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History
and Systems of Psychology
PSY502
VU
Lesson
41
PSYCHOLOGY
IN THE THIRD WORLD
Third
world countries are
considered those regions and
countries that gained
independence and self-rule
after
World War II. Some of these
countries were under the direct occupation of the
European countries
and
America; some others were
under the control of other occupying
forces. These countries
included
Pakistan
and India, most of the
countries in Africa, some in the
Far East as Vietnam and
Indonesia, and the
biggest
of them all was China. Where
the II World War brought numerous
sufferings to mankind, it also
resulted
in freeing most of these regions
and countries form the curse
of modern slavery or colonialism.
Frantz
Fanon (1925-1961)
Frantz
Fanon
Post
World War II psychologists
have asked themselves a question if being
colonized by a foreign power, it
influences
the psyche of the people of the region? Frantz Fanon
was one of such
psychologists. Fanon
worked
in Algeria as a psychiatrist. Algeria is
a country in South American continent which
was previously a
colony
of France. With reference to
psychology in the Third World, Fanon is a
prominent contributor.
Frantz
Fanon was a black African
who was educated in France,
specialized in psychiatry and
joined a
hospital
in Algeria. Frantz Fanon's relatively short
life yielded two potent and
influential statements of
anti-
colonial
revolutionary thought, Black Skin
White Masks (1952) and
The Wretched of the Earth
(1961),
which
have made Fanon a prominent
contributor to postcolonial
studies.
Fanon
was born in 1925, in a
middle-class family, in French
colony of Martinique. He left
Martinique in
1943,
when he volunteered to fight with the
Free French in World War II
and he remained in France
after
the
war to study medicine and
psychiatry on scholarship in Lyon.
Here he began writing
political essays and
plays,
and he married a Frenchwoman. Before he
left France, based on his
lectures and experiences in
Lyon,
Fanon
had already published his
first analysis of the effects of
racism and colonization,
"Black Skin, White
Masks"
(BSWM), originally titled "An Essay
for the Disalienation of Blacks". Fanon
died in 1961.
He
tried to look at mental
diseases and also at the
struggle of the colonized people of Algeria. As a
result of
his
practice and observation he came to
have some interesting ideas
which are included in his
two famous
books.
His books are available
worldwide and have been
translated into Urdu as
well.
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History
and Systems of Psychology
PSY502
VU
He
put forward the view that as
a result of occupation, a region or country
comes to have two types
of
people:
·
The
colonizer
·
The
colonized
Both
the colonizer and the colonized have
different psyches. Colonizer is the
aggressor who tends
to
dominate
the colonized. The colonized on the other hand is
obviously meek and receptive
towards the
colonizer
who tends to impose him.
Another important aspect of the
colonizer, colonized relationship is
that
the colonizer considers himself superior and the
colonized inferior. This means that the
practices, views
and
beliefs of the colonizer are supported as superior by
him while the colonized also
accepts this. Further
the
colonizer also considers his culture
superior and the colonized agrees.
As
a result of this division of
superiority-inferiority, people feel anger
and rage. This anger
and rage is
expressed
in various forms such as political
turmoil, protests against the
rulers etc. The rage is
significant
because
it is not directed against the
real culprit, the colonizer, but
against each other. The
colonizer uses
this
tool to keep a hold on the colonized. In
other word, in order to ease
his survival the colonizer
facilitates
the
flow of this rage against the colonized,
by dividing and directing it against
religious sects, tribal
belongingness,
language and other cultural
differences.
When
the colonized adopts the ways of thinking
of the colonizer, this adoption in Fanon's
view is called the
"Colonial
Mentality".
Colonial mentality is considering the
culture, language and the general
way of life of
the
colonizer as superior and considering
these of the colonized as
inferior.
Fanon
put forward the view that
mental disease is the result of
rage of the colonized on one hand and
the
adoption
of colonial mentality on the other
hand. He saw in his practice
that when some of his
mental
patients
started to fight or take
part in the struggle to free
Algeria from the French
control, they started to
rid
themselves of their diseases
also, so his suggested method of
treatment was to make his
patients
conscious
of their rage and their
acceptance of colonial mentality and
prepare them to wage a battle
against
the
colonial powers. An important
thing to note in this regard is
that the battle may not be
fought with guns
only,
but also in schools and
colleges by advancing in education; in
hospitals by advancing in research
and
developing
new medicine etc.; and in
games and sports
also.
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