WELCOME TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY AT UCT

If you are not studying with us, but are interested in studying Psychology, we believe we can offer you an outstanding training in Psychology, certainly among the best in South Africa. We offer undergraduate training, as well as postgraduate training leading to professional registration as a psychologist. Please use this website to browse our offerings.

We are also one of the leading research departments in South Africa. Our staff members have considerable expertise in a number of areas, and have contributed important original research to national and international journals.

We strive in every way to produce the highest quality in the teaching of psychology and its research. We invite you to join us in the exploration and promotion of the vibrant discipline of Psychology.

The Department's teaching and research interests are concentrated in a number of areas. In general terms its strengths lie in clinical psychology and in research, and in more specific terms, in areas such as child development, gender, psychological trauma, social psychology, cognitive psychology, research methodology and statistics, psychoanalytic theory, and neuropsychology.

If you are already registered with us as a student, please use the links on this website to find course materials and other resources that we make available to you.

The Trickster

Sculpture in bronze,
by Bruce Arnott.
Commissioned by the University, 1987.

("What a trickster life was, and how merciless to our self-respect"
Lawrence Durrell - Constance)

Presently located in
the foyer of the Graduate School of Humanities

HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Psychology was formed in 1920 as the Department of Logic and Psychology. The first head of the Department was Hugh Reyburn, trained as a philosopher at Glasgow University. By 1950 the Department was described as "one of the most prolific sources of postgraduates on campus'. Today this statement still holds true for Psychology - please have a look at our research page.

In 1935 the Cape Town Child Guidance Clinic was established, with Reyburn as director. In 1952 Dr Vera Grover assumed the directorship of the Clinic, and in 1957 the Clinic was formally placed under the auspices of the Department. Today it is a teaching unit of the Department of Psychology, and acts as a centre for the professional training of clinical psychologists.

Hall of Fame

Hugh Adam Reyburn D.Phil (Glasgow) was appointed Professor of Logic here in 1912. He became professor of Logic and Psychology in 1920 and was instrumental in the foundation of the present department of psychology in a building now occupied by the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of Ornithology. In 1935 he established the Child Guidance Clinic, which was an outgrowth of the international Child Guidance Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Professor Reyburn headed the psychology department and the clinic until his death, at the age of 64, in 1950.

James G.Taylor M.A. (Aberdeen) was Senior Lecturer in Psychology from 1924 until 1962. He contributed an important work on the study of perception and consciousness from a behaviourist perspective.

After Reyburn, the chair of psychology was vacant until 1955 when Kenneth Hall, formerly of the Psychology Department at Barrow Hospital in Bristol, took up the appointment. Professor Hall became an internationally recognized researcher into primate behaviour, but resigned his post in 1959 out of opposition to the government's newly introduced system of university apartheid. He died tragically, aged 47, in 1965.

Kurt Danziger D.Phil (Oxford) became Professor of Psychology in 1959. He had lectured at Melbourne University Australia, the University of Natal in South Africa, and at Gadja Mada University in Indonesia. At UCT Professor Danziger had a lasting impact on psychology with his interest in social psychology. He testified in political trials on the effects of solitary confinement and took a strong stand against it. Because of these activities he was exiled, under protest, from South Africa in 1965. Kurt Danziger now lives in Canada.

Dr. Vera Grover acted as head of the department until 1967. She served as director of the Child Guidance Clinic from 1952 until her retirement in 1971.

W.D. Radloff was Professor of Psychology and head of the department from 1967 until 1974.