Analytical Psychology & Indigenous Healing Practices in South Africa: The Merging of Two Worlds

Analytical Psychology & Indigenous Healing Practices in South Africa:
The Merging of Two Worlds

3 CPD Points
Presented Online via Zoom by
Vella Maseko & Nompumelelo Prudence Kubeka

Saturday, 7 September 2024
Enrollment Fee: Non-Members: ZAR 1,200 for the full workshop
SAAJA Members: ZAR 1,050 for the full workshop
SAAJA Certificate Course Students: ZAR 1,050 for the full workshop

Please note: Registered SAAJA Members and 2024 Certificate Course students will receive a direct email containing a discount code. Please use the discount code when completing your online booking. 

About the Workshop

Most professionals skilled and experienced in treating a wide range of human conditions, are often faced with difficulties to fully understand and empathise with the plight of their African patients. 

Basic insight and knowledge of the African tradition would greatly contribute to a meaningful and productive psychotherapy session. African patients may indeed present with problems that are foreign or “strange” – and certainly unknown – to Western psychology and the uninformed Western mind. These problems include, for example: ancestry, prayer, callings, rituals, protection and cursing, dreams, and witchcraft.

The purpose of the workshop is to support professionals in mental healthcare systems to develop a better understanding of ancestral calling and traditional healing. 

The aim is to equip professionals with a basic knowledge of the ancestral world, and the problem that many African patients present with when they come to a psychotherapy consultation. Many black African patients seek help from both the psychiatric clinics/hospitals as well as indigenous healers, creating an opportunity for these two worlds to merge.

This workshop forms part of a long-standing and established SAAJA initiative of creating dialogue between Jungian Analysts and African Traditional Health Practitioners, and which forms part of the original vision of SAAJA’s founder and London-trained Jungian Analyst, Dr. Vera Bührmann. Read more about the founding principles and intention of this transformative exploration here. 

Workshop Programme

Saturday, 7 September 2024

About the Workshop Presenters

Vella Maseko is an Indigenous Healer as well as a Clinical Psychologist in private practice. She is based at Vista Psychiatric Clinic in Centurion in Tshwane (Pretoria). She received her calling to become a healer in her internship year of the Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2004.

After completing her internship at Baragwanath Hospital and Charlotte Maxeke Hospital she had to put her studies and practice in psychology on hold due to illnesses related to Ukuthwasa. 

From 2005 to 2007 she worked mainly as a facilitator and trainer. Some of the companies she worked for were MOA (Pty) Ltd where she conducted healing workshops in areas which were gutted by political violence in the 1990’s like Boipatong and Sharpeville. She also served as a consultant in a Faith Based Advisory Committee at Freedom Park Trust during the construction of Freedom Park Heritage Site in Pretoria. 

Vella was initiated and completed her training as Isangoma in 2007. In 2010 she completed her initiation into being an Igqirha (Xhosa spiritual healer) as well as Umthandazi (Faith Healer). She has been working as a Traditional Health practitioner as well a Clinical Psychologist in private practice for more than 13 years. Since 2018 Vella has been involved in a series of dialogues between Traditional Healers and Jungian Psychoanalysts who belong to the South African Association of Jungian Analysts (SAAJA). She also facilitates seminars and workshops on African Spirituality and Psychology.

Nompumelelo Prudence Kubeka is a Traditional Healer and Clinical Psychologist in private practice. Her Practice is called NPK Clinical Psychologist and it is based in Mondeor (Johannesburg). She is also a sessional psychologist at Akeso psychiatric clinic in Alberton.

Nompumelelo incorporates her work of being a traditional healer and a psychologist in her practice and adheres to the HPCSA scope of practice. She completed her magister in 2016 at University of Pretoria. After her internship at Weskoppies Psychiatric hospital, she worked at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic hospital as clinical psychologist. While completing her magister and internship at Weskoppies Psychiatric hospital, she was trained in traditional healing and graduated in 2016 as a traditional healer. Her thesis The Psychological Perspective on Zulu Ancestral Calling: A Phenomenological Study (2016, UP, Pretoria), written while she was undergoing her process, is based on her understanding of and submission to the ancestral calling.

Her work includes psychotherapy, teaching and supervising on the value of indigenous healing, African rituals and culture to professionals in universities and academic hospitals, to promote an understanding of patients especially those with ancestral calling.