South African Journal of Psychology

This article reports a rhetorical discourse analysis of learner perspectives on language diversity in a contemporary South African high school. Based on four group discussions with Grade 12 isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English-speaking learners, the analysis traces two interrelated clusters of argument. In the first, a liberal discourse of individual freedom and human rights is mobilised to argue against a language order where languages are made compulsory, or forced upon people. We show that this argument was employed inconsistently: it only extended to languages other than English. To understand how this dilemmatic use of liberal ideas was justified, we trace a second line of argument. This is the construction of English as a universal language and, consequently as neutral, necessary and unifying; a language of ‘rational choice’ for all South Africans. Based on these arguments, language diversity – or the formal recognition and empowerment of languages other than English – was problematised as both violating individual rights of choice and a public order characterised by the mutual and universal understanding afforded by the universality of English. Supporting English-only practices in the school was thus presented as itself a liberal gesture, allowing not only the continued racialisation of isiXhosa, but also a rhetoric of racial blame: isiXhosa speakers, when they use their language in public, were blamed for instigating racial tension and misunderstanding in the school.

The article reports on the findings of a study designed to explore the thoughts, feelings and fantasies of white South African therapists working interracially. The research was couched within an expanded understanding of Pedersen's Model for training in multicultural psychotherapy. More specifically, it investigates how therapists' therapy-hindering (‘anti-client’) statements reflect aspects of racial prejudice in South Africa and South African psychology, how their therapy-facilitating (‘pro-client’) statements reflect racial sensitivity, and how these competing attitudes are negotiated when therapists reflect on them. The contribution of the study is the explication of both positive and negative therapist self-talk in interracial contexts. Implications of the findings are discussed and the development of an Anti-client-Pro-client Model for counsellor sensitivity training is recommended as an extension of the framework promulgated by Pedersen (1985, 2000).

This article attempts to make sense of the clinical psychology training experience, as a negotiation of personal and professional identity. It suggests that the training, particularly in the first year, is a rite of passage, in many respects similar to an initiation process. Rites of passage can be seen as processes marking shifts in status and social identity. In the case of training to be a psychologist this change involves the movement from lay to professional status. There are three phases involved in the transitional process. The first involves separation from other groups of postgraduate students, and also in different ways from friends and family through involvement in course material that is often both esoteric and confidential. The second phase is marked by a fluid and often confusing marginal state between student and professional identity. The third phase involves a reintegration back into society as a fully-fledged professional, once the training is over. This article focuses on the ambiguities of the marginal state as the primary identity position during training, and explores the implications of this, both for those being trained and for trainers.

The purpose of this article is to describe some postmodern implications for the ethical conduct of psychotherapists. In our opinion, one of the overriding implications is the increase in the ethical responsibility held by psychotherapists. In a context that rejects objectivity, redefines boundaries and broadens the notion of the client, the ‘buck stops' with the psychotherapist. Consequentially, with an increased emphasis on the ethical responsibility of psychotherapists, training, curricula and ethical codes have to be revisited. This article is a postmodern discourse. In deconstructing the text, the reader engages in, and assigns meaning to, it. This process is an echo of the therapeutic relationship in which psychotherapist and client engage each other and assign meaning to the texts presented in psychotherapy. All behaviour in this dynamic relationship has ethical implications that psychotherapists need to manage. Thus, the postmodern psychotherapist ‘is the ethics’.

This article is broadly based within a psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy, drawing on object relations theories and, more specifically, on an object relations model outlined by Frank Summers, namely, relational psychoanalysis. The article explores the notion that because attachment to the object is central to the development of a sense of identity and belonging, individuals will seek to preserve the relationship at the expense of the development of their authentic self. In this way, those aspects of themselves that they perceive to be unacceptable to others and thus often to themselves, will be buried in order to maintain the relationship. The therapeutic relationship, as an interpersonal matrix, may echo patients' problematic modes of being and relating. However, the therapeutic relationship is potentially one in which such problematic patterns of relating may be resolved rather than re-enacted. In this context, patients may experience in therapy a ‘transcendence of the self as they begin to experience how they are relating, and more importantly, how such relating may result in the arrested development of their authentic self. The article makes links between three therapeutic phenomena in which problematic patterns of relating are embedded: (a) patients' coaching behaviours, (b) transference testing and (c) the corrective emotional experience. Such links are not clearly made in the literature. Furthermore, clinical material is drawn from the author's work as a psychotherapist and is used to illustrate transference-testing behaviours and three of its components, namely: (a) testing by compliance, (b) testing by non-compliance and (c) passive-into-active testing.

Criticisms have been raised that psychological tests do not actually measure the variables that they claim to measure. As a result, the concept of construct validity is called Into question. This article explores the rationale for measurement criticisms levelled at the field as well as the implications for psychology if pseudo-measurement is perpetuated. The article argues that either a re-conceptualisation of construct validity or the development of a new form of validity evidence may be necessary, if the psychological profession is to meet the future in an ethical and scientific manner.

The factor structure of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression scale (EPDS) and similar instruments have received little attention in the literature. The researchers set out to investigate the construct validity and reliability of the EPDS amongst impoverished South African women. The EPDS was translated into isiXhosa (using Brislin's back translation method) and administered by trained interviewers to 147 women in Khayelitsha, South Africa. Responses were subjected to maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis. A single factor structure was found, consistent with the theory on which the EPDS was based. Internal consistency was satisfactory (a = 0.89).

This study investigates whether the Disruptive Behaviour Disorders (DBDs) rating scale measures the same constructs in South African as in Western cultures, and explores the differences in scale scores as a function of language, gender and age. Teacher ratings between 1997 and 1999 of the 18 DSM-IV symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in 6 094 primary school children of six language groups in the Limpopo Province of South Africa were collected and analysed. For all language groups, the results were consistent with a two-factor model of ADHD with correlated factors. There were gender and age effects on both scales. The prevalence rates for ADHD sub-types were in line with rates in the United States of America (US) and Europe. Similarities across language groups, as well as to results reported in the US and Europe, were striking. Despite the limitations discussed, teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms on the DBD scale can be used as a screening instrument in South Africa. Separate norms for different language groups are not indicated.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic will have massive implications for mental health in sub-Saharan Africa. While research in developed countries is quite advanced in this area, and while some of this research is relevant and important in developing countries, understanding and dealing with a disease of relatively low prevalence and which is mostly under control is vastly different from the considerations required of a growing epidemic which seems likely to kill a significant proportion of the population. The mental health implications of HIV/AIDS will be felt by individuals, families, communities and society as a whole. This article looks at the mental health of people who are unsure of their HIV status, people diagnosed as HIV-positive, the family and caregivers of HIV-positive individuals, people left behind following AIDS deaths and of society as a whole. Given the magnitude and pervasiveness of HIV, it is argued that the mental health ‘whole’ will be far greater than the sum of the parts. This means that much more research and interventions will have to be put in place in order to obviate a potential mental health and social ‘disaster’.