Department well-represented at PSYSSA Conference

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Three staff members and three students represented the Department of Psychology at this year’s Psychological Society of South Africa’s Conference in Durban. Professor Michael Guilfoyle presented a paper entitled ‘The agentive subject in narrative therapy’ which looked at the controversial notion of personal agency in discursive literature and narrative practice. Gary Steele, a regular at PSYSSA, presented a paper on joint work with former student, Geoffrey Wakefield, on Psychological Skills Training in sports. Stuart Pattison, a Masters student under Gary's supervision, also presented his research on Mental Toughness and in particular, the implementation and evaluation of Mental Toughness Programmes for school level cricketers. Werner Bohmke, who is currently studying towards a PhD presented a paper entitled ‘Crisis in masculinity?’ which applies a critical Marxist reading to explanations of sex- and gender-based violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. Michael McInerney, an Honours student in the Department, presented a paper called ‘Repertoires of failure’ which was based on an assignment for an honours course taught by Professor Lindy Wilbraham and involved a discursive analysis of a post-match interview with Jake White. Finally, Megan Campbell presented a paper based on her Master’s research, supervised by Jan Knoetze, which has been accepted for publication in an international journal and which looks at repetitive symbolic play as a therapeutic process.