Interiors: A History of Psychology in South Africa

Front Cover
Clifford Van Ommen, Desmond Painter
University of South Africa Press, 2008 - History - 485 pages
This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the history of Psychology in South Africa. Building on the small but significant body of existing local historical work, this volume expands the historical focus on Psychology in South Africa considerably by presenting the discipline both in terms of its formal academic development and its complex entanglement with the economic and political developments of this society during the twentieth century. The various chapters in this volume each address a major orientation, field, or sub-discipline of Psychology, paying attention to the academic, professional, as well as political dimensions of its origins and development in South Africa. Comprised of histories of inauguration and subsequent institutionalisation rather than, strictly speaking, histories of ideas, the contributions to this volume take great care to trace the development of Psychology in teaching and research institutions, in various domains and modalities of application, and in the context of Psychology's involvement in the political history of South Africa. The volume blends a number of established and younger voices in South African Psychology.

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