SW13

• Sikolohiyang Pilipino


  Filipino Psychology, efforts of Filipino psychologists and social scientists to indigenize Psychology in the Philippines
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino started


  1960s
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino crystallized into a distinct movement

  Mid-1970s
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino continued to flourish in the 21st century
• Critical-emancipatory social science


  Broad outlines that Sikolohiyang Pilipino is based on
• Liberated and liberating psychology


  What Sikolohiyang Pilipino is meant to be and has proven to be
• Critical psychology


  Sikolohiyang Pilipino may be a unique type of in the Philippine setting
• Examination of Sikolohiyang Pilipino

  1. Academic and cultural circumstances that led to the movement

  2. Aims

  3. Methodologies

  4. Advocacies

  5. Theoretical contributions

  6. Establishment of professional organizations, research programs, and curricular offerings
• The movement from the traditional academic psychology as taught in the universities was brought about by dissatisfaction with too much emphasis on Western theories particularly on the tendency for quantification to emulate the scientific method to examine human phenomena
• The end of the colonization period in the Philippines brought with it the beginning of a post-colonial psychology that focused on indigenous knowledge, practices, and methods
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino


  • Decolonization-indigenization as two-pronged objective
  • Cross-fertilization with other indigenization movements (Pilipinolohiya and Pantayong Pananaw)
• The founders of the three indigenization movements (Virgilio Enriquez, Prospero Covar, Zeus Salazar) were all present in the launching of the first conference of the Pambansang Samahan sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino (PSSP, or National Association of Filipino Psychology) in 1975
• Alfredo Lagmay and Armando F. Bonifacio, from the University of the Philippines, were also present at the launch of PSSP in 1975
• All three founding fathers of indigenization (Enriquez, Salazar, Covar) had their post-graduate training abroad
• Upon their return from schooling abroad, the founding fathers saw the incongruity of teaching, advocacy, and practice of psychology in the Philippine context guided by Western concepts and theories drawn from experiences and histories of people from elsewhere
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino


  • Challenged or questioned the social relevance of dominant Western psychological perspectives and theories
  • Highly critical of the various exclusions of Western psychology, specifically the exclusions of local and indigenous notions and practices of well-being
• Constructive action plan for Sikolohiyang Pilipino

  1. Psychological concepts, theories, and methodologies based on local sources and resources

  2. Researches on, or with meaningful relevance to, different realms and aspects of Filipino ways of life

  3. Support mechanisms and professional associations set-up

  4. Links established with similar attempts in the Third World, Southeast Asia, Asia, Latin America, and parts of the world where many Filipinos have migrated
• Recently, Sikolohiyang Pilipino has diversified its theoretical-practical engagements in response to global neo-liberal transformations affecting social relations and in the light of political, economic and environmental uncertainties
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino's sustained critique of Western-originated psychology and advocacy of a necessary connection between theory, context and practice, could count it as a variant of critical psychology from the Philippine geo-political region
• Literature on Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP)


  • Papers/reports solely on SP (Pe-pua, 2006; Pe-Pua & Protacio-Marcelino, 2001)
  • SP as a topic under reports/assessments of bigger movements (psychology in the Philippines (A. Tan, 1999); the indigenization of psychology in the Philippines (Church & Katigbak, 2002); the Philippine social sciences (Bautista, 1999; Miralao, 1999))
  • SP in relation to nativist-poststructuralist debates on Filipinology vis-à-vis Filipino-American identities (Mendoza, 2006/2002)
  • SP in relation to Filipino counterdiscourses to Eurocentrism in the social sciences (Alatas, 2006)
  • Papers by V.G. Enriquez and Z. Salazar in edited volumes on SP (Protacio-Marcelino & Pe-pua, 1999; Pe-pua, 1995/1982) or Philippine psychology (Bernardo, Sta. Maria & Tan, 2002; Church & Katigbak, 2002)
  • Major works foundational to SP, Pilipinolohiya and Pantayong Pananaw (V.G. Enriquez (2008/1992, 1994); Z. Salazar (1996a, 1996b, 2000, 2004); P. Covar (1998a, 1998b, 1998c))
  • Papers from PSSP conferences
• Brief history of mainstreamed psychology in the Philippines
• Psychology was introduced during the early part of American colonization (1900s)
• The first department of psychology was instituted at the University of the Philippines only in 1926
• Psychology was initially taught as rational psychology or philosophical psychology at the Royal-Pontifical University of Santo Tomas
• In 1938, the UST Experimental Psychology Laboratory was established, which had influenced a clinical, medical, and physiological orientation to psychology in the 1970s
• The psychology taught in Philippine universities was basically North Atlantic in orientation – German (Wundt, Freud) and/or American (positivist, experimental, relying on quantitative methods)
• Positivist-experimental psychology eventually became mainstreamed due to several factors
• Mainstreamed psychology


  The psychology that universities often teach and that clinicians, researchers, and consultants most often practice
• Mainstreamed western psychology


  Scientific-experimental, quantitative, behaviorist psychology or positivist psychology that carries with it a host of questionable assumptions about the world, about human beings and about knowledge
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP)


  The psychology born out of the experience, thought and orientation of Filipinos, based on the full use of the Filipino culture and language
• SP has to articulate a counter-history of indigenous psychology in the Philippines that is situated in an insider account of Philippine history
• The lifeways, worldviews and value systems, folk anatomy and physiology, and concepts of well-being of the pre-colonial Filipinos have been a subject of inferences and conjectures to the best explanation, based on relevant records, sociolinguistic studies, ethnography, and archaeology
• The babaylan/katalonan were medicinal priests/priestesses who administered over the harmonious relationship between the different dimensions of a person and could have been the Philippines' 'proto-scientists'
• SP, in tandem with Pilipinolohiya and Pantayong Pananaw, has through the years generated the most sophisticated and thorough formulation of alternative theorizing in psychology and the other social sciences
• Theorizing from the ground up was based on traditional Filipino knowledge, beliefs, and values that were recovered from misrepresentations and denigration by Western social science
• Kapwa


  A 'super-ordinate concept', the 'core concept that would help explain Filipino interpersonal behavior' which encompasses both the categories of 'outsider' and 'one of us'
• Enriquez uncovered eight levels of intersubjective interaction, based on the core concept of kapwa, which led to the formulation of indigenous methodologies and methods of research
• Many researches requiring the breaking of barrier between the researcher and research partners, especially women's studies have benefitted from these methodological innovations
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP)


  • Aims to unearth eight levels of intersubjective interaction, based on the core concept of kapwa
  • Formulates indigenous methodologies and methods of research
  • Strategies for collecting information include pagmamasid (Observation), pakikiramdam (feeling your way through), pakikilahok (participation), pagtatanong-tanong (informal interview), pakikipagkuwentuhan (informal conversation), and samasamang talakayan (focus group discussion)
  • Uses indigenous language which is disarming and nonthreatening for indigenous researchers
  • Guiding principles are that the level of interaction or relationship between the researcher and participants determines the quality of data, and researchers should treat participants as equal or superior, not as guinea pigs
• Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) was institutionalized with the founding of the Pambansang Samahan ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino (PSSP), or National Association of Filipino Psychology, in 1975