Zambezia (1978), VI (ii;THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICA: EXPLORER, DOCTOR,OR MISSIONARYD. MUNRODepartment of Psychology, University of RhodesiaIT SHOULD NOT be necessary to remind an academic audience that theroot of the word 'psychology' is the Greek word 'psyche', which can meancither the soul, or the mind. Yet in this fact lies concealed a point which istoo often forgotten these days (especially by psychologists themselves);namely, that although psychologists see themselves as technicians of themind, able to carry out a number of processes which are based on scientificand empirical findings about human behaviour and thought, their role is inmany ways similar to that of the minister or priest. Often, what the psycholo-gist has to say about what is good or right (in other words, what is'mentally healthy1), he does not say to people directly but by proxy throughmedical practitioners who, by sheer weight of numbers, play a moreimportant part in the day-to-day interaction with people. Nevertheless, theadvice of the physician is often based on what psychologists have said (orwhat they are thought to have said).On a wider front, another role which the psychologist has is that ofexplorer. In this context, the exploration is of human behaviour throughscientific investigation or research. For the psychologist in Africa it hasbecome exploration of a new culture and involves sharing yet another role,that of the anthropologist. Now, any anthropological survey of behaviourinvolves a contact of cultures, an exchange of ways of thinking about things,a communication process involving transactions between the two culturesinvolved, that of the anthropologist and that of the subject. The impact ofthe psychologist's way of thinking about behaviour, personality and intellectis clearly evident in our everyday language in the Western world. One cansee in the literature of each generation the way in which people think abouthuman behaviour, and we have seen in the last hundred years, which is thelife span of psychology as a recognized discipline, a change from a moral wayof interpreting human behaviour to one which could be said to be based onpsychological considerations. The terminology and the models of mind whichthe psychologist has produced have permeated our way of thinking. It is tobe expected, then, that the same process will occur across cultural boundariesAn inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Rhodesia on 18 May 1978.1O5106THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICAwhen the psychologist moves into his role of anthropological explorer indifferent cultures such as those of Africa. In this regard, I want to raise twoquestions. First, to what extent and in what way will this process occur inAfrica? Secondly, is it proper that the psychologist should be making animpact of this kind on African culture?One of the facts which the student psychologist has drawn to hisattention is that psychology has 'a long past but a short history'. Thisparaphrases the point that, although psychology as a separate discipline hasonly existed, or been recognized, for a century or so, its roots are deep inthe Western intellectual tradition. Its parents in the nineteenth century werephilosophy, with elements traceable back at least to the ancient Greeks, andphysiology or medicine with its pragmatic, functionalist approach, especiallyin the post-Darwin era. Most of the concepts of modern psychology aredevelopments of concepts which have existed in Western philosophy forhundreds and sometimes thousands of years. But even more important is thefact that psychology was seen at an early stage to fit in with the new approachto life which was characteristic of the era after Darwin, and was particularlyamenable to the pragmatic and optimistic American attitude to the possibilityof solving all human problems. It is thus no mere economic artifact that theAmerican Psychological Association is by far the largest in the world, notonly in terms of actual numbers (39 000 members in 1977), but also in termsof the ratio of psychologists to the general population, and that nearly everyorganized activity in North America has the advice of psychologists in someway. Nor has the influence been entirely one way, as is evidenced by thefact that psychology has adapted to every sector in the spectrum of attitudes,from tough-minded scientific empiricism with its intolerance for anythingwhich cannot be observed and measured, to the subjective and mysticalapproach characteristic of Oriental religions and cosmologies.Now, we must ask the question: To what extent will this robust planttransplant to the different soils of Africa? Will it survive only in isolatedspots, where carefully tended, or will it flourish and dominate other plantsand change the ecology of the region as it does so? Will it hybridize, or willit retain its essentially Western nature?The psychologist as explorer has been in Africa for a comparativelylong time, but in very small numbers, and scattered widely over the continent-Much of the early work in the area of personality study was done in theFrancophone countries and seems to have had comparatively little effect onthe way that Africans think about themselves. In the English-speaking partsof Africa the approach was (characteristically) more pragmatic, and involvedthe application of mental ability testing to attempts to find solutions toeducational and industrial problems. A further reason for the interest inability testing was the possibility of solving the 'nature versus nurture5problem which has remained with psychology since its beginnings; anobvious if naive question was, 'to what extent do Africans have the same kindand degree of intelligence as those from "sophisticated" Western culture?'D. MUNRO107Predictably, the results for Black and White people were found to be not thesame; even more predictably, the reaction of many to this finding was thatit was merely a confirmation of their expectations or prejudices, a demonstra-tion of, for example, the need for separate education provisions and separateways of life and places of residence. It is one of the unsung accomplishmentsof psychology in southern Africa that one of the first critics of such anacceptance of inferior mental ability on the basis of test results was SimonBiesheuvel, whose classic little book, African Intelligence, published in theearly 1940s, argued the case against the use of these results for educationalseparation.Biesheuvel and others have continued up to the present time to cautionagainst the interpretation of psychological findings out of the context of thecultural setting in which they have been obtained. These caveats are oftenignored, however, sometimes because of elementary misunderstandings aboutconcepts like intelligence and the pitfalls in measuring it, and sometimesbecause of political and social biases.However, despite continuing differences of opinion about the implica-tions of test results in Africa, mental testing for selection to jobs and toeducational institutions has continued to make a marked impact, at least atthe southern end of the continent. More sophisticated instruments and tech-niques of analysis continue to make a contribution to fair practices, andparticularly to the acceptance of the notion that the best man should get thejob. Thus psychologists have had an unrecognized but nevertheless pervasiveinfluence on economic, social and cultural change.Since the Second World War, in addition to the developments in testingtechniques mentioned above, there has also been a shift in the perspective ontesting and evaluation of abilities and personality across cultures. From theearly 1960s this has been reflected in the emergence of a cross-cultural ortranscultural psychological movement, which is acutely conscious of theissues of cultural relativism and of the need to provide techniques of analysisand iRterpretation of data which are less ethnocentric. The term 'cross-culturalpsychology' is properly applicable only to direct comparisons betweencultures, although it is usually taken to include any attempt to apply or testWestern findings in non-Western cultures. Its objectives can be said to be totest the limits of applicability of laws and generalizations which haveemerged from work on Western populations and, further, to gain insight intouniversal human psychology. The main thrusts have been into the areas ofcognition, notably intellectual development and perceptual abilities; studiesof motivation, personality and social interaction have remained far behind interms of numbers of studies and of sophistication.The first phase of this cross-cultural exploration effort was the collectionof what could be described as 'drawing-room curiosities' from the anthro-pological literature and from safaris by psychologists themselves. The secondphase could perhaps be described as more serious psychological map work.It would be fascinating to retell some of the many traveller's tales from the108THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICAearly phase, but we shall satisfy ourselves with one or two. The study ofperception has given rise to some of the more interesting examples ofdifferences between people. One topic that has been intensely studied isvisual illusion; illusions are the curious phenomena generated by certaincombinations of lines drawn on paper (the perusal of any elementary text-book in psychology will illustrate what is meant). The importance of studyingillusions is that they may give a clue as to how perceptual processes operateon normal objects and situations, or how perception can become distorted.Cross-cultural work has shown us that the effects may not be inherent in theperceptual system entirely, but may be largely generated by the kind ofenvironmental experience which the individual is subject to, without anyawareness. It has been found, for example, that different patterns ofsusceptibility to illusions are created by living in flat treeless country, forestareas where the line of vision is restricted to a short distance, or so-called'carpentered environments' containing many straight lines and right angles.Thus, Kalahari Bushmen, pigmy forest dwellers, and students from urbantownships, see the world in noticeably different ways; this probably affectstheir behaviour and intellect in subtle ways. The most dramatic example isgiven by the anthropologist, Turnbull, who reported, in 1961, on taking apigmy guide out of dense rain forest, where he had lived all his life, on tothe open plain. The pigmy gazed around him and then asked, 'What insectsare these?' The puzzled anthropologist at last realized that what was beingreferred to were some buffalo grazing some miles away. The pigmy, neverhaving had to allow for differences in size occasioned by distance, becausehis line of vision had always been restricted to 100 metres or so, was unableto take into account that a large animal would look a different size whenseen far away. A lesson that is learned from this is that, just as the pigmy'sperceptual analysis system was dominated by the assumption that objectsremain the same size and do not vary in size according to distance, so alsothose of us who have grown up in a right-angled environment are dominatedby the notion that the world is full of straight lines and right angles Š andfeel disturbed by situations where this is not so,Other stories come from the studies of intellectual development whichhave been done over the last ten years or so on