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.
1. Toward a Relevant Psychology 2. Social Science in Africa: Problems and Prospects 3. Psychotherapy and Culture: A Critical View 4. Cultural Fragmentation and Mental Distress 5. Ethnic Identity: A Psychoanalytic Critique 6. The Emotional Damage of Apartheid: A Psychoanalytic View 7. Apartheid’s Children: The Emotional Costs 8. Quasi-Family, Quasi-Psychotherapy: Six Years of Living Together, Black and White, in South Africa 9. After the War is Over: Truth and Reconciliation? Reflections from South Africa.
Biography
Bloom, Leonard
