Oppression and Mental Health Theme Analysis

Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is an examination of the psychological effects of colonialism. Fanon was a practicing psychiatrist in France, and later in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence—a war fought between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front between 1954 and 1962, which resulted in Algeria becoming an independent nation. Fanon was particularly interested in the psychological impact of colonialism on the colonized individual. The colonial situation, Fanon contends, is rooted in racism and violence, and it keeps the colonized living in a constant “state of rage.” Fanon explores this rage and its role as a cause of Algerian criminality, and he looks more specifically at other forms of psychological stress, such as brainwashing and physical torture, including electrocution. In Algeria, Fanon treated both Algerian torture victims and the French soldiers and officers who tortured them, and he reflects on such cases in his book. Through The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon effectively argues that the practice of colonialism is psychologically damaging to both the colonized and the colonist. 

Fanon includes several cases of Algerian patients he treated for mental illness during the Algerian War of Independence. Fanon argues that their various illnesses are “psychotic reactions,” which are directly related to the stress of colonialism. Fanon includes the case file of an Algerian man known only as B, who was treated for impotence, migraines, and anorexia after his wife was raped by a French soldier. Each of B’s symptoms and conditions are in response to the violence of colonialism and the trauma of his wife’s rape. Fanon also includes the case of S, another Algerian man who was treated for “random homicidal impulses” after surviving a massacre in his small Algerian village perpetrated by the French military in 1958. Twenty-nine Algerians were killed in the massacre, and S suffered two bullet wounds. Since the massacre, S has the urge to “kill everybody,” a desire that only began after the violent attack on his village by the French soldiers. Fanon also includes notes on a group of young Algerian children, each under the age of 10, whom he treated for adjustment disorders. The children, whose parents had been killed in the war with France, suffered from bedwetting, sleepwalking, insomnia, and anxiety, and like both S and B, their pathologies were also directly related to the psychological stress of colonialism.

Fanon also includes case notes relating to his work with colonial soldiers and officers, as well as their families, which suggests that colonialism has a negative psychological effect on both the colonized and the colonizer. Fanon includes notes on A, a young European police officer whom he treated for depression and anxiety, which began after he was expected to begin torturing Algerians on behalf of the colonial police. Like the Algerians Fanon also treated, A was likewise psychologically impacted by colonialism. Fanon, too, treated a young Frenchwoman who suffered from an anxiety disorder after her father, a civil servant, was killed during an ambush in Algeria. The Frenchwoman was disgusted and embarrassed by her father’s involvement in the oppression of the Algerian people, and she found it impossible to be proud of him. This shame is directly related to colonialism, and it has a negative effect on the young Frenchwoman’s psychological wellbeing. Lastly, Fanon includes his notes on R, a European police inspector who, after his involvement in colonialism and the oppression of the Algerian people, tortures his wife and children just as he tortured the Algerians. Like all of the patients mentioned in Fanon’s book, R suffers from a “psychotic reaction” that is directly related to colonialism.

Fanon argues colonialism “sows seeds of decay here and there that must be mercilessly rooted out from our land and from our minds.” In addition to being a moral stain on the history of Europe, Fanon underscores the psychiatric phenomena emerging from the colonial situation and advocates for colonialism to stop. Of course, at the time Fanon wrote his book in 1961, there was little evidence to suggest the colonial situation in Algeria would resolve anytime soon. “The truth is,” Fanon claims, “that colonization, in its very essence, already appeared to be a great purveyor of psychiatric hospitals.” In other words, there is no shortage of mental illness within the colonial situation.