this continent. One of themore amusing of these is that told by Cole and Scribner, regarding a smallWest African boy who was told by his teacher that all insects have six legs.The well-meaning psychologists showed him one which had more than sixand suggested that he might show this to the teacher. The unfortunate boywas soundly beaten for his trouble and sternly reassured that all insects dohave six legs. The serious point in this story, besides its implications foreducational and teacher training, is that the teacher, and of course parentsand well-meaning psychologists, are part of the ecology of the intellect.Within the wider field of psychology one of the major developmentsover the past generation has been the demise of the notion of fixed intelli-gence, which was popular at an earlier stage and which still dominates theD. MUNRO109layman's approaeh, and even the approach of certain other scientists, suchas geneticists. The work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget has beenparticularly important in creating this shift of perspective, and one of themore interesting aspects of the work that has been generated by hisapproach is the attempt to discover whether his model of the growth ofintellect is valid across cultures. In general, the answer has been in theaffirmative; that is, it is clear that the way our brains process information iscommon to all human beings, at least in certain respects. Differences in ratesof intellectual development created by differences in educational opportunitiesand emphases, plus intercultural variations in the qualitative content ofintellect, are of course not ruled out by this finding. Here again, the lessonhas been that the psychologist must penetrate into the mental developmentof the child and the mental processes of the adult, to understand them fromwithin in terms of what they accomplish for the individual. Thus, we seewithin cross-cultural psychology a movement for the development of culturalrelativism, which is an approach to the problems of psychology from theperspective of each culture in turn (Serpell, 1976). This can be seen asmerely an extension of the approach of understanding the individual as away to an understanding of the universal, but the movement has importantthings to say about the dangers of judging the abilities and life styles ofpeople in Africa merely in relation to Western norms.So much for exploration for the moment. To what use has thisaccumulating knowledge and understanding been channelled? Unfortunately,it has to be admitted that the explorers often stop when they have finishedtheir explorations and go home, leaving little behind. Lecturing about theresults of cross-cultural research to students means too often presenting alitany of the perceptual and intellectual deficits of people brought up innon-Western cultures. Interesting or even challenging though these differencesmay be to the theorist or to the dispassionate observer of the human scene,to the student from a disadvantaged culture or to anyone who is involved inthe consequential problems of the deficits, identifying and quantifying themis a frustrating and humiliating half-loaf to accept. We must take the furtherstep of solving the problems which have emerged. Western psychologists havemade contributions in this area as, of course, have educationalists andindustrialists, but it is my conviction that for a real impact to be made inthis area, psychology must be handed over to Black students and Blackpeople themselves. The methods and skills which have been derived bypsychologists working in a Western environment and from a Western pointof view must be put to use in helping people to solve problems as they areperceived by African people from their perspective. The next generation ofpsychologists in Africa must be Black psychologists, with a foot in twocamps. On the one hand, they must have the skills and training which makepossible the analysis and solution of human problems with the level ofnoTHE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICAsuccess experienced in Western societies. On the other hand, they must havean intimate familiarity with African language and culture such as isvirtually impossible for the White Westerner to obtain without very con-siderable effort and opportunity. And they must be capable of bringing thetwo together; that is, psychology must be made meaningful in the lives ofthose who need to make use of it for solving practical problems.The main thrust here must be the provision of proper training. A mistakewhich is widely made throughout the world, in ali fields, is to concentrateon the production of partly trained people who have some acquaintance withthe methods of the professional but who lack the depth of training to make anoteworthy and creative contribution to solving problems in practice. It willnot be enough to merely repeat all that has been done in the West in adifferent cultural setting; the problems are different and the solutions mustbe different because the ways of looking at the problems are different. If thenew solutions are inadequate, we will find that both the methods and theirpractitioners will fall into disrepute and disuse. Human problems are the lastunconquercd area of science. Human problems are extremely difficult tosolve. We cannot afford to let amateurs and charlatans merely do their best(or their worst).In training African students to take on these responsibilities, one of thedifficulties which occurs is in generating the kind of enthusiasm, motivation,or involvement in the subject which will carry students forward to becomingexperts. S raised, at the beginning, the issue of how well psychology can betransplanted to an alien culture. It seems to me that in fact this has occurredin