WATCH: Video (“African Psychology” with Dr. Ifetayo Flannery)
For each half-page post, students will be prompted to think about three different “Qs” as they relate to the assigned material of each learning module:
QUALITY: This is a personal reaction to/reflection on a specific part of the reading.
Step 1: Describe something from the reading that surprised you, challenged you, piqued your interest, or made you curious.
Step 2: Explain why it impacted you in this way.
QUOTE: Identify a specific part of the reading that you found memorable or quotable, and type it out in the form of a word-for-word quote (no more than two sentences).
Step 1: Type out the quote (Don’t forget the quotation marks (“”)!!!)
Step 2: Give the specific page number(s) from which you took your quote, if applicable.
QUESTION: Write a critical thinking question about the reading.
-This is not a critical thinking question: How old was Phyllis Wheatly when she wrote this poem?
-This is a critical thinking question: According to the background statement on Phyllis Wheatley, she was a teenager when she started writing—but also very young and poor when she died. This Wheatley poem was extremely positive about white colonial slaveholders and white Christianity, especially for someone who was enslaved. How might the tone of her poem be different if she had survived poverty, illness and disappointment and wrote it at an older stage in life?
*Please write the main word of the prompt (i.e., Quality, Quote, Question), and then your response for each. Please do not write out the whole prompt.
** You may write about one reading, or about multiple materials in the same module, as they relate to these prompts.14
2
� � �
African-Centered
Psychology in the
Modern Era
DEFINITIONS
Those who have not had the benefit of reading the first, second, or third edi-
tions of The Psychology of Blacks, or who are otherwise unfamiliar with the con-
cept of a Black psychological perspective, may be asking themselves “What is
this discipline called Black or African-American psychology?” As such, perhaps
the most logical place to begin this fourth edition is with a definition of the con-
struct (psychology of Blacks) and with a discussion of why an African-centered
psychological perspective is necessary.
Nobles (1986) reminds us that in its truest form, psychology was defined
by ancient Africans as the study of the soul or spirit. He writes:
A summary reading of our ancient mythology reveals that ancient
Egyptian thought can be characterized as possessing (1) “ideas of
thought” which represent the human capacity to hay “will” and to
invent or create; (2) “ideas of command” which represent the human
capacity to have “intent” and to produce that which one wills.
Parenthetically these two, will and intent, are the characteristics of
divine spirit and would serve as the best operationalization of
human intelligence. (Nobles, 1986, p. 46)
Nobles further asserts that the psychology that was borrowed from Africa
and popularized in Europe and America (so-called Western psychology) in some
respects represents a distortion of ancient African-Egyptian thought. What the an-
cients believed was that the study of the soul or spirit was translated by Europeans
into the study of only one element of a person’s psychic nature, the mind.
In a similar vein, Akbar (1994) has persuasively argued that the Kemetic
(so-called Egyptian) roots of psychology bear little resemblance to the modern-day
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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 5/31/2022 1:59 PM via PRINCE GEORGES COMMUNITY COLLEGE
AN: 1081379 ; Thomas A Parham, Adisa Ajamu, Joseph L. White.; Psychology of Blacks : Centering Our Perspectives in the African Consciousness
Account: s8994265.main.ehost
constructs. Akbar explains, for example, that the term sakhu represented in its
original form illumination and enlightenment of the soul or spirit. However, this
perspective lost its meaning when the Greeks reinterpreted it to mean behavior
and created a discipline to quantify, measure, and materialize the construct ob-
jectively.
Thus, the term “psychology” (in a Western context) is constructed from the
words psyche (meaning mind) and ology (meaning knowledge or study of) and is
generally assumed to be a study of human behav3
� � �
The Spiritual Core
of African-Centered
Psychology
Over the past one hundred years, the discipline of psychology has exploded
onto the academic and scientific scene, advancing theories of human behavior,
theories of normal and abnormal development, and theories of the personal
and situational variables that contribute to one’s personality makeup. In fact,
there are entire schools of thought that have been developed as a way to syn-
thesize the vast array of ideas proposed by various theorists who are convinced
that their theory is the most compelling in the understanding of the human
psyche. There are Euro-American schools of thought that are labeled psychody-
namic, neo-analytic, behaviorism, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and exis-
tential (Myers, 2010).
MISSING ELEMENTS
In illustrating this point, many psychoanalytic theories are anchored in the
works of Sigmund Freud, who viewed human nature as a dynamic interplay be-
tween the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious mind. Each domain is be-
lieved to be responsible for navigating perspectives that influence how each
individual responds to internal instinctual drives (unconscious), repressed or
stored memories (preconscious), or to the demand of the external environment
(the conscious). Freud’s approach advanced the notion that the personality
comprised three interrelated parts labeled the ID (basic instincts that operate ac-
cording to what is pleasurable and satisfaction seeking), EGO (conscious
choices that are anchored in perceptions of reality), and the SUPER EGO (a
mental conscience influenced by parental values and principles of morality).
Psychoanalytic theory also proposed five stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and
genital) of development in a person’s life, each focusing on a region of the
35
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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 5/31/2022 2:00 PM via PRINCE GEORGES COMMUNITY COLLEGE
AN: 1081379 ; Thomas A Parham, Adisa Ajamu, Joseph L. White.; Psychology of Blacks : Centering Our Perspectives in the African Consciousness
Account: s8994265.main.ehost
36 Chapter 3 • The Spiritual Core of African-Centered Psychology
body that aligned with the instinctual and pleasure seeking tendencies that
were believed to be the most salient at that point in time. The goals of a psy-
chodynamic clinician include: helping clients/patients recognize how unre-
solved issues in childhood continue to exert an influence in their lives and
helping clients gain insights into the roots of dysfunctional or maladaptive cop-
ing or lifestyle choices.
A contemporary of Freud who
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