Trends and redress in

community psychology during

10 years of democracy
(1994-2003): A journal-based
perspective
Mohamed Seedat*, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens
UNISA Institute for Social and Health Sciences, P. O. Box 1087, Lenasia, 1820, South
Africa
e-mail: Seedama@unisa.ac.za

Drawing on a content analysis of selected articles from the South African Journal of
Psychology (SAJP) and Psychology in Society (PINS), the authors reflect on the extent
to which South African community psychology's early vision resonates in publications in
post-1994 South African psychology. Concerned about the Euro-American, patriarchal,
classist, and individualised orientation in clinical, counselling, and social psychology, com­
munity psychology's vision arose as a response to this crisis of 'relevance' in the 1980s
in South Africa. It placed the accent on accessible psychosocial services, re-defining the
roles of psychologists, democratising psychological practice, prevention, competencies,
empowerment of under-represented groups, collaboration, and inclusive modes of knowl­
edge production. Our content analysis suggests that South African community psychology
tends to operate within a porous disciplinary boundary, sharing academic concerns with
a larger group of critical psychologists. Authorship characteristics show that for the 1994
to 2003 period male and females were more or less equally represented as authors, the
majority of whom were affiliated to academic institutions. In contrast, co-authorship as an
expression of collaboration did not feature strongly and the community voice was unrepre­
sented at authorship level. Most of the articles tended to assume an empirical or theoreti­
cal slant and examined themes consistent with community psychology's early vision and
focus. Similarly, research in community psychology seemed to have attended to selected
priority psychosocial issues and drawn on historically neglected groups, including black
adolescents and adults, to serve as participants. By way of conclusion, we surmise that
community psychology, albeit an under-represented branch of psychology, may be one of
many areas of engagement for those aligned to the quest for emancipatory psychological
practice and theory in South Africa.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed

(©Psychological Society of South Africa. All rights reserved. South African Journal of Psychology, 34(4) 2004, pp. 595-612.
ISSN 0081-2463
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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

Community psychology, which originated in the United States of America (US) dur­
ing the 1960s era of civil unrest, gained currency in South Africa during a period of
violent socio-political conflicts when the socio-medical sciences, including psychol­
ogy, experienced an existential crisis. For psychology, the crisis centred on theoretical
relevance and practice-related appropriateness. Raising questions about the 'alien' and
non-African nature of South African psychology, writers interrogated the discipline's
uncritical relationship with Euro-American philosophical traditions, its support of the
colonial and apartheid missions to occupy the black psyche, its sexist and patriarchal
assumptions, and its socio-cultural incongruence in South Africa (Dawes, 1986; de la
Rey & Parekh, 1996; Hayes, 1984). At the level of practice the disciplines of clinical
and counselling psychology were critiqued for their inaccessibility, elitist orientation,
focus on pathology, and one-on-one therapeutic modalities (Seedat, Cloete & Shochet,
1988; Swartz, Dowdall & Swartz, 1986). Many argued that the 'talking cure' was
insufficient to address the material and oppressive conditions faced by the majority
of South Africans (Anonymous, 1986; Berger & Lazarus, 1987; Perkel, 1988). These
disciplines were also viewed as a-historical and contextually disconnected from the
'spirit ofAfrica'. Many went as far as criticising clinical psychology for being integral
to the arsenal of oppressive social control measures (Bodibe, 1994; Holdstock, 1981;
Nicholas & Cooper, 1990).
In response to these and other such critiques, small groups of formally and infor­
mally organised psychologists, referred to as 'progressive psychologists', including
those who adopted the social messages encoded into North American community
psychology, aligned themselves to an emerging agenda to reconsider and reconstruct
clinical, counselling and social psychology. Community psychology in South Africa,
like its North American counterpart and as part of its reconstruction agenda, em­
phasised the need for: (a) transforming the nature and content of mental health and
psychological service delivery; (b) re-conceptualising the genesis and determinants
of psychosocial and mental health problems; (c) cultural and contextual congruence
in service delivery; and (d) reformulating the roles of psychologists to include, among
other functions, community and resource mobilisation, advocacy, lobbying, training,
and networking (Berger & Lazarus, 1987; Lazarus & Seedat, 1996; Seedat, Duncan,
& Lazarus, 2001). In addition, advocates of community psychology in South Africa
stressed the need to address apartheid-generated distortions in knowledge production.
They encouraged political representation of marginalised groups in professional as­
sociations, the inclusion of blacks and women at authorship level, and theoretical and
methodological plurality that recognised and critically examined the psychological
life worlds of both the dominant and dominated in society (Fullagar & Paizas, 1986;
Nicholas & Cooper, 1990; Seedat, 1993; Thornton & Ramphele, 1988; Van Vlaenderen
& Gilbert, 1992).
This Special Issue offers a timely opportunity to reflect on community psychology's
growth during South Africa's first decade of democracy. However, a fully-fledged

