We have since 1954 in various scientific works drawn the attention of both French and international psychiatrists to the difficulties that arise when seeking to "cure" a native properly, that is to say, when seeking to make him thoroughly a part of a social background of the colonial type. The truth- is that colonialism in its essence was already taking on the aspect of a fertile purveyor for psychiatric hospitals.
We cannot be held responsible that in this war psychiatric phenomena entailing disorders affecting behavior and thought have taken on importance where those who carry out the "pacification" are concerned, or that these same disorders are notable among the "pacified" population. Perhaps these notes on psychiatry will be found ill-timed and singularly out of place in such a book but we can do nothing about that. We shall deal here with the problem of mental disorders which arise from the war of national liberation which the Algerian people are carrying on. That imperialism which today is fighting against a true liberation of mankind leaves in its wake here and there tinctures of decay which we must search out and mercilessly expel from our land and our spirits.
#Franz fanon. imapact series
This article is part of a series for World Mental Health Day 2015. In 'Colonial Violence and Mental Disorders', he discusses the pathologies which result from colonial repression, as well as examinging their violent expression through a shocking case-study: the murder of a child of white European settlers by two of his young Algerian friends.
Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961) was a seminal publication, analysing the psychological and psychiatric effects of colonialism upon the colonised subject.
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