Week 7

Question 1

Intro to colonialism

Answer 1

• Both historic and contemporary
• Not exclusively European, post 16th C. variant particularly worth of attention
• European colonialism positions itself as kind/ helpful

Question 2

Loomba: Colonialism

Answer 2

colonialism as “the conquest/ control of other people’s land and goods”

Question 3

Justifying the Colonial Project

Answer 3

Psy-disciplines generated knowledge and scientific “facts” that have helped to facilitate colonialism

Question 4

Fanon: Colonial Project

Answer 4

North Africans imagined as incapable of controlling impulses, exercising self-discipline

Question 5

Gordon: Colonial Project

Answer 5

African reasoning ability as inferior

Question 6

Corothers: Colonial Project

Answer 6

African mind “childlike”, incapable of handling responsibility of democracy, diminished frontal lobes

Question 7

Ernst: Colonial Project

Answer 7

construction of asylums in India “contributed to maintenance of self-image of British as superior people whose charitable humanitarianism and rational, scientific achievements made colonial rule appear morally beneficial/ legitimate”

Question 8

Psy-ences and slavery

Answer 8

Psy-disciplines facilitated slavery by reinforcing notion that some racial groups “natural state” was one of servitude/ inferiority

Question 9

Drapetomania

Answer 9

where slaves run away: give food, clothes, and limited social time to “cure” (framed as an issue with the individual NOT their treatment)

Question 10

Dysaethesia Aethiopica

Answer 10

destroying farm equipment/ slacking

Question 11

Constructing Race

Answer 11

Colonial psy has tended to approach colonized patients not as individuals, but as racial stereotypes: in doing so helped to build very notion of racial differences
- Residential schools premised upon idea that race-based mindsets existed and could be (needed to be) fundamentally reshaped

Question 12

Vaughan: Constructing Race

Answer 12

psy’s greatest contribution to colonialism was its framing of “normal mind” of Africans, rather than a pathological one

Question 13

Kocher: Constructing Race

Answer 13

argued that violence inherent to Islamic culture; assimilation of Frenchness would resolve it

Question 14

Facilitating Colonialism

Answer 14

• Psy world also important to bureaucratic machine of colonialism, providing system to categorize/ classify people
• By producing assessments on “Indigenous psychologies” psy-discipline conferred an imagined rationality, further justifying “civilizing mission”
• Such technologies provided rationale for intensified colonial violence

Question 15

Kloos: Facilitating Colonialism

Answer 15

implied “control” where colonial authorities often struggled to achieve it

Question 16

McCullogh: Facilitating Colonialism

Answer 16

Carothers warned that British “civilizing mission” would be futile

Question 17

Native Madness

Answer 17

• Psy argued that mental illness was comparatively rare among Native populations due to “simplicity”
• Eg. depression and African continent
• “Civilization” despite being ostensible goal of colonial regimes, framed as the cause of madness itself
• most continued to receive traditional care

Question 18

Carothers: Native Madness

Answer 18

Mau Mau result of mental pathology

Question 19

Ernst: Protecting the colonizer

Answer 19

• Diagnosis of British worked to uphold image of superiority; those whose behaviour threatened this image were repatriated
• “Going native” cause of concern; sign of insanity and potential cause of it
• Eg. marrying native, adopting culture, etc.

Question 20

Racial differences in care

Answer 20

• India: full segregation, better facilities for Europeans, hard labour only for Indians, etc.
• Often differences in treatment (white = psychologic / Indian = somatic)
• Canadian Indigenous patients were sterilized under eugenics laws at high rates

Question 21

Sandowsky: Care differences

Answer 21

Nigeria had no treatment for locals into 1950s (prison/ asylum = the same)

Question 22

Swartz: Care differences

Answer 22

black people more likely to die of infections because of asylum housing

Question 23

How did psy play role in framing resistance as insanity

Answer 23

• As care care was carceral, added “benefit” of removing agitators
• Psy positioned madness as individual pathology, rather than reflection of colonial context
• Cynical act OR reflection of colonial worldview? (THIS IS STILL HAPPENING)
• NOT necessarily evil: just wanted to push ONLY their own culture

Question 24

Dick: Suppressing dissent

Answer 24

pibloktoq = “arctic hysteria” built off of 1 white interaction with an Indigenous woman

Question 25

Kloos: Suppressing dissent

Answer 25

Atjeh-moorden blamed on “primordial” character of Acehnese and their tendency to insanity

Question 26

Swartz: Suppressing Dissent

Answer 26

those who disrupted economic order subject to clinical attention/ treatment

Question 27

Contemporary manifestations

Answer 27

Indigenous individuals still overrepresented in mental health systems
- “Modern suicide crisis” as mental health concern?
- “Intergenerational trauma” as a diagnostic concept?
- Individualized social problem of colonialism

Question 28

McGibbon: Contemporary manifestations

Answer 28

“psychiatrization” mental health problems as apolitical, devoid of social context
- Oppression produced mental illness, yet reads impacts as individual and not political

Question 29

psychiatric dimensions of colonialism

Answer 29

• Inferiority, shame, inefficacy
• Colonizer culture/ practice as superior, modern, dignified
• Assimilation not possible, at best “3rd class” status achievable

Question 30

Conclusions

Answer 30

• Significance of psy disciplines not only that they define psychiatric deviance, but they define what is normal
• Many ideas propagated by colonial psychiatry outlive formal colonization itself

Question 31

Christopher & Hickinbottom: Conclusions

Answer 31

human science always reflects socio-cultural setting of those that set disciplines’ norms and standards
- In context of colonialism, science produced by psy justified, facilitated and maintained