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

examination of community psychology's progress as a reconstruction project over

ten years of democracy is time, labour and resource intensive. We therefore assume a
modest and yet critical review of the extent to which selected publications in the South
African Journal of Psychology (SAJP) and Psychology in Society (PINS) continue
to advance debates and dialogues that are central to the development of community
psychology's visionary agenda described above. As part of our review, we seek to as­
sess the degree to which publications embody collaboration and gender representivity
at the level of authorship; continue the 'relevance' and 'appropriateness' debate with
specific reference to mental health services; and focus on the psychosocial concerns
of the historically marginalised and under-served groups.

THE HEART OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY

Before proceeding to a discussion of our methodology and results, it may be instruc­
tive to reflect further on the key issues (identified above) that community psychology
sought to foreground in its quest to re-centre the emphasis and resources of the ap­
plied fields of clinical and counselling psychology in particular. These issues, which
are inherent to community psychology's identity and philosophical core, serve as the
backdrop against which we conduct our journal-based analysis of selected trends in
South African community psychology (1994-2003).

Extending psychological and mental health services

The endeavour to transform the nature and structure of traditional psychological serv­
ices arose from the concern that traditional individualised psychotherapeutic modalities
were inaccessible, elitist, and culturally inappropriate particularly for the under-classes
whose competencies and psychological resources tended to be undermined or ignored
by the inordinate accent on individual pathology and deficits. Thus, promoting the
virtues of prevention, empowerment and positive mental health, champions of com­
munity psychology advocated for a focus on resiliencies and competencies, and the
rendering of accessible community-oriented psychological services. Psychological
services were to be extended through community mental health centres serving distinct
geographical catchments areas and/or at-risk groups, the utilisation and enablement
of indigenous lay-healers, and mobilising communities to resist and better cope with
the psychological consequences of apartheid. Irrespective of the major models (e.g.
the mental health model and the social action model) that community psychologists
privileged, they were driven by a commitment to render culturally and contextually
accessible services to marginalised and vulnerable groups, including support for high-
profile victims of apartheid, devolving psychological skills to laypersons, and forensic
assessments for survivors of torture and detention. These community psychologists
stressed knowledge transfer and skills devolution as a key to positive mental health
(Dawes & Tredoux, 1989; Straker, 1987; Swartz et al., 1986).

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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

