Incorporating Indigenous Perspectives in Counselling Psychology (Speaking Together)

1. Incorporating Indigenous Perspectives in Counselling Psychology(Speaking Together) Nhlanhla Mkhize, PhD University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Psychology South Africa mkhize@ukzn.ac.za

2. Background • Over-reliance on imported theoretical frameworks • Marginalization of others’ ways of being-in-the-world

3. Implications for Counseling Psychology Training • Reflect on assumptions embedded in our theories • What does it mean to be a black/white man/woman teaching counseling psych in the post-colonial context? • The social construction of minority students: and dominant narratives about minorities • Professional training and identity development

4. Plurality of Knowledge: Diverse Syllabi • Incorporate indigenous worldviews in the Counseling Psychology Syllabi: • Human life interconnected, indivisible • Human beings inherently spiritual • Interdependence of Self & Other, Mind, Body & Spirit • Human participation in creative becoming; human beings as forms-in-waiting • Relationship between Balance & Imbalance

5. The Role of language in Counseling Training • Translation of major counseling texts into indigenous languages is required, in order to ensure conceptual equivalence • Bottom up approach: to bring local counseling knowledge and frameworks into the international arena

6. Recommendations • Incorporation of indigenous knowledge systems into the curriculum, while • Avoiding tokenism and anthropological essentialism and ghettoisation

7. Recommendations • Contextualizing various claims to truth, to identify liberating and constraining discourses within the discipline of counseling psychology itself • Ongoing questioning of one’s assumptions and opening up to the world of the other, through dialogue • Paying attention to the role of power/power differentials in psychological work

8. Recommendations • Paying attention to knowledge communicated by our racialized and gendered bodies, knowledge ‘deposited’ in our bodies • Immersion experience for senior counseling students: to promote a practical and relational, rather than a detached and theoretical, view of the other

9. Recommendations • A vernacular language requirement for all trainee counselling psychologists • Internationalization: Translation of major international texts into African languages • A bottom up approach to research, to make local counselling concepts international • That way, we will be able to say, we are ………….

10. Speaking Together Thank You kea le boha ngiyabonga E Nkosi! Asante sana! Baie dankie