JPAS: Thank you for this interview on the dynamics of the Azibo Nosology, an organized system for diagnosing disorders or pathologies of the African personality.

DAYA (Daudi Ajani ya Azibo): It is my pleasure and honor.

JPAS: For those who may not be familiar with you and your work within the field of African-centered psychology, can you please provide our readers with a brief biography, a report on how you came to the field of African-centered psychology, and more specifically, how you became involved in African-centered personality theory development?

DAYA: For an extensive account of my background and paths to African-centered psychology, see Daudi Azibo, Ph.D: Distinguished psychologist. In R. L. Williams (Ed.), History of the Association of Black Psychologists: Profiles of Outstanding Black Psychologists. New York: AuthorHouse. In brief, as an undergraduate at Rider College I began research looking into why my peers were flunking out of college at high rates. I wanted to do something about it. Psychology seemed to come natural to me and provided a way of addressing that problem and many problems that beset the African descent person (ADP).

I undertook doctoral studies in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis where I was formally introduced to African-centered perspective. There I became convinced that the African personality construct was the psychological vehicle for setting afoot the new African. So, my first three empirical research studies as a graduate student from 19791983 systematically investigated (1) sources of intrinsic motivation that correlated with the African personality, (2) just for which ADP was "Black beautiful" and (3) which ADP would behave in a "race-first" way that defended and developed ADPs. This third study was my dissertation. African-centered personality theory and theory-derived empirical research has been my focus ever since. It all derived from motivation to make life better for ADPs as a life's imperative.

JPAS: What was your thinking that informed the original the Azibo Nosology?

DAYA: I had an aha moment while yet still a graduate student studying scores of works about the African personality/racial identity. It became clear that although the various scholars were writing from different psychological frameworks, each had a piece of the picture of African personality. Some works addressed normalcy and others abnormality. The original Azibo Nosology brought all that together in one centered African personality theory, which was the linking piece that had been missing up to that time.

JPAS: Why have you decided to revisit your original thesis of the Azibo Nosology?

DAYA: Practical imperative and scholarly necessity. A cursory look at the mental state and behavioral sink (including Negro-like/middle-class-like/bourgeois overdoing or aping of Eurasian behaving as well as the mayhem, depradation, and degeneracy operating in African societies everywhere today) of ADPs en masse today screams for psychological liberation as a practical imperative. Yes? That would seem to require or benefit from a psychological tool. As I envision the Azibo Nosology II, it is a tool likened to a spear for fighting this fight. The fight goes on unless one has...