Transforming psychologists' roles

In order to assure quality, accessible and culturally appropriate services within a
society characterised by 'racialised' and gendered inequalities and violent conflict,
psychologists were challenged to critically review their roles and professional identi­
ties. Psychologists were called on to cast aside the myth of political neutrality and
to provide a critical voice that highlighted the transgressions of apartheid and the
disempowering aspects of psychology, so as to accentuate the liberatory potential of
psychology. Those who articulated or responded to such calls sometimes functioned
as community mobilisers, conscientisers, and advocates of human rights and safety
alongside their traditional roles of therapists and psychometricians. Focused on the
community as a unit of intervention, advocates of the social action and community
mental health approaches rendered services to high profile victims of apartheid-gener­
ated abuse, championing the virtues of collective struggle, and sometimes acted as the
guardians and expert voice of disenfranchised communities (Cloete, Pillay, & Swartz,
1986; Dawes, 1985, 1986, 1987; Freeman, 1991; Fullagar, 1984).
As community psychologists endeavoured to redefine their roles, some writers
expressed concern that the extensive rendering of curative psychological services to
trauma survivors, like ex-detainees and returnees, may re-trap psychologists into repro­
ducing the conventional roles of therapist, consultant and psychometrician, especially
when psychologists, in these roles, passively waited for 'problems' to occur and then
responded to 'treat' them. Similarly, psychologists who advocated social action and
defined themselves as empowering agents, whose function was to mobilise and consci-
entise oppressed communities for collective socio-political struggle, were challenged
to consider the fact that the differences in skill between themselves and participant
communities cannot simply be resolved by professionals declaring themselves as
'part of the people'. Professional alignment with progressive political movements in
itself did not represent a radical innovative shift in roles for psychologists. Instead,
'joining the organisation' heralds the beginning of the process of forging different
functions and roles for psychologists (Seedat et al., 1988). Paradoxically, trained to
facilitate individual change, psychologists faced the task of developing a systemic
theory of intervention that could facilitate their professional roles within the context
of resistance to apartheid-capitalism and collective social transformation. The roles
and functions of psychologists during violent conflict and collective transformation
therefore required ongoing theorising and scrutiny.

Wherein lies mental health

Proposals on how to transform mental health services and the requisite roles of psy­
chologists were informed by an attempt to radicalise our conceptualisation of mental
health or conversely mental illness. Placing the accent on macro-level variables and
systems analyses, and in South Africa's case, on the insidious influences of apartheid-
generated 'racialised' and sexist social formations, community psychology sought to

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

move away from 'blaming the victim' towards ecological explanations for psychosocial
problems (Dawes, 1985; Freeman, 1991; Gibson, 1987). Social inequality, the uneven
distribution of material and discursive resources, and exclusionary social and profes­
sional practices were therefore viewed as systemic hindrances to achieving positive
mental health. In the process, individual psychosocial and cognitive factors that may
contribute to psychosocial problems tended to be de-emphasised. In the re-conceptu­
alisation process, community psychologists were alerted to the ordinary, other-than-
Western discourses of illness, trauma and disease (Buch & De Beer, 1990; Butchart,
1990), the sociolinguistic context (Levett, 1989; Swartz, 1989) and the dangers of
conflating individual and collective transformation (Seedat, 1993).

Cultural and contextual congruence

In adopting an ecological perspective community psychology also sought to en­
courage the development and adoption of multiple theoretical and methodological
frameworks so as to assure that the life experiences of the dominated and dominant,
male and female, Euro-American and those of other-than-Euro-American were all
represented in the psychological analysis and services (Holdstock, 1981; Lazarus,
1985; Seedat, 1993).
Such an inclusive approach presented a challenge to hegemonic ideas about what
constitutes universal experiences in the psychological literature that tended to equate
humanity with Western 'man' and Western 'humanity' (Seedat, 1993; Stanfield,
1985). Thus, community psychologists, like others located in the broad stream of
liberatory psychology, emphasised that the producers and products of our psycho­
logical knowledge should embody the ideological, philosophical, cultural, religious
and social diversity evident in the body of humanity. Some suggested that the quest
for inclusive paradigms might be strengthened through employing multiple ways of
investigating phenomena and including logico-empiricist traditions alongside spiri­
tualised, artistic and intuitive ways of knowing (Holdstock, 1981; Muller & Cloete,
1987; Seedat, 1993).
The focus on theoretical pluralism was also associated with calls for democratising
the research process so that mutually beneficial partnerships and significant collabo­
rations could emerge in expert-participant community engagements throughout the
phases of research design, data collection, data interpretation, publication, dissemina­
tion and associated advocacy and/or community-based actions (Lazarus, 1985; Van
Vlaenderen & Gilbert, 1992; Vogelman, 1987).

