Making the distinction between scholarly extraversion and introversion in African psychology is a way to reflect on the term ‘centring’. Scholarly extraversion and introversion are two end points of a continuum. The confusion and battles within African psychology revolve around the question of how psychologists might be able to locate themselves on this continuum.

To one side you find a psychologist who sees relatively little wrong with much of the psychology that she practises, or with many of the approaches to teaching and research that she employs, or with many of the therapeutic healing practices she uses on her clients. The thing is that, even though some of us may suspect that the way we live and where we work contribute, by omission if not commission, to socioeconomic injustice, or that the discipline of psychology is dominated by US and Western European patriarchal capitalist interests, we may feel that we are better off with the world of psychology as it is. Ironically, those who see nothing fundamentally off-colour with much of psychology as it is, include those of us who identify as social-justice-oriented psychologists. We may recognise and critique what is wrong with mainstream, non-critical, hegemonic psychology and its methods and explanations. But we do hold very dearly to, and our differentiation is marked by, our knowledge of our Brownmillers, Butlers and Cixouses, our Chomskys, De Beauvoirs and Derridas, our Du Boises, Foucaults and Lacans. That is to say, we privilege the major critical and radical European and US thinkers, be they male, female, or other genders/sexes, white, black, brown, or of other racially or ethnically defined groups. The centre of gravity of this offshore model of African psychology is Europe and the US. As an offshore, extraverted psychology, this African psychology primarily looks to places outside of the continent for legitimation and reward, using the locals mainly as a site of data extraction or application. This African psychology might be taught and written in some African universities, but it is actually epistemologically, ontologically, cognitively and emotionally invested elsewhere.