Growing Psychology at Home: Reflections on Indigenous Psychology

This dissertation reflects on the indigenous Psychology movement, which emerged in reaction to the international spread of American Psychology after the Second World War, but whose literature began to expand from 1990 notably and has continued to do so to the present. These reflections adopt an analytical framework following the stages of critique, reconstruction, and creation. In the first, different definitions and meanings of indigenous Psychology and distinctions among its cognate terms (indigenized, indigenizing, and indigenization) are critiqued and reconstructed. Starting from the generic definition of indigenous Psychology as Psychology specific to a particular culture, the relationship between the notions of psychology and culture are discussed. Because the most fundamental critique levelled by indigenous psychologists at the current discipline of Psychology is at the individualistic framework it employs and depends on, individualism is conceptually analyzed by dividing it into its various components. Following from each critique exposing confusions in basic concepts such as indigeneity, culture and individualism, the dissertation proceeds in the second stage to reconstruct these to a certain extent by proposing some clarifying analytical distinctions. Finally, in the last stage, the dissertation aims to put the notion of indigenous Psychology on a more concrete case-specific basis by pointing to the lack of indigenization of Psychology in Türkiye and concludes by proposing an undergraduate course syllabus on the historical development of Psychology in Türkiye.