South Africa, taking an explicitly constructionist and historicist
approach (cf. Van Drunen & Jansz, 2004) to the writing of history. The account
relies almost exclusively on a synthesis of literature published in, about, or deemed
relevant to community psychology, and it is neither exhaustive, nor can it account for
the substantial ‘community psychological’ work of the numerous and varied health,
mental health and social service organisations in South Africa, which remains largely
undocumented. Relevant unpublished reports, research dissertations, and other ‘grey’
literature have also not been included. As I will argue below, the field of community
psychology in South Africa is not a unified field of study or intervention, and has
often been characterised by the transgression of traditional boundaries between
academic disciplines and between the academy and non-academic organisations. The
material on which this account is based is therefore a selective sample of community
psychological work, and somewhat biased towards the written word. However,
this chapter has also been informed by conversations with particular personalities
involved in community psychological work,1 and a selective review of current
nationwide departmental undergraduate and postgraduate psychology curricula. It is
thus largely an account of others’ accounts, and therefore primarily historiographic.
Defining community psychology

Defining community psychology in the South African context is a tricky business
– the term encompasses a broad range of epistemological and methodological
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CHAPTER 14 A History of Community Psychology in South Africa
approaches (Bhana & Kanjee, 2001) and tackles a wide array of social-psychological
problems. The difficulty also lies, in part, in the ideological and politicised nature
of the term ‘community’ in South Africa and its historical position as a key term in
the ideology of separate development (cf. Butchart & Seedat, 1990;; Thornton &
Ramphele, 1988). Moreover, from a constructionist position, it could be argued that
the subject matter of community psychology (which has included both the individual
and the ‘community’) does not have a trans-historical existence, independent of
both developments in the discipline, and broader socio-political changes (cf. Louw,
2002). In addition, as other writers have argued, community psychology has been
interpreted differently by conservative, liberal and radical psychologists in South
Africa (Lazarus, in Wingenfeld & Newbrough, 2000), leading to widely differing,
and sometimes hotly contested, conceptions of its nature and scope. The following
definitional statements from the literature are therefore selective and primarily serve
an analytical purpose.
Community psychology has sometimes been referred to as applied social
psychology, and historically in South Africa, community psychology has leaned
towards an emphasis on intervention, while later definitions have begun to emphasise
research as a key activity for community psychologists (see below). Consider the
following definition from a recent first-year introductory psychology text:
[Community psychology is] an emerging branch of psychology that uses
a variety of interventions (including prevention and health promotion) to
facilitate change and improved mental-health and social conditions for groups,
organisations or communities. (Naidoo, Shabalala, & Bawa, 2003, p. 423)
The emphasis on intervention in this definition reflects a key dualism within

community psychology and psychology as a whole – that between research and
action. Arguments from within the fields of action research and participatory action
research (PAR), as I will describe later, emphasise the inseparability of research and
intervention and are explicitly committed to research that is immediately and directly
beneficial to research participants (e.g., Van Vlaenderen, 2004). Other writers have
also appropriated the Marxist notion of praxis, emphasising the dialectic or cycle
of action and understanding – the ‘unity of theory and action’, to illustrate their
preferred approach to community psychology (Prilleltensky, 2001, p. 748). Another
fundamental dualism that is glossed over in the above definition is that between the
individual and the social, and the difficulties in conceptualising how ‘groups and
communities’ may be thought of as having mental health. These are key themes
grappled with throughout the development of the discipline.
Theoretically, methodologically – and importantly – politically divergent models
of research and intervention lay claim to being forms of community psychology
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(cf. Seedat, Cloete, & Shochet, 1988). For example, while differing approaches to
community psychology may share a perspective on the social causes of psychological
distress, they may differ in the extent to which they acknowledge the significance
of social and material relations of power, or the structuring effects of language, or
locate their analyses within the context of global capitalism (cf. Hamber, Masilela,
& Terre Blanche, 2001).
Reporting on a workshop on appropriate social services in South Africa in 1988,
Prinsloo (1989) provided one of the earliest available South African definitions
of community psychology. In it she states that community psychology rejects the
notion of itself as a neutral discipline, and is distinguished by a self-conscious
acknowledgement of its values. Its characteristics are as follows: 1) cultural and
contextual relativism;; 2) insistence on the just distribution of power and resources;;
3) commitment to oppressed and disadvantaged groups;; 4) recognition of people’s
ability to identify their own needs and resources;; 5) insistence that people take
responsibility for their own change;; 6) belief in the need for ideological analysis or
consciousness-raising in community work;; and 7) insistence on dialogue between
‘expert’ and ‘local’ knowledges. This description is remarkable for its emphasis
on action and change, participation, empowerment and social justice, and reflects
some of the urgency with which, at the time, a growing number of psychologists
attempted to find ways to deal with the devastation being caused by apartheid (cf.
Hayes, 2000).
More recently, the first South African textbook on community psychology,
published in 2001, carries the following, extensive definition:
Community psychology … is concerned with:
– extending mental health services to all citizens, in particular the historically
unserved, underserved and oppressed;;
– transforming the way in which the genesis and development of psychosocial
problems are conceptualised and understood;;
– providing a contextual analysis that takes cognisance of social issues and
addresses environmental stressors;;
– radicalising the praxis of psychological service delivery to include
prevention initiatives;; and
– redefining the role of psychologists towards a broader public health portfolio
that embraces the functions of advocacy, lobbying, community mobilisation,
community networking, and policy formulation.
(Seedat, Duncan, & Lazarus, 2001, p. 3)
These statements by Seedat et al. (2001) identify community psychology as a

politically progressive and reflexive enterprise that aims to ‘transform’, ‘radicalise’
and ‘redefine’ the profession of psychology in the process of serving the historically
oppressed. So defined, the field shares a similar political project with the broader
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field of critical psychology (Seedat, MacKenzie, & Stevens, 2004;; Prilleltensky &
Nelson, 1997), in its explicit rejection of an objectivist, value-neutral and socially
distanced notion of psychology, and in its implied critique of psychology’s rampant
individualism. As I have mentioned previously, however, not all forms of community
psychology would adhere to this definition.
Having briefly sketched the outlines of the field of community psychology and
some of the key issues it faces, my narrative turns to an account of key events,
organisations and activities that feature prominently in the development of
international community psychology. An overview of international developments
will help to contextualise the origins of the field in South Africa, and also allow
useful comparisons to be made which may illuminate local developments.
International community psychology

