AM23 Keynote 2

Wahbie Long, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Psychology and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town. A clinical psychologist by training and former director of the UCT Child Guidance Clinic, he has held research fellowships at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study.

With a B2 rating from the National Research Foundation of South Africa, he is a past recipient of the Early Career Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association’s Society for the History of Psychology. He has published widely on the history, theory and indigenization of psychology, and is an associate editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Modern Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2022).

His first book – A History of ‘Relevance’ in Psychology(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) – traces the contours of the ‘relevance’ debate in psychology since the 1960s. His latest book is Nation on the Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind (MF Books, 2021), which draws on psychoanalytic theory to understand social problems in South Africa.

Nation on the Couch was published to widespread acclaim and was longlisted for both the NIHSS and Sunday Times non-fiction awards. Considered “one of South Africa’s brightest academic minds” (Daily Maverick), he is working on a new book exploring the psychological aspects of social hierarchies in the modern world.