head games: de-colonizing the psychotherapeutic process

Head Games is focused on the way in which ethnocentrism and cultural bias can impact public health, and in this case, psychotherapeutic process. It examines a family therapy program being run by a major public university, tied to the criminal justice system and the educational establishment, aiming to reform perceived "dysfunctionality" in homes of the "patients (subjects)." What follows is a tragic comedy of errors in which theory and practice normed in one sociocultural context is applied, or more appropriately, misapplied. This book questions whether we have come as far as we think in the US in terms of calibrating our mental health systems for multicultural sensitivity and perhaps suggests there are limits to how much we can engage in cross-cultural therapy. The book uses an Africa-centered theoretical framework to tease out these systemic incongruities and will hopefully provide guidance for counselors, researchers, and those more generally interested in programmatic evaluation research across cultural lines. The title, Head Games, is an apt metaphor for the manipulation of the program by all of its participants for the purpose of reifying or resisting its inherent definitions of abnormality.

Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani serves as associate professor of sociology and Africana Studies at James Madison University. He received his BSFS degree in international politics specializing in international relations law and organization from Georgetown University (1989). He subsequently earned a master’s degree in political science (1991), a master’s degree in sociology (1992), and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Florida (1995). Dr. Imani is the co-author of The Agony of Education, a study of the experience of African students at predominantly Euro-American colleges and universities (Routledge, 1996). Dr. Imani is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Eulas C. Strong and has a son, Kamau Okembe-RA Imani, and a daughter, Kandyce Brene L’Joy Bartee.