Vignettes from ICP 2012

The 30th ICP (International Congress of Psychology) held in Cape Town at the Convention Centre turned out to be a great place to meet former colleagues, to stretch one's psychological imagination - the programme went to 350 pages - and to marvel at the international scope of psychology. There were  five and a half thousand registrants from many different countries attending dozens of parallel streams - an amazing experience. There were disciplines I'd never heard of - like psychological physics and there were so many papers in neuropsychology, one could've probably ended up passing Neuropsych 301 by the end.

I chose to go to presentations connected with Human Rights issues and also some of the keynote debates and lectures:

• There was a so-called Controversial Debate between Mark Solms (who describes himself professionally as a neuro-psychoanalyst) and Barbara Wilson - a rehabilitative neuropsychologist. I have a huge respect for Mark Solms - he is a brilliant lecturer, has actually founded a new discipline which has brought him world recognition and has done amazing things on his Solms-Delta wine farm - and here comes the but - he started off the debate by telling Professor Wilson that he was frightened of her handbag!

Human Rights Day and the Under-recognition of Robert Sobukwe

On March 21st – Human Rights Day – one of the rights we celebrate is the right of every South African citizen to move about freely in the country of their birth.
Fifty-one years ago, this was not the case – most South Africans by birth were not citizens, and the movements of all black South African men were severely restricted by the laws which governed the passes they were obliged to carry.

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe

On March 21st 1960, nonviolent protests against the pass laws were initiated by a new organization - the Pan Africanist Congress. Thousands of people gathered at police stations to burn their passes and to present themselves for arrest.
At Sharpeville a large gathering of unarmed protestors was fired on by apartheid police. 69 people were killed and many more wounded. This massacre changed the nature of the struggle in South Africa. Within a week the country was mobilized – there were mass protests, demonstrations and strikes.

Tutu, Human Rights and the Human Genome Project

Last week, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu by citing his sequenced genome pointed out how ridiculous racism really is. " I am related to the San people, so I am coloured." he said at UWC, poking fun into the current debate about how jobs should be allocated in different regions of the country. (That is, according to national racial demographics and not taking into account regional population differences)
The Human Genome Project (HGP) has provided us with the kind of information that makes me think differently about us human beings. For one thing, despite all our languages, different cultures and allegiances, we are all Africans! I love that about us. Furthermore, the most ancient genes on our planet are carried right here amongst the San people of the Namib.

The HGP was funded because it was marketed as being able to provide insights about non-communicable diseases and it is doing this more and more rapidly and also more cheaply than it did 10 years ago. This history is well documented and if you read the link, you will probably think like I did, that it'd make a terrific movie.

There are however, human rights implications that interest me just as much as the idea that drugs could be designed to counteract my particular version of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's which is probably where I am headed.