It is now commonplace to find texts which locate the origins of the field of community
psychology in the United States of America (US), as concurrent with the broad social
and civil rights movements of the 1960s (e.g., Newbrough, 1997;; Pretorius-Heuchert
& Ahmed, 2001). While not particularly contentious, some non-American writers
have claimed to be practising community psychology since the 1920s (cf. Kelly,
2002;; Walsh-Bowers, 1998). Nevertheless, few would disagree that the formalisation
of the discipline in the US had a significant impact on its development internationally
(Wingenfeld & Newbrough, 2000).
Under pressure to respond to pressing social problems such as poverty, racism,
sexism, and institutional recidivism, the US government, through its National
Institute of Mental Health, sponsored the Swampscott Conference in 1965. The
central aim of this conference was to consider how clinical psychologists should
be trained to work in community mental health centres. Despite its initial narrow
focus on deinstitutionalisation and community mental health, the conference became
an arena for fertile debate about the social origins of mental health and illness
and the conceptualisation of social interventions. Soon after this, the Division for
Community Psychology was established in the American Psychological Association
(APA) in 1967 (Newbrough, 1997). The field of community psychology, then, was
inaugurated in the context of social and government policy changes in response to
community-based protest. While this development was motivated by an obvious
humanist impulse, there were also those who saw the changes as motivated primarily
by the economic benefits of transferring the costs and responsibility of care from
the state to the ‘community’ (Pretorius-Heuchert & Ahmed, 2001), and others
who interpreted it as a means of subduing the growing social militancy of the time
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(Vogelman, Perkel, & Strebel, 1992). Institutional policies in the 1960s in the US that
emphasised deinstitutionalisation and prevention still remain key to what is termed
the ‘community mental health’ approach in community psychology. This model
neither prioritises issues of social justice or redistribution of resources, nor provides
the means to understand social change (Ngonyama ka Sigogo, Hooper, Long, Lykes,
Wilson, & Zietkiewicz, 2004). Crucially, these concerns illustrate how certain forms
and interpretations of community psychology may function to reinforce the status
quo rather than change it (Walsh-Bowers, 1998).
In the two decades subsequent to its formation, the field grew rapidly, with
numerous conferences, the establishment of dedicated journals (such as the Journal
of Community Psychology, the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology,
and the American Journal of Community Psychology), and close collaboration with
government agencies and commissions in community psychology projects. This
growth was characterised by a broadening of the mandate of psychologists to include
organisations, institutions, society and the nation, and also the introduction of a rich
diversity of ideas and practices (Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al., 2004). Two milestones
identified by American authors include two decisive publications by Julian Rappaport
– a textbook in 1977, which assembled the key concepts and values of an emerging
field, and his article, In Praise of Paradox: A Social Policy of Empowerment over
Prevention (1981), which prompted conceptual changes that stimulated larger-scale,
social change interventions, and the introduction of concepts of human diversity into
the field (Revenson & Seidman, 2002). Much of the nascent South African literature
on community psychology, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, seemed to rely
considerably on this work.
The theoretical or conceptual roots of the field can be traced to the work of Kurt
Lewin (1946) and his formulation of the person-in-context. Newbrough (1997)
identifies the individual-social interface or dichotomy as the key dilemma or dualism
within which community psychology operates. Traditionally, the individual is the
subject of psychology, and social groups are seen as providing an environment for
individual behaviour, rather than being conceived of as independent wholes. In
contrast, as Newbrough (1997) argues, disciplines such as sociology maintain that
social groupings function as wholes and have ‘unitary qualities’ (p. 140) not reducible
to accumulations of individual behaviour. For Newbrough (1997) then, the challenge
for community psychology is to operate somewhere between the two disciplines.
In the US and other developed countries, the development of community
psychology has generally accompanied the emergence of a discourse of civil and
human rights, while in contexts such as Latin America (and as we shall see, in South
Africa), the language of liberation and resistance to colonial domination has been
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highly influential (cf. Watts & Serrano-Garcia, 2003). Community psychology

developed in countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Puerto
Rico, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba in the 1970s, very often in response to systems of
political repression and exclusion from access to resources and power (e.g., Zúñiga,
1975). Under the influence of developments in American community psychology,
these international responses were most commonly spurred on by a disenchantment
with and critique of mainstream clinical psychology, and sometimes in response
to the new demands placed on psychologists by changes in government policy
(Wingenfeld & Newbrough, 2000). South African community psychology developed
under analogous circumstances, but somewhat belatedly only in the 1980s.
South Africa - 1980s