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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

METHODOLOGY
Data corpus: scope and limits
Within the present study, out of a total number of 379 articles published in the SAJP
and PINS for the specified period (1994 to 2003), a total of 47 articles were selected
for content analysis. An initial search using the PsycINFO database with the keywords
community and community psychology only yielded 18 articles. Given the diverse
nature of community psychology, the authors decided then to visually scan the titles
and abstracts of all articles published in both journals (1994 to 2003) in orderte deter­
mine their suitability and appropriateness for the current study. In an attempt to be as
inclusive as possible, articles containing a direct and/or indirect focus on community
psychology or that referred to subjects such as community empowerment, groups,
equity, social relevance, prevention, critical psychology, social marginalisation and
participatory processes were all included for content analysis. A significant number of
articles influenced by postmodernist thought, critical psychology and social psychol­
ogy were also included for review, as they seemed to contribute towards the ongo­
ing development of community psychology. In short, all of the 47 selected articles
referred to subjects that are found within various definitions and foci of community
psychology (Seedat, Duncan, & Lazarus, 2001).

Content analysis
Content analysis, first used in eighteenth century Sweden to settle a religious dispute
(Krippendorff, 1980), has mushroomed to be applied in diverse areas, including
communication studies, psychology, sociology and political intelligence. Content
analysis has been used to characterise the nature of theoretical and methodological
developments in general psychology, community psychology and community mental
health (e.g. Alpert & Yammer, 1983; Bruner & Allport, 1940; Loo, Fong & Iwamasa,
1988; Lounsbury, Leader & Mears, 1980). In South Africa, critical analyses of texts
and content analyses on publications have been conducted by among others Duncan
(1993,2001), Seedat (1998,2001a, 2001b) and Stevens (2003), highlighting publica­
tion trends and the distinct relationship between formal knowledge production and
socio-political processes.

Journals
The SAJP, (1970-), the official journal of the Psychological Society of South Africa
(PsySSA), incorporates its predecessors, namely, the Journal of Behavioural Sciences,
(1969-1979), Psychological Africana (1962-1983), and the South African Psycholo-
gist (1962 - 1979), and may be regarded as the most popular and privileged journal
in South African psychology, boasting significant circulation and annual submissions.
The SAJP encourages the publication of empirical research, theoretical and methodo­
logical articles, reviews and short communications.

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

PINS (1983-) represents an organised effort to create a forum through which psy­
chologists could critically examine the dominant ideas about the nature of psychology
in apartheid South Africa. It encourages critiques of mainstream psychology, and
substantive theoretical and methodological reviews. Post-1994 PINS aims to promote
socio-historical and critical theory perspectives through an emphasis on the theory
and practice of psychology in a transitional democratic society.
These two journals together offer a fairly comprehensive picture of the nature and
character of selected developments in South African psychology, and so the reflections
we offer herein is the 'view' represented by these two journals. Our journal-based
content analysis offers some indication of the philosophical and service-oriented
continuities, shifts and developments that characterised community psychology dur­
ing the 1994 to 2003 period.

Categorisation and analysis

When reviewing the titles, abstracts and content of selected articles we centred our
analysis around: (a) authorship characteristics (number of authors, sex and institutional
affiliation); (b) the nature of the article (empirical, theoretical, descriptive, review);
(c) the characteristics of participants selected for research studies (sex, 'race', age,
settings); and (d) the subject/themes covered by the article. One of the co-authors
served as the primary analyst, adapting a list of content categories developed earlier
by Seedat ( 1993), who traced the topics, trends and silences in South African psychol­
ogy for a forty-year period (1948 to 1988).
Whereas authorship characteristics provided a good indicator of collaboration and
gender representation at authorship level, information about the nature of the article
offered some indications of the level of theoretical and methodological maturity, com­
plexity in community psychology and the continuation of the 'relevance' debate.
With regard to the nature of the article, the four coding options were empirical,
descriptive, review and theoretical. Empirical articles referred to those that include
randomised control trial studies, attempted to answer specific hypothesis or research
questions, tested models using data, and programme evaluation studies. This cat­
egory of articles included both quantitative and/or qualitative analytic techniques
and data.
Descriptive articles included those that offered descriptions of approaches used
in community psychology intervention. They focused on intervention programme
characteristics and sometimes included process evaluation or implementation notes.
Reviews included literature reviews and/or analytical systematic analyses of the
most recent findings or developments in the field.
Theoretical articles, focused on theoretical formulations with a view to developing
novel concepts or refining existing theories and concepts.
The subject characteristics offered some insight into the 'reach' of commu­
nity psychology, and the extent to which the psychosocial needs of historically
marginalised groups were prioritised.
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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

