PINS-Psychology in Society

Journeying with Psychology in Society (PINS) and vision for the future

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Editorial: Journeying with Psychology in Society (PINS) and vision for the future

We celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the journal Psychology in Society (PINS) in September 2023.

A brief history of PINS

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The early 1980s was a vibrant and tumultuous time in South Africa as increasing challenges to the apartheid
government were being mounted from all angles of the society. The state and its security forces were cracking
down on anti-apartheid activists through large-scale detentions, and in turn individuals and organisations
were responding with a combination of defiance and organized resistance in the formation of communitybased
organisations. The highpoint of this organizational development was the formation of the UDF (United
Democratic Front) in 1983 (20 August 1983 in the Western Cape), and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade
Unions) in 1985 (1 December 1985 in Durban).

Reflexivity on medicalisation of the mind and the biomedical invasion on being human

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Clinical psychology practice is characterised by three core functions; assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. We challenge the biomedical imperative in clinical psychology through our shared personal experiences in training as clinical psychologists in South Africa. We pose that the training of clinical psychologists historically was and continues to be focused through a biomedical lens. Alluding to the perennial debate on the relevance of psychology and current arguments around the contemporary relevance of clinical psychologists’ training; we propose clinical-community psychology as the main way forward for psychology practice in South Africa. Our position is that in South Africa, clinical psychology training and services should be appropriate and equitable in response to the needs of individuals and communities. We highlight the lack of contextual relevance that has been perpetuated in most of the clinical psychology training programmes. This misplaced historical legacy does not serve the people within the South African context. Current and future clinical psychology training should be re-aligned toward the service of members of the South African communities and settings.

PhDing while panicking in a Pandemic

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The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a global panic and the destabilisation of economic, and education systems
resulting in a sense of anxiety and helplessness at a societal and individual level. We offer a reflection of
the end of our PhD journey, that occurred concurrently with the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown in South
Africa. Thinking through an intersectional lens we draw parallels between our precarity as black women in higher education nearing the end of our PhD journey (s) and the unpredictability of life during the pandemic. While we recognise the incompatibility of life during a pandemic and PhDing (completing a PhD), we use this moment to map out how the precariousness in academia lends itself to a sense of anxiety and helplessness often to the death of scholarship. We attribute our panic while PhDing to the process of completing the thesis as well as the sense of insecurity we have observed and experienced within academia. We argue that the casualisation of young black women academics, lends itself to the reproduction of exclusionary practices in higher education.

Challenging Ciscentric Feminist Margins: A South African Study on Gender-Based Violence in the Lives of Black Trans Women

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Feminist discourses around the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV) have historically prioritized the voices and contextualities of cisgender heterosexual women, often to the exclusion of trans persons. In light of the continual invisibility of black trans persons and in particular black trans women in anti-GBV activism, this paper explores black trans women’s experiences of violence in post-apartheid South Africa. The study was undertaken from a transfeminist framework that asserts that the stories and histories of trans persons are central to the development of trans epistemologies within an inclusive gender liberation framework. The study followed a
narrative methodological approach. Unstructured individual interviews were conducted with eight black trans women living in South Africa. Narratives of gender policing and punitive sexual violence in addition to narratives of cissexism as well as of the paradoxical hypervisibility and invisibility of black trans positions revealed violence meted against black trans women in South Africa as structural, grounded on a patriarchal matrix of cisgender power representing trans women as devalued others. Apartheid legacies of racialised
economic marginalisation manifest as bearing a strong mediating role in shaping black trans women’s sustained vulnerability to violence. By addressing anti-trans violence as a feminist concern, this paper disrupts the ciscentricism of feminism, enabling more nuanced and inclusive constructions of GBV.

Psychological barriers to climate-friendly food choices

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The food supply chain is a significant contributor to climate change. By following a climate-friendly diet, consumers have the potential to significantly reduce the effects of climate change. However, despite the growing awareness of the climate-friendly food options that are available, consumers still choose foods with a high carbon footprint. Following a survey design, this study aimed to determine the extent to which four psychological processes (denial, conflicting goals and aspirations, tokenism, and interpersonal influence)
limited climate-friendly food choices in a sample of adult consumers residing in Gauteng, South Africa. Data were collected from 146 participants using the Climate-friendly Food Choices Scale and the Psychological Barriers Scale. Results indicated that, overall, the barriers were negatively associated with climate-friendly food choices. Regression analysis indicated that the four psychological barriers explained 10.6 % of the variance in climate-friendly food choices. Conflicting goals and aspirations and denial were identified as the two main psychological barriers to climatefriendly food choices. It is therefore essential to consider the psychological processes that could have a limiting effect on the adoption of climate-friendly food choices in our approach
to encourage pro-environmental change.