The Psychological Society of South Africa, its 25 years of achievements and the challenges ahead
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: In a confluence of circumstances, I joined Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA) some years ago on a relatively permanent basis after belonging to its various incarnations intermittently.PsySSA was host to the International Congress of Psychology (ICP) in 2012 which in itself was an extremely significant event for psychology in South Africa.I was invited to become part of the scientific committee for ICP a few years before the event, and my experience henceforth with the Society was enriching and made a positive difference in my career and experience of professional and academic psychology.The importance of the Society dawned on me when I realised that PsySSA is the perfect vehicle for collaboration between academics in psychology and colleagues from the profession of psychology.PsySSA structures, committees, and events cater for dialogue and collaboration between practitioners and academics, not only within PsySSA but also between the Society and other structures in South Africa and abroad.This is also true of the annual congress which is a highlight in the year of psychologists.The annual awards made at the Society's congress focus on scholars and practitioners alike.My involvement in the management structures of PsySSA and as President in 2013 exposed me to diverse groups, individual academics, and professionals who are all committed to and serious about professional psychology in South Africa and beyond.Despite PsySSA's facilitating structure, my participation in a number of local congresses made me aware that psychology is still divided along practitioner and academic lines.Although tertiary institutions train psychologists explicitly or implicitly on the perennial scientist-practitioner (SP) model, participation at congresses in some way still struggle to incorporate both strands of the model sufficiently.My assumption about the reality of the split still dividing our profession is based on the fact that if there was no split, then, first, attendance of the annual congress would be much higher given the number of practicing psychologists outstrip those of academics and, second, the membership of PsySSA does not represent the number of registered psychologists in the country.If psychologists felt comfortable as practitioners within the Society I am sure the membership numbers would show this.The SP split and the difficulty of integrating the two streams have been thoroughly discussed in the literature for many years ever since the model has been proposed at a conference in Boulder,
Author: David JF Maree
Institution: University of Pretoria
Language: English
Subfield: General Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2969722409