About this episode

The episode explores the impact of colonialism on Western psychology and discusses the need to reimagine post-colonial psychology through the lens of complexity and nuance.

How has colonialism shaped our western psychology? How can we reimagine our post-colonial psychology, before we wipe ourselves out? What is the role of the trickster archetype in the disruption of such a well-established and dominant world view? In this episode we have the tricky topic of trying to re-orientate our post-colonial psychology. So we’re going to be looking into the reasons why we might need to do that, following the influence of the west’s military-industrial rise to power over the last 250 years, and the post scientific revolution’s predominantly reductionist, philosophy of science; we’re going to be considering the consequences of such a view of humanity and the natural world; and crucially what elements we might invite back into our psychology, to perhaps set humanity back onto a path of harmony with its own species and its habitat, before it destroys itself. To do this we’re going to be exploring the possibility that the dualistic, black and white separation of ideas into binary truth or falsehood; and right or wrong, is a big part of the problem; exploring how the complexity of systems, and the nuance of their relations goes far beyond the simplified duality of…

People in this episode

Host: Freddy Drabble

Guest: Bayo Akomolafe PhD

Topics covered

• post-colonial psychology
• colonialism
• trickster archetype
• reductionist philosophy
• humanity and natural world
• binary thinking
• complex systems

Keywords

• colonialism
• psychology
• trickster archetype
• reductionism
• binary thinking
• humanity
• natural world
• complex systems

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: western psychology, military-industrial, scientific revolution, psychology

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