Content categories refer to the central themes and subject matter covered in the
articles. We selected and adapted 5 subject categories relevant to community psychol­
ogy from a list of 137 content categories developed by Seedat (1993) over two stages.
In Stage 1, Seedat (1993) content analysed all the articles that were published in the
SAJP and PINS between 1983 and 1988. After reviewing articles for central themes
he categorised them according to their areas of focus. This stage yielded a total of 26
content categories, which were reviewed with three doctoral level psychologists who
were also qualitative methodologists. They emphasised the need to be inclusive of the
diversity of subjects within the broad field of psychology, and called for precision in
the definition of content categories and the overall content categorisation scheme. In
Stage 2, Seedat (1993) advanced the development of thematic categories by expand­
ing his content analysis to include articles from other journals such as Psychologia
Africana and Humanitas. Through this extended analysis Seedat (1993) generated
a total of 137 content categories, incorporating 17 content labels and titles used in
the Index of Psychological Abstracts to delineate fields of speciality in psychology,
and the labels employed by Lounsbury et al., (1985) to define topics evident in com­
munity psychology. The 137 content categories were diverse in nature and so were
further clustered under 26 broad fields of psychology, such as community psychology,
industrial psychology, personality psychology and experimental psychology. For the
purposes of our study reported herein we adapted, modified and relabelled the five
content categories that were delineated by Seedat (1993) under thefieldof community
psychology. The 5 modified thematic categories used to classify the journal articles
are labelled as: (a) Relevance, appropriateness and scope of psychology to include
articles focusing on postmodernist thought, critical psychology and social psychol­
ogy, as well as formulations about the Africanisation of psychology, universalism,
knowledge production, 'race' issues in psychology, and the roles of psychologists; (b)
Mental health policy and services to incorporate articles focusing on service delivery,
innovative intervention approaches and models, and the evaluation thereof; (c) Specific
mental health andpsychosocial issues to cover articles addressing concerns such as
HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, political
violence, suicide and psychopathology, (d) Gender specific issues to consider articles
focusing on issues specific to either women or men; and (e) 'Race 'specific issues to
include articles dealing with the perpetuation of racism in the discipline of psychol­
ogy and society in general.
All the selected articles and abstracts were first scanned for central themes and
thereafter allocated to an appropriate content category on the adapted list. If the article
covered multiple themes/subjects, it was assigned to a maximum of two thematic
categories. Where the analyst was uncertain about the allocation, the themes were
described in detail under the 'other' category and final allocation was arrived at after
discussion among the authors. The coded data were analysed using the SPSS data
analysis package, yielding descriptive statistics for the nominal data set. In addition

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

to an overview of the key characteristics of the 47 selected articles, subsets of the

data were grouped together in order to address four main areas of interest indicated
above: (a) authorship characteristics; (b) nature of the article; (c) the characteristics
of participants selected for research studies; and (d) the subject or themes covered
by the article.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY

CHARACTERISED (1994-2003)
Authorship
Whereas the majority (63.9%) of the selected articles were authored by one person,
21.3% were authored by two persons, 10.6% were co-written by three authors, and
4.2% were co-written by five or more authors. The gender composition was more or
less equally distributed for men (52.6%) and women (47.4%), who were mainly affili­
ated to academic institutions historically reserved for those classified 'white' within the
apartheid nomenclature and that adopt English as the sole medium of instruction (e.g.
KwaZulu-Natal and UCT) (see Table 1). Authors affiliated to the University of South
Africa that historically assumed English and Afrikaans as mediums of instruction,
and the universities of Western Cape and the former Durban-Westville also featured
prominently in journal publications.

