Publications by authors named "Roelf van Niekerk"

Ahmed Kathrada (1929-2017), an anti-apartheid activist, political prisoner, and parliamentary politician had been at the centre of South Africa's liberation struggle for six decades and is remembered as a soft-spoken, strong-willed and incorruptible freedom fighter. This psychobiography uses the career development framework of Jeffrey Greenhaus and the ecological human development systems framework proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner to investigate and illuminate Kathrada's life history. Kathrada was purposively selected as subject due to his extraordinary contributions to the liberation struggle.

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Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) was a moral development specialist and moral teacher. He is considered an exceptional individual due to the success he obtained from developing his . Throughout Kohlberg's life, there was a reciprocal influence between Kohlberg's development and the sociocultural influences of his time, guiding his life story.

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Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, born in 1938, is Africa's first elected female head of state. She navigated stressful and traumatic events, including bullying, domestic abuse, persecution, a civil war, witnessing the effects of genocide and navigating a patriarchal system. Nonetheless, Johnson-Sirleaf's determination established her as a global icon who played a significant role in women's empowerment.

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The existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) lived an extraordinary life. He witnessed and experienced acts of anti-Semitism, persecution, brutality, physical abuse, malnutrition, and emotional humiliation. Ironically, through these experiences, the loss of dignity and the loss of the lives of his wife, parents and brother, his philosophy of human nature, namely, that the search for meaning is the drive behind human behaviour, was moulded.

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The study investigates Sol Plaatje's (1876-1932) spiritual wellness across his lifespan. He was purposively sampled due to his impact upon South African society. As an intellectual, novelist, journalist, and politician, Plaatje was also a founder member of the South African Native National Congress, which later became the African National Congress.

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This comparative psychobiographical study provides an in-depth exploration of meaning in the lives of two extraordinary individuals, Helen Suzman and Beyers Naudé. A comparison of the construction of meaning, as an important aspect of wellness within the holistic wellness model, is given for these South African anti-apartheid activists. Suzman (1917-2009) dedicated her career to opposing apartheid policy as a parliamentary politician.

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This article serves as the editorial to the Special Issue of Europe's Journal of Psychology that focusses on "Creating a meaningful life: Psychobiographical investigations." The introduction provides a brief overview of the articles that offer original and innovative approaches to the growing research area of psychobiography, meaning and identity from different theoretical, methodological, disciplinary and socio-cultural background.

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The dark sides of personalities have gained importance during the past two decades. Psychobiography deals with the life of extraordinary individuals throughout the life span by applying selected theories to analyse specific life aspects. This study uses Theodore Millon's (1990, 2011) personality theory to explore the life of Ferdinand Karl Piëch (1937-2019), an Austrian engineer and business executive who was the chairman of the executive board of the Volkswagen Group (1993-2002) and the chairman of the supervisory board from 2002 to 2015.

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Holistic wellness theories conceptualise wellness as a multidimensional and synergistic construct. The term wellness refers to a way of life oriented towards optimal health and wellbeing in which body, mind, and spirit are integrated by the individual to live life fully within the human and natural community. The proposed incorporate five life tasks that are influenced by seven life forces that are, in turn, influenced by global events.

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Background: Globally the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has become more apparent. Prevalence on the African continent remains unknown. There is a call for further research into ASD in Africa as well as means to make early diagnosis and intervention possible.

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