The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust, 2024
/The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust’s unique initiatives center on promoting healthy parent-child attachment, offering an emphasis on transference and appreciation for the influence of the unconscious. Ububele’s approach is firmly rooted in the lived experiences of Johannesburg and Alexandra’s community of over 500,000 people overburdened by harsh poverty, serious crime, corruption and apartheid’s lasting impacts. The resulting mental health challenges place a strain on mothers and caregivers struggling to overcome historically deficient and discriminatory systems.
Ububele trains intern psychologists and psychotherapists and expands capacity by educating social workers, nurses, lay counsellors (directly from the community), teachers and clinic staff. The education emphasizes the transference relationship and the necessity of working beyond the surface. This psychoanalytically informed psycho-emotional support gives children, young people and their caregivers the capability to succeed in life and break inter-generational cycles of emotional poverty and mental health despair.
The organization’s teachings reach a wide audience owing to professional lectures, media, and consultation with interventionists from across the world seeking to implement similar interventions in their settings, such as Pakistan. The organization has also had a significant presence at World Association for Infant Mental Health conference, the American Zero to Three Fellowship Program, and the International Developmental Pediatrics Association.