Table 1. Author affiliation

Institution Number of authors

University of KwaZulu-Natal 10
University of Cape Town 9
University of South Africa 7
University of the Western Cape 7
University of Durban-Westville 6
University of the Witwatersrand 5
Universities outside South Africa 5
Research institutes and councils 5
University of Pretoria 3
Non-academic 3
University of the North West 2
Stellenbosch University 2
Rhodes University 2
University of the Orange Free State 1

Note: The Universities of Natal and Durban-Westville have now merged to form the University of KwaZulu-
Natal.

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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

Nature of the articles

Most of the articles were either empirical (38.3%, 18) or theoretical (31.9%, 13) in
nature, followed by review (17%, 8) and descriptive (12.8%, 6) type articles. The
theoretical articles examined postmodern and critical paradigmatic approaches with
a view to contributing to the reformulation of psychological theory and research.
Descriptive type articles focused on processes inherent to programme development
and implementation. Both the theoretical and empirical articles were targeted to the
community psychology fraternity itself, with a possible view to generating dialogue
and debate about the future direction of psychology and encouraging a 'new' psychol­
ogy for a 'new' South Africa. Whereas in the pre-1994 era community psychology
tended to focus on liberatory theory and practice as part of the larger struggle to dis­
lodge apartheid-capitalism, in the first decade of democracy the selected publications
reveal a shift in community psychology towards re-thinking its role in the context
of a democratic social order. The theoretically-oriented articles highlight issues per­
taining to the role of community psychology as part of an attempt to support social
transformation and yet retain a critical voice in relation to the new emerging status
quo. Overall, we noted a growing complexity in community psychology, which is
characterised by an accent on alternative theory development and the production of
empirical evidence for community psychology practice focused on redress for the
historically marginalised.

Characteristics of participants selected for research studies

Fifteen of the 18 empirical studies provided participant-sample characteristics. The
remaining three studies applied qualitative methods, e.g. content analysis to data such
as journal articles. In the articles that specified sample characteristics, most of the
participants were adults (eight studies), followed by adolescents (four studies), mixed
age groups (two studies), and children (one study). The majority of the studies (nine)
engaged black participants, whereas only one study focused on white subjects. The
remaining five studies included both black and white participants.
Most of the studies that specified the gender distribution of their sample used both
male and female participants, whereas three studies focused exclusively on women
subjects. Where specified, the settings of the studies varied to include preschools
(two studies), secondary schools (three studies), and health clinics or centres (seven
studies).
The inclusion of marginalised groups (blacks and women) located in diverse
settings suggest that community psychology continues to successfully maintain
its diverse reach and focus on the under-served and unserved sectors of society.

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

Thematic focus
The analysis revealed overall emergent themes and provided a synopsis, albeit not
exhaustive, of the key areas of focus relevant to community psychology.

Table 2: Themes covered by the article

Theme Number of occurrences

(% of total articles)
1 ) Relevance, appropriateness and scope of 22 (46.8%)
psychology
2) Mental health policy and services 16 (34%)
3) Specific mental health and psychosocial issues 16 (34%)
4) Gender specific issues 3 (6.4%)
5) 'Race' specific issues 2 (4.3%)

Note: As some articles were assigned to more than one category the total percentage is greater than
100%.

