SOUTHERN AFRICAN STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE

From Left to right: Mrs. Riana Andersen, Dr. Hennie Scheepers, Mr. Pule Pule, Ms. Zipporah Sigwili & Mr. Willem Joubert

ICP lecturers, staff and a student visited the Southern African Students’ Psychology Conference held from 26 – 27 June in Gabarone, Botswana. The conference was presented as a joint venture between the Departments of Psychology from the University of South Africa and the University of Botswana, and was attended by more than 200 delegates. The theme for the conference was “Re-imagining psychology” and the delegation from the ICP, consisting of Dr Hennie Scheepers, Zipporah Sigwili and Pule Pule decided to present a symposium on the following topic: “Christian Psychology as a New Voice: Re-imagining the possibilities!” In addition to the symposium, Dr. Scheepers presented a paper titled “The Business Case for Integrative Life Planning – Imagining an integration of seemingly diverse disciplines”.

Mr. Joubert and Mrs. Andersen sharing valuable information with interested students

The objective with attending the conference was to present a paper to delegates which would provide support for the statement that Christian Psychology needs to be regarded as an example of a new voice in psychology, i.e. as an alternative to secular psychology. This was achieved by offering a conceptualisation of Christian Psychology, indicating from a theoretical perspective that it shares the characteristics of general psychology, that it also meets the requirements for reliability and validity from a research perspective, and finally, to demonstrate its value in terms of application to an HIV/ AIDS counselling context. The paper was well received by delegates.

Ms. Zipporah Sigwili flying the flag of Christian Psychology

Further to this the conference provided many valuable networking and marketing opportunities inspired by the paper presentations as well as the ICP’s  exhibition table which was handled by Mrs Riana Andersen and Mr Joubert.

Most importantly the new voice of Christian Psychology was heard loud and clear!