Africa with only moderate success, despite the notable achievements ofAfrican scholars in fields as diverse as theology and physics. Black Africahas produced few, if any, psychologists of real international note. Why shouldthis be so? Leonard Bloom has recently devoted attention to the issue. In ajournal article based on his experience in Zambia and in West Africa, hesees the problem broadly as a conflict between 'the positivist, empirical andmaterialistic approach of psychology' on the one hand, and the traditionalAfrican cosmology, which is religious in its base and humanistic in itsorientation. Another way of putting this conflict is in terms of the way thatthe psychologist and the African philosopher look at the human being. Thepsychologist tends to reduce the human being to the level of a machine; evenin the area of humanistic psychology, theories and models are based onanalogies with the world of physics. The African, on the other hand, tendsto do the exact opposite; that is, he sees a spirit in every machine, or at leastsees human motives, wishes, and behaviour as relevant to explaining andcontrolling events in the physical world. Thus, he must feel (as manyWesterners have) that a psychology based on hard 'scientific' determinism,without reference to spiritual or mystical experience except as delusions orepiphenomena, is a cold, remote and inhumane creed.Another clash which Bloom sees is between the sceptical, questioningframe of mind of the psychologist, on the one hand, and the reverence forD. MUNROIIIfr *authority and established ways of thinking about the world, which ischaracteristic of traditional African culture. While this reverence forauthority may, in certain respects, be useful in passing on information tostudents and making them accept a new perspective on things, the troublebegins when the individual (hen applies this critical and evaluative techniqueto his own life, and, by implication, his culturally implanted belief system.The result may be a rejection of the belief system, a rejection of Westernpsychology and its system of beliefs and values, or confusion and ambi-valence. These are the negative outcomes: the positive one is a process ofcreative re-cva'uation and re-ordering resulting in a higher level of adaptationto the problems of life. But nor every student is intellectually or emotionallycapable of this adaptation. We need students, during the process of education,to be willing to question not only their own beliefs but the beliefs of thepsychologist; only in this way will they develop in their own minds asatisfactory and satisfying meld of traditional belief and scientific psycho-logical, approach.Another perspective of the problem has been given by Sidney Irvine,among others, lie points to the disjunction between the thought processeswhich the child learns at home, and which are bound up closely with humanand religious relationships, and on the other hand, the cold, hard, de-humanized rationality of the classroom. It has been pointed out by manypeople that linguistic differences also contribute to this particular kind ofbarrier. The language of the home, the mother tongue, is the language of oursocial reality, of emotional relationships, of 'real life'; the language of theclassroom, the second language, is separated from social life, and thingswhich are learned in terms of the second language tend to be seen as relevantonly to the world of academic study and of work. Thus, there is a difficultyin applying scientific knowledge to one's own experience, and a later diffi-culty of applying this new- model of thought to the worldly problems whichthe graduate encounters outside the university walls. What I am saying isthat African students know and understand, at an intellectual level., the logicof psychology, but they often seem not to believe in it as relevant tohuman problems. Thus, at university and later in the world of work, theymay 'role-play' the role of the psychologist but not really become involved init, as Bloom has pointed out.But there is an opposing proposition to which Bloom also refers. This isthat Western science and African supernatural beliefs and practices are reallyboth directed to the same universal problem Š understanding and masteringthe world Š but they take different approaches to achieve this end. If this isthe case, then psychology can be seen as an alternative way of looking athuman relationships, and perhaps competetive rather than supplementary. Ifthe psychological approach is to attract interest and enthusiasm, it must beshown to work in solving human problems, and, furthermore, it must be seento work better than traditional psychologies. In Western culture psychologyis seen as something which helps us to understand the behaviour of human11,THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICAbeings in everyday life. It has become a living force as part of the Westernway of thought and, in particular, it has been taken home by people, takeninto their own lives (albeit often in very distorted forms). The success ofpsychology in Africa will be demonstrated, as in the West, when studentsnot only discuss psychological theories and techniques in the classroom, butuse them to apply to their own problems of thought and behaviour, discussthe behaviour of their friends using the psychological model, and use thejargon of psychology (or devise a new one for local use). Thus, the teacherof psychology can be seen as a minister, converting students to his way ofthought, not by force of authority but by demonstrating the success ofpsychology in action,It goes without saying that if this work is to be successful, psychologistsmust become more aware of the needs and beliefs of their congregation.Psychology will have to adapt and