Identity and Ethnic Relations in Africa - 9781138321847

Published in 1998, this text asserts that psychologists and sociologists have a professional and personal responsibility to further the "cure" of the damage done by governments. The author draws on his own personal experience of living and working in authoritarian, racist or ethnically-sensitive societies and argues that psychologists and sociologists can and should confront their professions and governments by playing an active, collective, therapeutic role in judging the psychological consequences of legal and political practice. The author is concerned with the critical, deconstructionist roles of psychoanalysis and looks at ethnic identity and culture, psychotherapy and mental health problems and the emotional costs and consequences of Apartheid.