The roots of South African community psychology’s preoccupations can be traced
back to the violent and tumultuous decade of the 1980s in South Africa, during
which a growing collective of psychologists became active in both organising
around and writing about their concerns and objections to the apartheid system and
its psychological effects (cf. Dawes, 1985). In contrast to the US, the field developed
in this country largely in opposition to the political regime of the time, and therefore
also bears the marks of a more radical and critical tradition.
Seemingly immune to international developments in community psychology,
and perhaps as a consequence of increasing international isolation (cf. Dumont &
Louw, 2001), academic and professional psychology in South Africa prior to the
1980s seemed relatively content to ignore the vast, racially structured disparities
within its own ranks and in the socio-political context in which it was situated. For
example, psychologists publishing in South African academic journals between 1948
and 1988 were largely silent on the issue of racism, a problem critical to people’s
everyday lives and to the structure of apartheid society (Seedat, 2001). Even writing
explicitly addressed towards enhancing the ‘social responsiveness’ of psychology
(e.g., Strümpfer, 1981) or exhorting psychologists to be aware of their African
context (e.g., Holdstock, 1981), which began to appear in the early 1980s, tended
to either neglect apartheid inter-group differences in power, and/or reify African
culture (Dawes, 1985).
Socio-political context
Community psychology emerged out of the particular social context of 1970s and
1980s South Africa, which saw the rejuvenation of large-scale political and protest
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activism among (particularly young) black people. During this fertile period, there
was a proliferation of civic associations and organisations which, in response to
the apartheid state’s particularly violent reaction to the increased activism, began
to struggle for and in many cases themselves provide the lacking and much needed
social services for victims of state detention, torture and persecution (cf. Hayes,
2000;; Seekings, 1990;; Shubane & Madiba, 1994). Progressive groupings of health
and social service workers mobilised to form a wide variety of anti-apartheid health
and welfare organisations (Hayes, 2000). Among these were the National Medical
Doctors Association (NAMDA), the Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in
South Africa (OASSSA), and the Psychology and Apartheid Group. Psychologists
were mostly represented in the membership of the latter two organisations, which
were – rather ironically – also distinguished by their racial composition.2 Many of their
members are now prominent figures in national university psychology departments,
and/or in government-affiliated national research organisations such as the Human
Sciences Research Council (HSRC). OASSSA itself, it could be argued, played a
small but significant role in the history of South African community psychology, and
its contributions are discussed below.
Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in

South Africa (OASSSA)
In 1983, the same year in which the United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched and
mass political mobilisation began to take hold, OASSSA was formed from an informal
committee of progressive mental health workers and students. It was partly sparked in
protest at the obscenity of holding a conference on the family and family therapy at Sun
City, in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana (see Oosthuizen, this volume). The
homeland system had played a key role in, and came to symbolise, the fragmentation
of black families under apartheid. OASSSA became a national and explicitly anti-
apartheid grouping of mental health workers (including psychiatrists, students, social
workers and psychologists) with branches in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town,
Grahamstown and Pietermaritzburg (Hayes, 2000). The activities of its members
were directed, initially, at providing ‘emergency’ mental health support services to
ex-detainees and their families, victims of state violence, harassment and torture, and
basic training in trauma counselling, at a time when heightened state repression and the
state of emergency of the mid-1980s led to the detention of over 40 000 people without
trial (Gottschalk, 1994).3 Their work also involved publicising – despite severe state
censorship and repression – the realities of the torture and abuse of detainees through
seminars, workshops and talks, support for conscripts trying to avoid call-up, and
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later psychological support for ex-political prisoners and returning exiles (Truth and
Reconciliation Committee Health Sector Hearings, 1997). OASSSA’s activities later
extended to researching – on a limited scale – the causes and contexts of social and
psychological problems in the settings in which OASSSA members worked (cf. Eagle
& Hayes, 1989;; Hazelton & Schaay, 1990).
While some of those principally involved in the formation of the organisation
regard its social service contributions as significant, but relatively modest, OASSSA
represented a watershed in South African psychology by impelling psychologists to
‘take sides’ in relation to apartheid (Hayes, 2000;; K. Kelly, personal communication,
September, 2005) and specifically to the largely conservative professional body of
South African psychologists of the time, the Psychological Association of South
Africa (PASA). This represented a discursive division and political realignment
within the discipline that is still evident today, particularly with regard to the question
of ‘relevance’ in the profession (cf. Suffla & Seedat, 2004).
Hayes (2000) has alluded to the numerous ways in which the aims and practices
of OASSSA might be seen as precursors to the kind of work that would now
commonly be thought of as community psychology in South Africa. These include
a community mental health focus among psychologists and a turn to participant
observation and action research methodologies among academic researchers
involved with OASSSA. While it would be inaccurate to locate the birth of South
African community psychology solely within the work of OASSSA, the organisation
was certainly integral to the development of many of the values, concerns and foci
of community psychology in South Africa. Some of the work done by OASSSA
members which is prefigurative of contemporary community psychology include:
Training preschool teachers to deal with the effects of violence on children (Swartz
& Swartz, 1986);; treating psychological trauma or ‘detention rehabilitation’
through the Detainee Counselling Services (Manson, 1986);; providing accessible
services for childhood developmental difficulties (Narunsky, 1986);; investigating
and contextualising incidents of political violence and conflict (Unrest Monitoring
Project, 1989;; Jocelyn, 1989);; creating forums for discussion, support and counselling
training for incidents of suicide (Eagle & Pillay, 1989);; providing comprehensive
and accessible mental health services through the establishment of consultative and
community-oriented programmes (Middleton, Stavrou, Buys, & Solomon, 1989)
and counselling/civic centres (Carollisen, Hansson, Naicker, Petersen, & Sterling,
1989);; training and mentoring students (OASSSA Transvaal, 1989);; establishing
advice centres (OASSSA Western Cape, 1989);; acting as expert witnesses in political
trials (Friedman, 1989);; providing information about HIV/AIDS prevention (Harper,
1989;; K. Kelly, personal communication, September, 2005);; and commitment to
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accountability to the ‘community’ in research (Durban OASSSA Research Group,
1989).
Some important features of OASSSA’s work, also very much in line with the
aims of contemporary community psychology, included its commitment to and
close working relationships with community organisations and civic associations,
its commitment to interdisciplinarity, its (intermittent) success at mobilising and
coordinating social service workers at a national level, and its alignment with
a broadly progressive political movement. However, an interesting point made
by Hayes (2000) is that OASSSA’s concerns with determining the links between
apartheid and mental health were often not shared by the communities with which
it was principally involved, alluding to the inevitable incongruence between the
interests and class positions of academics and professionals and the people with
whom they work, specifically in times of rapid social change (cf. Seedat et al., 1988;;
Zúñiga, 1975).
University psychology departments

