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Articles

CIJP: VOL. 7, NO. 1, JUNE 2022

AFRICAN CULTURAL MODEL IN PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: A CASE OF PSEUDOEPILEPSY

Submitted
October 24, 2022
Published
2022-07-15

Abstract

There have been calls for Africanizing of psychology in Africa based on the peculiarity of African culture. The proponents of Africentric psychology believe that personality theories derived from Western psychology do not consider Africa's uniqueness. Furthermore, African practitioners have cast doubt on the efficacy of Western psychotherapy techniques for Africans. Both views seem justified considering the interdependence of Self and culture. We note, however, that African scholars and practitioners have done little overtime to develop alternative models that may genuinely be called African. An inspection of the literature indicates that some examples branded 'African' are still shrouded in mystery, unknown to science, and useless. In this paper, we demonstrate that Western theories of personality indeed exclude the African dimension. We also illustrated the objective integration of African models into psychotherapy and showed its effectiveness.