Comments on “Psycho-Social Studies in Africa”

Extract

While I am in accord with Professor LeVine's defense of culture and personality studies and agree that it would be unfortunate if the psychological dimension of social research in Africa were to be ignored as a result of the “bad press” given to culture and personality research, I would prefer to have seen Professor LeVine emphasize sources of psychological theory other than those which played such a major role in that discredited enterprise. Over the years many new developments have occurred in psychological research which constitute a far better reason for social scientists to attend to psychology than the fact that culture and personality studies have been unfairly discredited. Happily, LeVine himself cites some recent work which underlines my point. Thus, the work of Gay and Cole derives from theoretical concerns with cognitive development. These concerns originate in a tradition in psychology having virtually nothing to do with the psychoanalytic tradition which served as the sole psychological foundation for culture and personality research.

To me the most interesting part of Professor LeVine's paper is that dealing with the inadequacies characteristic of psychology itself when its practitioners turn to research in Africa. In my opinion, it is precisely one of psychology's so-called “strengths” that has produced this functional inadequacy. Graduate students in psychology are still taught that the only satisfactory mode of operation is to design a study well in advance of carrying it out, articulating the hypothesis that the study is designed to test, specifying exactly which measures will test that hypothesis, and preparing in advance the analysis of those measures with a clear understanding of the significance of all possible outcomes.