In parallel with these developments, a growing number of academic psychologists
– some of whom were also members of progressive groupings – debated the
‘relevance’ of psychology in South Africa in academic journals, most notably in
the critical journal Psychology in Society (PINS) (e.g., Berger & Lazarus, 1987;;
Dawes, 1986a;; Turton, 1986). Critique – often couched in liberatory discourse –
focused on psychology’s blindness to the socio-political and economic context of its
work (Dawes, 1985;; Vogelman, 1986), the inaccessibility and inadequacy of mental
health services (Anonymous, 1986), the politics of professionalism (Dawes, 1986b;;
Isemonger, 1990;; Louw, 1988), and the need for Africanisation of the discipline
(Dawes, 1986a). During this time the first major pieces of research on community
psychology (Lazarus, 1988), sexual abuse and trauma (Levett, 1988), the effects
of violence and traumatic stress (Solomons, 1988;; Straker, 1987), and culture and
mental health (Swartz, 1989) in South Africa were completed. A further important
body of work that developed drew from the Soviet socio-historical tradition of
activity theory and situated cognition in an attempt to account for social change
and to conceptualise cultural processes (Gilbert, 1989). This conceptual framework
found application in community development interventions, in combination with
participatory methods informed by the dialogical approach of Paulo Freire (e.g., Van
Vlaenderen & Nkwinti, 1993).
An important paper published at the time by Seedat, Cloete, and Shochet (1988)
identified key problems facing the ‘new’ field of community psychology. These
included: 1) the need to develop theory that could account for the relationship
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between madness and oppression, at the ‘individual-society interface’ (Duveen

& Lloyd, cited in Seedat et al., 1988, p. 45);; 2) the need to develop interventions
that link understanding and action, internal and external, and the individual and the
social;; and 3) determining the appropriate role of the psychologist in relation to
the community. They also highlighted the ideological function of the existence of a
separate field of community psychology in relation to psychologists’ ‘contradictory
class locations’ (p. 50) (see also Perkel, 1988;; Vogelman, Perkel, & Strebel, 1992).
Sweeping political changes, the drafting of a new constitution and the creation of
new social institutions in the 1990s and particularly the period following 1994 saw
a proliferation of community-oriented research and intervention in South Africa,
very often in tandem with both governmental and non-governmental efforts to
restructure and transform health and mental health services provision in the new era
of democracy. The guiding sentiment appeared to be that of responding as quickly as
possible to the considerable and urgent need for services within the broader political
aim of ‘reconstruction’. Moreover, many of those engaged in community psychology
– in contrast to the 1980s – now found themselves working in collaboration with,
rather than in opposition to, prevailing political and social institutions, requiring
theoretical, practical and political shifts in the way they conceptualised their
roles (Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al., 2004). Mental health policy in the ‘new’ South
Africa was vigorously debated by South African mental health workers at a major
conference in 1995 (Foster, Freeman, & Pillay, 1997). These authors grappled with
the reconceptualisation of mental health service provision within a newly democratic
society with vast disparities in economic and social conditions, but with an eye to the
more pernicious and slippery effects of power in the new language of democracy,
empowerment and participation (cf. Foster & Swartz, 1997;; Butchart, Hamber, Terre
Blanche, & Seedat, 1997).
South African psychologists began increasingly to apply themselves to pressing
social and mental health issues such as violence, trauma, child development, and
substance abuse. A further grouping of new non-government organisations (NGOs)
emerged in the early 1990s, some formed out of the integration of apartheid-era
progressive mental health organisations such as the Emergency Services Group and
the Detainees Treatment Team, and began providing mental health services for ex-
political prisoners, returned exiles and other survivors of political violence (see,
e.g., the Cape Town-based Trauma Centre, the Centre for the Study of Violence and
Reconciliation (CSVR) and Sinani). Tellingly, HIV/AIDS began to receive rather
belated attention from community psychology itself (Lindegger & Wood, 1995;;
Perkel, Strebel, & Joubert, 1991;; Visser, 1996), despite having been identified as
a potentially serious social and health problem a number of years earlier (Perkel &
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Strebel, 1990). Outside of the discipline, an important and pioneering HIV/AIDS

prevention programme involving peer education with traditional healers was initiated
in 1992, involving primarily American and South African NGOs. Very few South
African psychologists took part in this, except perhaps those who were involved
with the Progressive Primary Health Care Network (PPHCN), a South African NGO
(Green, Zokwe, & Dupree, 1995).
Childhood trauma and development in the face of adversity were addressed in
two important books (Dawes & Donald, 1994;; Straker, 1992), and the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) received sustained attention, both in the way
of a critical evaluation of its effectiveness in promoting national and individual
healing (Hamber, 1998;; Hamber, Nageng, & O’ Malley, 2000;; Lykes, Terre Blanche,
& Hamber, 2003), and a consideration of the implications of the TRC process for
conceptualising psychosocial intervention in clinical and community psychology
(Swartz & Drennan, 2000). The TRC has also been addressed in terms of its role
in the discursive projects of memory-making and representation (cf. Lykes et al.,
2003;; McEwan, 2003;; Wilbraham, 2000). This writing and deliberation about the
TRC encapsulates some key concerns of community psychology, and is therefore
discussed in some detail below.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

