Communities and Professional Identities: South African Women Students’ Accounts of Applied Psychology Training

Abstract

Co u ities a d Professio al Ide tities: South Africa Wo e Stude ts Accou ts of Applied Ps cholog Training Jane E.M. CallaghanIn the period of reconstruction following the collapse of legislated Apartheid in South Africa (culminating in the first elections in 1994), pressure has been exerted on professions to restructure and reform themselves to p o ide se i es that a e o e app op iate fo a "outh Af i a o te t. I the fi st fe ea s of the Ne "outh Af i a , o ga ised ps holog espo ded i n several ways: reorganising the professional bodies that egulate ps hologi al p a ti e; o side i g the otio of ele a e a d uestio i g hethe ps holog e ui ed Af i a isatio ; a d th ough est u tu i g its t ai i g p og a es i SA to make it more accessible and appropriate for the South African people. However, as the psychological establishment has at least o i all estled ith the uestio of ho to e o e rele a t , the i t a sige e of do i a t odels of psychology has become increasingly evidence.A pa ti ula featu e of ps holog s atte pt to estle ith its isis of ele a e i SA has been to focus on otio s of o u it , o u it se i e a d o u it o k . I this hapte , I e plo e the a that notions of professio alis i te se t ith ideas of the o u it a d of o u it o k, i a s that eate complex and contradictory tensions for students engaged in the identity project that is professional psychological training.This chapter emerges from a doctoral project, focused on a critical consideration of the idea of a relevant and appropriate psychology (or psychologies) for a South African context. The aims of this project were achieved primarily through a consideration of the accounts of women students, in terviewed in groups and as individuals, as they moved through professional psychology training programmes, over a period of three years.Of key interest to me in this process was the question of the way in which identities are formed and shift in training p og a es, pa ti ula l i elatio to the a uisitio of a ide tit of p ofessio al ps hologist , a d the implications of this identification for other political and social identities.I interviewed 26 participants in total, and participants were drawn from 4 South African universities where they were being trained as clinical, counselling, educational or industrial psychologists. Participants were interviewed over a period of three years to capture longitudinally a sense of shifting training stori es. Drawing on theoretical and methodological resources from discursive (e.g. Parker 1992Parker , 1994, postcolonial and feminist approaches, I analysed the operation of a discourse of professionalisation in relation to key axes of gender and racialisation as they function in the contemporary South African context. In this chapter, I unpack how this discourse of professionalisation constructs a linguistic polarisation that renders some aspects of su je ti it as p ofessio al a d othe s the politi al, the pe so al as o -p ofessio al . To o st u t a professional identity, we must relinquish other subject positions that are not...

Catalysts and connections: The (brief) history of community psychology throughout the world.

“…Those who practice community psychology do so through other registrations and subsequently have primary professional identities located as psychologists in the formal registration categories. Callaghan (2012) argued that the identities of "professional" psychologist and community psychologist/activist are contradictory, hence the silencing of the activist voice in favor of the professional stance during professional training. Third, debates about the relevance of psychology to South Africa, so dominant during the 1980s, have virtually disappeared (de la Rey & Ipser, 2004).…”