Relevance, appropriateness and role of psychology

One of the primary areas identified in the current investigation involved critical
commentaries on the notion of transformation in the discipline of psychology. Ar­
ticles highlighted diversity and sameness (see Rock, 1994), critical psychology and
mental health (see Nell, 1994), and postmodern thinking (e.g. Parker, 1996). While
not specifically focusing on community psychology per se, many of the concerns of
community psychology were implicitly infused into these articles, especially those
relating to psychology's relevance. This may suggest that conceptions of community
psychology are being subsumed under the rubric of relevance debates and transfor­
mation, as an attempt by psychology to re-think itself in the context of ten years of
post-apartheid South Africa.
Many of the issues previously raised within community psychology, such as eq­
uity and epistemological diversity, are re-articulated in articles that highlight gender
and psychology, 'race ' and psychology, authorship and psychology, post-modern
approaches, and the importance of community feedbackprocesses. While these kinds
of articles reflect an ongoing struggle for being relevant and critical on one level,
through the content analysis we also discern the professions' attempt to forge new
creative roles within the new social trajectory of South African society (e.g. Gibson,
Sandenbergh & Swartz, 2001 ). A few articles address issues of disciplinary and profes­
sional transformation in psychology, referring to professionalism among providers of
community mental health care in South Africa (e.g. Isemonger, 1994). Other articles
highlight psychology's value in evaluating social programmes, understanding pro­
cesses within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, its relationship to AIDS, its
contribution to health transformation, ethics and professionalisation and its role in

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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

understanding the health and academic behaviour of blacks as a marginalised cohort

of the population in particular. Thus, during the first period of democracy selected
publications tended to elaborate on critical concerns raised by community psychology
in the 1980s, and on processes of reform, perhaps indicative of psychology's attempt
to reinvent itself into a relevant and meaningful profession, applied discipline, and
intellectual endeavour for and in post-apartheid South Africa. Significant attention
was accorded to considering additional roles for community psychologists to include
contributions to policy formulation processes, programme evaluation and the devel­
opment of services for at-risk and traumatised groups, such as high profile victims of
apartheid and those afflicted by HIV/AIDS.

Mental health policies and psychological services

Another key area identified in the content analysis focused on the reformulation of
mental health policies, changes in the provision of mental health services, and the
psychosocial needs of certain groups identified as victims of apartheid terror. Early
policy formulations suggesting that mental health services be integrated at the primary
health care level illustrate the interest in reformulating mental health policies (Pe-
tersen, 1998; Pillay & Freeman, 1996). The 2000 Special Issue of the SAJP, devoted
to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Volume 30, issue 1), reflected on the
psychological processes underlying the acts of providing testimony to the commission.
A somewhat neglected area in this regard was the documentation of the provision of
community mental health services to high-profile victims of political violence and
trauma, as only one article was identified in the current analysis (see Statman, 2000).
However, publications included analyses of efforts to develop innovative intervention
models and mental health service approaches (e.g. Lund & Swartz, 1998), which may
be suggestive of creative efforts to locate intervention services beyond the typical
clinical settings and an ongoing commitment to offer culturally appropriate services
to at-risk groups.

Specific mental health and psychosocial issues

The specific psychosocial and mental health issues that the selected articles addressed
included violence, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy and suicide, reflecting an interest in
key national psychosocial priorities and mirroring a globalised interest in these areas
(e.g. Lindegger & Wood, 1995; Parekh & de la Rey, 1997; Visser, 1996). Articles also
focused on individual behavioural-level concerns such as life stress, psychopathology
and health behaviour (e.g. Lund & Swartz, 1998; Malefo, 2000).
Following the endeavour to transform mental health services and the roles of psy­
chologists (see Pillay & Petersen, 1996), community psychologists seemed to have
extended their scope of work to focus on intervention and programme development.
Several articles highlighted psychology's value in evaluating social programmes and
services (e.g. Campbell & Williams, 1998; Shabalala et al., 2002; Visser, 1996) and

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

the importance of community feedback processes (Macleod, Masilela & Malomane,

1998).

Gender and 'race' specific issues

Consonant with community psychology's emphasis on equity and social marginali-
sation, some articles highlighted gender and psychology (Finchilescu, 1995; Shefer,
2001), teenage pregnancy (Mojapelo-Batka & Schoeman, 2003; Parekh & de la Rey,
1997), and 'race 'and relevance (Durrheim & Mokeki, 1997). Despite the SAJP Spe­
cial Issue focused on Black Scholarship in 1997, the relatively low representation of
gender- and 'race'-specific issues in the corpus of texts analysed suggests that there
may still be silences with respect to 'racialised' and sexist forms of domination.