The controversial and complex process of the TRC (which ran from 1995 to 1998)
– and the psychological and psychoanalytic language in which it came to be couched
– condensed a fundamental theoretical predicament for community-oriented
psychology, that of the interface between individual and collective healing (see
Craig, this volume). Touted as an instrument of ‘national healing’, the TRC has been
criticised for, paradoxically, causing individual psychological harm to survivors of
political violence, through the often traumatic process of testifying (De Ridder, in
Swartz & Drennan, 2000), and also the expectation that uncovering the ‘truth’ should
necessarily lead to forgiveness (Hamber et al., 2000). The question raised here
concerned the extent to which people may infer beneficial change at an individual
level simply through participation in a process of collective change. Recovering, or
even privileging, the notion of individual subjectivity, Swartz and Drennan (2000)
argued that at times processes that aim to bring ‘healing’ at a collective level may
in fact be inimical to ‘individual healing’, and that broad socio-political changes in
themselves may not necessarily automatically result in individual ‘liberation’. Hayes
(2000) highlighted similar contradictions in relation to what he termed the ‘human
dimensions of the struggle’ (p. 339). Remaining mindful of the potential pitfalls
of reifying ‘personal emotions’, their arguments represented a (psychoanalytically)
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nuanced counterpoint to models of community psychology and social theory which
had all but painted the individual subject out of the theoretical picture. These concerns
echo some of the anxieties and sense of disempowerment psychologists feel in the
face of accusations that their skills are largely irrelevant (Seedat, 1997;; Swartz &
Gibson, 2001). The TRC has also stimulated work of an explicitly community-
oriented and participatory nature on the politics of representation and voice (Lykes
et al., 2003;; McEwan, 2003), which recognised the impossibility of romanticised
notions of unmediated self-representation resulting from political liberation. The
relative success or failure of the TRC notwithstanding, these debates highlighted
the inadequacies of dualistic conceptions of community psychology that account for
change only at the level of social action (cf. Seedat et al., 1988).
Other developments
University psychology departments around the country – but particularly those in
‘historically black’ institutions such as the University of the Western Cape (UWC)
and the former University of Durban-Westville (Seedat et al., 2004) – began
experimenting with community psychological approaches during this time, with
many setting up community-oriented training programmes and introducing modules
in community psychology at all levels of the psychology curriculum. Some examples
of specific initiatives described in the literature include the Zululand Community
Psychology Project, established in 1993 (cf. Edwards, 2002) and honours level
courses in community psychology at UWC (cf. White & Potgieter, 1996). There
was, however, by this time, still no national grouping or association of community
psychologists in South Africa, and despite rapid international growth in the field,
very little representation of South African psychologists at international community
psychology meetings (Wingenfeld & Newbrough, 2000).
Establishment and institutionalisation

In recent years South African community psychology has begun to formalise and
become established in institutions and organisations. It has been increasingly
represented in university curricula, a number of published books and textbooks,
government-backed research and intervention programmes (such as those in the
HSRC and Medical Research Council (MRC)), and changes in government social
and health policy (see Lazarus, 2001). Significant examples of the latter include
across-the-board prioritisation of comprehensive primary health care and prevention
(cf. Parry & Yach, 1993) which has found its way into the Mental Health Care
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Jeffrey Yen
Act of 2002, and will begin to demand new skills of mental health professionals
and particularly primary health nurses and community health workers (cf. Swartz
& MacGregor, 2002). Another important example has been the involvement of
psychologists in national education policy research and development, which has
contributed to far-reaching changes in the discourse and aims of current education
policy in South Africa (cf. Lazarus, 2001). Also at a national level, the transformation
and restructuring of the HSRC has led to the establishment of research programmes
in Child, Youth and Family Development and the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS. In the
last few years, NGOs and institutes such as the Centre for the Study of Violence and
Reconciliation (CSVR), the Centre for AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation
(CADRE), and UNISA’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences (formerly the
Health Psychology Unit and the Centre for Peace Action), amongst many others,
have consolidated their growth and become increasingly involved at the forefront of
innovative community psychological work in South Africa, very often in support of,
or in collaboration with, extensive government-backed programmes.
Following moves in the medical profession, it became mandatory in 2003
for training clinical psychologists to complete a year of ‘community service’ in
historically underserved (sometimes rural) contexts (Ahmed & Pillay, 2004). While
it is a relatively recent development, there have as yet been no systematic attempts
at evaluating this initiative. There is currently an urgent need for research into the
effectiveness of these placements, trainee psychologists’ experiences of them, and the
extent to which their training adequately prepares them for their placements. Recent
debate would suggest that practice in community service placements will very likely
be narrowly interpreted as routine clinical work performed in ‘community’ contexts
(in line with a community mental health approach), if clinical training as defined by
the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) continues in its present
form (Ahmed & Pillay, 2004;; Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al., 2004;; Pillay, 2003).
Education, training and professional issues

To date no research exists that examines the nature or extent of training in
community psychology in South African universities, although Wingenfeld and
Newbrough (2000) have reported that a smattering of courses has been offered
within undergraduate curricula and professional training programmes since the
1980s. De la Rey and Ipser (2004) have asserted, and not unreasonably, that by 2004
most psychology departments and professional training programmes in the country
included at least one module in community psychology, and anecdotal evidence
certainly suggests that this was the case. At the time of writing the courses being
offered in, or essentially related to community psychology at both undergraduate
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and postgraduate levels at South African universities – as reported on the respective
institutions’ websites – was as follows (see Table 1 below):
Table 1 Courses and programmes offered in community psychology at

selected South African universities (2005)
Course titles/Degree programmes offered

