Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind

In this history of psychiatry in colonial Africa, Jock McCulloch describes the clinical approaches of well-known European practitioners.

Jock McCulloch (Author)

9780521034807, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 December 2006

196 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.1 cm, 0.3 kg

"McCulloch has put together an important study which makes a real contribution to the history of African psychiatry." Leland V. Bell, The International Journal of African Historical Studies

In this history of the practice and theoretical underpinnings of colonial psychiatry in Africa, Jock McCulloch describes the clinical approaches of well-known European psychiatrists who worked directly with indigenous Africans, among them Frantz Fanon, J. C. Carothers and Wulf Sachs. They were a disparate group, operating independently of one another, and mostly in intellectual isolation. But despite their differences, they shared a coherent set of ideas about 'the African mind', premised on the colonial notion of African inferiority. In exploring the close association between the ideologies of settler societies and psychiatric research, this intriguing study is an attempt to explore colonial science as a system of knowledge and power.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Psychiatry and colonial practice
3. Some contemporary reviews of colonial mental health systems
4. Towards a theory of the African mind
5. Theory into practice: Carothers and the politics of Mau Mau
6. African intelligence, sexuality and psyche
7. The African family and the colonial personality
8. The elements of orthodoxy
9. From psychiatry to politics
10. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]