change, by incorporating different thoughpsychologically valid interpretations of human relationships; if, and only if,psychology grows thereby, will it have demonstrated its viability and validityas a way of looking at the world for people of different cultures. Psychologyshould not impose an alien viewpoint of human nature but generate a newand fresher one. Gustav Jahoda has shown in some of his studies in Ghanathat traditional beliefs in magic and the supernatural can co-exist withWestern scientific awareness and, furthermore, there is a suggestion that aspeople grow in the confidence born of running their own affairs, they actuallyincrease their acceptance of traditional beliefs and integrate them intellec-tually with the Western scientific conceptions of reality.Shifting to a more mundane level, I would like to turn now to a pointintroduced earlier and mentioned in my title Š the psychologist as doctor.More precisely, what I would like to discuss is the relationship between theclinical psychologist on the one hand and the psychiatrist on the other. Thedistinction between these two roles puzzles the layman, and is also of concernto professionals in the fields concerned. In many parts of the world, an undueemphasis on the division has given rise to rather poor relationships betweenthe two professions Š and professional jealousies can be intense. This takesvarious forms, ranging from personal animosities to a tendencey on the partof each profession to denigrate the value and contribution of the other. Anexample which comes to mind is an article which I recently received whichpurported to be a review of the latest developments in psychiatry. Verynoticeably missing from this article was any mention whatever of behaviourtherapy, which has been of great importance to both psychology and psy-chiatry and is, in fact, one of the few recent developments in either fieldwhich is worthy of note. But it is seen by many psychiatrists as outside thepale because it was the brainchild of psychologists.However, it is pleasing to report that in this country this animosity towhich I have referred does not prevail. Both at the personal and the pro-D. MUNRO113fessional levels relationships are good, and a spirit of co-operation prevails.It is as well, because, with the limited number of psychiatrists and psycholo-gists, we could ill afford to reduce the impact we have on those who requiremental health services. It is unfortunately a fact that only cases of the mostpressing kind can be dealt with at all by a psychiatrist in this country, andon such an occasional basis that efforts are little more than custodial innature. The consequence of this is that the psychiatrist's lengthy training isnot being utilized properly and is largely wasted, simply because to havemuch impact, he must have opportunity for the development of a properprofessional relationship on the basis of fairly frequent consultations withthe patient.Clinical psychologists, who are also very thin on the ground in thecountry, but who might be expected to make a viable contribution to aproperly functioning mental health programme, remain on the periphery forwant of any proper opportunity to participate fully. There is not a singleclinical psychologist in the Government health service, and only two in otherdepartments. Although it can be argued that in countries such as the UnitedStates the numbers of psychologists and psychiatrists are out of proportionto the real needs for their services, there is a lower limit below which mentalhealth provision should not sink. This country is well behind most othersemi-developed nations in its provision of mental health services: furthermore,the need is increasing, and there seems to be very little hope of providing therapid training of conventional practitioners required to meet this situation.If we are going to cope, it seems to me that what is required is evengreater co-operation between the professions. One way in which this can beaccomplished is by the team approach which has evolved in a number ofother countries. In such a team one finds psychiatrists, psychologists, medicalpractitioners., psychiatric social workers and nurses working together, eachusing his own talents and specialisms towards a number of common goals.Given suitable leadership, this is a very effective and efficient use of man-power and is something we need to encourage in this country. And, in thefield of African mental health, i would support the proposal of ProfessorGelfand and others that we should also bring in other kinds of practitioners,who are normally outside the medical profession, but who, in a traditionalculture, arc very much more in touch with the patient than the Western-trained psychiatric worker can hope to be.One of the reasons why the team approach is particularly recommendedis that both psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have their own advan-tages, but also their disadvantages. The psychiatrist, who specializes inabnormal aspects of psychology and in applying a medical or pharmacologicalmodel, is usually ignorant of the wide range of useful psychological findingsand methods in such areas as learning processes in normal humans. Medicalstudents are notoriously difficult to interest in general psychology. This isregrettable but understandable. It springs partly from lack of time andexposure; in order to properly understand and appreciate the value of what114THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN BLACKER AFRICAthe psychologist has to offer, one has to go into it in greater depth than thenormal medical course can possibly allow. Also, a comprehension of thewhole of psychology is required, and this is ruled out for the same reason;it takes the non-medical student doing a