University
Undergraduate Honours Masters
University of Cape Clinical and None (but Various courses in
Town community aspects offered clinical training
psychology (3rd in many courses)
yr)
University of Fort Psychology, Community Masters in
Hare context and psychology Community
research (3rd yr) Critical issues in Counselling*
contemporary
Africa
University of the Community Community None
Free State assessment, psychology
intervention,
development
(modules in
B.Psych)
University of None Community Information
Johannesburg psychology unavailable
University of Community Community and Modules in
KwaZulu-Natal psychology (3rd cultural issues professional
yr) Community training
and cultural programmes
intervention Masters in Health
Promotion*
University of Information Information Information
Limpopo unavailable unavailable unavailable
Nelson Mandela None None Some aspects
Metropolitan in professional
University training courses
North-West University Information Group and Some aspects
unavailable community in professional
psychology training courses
University of Pretoria Community Community Modules in
psychology, psychology professional
community training courses
psychology in
practice (3rd yr)
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Jeffrey Yen
Course titles/Degree programmes offered

University
Undergraduate Honours Masters
Rhodes University None None (but Some aspects
aspects offered in professional
in some courses) training courses
University of South Community Community Information
Africa psychology (2nd psychology unavailable
yr & 3rd yr)
University of Behaviour and Applied social Masters in
Stellenbosch health psychology Community
South African Community Counselling*
mental health psychology Some aspects in
context Alcohol abuse in other professional
South Africa training courses
University of Venda None Community Information
psychology unavailable
University of the Introduction Community Some aspects
Western Cape to health and psychology in professional
community training courses
psychology (1st
yr)
Community
psychology (2nd
yr)
Psychology of
social identity
and oppression
(3rd yr)
Applied
community
psychology (3rd
yr)
University of the Community Community Masters in
Witwatersrand psychology III psychology Community
Honours Counselling*
in Applied Some aspects in
Psychology* other professional
(strong training courses
community
mental health
focus)
University of Modules Aspects in Some aspects
Zululand in B.Psych various modules in professional
programme training courses
* These titles indicate degree programmes. Others indicate course modules.
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Of course, a simple description and listing of nominal courses being offered gives
no indication as to the scope, nature or content of these courses, and can provide
no more than an impressionistic view of the current state of university-based
community psychology training. While the number of courses offered may indicate
otherwise, recent research suggests that community psychology continues to occupy
a marginal position in many university curricula, and particularly in postgraduate
and professional training courses (Ahmed & Pillay, 2004), either because they are
optional, are offered late in students’ academic careers, or are poorly integrated into
overall programmes (cf. Pillay, 2003).
Nevertheless, in recent years, notable developments in university training
have included two new masters level professional training courses in ‘Community
Counselling Psychology’ offered by WITS and the then East London campus of
Rhodes University (now the University of Fort Hare).4 Though there are obvious
differences between them, both courses represent a significant step towards
integrating the values and sensibilities of a ‘liberatory’ community psychology within
the framework and constraints of professional training. However, reflections on the
development of these programmatic initiatives, particularly at WITS (cf. Ngonyama
ka Sigogo et al., 2004), suggest that despite the identification of numerous creative
tensions – between, for example, academic and indigenous knowledges, and theory
and practice – which have led to fruitful insights and innovations, the strictures of
professional identity and of the university environment have been harder to overcome.
As Lykes et al. (2003) demonstrated, critical community psychology practice tends
to be transgressive, requiring psychologists to straddle, or cross, disparate social
stratifications. The training and practice requirements set for counselling psychologists
by the HPCSA do not make this easy for fledgling community psychologists, and in
WITS’s case, were seemingly instrumental in students falling back on individualistic
and relatively conservative forms of intervention.
The necessity and value of these innovative stand-alone programmes in
transforming the discipline of psychology itself (cf. Seedat et al., 2001) is clear.
However, some would state that all South African psychologists should be
community-focused (Vogelman et al., 1992). They would argue that the increasing
‘formalisation’ of community psychology into specific professional training
programmes only allows important ongoing critique of mainstream psychology,
mental health and research to be deflected to training courses, intervention and
research projects and programmes carrying the prefix ‘community’. This results in
what some have aptly termed community psychology’s ‘[ghetto-isation] within a
subdiscipline of psychology’ (Vogelman et al., p. 86). The recent revival of debate on
South African psychology’s ‘relevance’ would seem to indicate that the increasing
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Jeffrey Yen
acceptance of community psychology in the discipline has not resulted in much

significant change, particularly in the arena of professional practice (cf. Suffla &
Seedat, 2004;; Hayes, 2000).
Publications
Further signs of the entrenchment of the discipline were manifested in the publication
of the first South African textbook on community psychology in 2001, edited by
Seedat, Duncan, and Lazarus. The book reflected to a large extent the state of the
discipline at the time as both firmly established within South African psychology as
a whole, but as yet, an ‘unfinished project’ (Seedat et al., 2001, p. 7). It contains a
wide and sometimes disparate variety of approaches and methods, and is indicative
of the increasingly rich plurality of which the discipline is constituted. The collection
of work in this volume also reflects an increasing emphasis on the interdisciplinary
and multi-level approaches required for intervention with large-scale social
processes such as poverty and violence (cf. Butchart & Kruger, 2001). Despite
previous coverage in journal articles, the book collated diverse issues such as gender
oppression (De la Rey, 2001), community policing (Nell, 2001), gun violence (Cock,
2001), injury prevention (Butchart & Kruger, 2001;; Mohan, 2001), and social policy
formulation (Lazarus, 2001) firmly within the ambit of South African community
psychology. Remarkably, community psychological work on HIV/AIDS is once
again conspicuous by its absence in this volume.
Another significant publication was that edited by Donald, Dawes, and Louw
(2000), entitled Addressing Childhood Adversity, a selection of reports on research
and intervention programmes for children in South Africa. It included contributions
from authors with varied disciplinary (psychology, psychiatry, education, economics,
sociology, social work and child health) and organisational (government, NGOs and
schools) affiliations, emphasising both the potential fruitfulness of interdisciplinary
collaboration, and the importance of including voices from outside of academia
(cf. Macleod, 2004). Further remarkable aspects of the book related to its focus on
evaluating programme effectiveness, and its attention to the ways in which a context
of scarce resources and changing trends in donor funding impacted on community
intervention projects. As the editors point out, these emphases were an explicit
response to increasing pressure on programmes to demonstrate their effectiveness
to project funders.
In a book edited by Franchi and Duncan (2003), reports and analyses of
community psychology projects have provided evidence of increasing complexity
and innovation in both the practice and development of theory. This collection of
work by some of the well-known proponents of community psychology evinces
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a prioritisation of both interdisciplinary and ‘multilevel’ approaches (cf. Stevens,

