Indigenous Psychology
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Indigenous Psychology Details
A study of psychology is imperative for anyone seeking to understand what it means to be human. Nonetheless, the discipline perpetuates a systemic bias that privileges the values of a few from which it extrapolates generalizations applied to the many. Specifically, psychology has formulated its theories of human nature, development, and behaviour by studying the inhabitants of wealthy western industrial societies.Such cultures normalize a core sphere of values while often pathologizing the expression of divergent experiences. These normalized values prioritize competitive self-determination and independence while perceiving human vulnerabilities as personal inadequacies arising from deficits in internal resources.However, such a view is not characteristic of humanity.Many indigenous communities function harmoniously and progressively by accommodating diversity and nurturing interdependency. Furthermore, while western psychology has defined and demarcated the ‘mind' with a set of inner boundaries, this intrapsychic concept of mentality is not universal. In many parts of the world, the ‘mind' is a contextually situated phenomenon, where individual fitness depends upon relational health, which in turn remains inseparable from ecological reciprocity.Integrating these insights into our approach to health and healing requires what some have called a ‘decolonizing' of psychology. It also invites us to uncover the principles of ‘indigenous psychologies' - ways of thinking and behaving that characterize diverse communities who have preserved a tradition of knowledge inseparable from the niche in which their identity, community, cognition, and emotionality are rooted.The Indigenous Psychology project explores the plethora of psychological ideas that characterize traditional communities, enriching and expanding the framework of western approaches to psychological science.
