Tales and African Mythology Psychotherapy: Rethinking Mental Health From a Decolonial Perspective

About the speaker:

Dr. Ismahan Soukeyna Diop is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and vice-president of the Association of Psychologists from Senegal. She will present her work in re-thinking psychotherapy through African mythology from a decolonial approach.

Summary of the presentation:

In 2020, the department of Psychology at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar was reopened, 53 years after it was closed by the government due to political unrest. This has brought the question of teaching a realistic curriculum in phase with people’s lives in Africa. Most of the science in psychology, psychopathology and even psychoanalysis, is based on the same theories that were used to stigmatize and diminish non-European people through epistemic violence and promote Eurocentric ideologies. Building a decolonial curriculum is teaching the reality of actual psychologists and psychiatrists in their current practice in Africa. As a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist, Dr. Ismahan Soukeyna Diop has come to develop a culturally relevant method for psychotherapy, based on oral tradition, and consider Senegalese representations of mental health as a theoretical basis for this method. This presentation will define those bases, explain how they shape people’s individual and social representations and introduce a decolonial method for psychotherapy that uses indigenous content as a lever for the therapeutic alliance.