Seedat, Swart, & Van der Walt, 2003) and the need to develop an integrated and
coherent theoretical basis for conceptualising the thorny dualisms of individual and
social change.
The psychoanalytically informed community psychology practised at UCT
received an airing in a collection of reports and reflections on their work in a text by
Swartz, Gibson, and Gelman (2002). Drawing largely on the concepts of Melanie Klein
and Wilfred Bion, and the application of these theoretical resources to organisational
consulting (cf. Obholzer & Zagier Roberts, 1994), the UCT approach represents a
kind of rapprochement with more traditional, clinically oriented ideas (cf. Swartz &
Gibson, 2001). While laudable in terms of its successes at both theoretical and practical
integration of work with ‘communities’ into professional clinical psychology training
(Gibson, Sandenbergh, & Swartz, 2001), its usefulness for theorising larger social
processes beyond that of the group or organisation is less clear.
The critical, pressing problem of HIV/AIDS received attention in Catherine
Campbell’s insightful assessment (2003) of the Summertown Project – South Africa’s
first major attempt, initiated in 1998, to reduce HIV infection at a community level. It
provides a critical evaluation of large-scale community psychological processes, and
in particular, it assesses the efficacy of the preferred Freirean theoretical framework
and emerging concepts of ‘social capital’ in their application to the project.
Nevertheless, a survey of the literature as a whole – with one or two exceptions (e.g.,
Campbell, 2004;; Visser & Schoeman, 2004) – reveals the glaring omission of HIV/
AIDS as a focus of (community) psychological research and intervention, which
continues to the present day (cf. Macleod, 2004). Outside of the academy, however,
the work of CADRE is notable for both its innovative methods and theoretically rich
approach to HIV/AIDS (see, e.g., Kelly, Parker, & Lewis, 2001).
Finally, the large areas of overlap between community psychology and critical
psychology have seen several strands of community-oriented work on HIV/AIDS
prevention (Campbell, 2004), social development (Van Vlaenderen & Neves, 2004b)
and psychoanalytically informed community psychology (Gibson & Swartz, 2004)
included in the publication of a hefty textbook on the subject (Hook, 2004).
Conclusion
A history of community psychology in South Africa is in some sense also a history
of psychology’s responses to the long-standing debate in the profession over
‘relevance’;; and because community psychology’s origins and raison d’être have
been that of a sustained critique of oppressive social relations and psychology’s
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Jeffrey Yen
positivism and individualism, it is also to some extent a history of South African
critical psychology. However, the forms it has taken and the ways it has been
appropriated by various individuals and institutions reveal significant divergences
from its original critical roots (cf. Seedat et al., 1988). Despite currently enjoying
significant institutional representation and recognition, community psychology
has not yet achieved a substantial level of coherence or scale. The kinds of large-
scale, multi-level interventions advocated by Stevens et al. (2003) require a
level of coordination and organisation amongst community psychologists rarely
achieve. Moreover, due to the reliance on external sources of funding and material
resources for most projects, community psychology practice in South Africa has
very often found itself constrained and shaped by the agendas of outside agencies
(cf. Donald et al., 2000). Small-scale intervention projects, very often associated
with university training programmes, have often provided only a kind of ‘baptism
of fire’ for psychology students which does little to induct new professionals into
more community-oriented careers as psychologists (although Gibson et al. (2001)
and Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al. (2004) reported some changes in post-qualification
practice). Ultimately, however, the great majority of newly qualified psychologists
remain attached to traditional ambitions of (relatively) quiet professional lives in
private practice, a situation which will only be altered by a radical re-evaluation of
the profession’s selection practices (Ahmed & Pillay, 2004).
Community psychology’s development has been characterised by increasing
heterogeneity in both theory and methodology. At a theoretical level community
psychology has made significant gains, mostly in terms of its cross-pollination from
other fields. Many of the approaches described in the literature reviewed above have
drawn from fruitful combinations of Freire’s ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ (e.g.,
Campbell, 2003;; Kelly & Van der Riet, 2001;; Van Vlaenderen, 2004), systems theory
(e.g., Visser & Schoeman, 2004), Vygotskian activity theory (e.g., Van Vlaenderen
& Neves, 2004a), public health (Butchart & Kruger, 2001), psychoanalytic object
relations theory (e.g., Swartz et al., 2002), Marxism (e.g., Hamber et al., 2001) and
postcolonial and post-structural theory (e.g., Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al., 2004).
Positioned in relation to the burgeoning field of critical psychology in South Africa
(see Foster, this volume), community psychology, as presented here, provides a
useful, praxis-oriented foil or complement to the often one-sided emphasis on
deconstruction and ideological critique.
These promising directions notwithstanding, the field has to a large extent not
been able to overcome important theoretical dualisms, and has lacked ‘a theory of
mediation between individuals and collectives and the social totality’ (Hayes, 2000,
p. 340), and therefore its interventions have tended to fall back on approaches that
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rely on individualistic levels of explanation. Of course, these issues have always