degree in psychology two to threeyears to grasp even the elements of the discipline, so it goes without sayingthat any attempt to provide an adequate coverage in a few months is boundto fail.But there is another and more important reason why the medical prac-titioner finds himself impatient with psychology. Medicine has urgent,pressing problems to solve in large numbers, and also has relatively quickand effective ways of dealing with them. The psychiatrist's pharmacologicaland physical treatments promise, and often produce, dramatic changes in themood and behaviour of patients. Against this, the psychologist's approachseems slow and ineffectual. It is easy to overlook the fact that these dramaticinitial changes have to be backed up by contact with human beings. Thebrain is a complex biochemical system, but not merely that: its activityreflects the accumulated experience which the patient has had of the outsideworld. And for each patient the outside world is a different world, full ofunique relationships between other people and events. There is no directphysical way (and I doubt whether there ever can be) of reorganizing thisreflected world so that it remains integrated in a stable but creative per-sonality. To change behaviour and thought patterns requires time, becausethe underlying learning process is a slow one, for biological reasons. If timeis required so also is patience on the part of the therapist, and a hurriedapproach to therapy is rarely a successful one. Thus, the very pace at whichthe doctor is trained to work becomes an impediment to him when he isrequired to deal with intractable problems of mental ill-health.The psychologist, on the other hand, while versed in a broad range ofnormal and abnormal processes, is not trained in physical medicine, andparticularly in the administration of psychoactive drugs. In general, thepsychologist regards drugs as aids or adjuncts to treatment and not as theprime method. His stock-in-trade is time Š the time taken to unravel thepast and knit it into the present and future in a more satisfactory pattern.His techniques are becoming more efficient in time-utilization as researchprogresses. And they are directed to a different goal Š mental health in thelonger run rather than dramatic short-run reductions in mental sickness.What I would like to suggest as a solution to this problem in this partof the world (and perhaps other parts also) is a new kind of combination ofthe psychologist and psychiatrist, which might be called the 'Doctor ofPsychology'. The training would combine the essential cores from bothdisciplines, without those peripheral aspects which make expensive general-ists. Thus, there would be on the medical side a concentration on the nervousand endocrinal systems at the expense of others, and little attention wouldbe paid to ailments of little psychiatric relevance. This would be combinedwith broad-ranging psychological training, with an emphasis on theD. MUNRO115methodology and assumptions underlying behaviour-change interventions andtheir scientific evaluation. I believe this could produce, not merely a crossbetween psychologist and psychiatrist, but a hybrid more robust in both themedical and psychological areas than either professional is today. If such aprofessional could also span the Black and White cultures, we could hopefor a real acceleration in the progress of mental health in Africa.Whether such a training would be more appropriate at the post-graduate level or whether students should be admitted straight to the degreeof Doctor of Psychology remains to be seen; my own view is that the latterwould be a more suitable solution and that we should find little difficulty inrecruiting suitable students to a course which is of reasonable length andleads to an interesting and satisfying career. The important thing is that weshould be flexible enough to cope with the unique problems which weencounter in this part of the world because we have fewer resources. Butwe have the advantage that change can be brought about without theburdens of tradition and vested interest being brought to bear on oursolutions.To summarize what I have had to say: psychology has a varying set ofroles to play in Africa. Some of them will be of a traditional kind, but themeeting of the various traditions of thought is almost certain to change theroles in future. Psychology can only gain from this; if it fails to gain, then itdoes not deserve to survive. It is, I think, a robust enough plant to survive,not only transplantation, but also new and often hostile environments. Wemust expect some varieties of it to die out, some to thrive in ways which aresimilarly unpredictable. It is also, I think, a useful plant and one which itis now difficult to envisage being without in any progressive society.ReferencesBIESHEUVEL, S. 1943 African Intelligence (Johannesburg, South African Instituteof Race Relations).BLOOM, L. 1976 'Psychology and higher education in Africa: Problems and impres-sions', African Social Research, [III], xxii, 131-46.COLE, M. and SCRIBNER, S. 1974 Culture and Thought (New York, John Wiley).IRVINE, S. H. 1970 'Affect and construct Š a cross-cultural check on theories ofintelligence', Journal of Social Psychology, LXXX, 23-30.JAIIODA, G. 1970 'Supernatural beliefs and changing cognitive structures amongGhanaian university s'.udcnts", Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. I, 115-30.SERPELL, R. 1976 Culture's Influence on Perception (London, Methuen, EssentialPsychology Series, No. C4).TURNBULL, C. M. 1961 The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo(New York. Simon & Srhu<=t."r), cited in J. Wnlfson, Cultural Influences onCognition and Attainment (Milton Keynes, The Open Unversity, Course E201,Block 8, 1976).