CONCLUSIONS
Our corpus of data and related analysis suggest that community psychology in South
Africa, as represented in the SAJP and PINS, may be a minor yet significant aspect
of the larger endeavour of liberatory psychology. Even though it is not circumscribed
by clearly discernable borders, the labels, language, terminology, concepts, philoso­
phy and mission of community psychology are evident in the 47 articles we content
analysed.
Authors' affiliations indicate that community psychology's vision may be restricted
primarily but not exclusively to certain institutions, such as the Universities of Natal,
Cape Town, South Africa, Western Cape and the former Durban-Westville, which
historically and currently continue to house small enclaves of 'progressive psycholo­
gists' committed to liberatory scholarship and addressing South Africa's racialised and
gendered systems of knowledge production. The representation of authors affiliated
to the Universities of the Western Cape and the former Durban-Westville, historically
reserved for those other-than-white, may in fact be reflective of the gradual inclusion
of groups that were marginal to the processes of knowledge production.
Authorship characteristics also point to a limited incorporation of the principles
of collaboration and community-academic partnerships. The under-representation of
community voices at the authorship level indicates that the act of academic writing
remains a specialised function, conducted by academics located mainly in Eng­
lish-medium universities, historically reserved for those classified white within the
apartheid-generated nomenclature. This raises questions about the forms and nature
of community self-representation that may stand as tools of dissemination and com­
munication alongside academic publications. The relatively equal gender distribution
of the authors, however, points to a growing tendency towards the inclusion of women,
coupled with an increasing interest in women's issues. Articles focusing on the structure
and form of psychology, mental health service innovation, and psychosocial issues of
relevance to marginalised groups represent a continuation of earlier focus areas, and
so raises the possibility of the further development of community psychology.

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Mohamed Seedat, Sarah MacKenzie and Garth Stevens

We surmise from our journal-based content analysis that there is a fair degree of
continuity in the core developments of community psychology even though such de­
velopments may be subsumed by the larger initiative of liber atory psychology, which
in turn seems to hold a small and marginal place in the professional and academic
activities of South African psychologists. Many of the core elements and principles
of community psychology seem to have been appropriated by feminists, critical psy­
chologists, post-colonial writers, health decision-makers and practitioners. It may
also be instructive to note that community psychology enjoyed greater voice in PINS
compared to the SAJP, perhaps indicative of the explicit transformation agenda and
critical orientation of PINS. Of the 47 articles selected for analysis, 32 (68.1%) were
from the SAJP, representing 10.2% of the total number of articles (315) published in
the SAJP for the 1994 to 2003 period. The remaining 15 (31.9%) articles were drawn
from PINS, representing 23.4% of the total number of articles (64) published in PINS
during 1994 to 2003. Whereas SAJP publications tended to focus on the provision of
mental health services and priority psychosocial issues, articles from PINS placed a
strong emphasis on critical approaches to community psychology. Irrespective of the
differing emphasis, our content analysis raises optimistic pos; ibilities for the continued
influence of the philosophies underlying community psychology in the ongoing and
changing quest for an emancipatory praxis in psychology, which includes the endea­
vour to redress the distorted systems of knowledge production in the discipline.
Our analysis may well also raise questions about the precise definition, structure,
content, location, influence, role and future of community psychology in a fledging
democratic society such as South Africa. Similarly, there may be concerns about the
possibility of community psychology being discursively misappropriated and distilled
of its critical content in the service of restrictive social agendas, especially whenever
a high premium is placed on economic liberalisation, political stability and interna­
tional recognition. The answers to such questions and concerns perhaps lie in further
studies, including an examination of community psychology's contemporary and
prospective roles within a dynamic global and national democratic order, and reviews
of community psychology's achievements and challenges at the levels of curriculum
reform, post- and under-graduate training, representation in professional organisations,
and focused analyses of psychology departments' commitments and approaches to
community psychology. This kind of research would require an expanded selection
of publications, including books, conference proceedings and monographs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Brett Bowman and Victor Peteke for their assistance in developing this
article.

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 Trends and redress in community psychology during 10 years of democracy

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