plagued the social sciences, but for a discipline which has traditionally privileged
the individual, they are critical. The methodological diversity of the field, though
sometimes bewildering to students, has become an important source of innovation
(cf. Ngonyama ka Sigogo et al., 2004). Innovations in method, associated particularly
with participatory research approaches (and the notion of Freirean codes;; cf. Kelly
& Van der Riet, 2001), have gone some way towards creating spaces for community
representation and ‘voice’ (e.g., the use of art, drama, video, or photographic narrative
in participatory community processes;; see Lykes et al., 2003;; McEwan, 2003).
Continued creativity is needed in the future, exploiting, for example, the increasing
penetration of mass media and information technology in South African society (see,
e.g., the work of CADRE in the production of the TV series Tsha Tsha).
South African community psychology has a long way to go, then, in terms
of its liberatory and critical aims, which set it at odds with the psychological
establishment, both in terms of its epistemology and its irreverence for the structures
of the profession and the university. Community psychology, as an academic pursuit,
will, therefore, perpetually find itself in situations of conflict or compromise with its
own sources of institutional legitimisation and funding. Despite its aims to transform
psychological theory and practice (Seedat et al., 2001), as community psychology
has seemingly become more established, the psychological profession has tended
to move further away from a more intense engagement with the everyday realities
of ordinary people (cf. Hayes, 1996;; Seedat et al., 2004). This statement reflects
more than just nostalgia for the good old days of solidarity and activism (as in the
days of OASSSA), and is perhaps indicative of the increasing institutionalisation
and commodification of ‘democratic’ praxis. As the language of progressive practice
becomes sedimented, new forms of transgression are needed.5
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kevin Kelly for his time and valuable conversation which
helped to fill in many of the gaps not covered by the literature.
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Notes to Chapter 14
1 See acknowledgements.
2 OASSSA’s membership was predominantly ‘white’, while that of the Psychology and
Apartheid Committee was largely ‘black’ (cf. Hamber et al., 2001).
3 The social and psychological effects of detention without trial were documented in the
important study by Don Foster (1987).
4 Stellenbosch University has also recently begun offering a masters level professional
training course in Community Counselling, and there are signs that other institutions may
follow suit. The University of KwaZulu-Natal has offered a taught masters degree in critical
psychology, which does not lead to professional registration, for a number of years. In the
1990s Rhodes University offered a taught masters degree in ‘research psychology’ leading
to HPCSA registration, with a distinct focus on ‘psychology in developing countries’, and
drawing heavily from Freirian and Vygotskyan activity theory approaches to community
development. While the degree is still being offered, this particular theoretical content is
unfortunately no longer being taught.
5 Another reading of this history would question the ways in which changing discourses
of community psychology are consistent with the requirements of a liberal democratic
system of government (Jansz, 2004;; Louw, 2002). Following Louw (2002), it would
be important to ask how the ‘subject’ of community psychology has changed as the
discipline itself has changed, and as different political arrangements have come into
being. It would not be difficult to argue that ‘community’ now is not the ‘community’
of the 1980s. Community psychologists are not studying or intervening in the trans-
historical ‘community’. Specifically, see Louw’s reference to the institutionalisation of
crowd self-regulation (Durrheim & Foster, 1999). Louw (2002) argues that through these
practices the kinds of individuals needed for modern forms of government are produced:
individuals and communities that can govern themselves.
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Interiors-prelims.

indd 3 2007/10/21 08:19:49 AM

1. Introduction: Approaching the histories of Psychology

Section 1: Themes

3. The triangulated development of South African Psychology:

4. Critical psychology: A historical overview

Section 2: Movements

6. Historical perspectives on psychometric testing in South Africa

Interiors-prelims.indd 5 2007/10/21 08:06:18 AM

Section 3: Fields

12. Social psychology in South Africa: Towards a critical history

13. Neuropsychology in South Africa: Past, present and future

14. A history of community psychology in South Africa

15. Prologue to a future psychology

16. Abbreviated histories: Some concluding remarks

List of abbreviations

Interiors-prelims.indd 6 2007/10/21 08:06:18 AM

A history of community psychology

Defining community psychology

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The emphasis on intervention in this deﬁnition reﬂects a key dualism within

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These statements by Seedat et al. (2001) identify community psychology as a

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International community psychology

Interiors-14.indd 384 2007/10/18 01:28:19 PM

Interiors-14.indd 385 2007/10/18 01:28:19 PM

highly inﬂuential (cf. Watts & Serrano-­Garcia, 2003). Community psychology

South Africa - 1980s

Interiors-14.indd 386 2007/10/18 01:28:19 PM

Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in

Interiors-14.indd 387 2007/10/18 01:28:19 PM

Interiors-14.indd 388 2007/10/18 01:28:19 PM

University psychology departments

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between madness and oppression, at the ‘individual-­society interface’ (Duveen

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Strebel, 1990). Outside of the discipline, an important and pioneering HIV/AIDS

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

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Establishment and institutionalisation

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Education, training and professional issues

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Table 1 Courses and programmes offered in community psychology at

Course titles/Degree programmes offered

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Course titles/Degree programmes offered

* These titles indicate degree programmes. Others indicate course modules.

Interiors-14.indd 395 2007/10/18 01:28:20 PM

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acceptance of community psychology in the discipline has not resulted in much

Interiors-14.indd 397 2007/10/18 01:28:20 PM

a prioritisation of both interdisciplinary and ‘multilevel’ approaches (cf. Stevens,

Interiors-14.indd 398 2007/10/18 01:28:20 PM

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rely on individualistic levels of explanation. Of course, these issues have always

Interiors-14.indd 400 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 401 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 402 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 403 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 404 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 405 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

Interiors-14.indd 406 2007/10/18 01:28:21 PM

highly inﬂuential (cf. Watts & Serrano-Garcia, 2003). Community psychology

between madness and oppression, at the ‘individual-society interface’ (Duveen