ABSTRACT
The culture and practice of group psychotherapy operated as a ‘Trojan horse’, in which to transfer indigenous beliefs and practices into the psychotherapy treatment for a predominantly young black student population. Group psychotherapy created flashes of pragmatism and a client base of responsive ‘test subjects’ apparently receptive, conversant with and most importantly, welcoming of African discourses inserted into the psychotherapy process. There is the irony of a gender category that is usually associated not just with violence per se but gender-based violence in particular, rejection of help and emotional illiteracy, cooperating with a female therapist’s experimentation with male-focused psychotherapy with patience and gratitude. This model of masculinised psychotherapy grew out of a partly unconscious collaboration between myself as the therapist and predominantly male psychotherapy clients. The use of Pan-African concept of ubuntu as a corrective philosophical foundation of psychotherapeutic contact is a step toward credible mental health interventions that can be adapted to clients across the racial and socio-economic spectrum.
