Decolonizing psychology and surmounting the colonialism legacy: Reparation and restitution in the humanizing process

Author(s): Rashmi Singla, Berta Vishnivetz 

Keywords: Colonization; Decolonization in Psychology; Indigenous; Eurocentrism

Abstract: Decolonization, colonialism, and persisting coloniality are issues that have received increasing attention in mass media, political discussion, academic networks, art, literature, and digital spaces in the last decades and simultaneously encounter resistance. To explore decolonization in psychology, it is imperative to review the origins of colonization, the emergence of Eurocentrism, and its consequences in geopolitics, mental health, laws, rules of organizations and in societies in Global North and South. We raised a question to understand such complex processes: “how to surmount the dehumanization inflicted by colonialism through restitution, restoration, and forgiveness towards decolonization” and reviewed global strategic research on colonial and decolonial issues. This provided a broad theoretical valuable step towards legitimizing native, indigenous epistemological and cosmological forms of understanding. We found similarities in the experiences of most colonized people who have suffered the dehumanization and the genocidal effects of colonization, some of them could be generalizable despite the different colonial histories. We focused on the consequences of the colonial period in India and point out the need of decolonizing, primarily based on the Indian political psychologist Nandy's (1983) studies, who explored colonialism though colonizing societies, the colonized, and resistance to it. Moving on poses multiple challenges and entails an open mind beyond the Global North and South. Including contemporary studies, this open- minded position emphasizes how we as psychologists, may contribute to the global decolonial turn in psychology to move on and forward, overcoming the pains of the past, to making progress now and in the future.