The Wretched of The Earth

by Frantz Fanon

  We started narcotherapy. After the third day a daily cross-examination allowed us to better understand the dynamics of the pathological process. His intellectual confusion gradually cleared up. The following are extracts from the patient’s statements:

  “God is with me . . . but he can’t have been with those who died. . . . I was damn lucky. . . . In life, it’s kill or be killed. . . . When I think I knew nothing about all that business. . . . There are some French among us. . . . They’re disguised as Arabs. . . . They’ve all got to be killed. . . . Give me a machine gun. All these so-called Algerians are French . . . and they won’t leave me alone. As soon as I try to get some sleep, they come into my room. But now I know what they’re up to. Everyone wants to kill me. But I’ll fight back. I’ll kill them all, every one of them. I’ll slit their thoats, one after the other, and yours as well. You all want to take me out, but you’ll have to think of other ways. Killing you won’t affect me in the slightest. The little ones, the grown-ups, the women, the children, the dogs, the birds, the donkeys. . . nobody will be spared. . . . Afterwards, I’ll be able to sleep in peace . . .”

  All that was said in fits and starts and he remained hostile, aloof and scornful.

  After three weeks his agitated state disappeared, but there was a disinclination to communicate and a tendency to keep to himself, which made us fear the worst. However, after a month he asked to leave so that he could learn a trade compatible with his disability. He was then entrusted to the care of the FLN’s social services. Saw him again six months later. Doing well.

  Case No. 3 —Major depressive disorder with mood-congruent psychotic features following the murder of a woman while briefly psychotic

  D — —, former student, ALN fighter, nineteen years old. When he arrived at the Center he had already been ill for several months. His symptoms were characteristic: deeply depressed, dry lips, and constantly moist hands. Heaved constant sighs. Persistent insomnia. Two suicide attempts since the onset of the disorder. During the conversation showed signs of auditory hallucination. Sometimes his gaze fixed for a few moments at a point in space while his face lit up, giving the impression he was seeing something. Incoherent thoughts. Behavior known in psychiatry as blocking where the start of a gesture or phrase is suddenly interrupted for no apparent reason. But one feature in particular caught our attention: The patient talked of his blood being spilled, his arteries drained, and an abnormal heartbeat. He begged us to stop the hemorrhage and not let them come into the hospital to “suck the lifeblood” out of him. From time to time, could no longer speak and asked for a pencil. Wrote: “Have lost my voice, my whole life is fading away.” This display of depersonalization led us to believe he had reached a serious stage.

  Several times in the course of our conversations the patient mentioned a woman who would come and persecute him when night fell. Having previously learned that his mother, whom he adored, had died and that he would never get over his loss (at that moment his voice became muffled and a few tears appeared) I turned the cross-examination to the mother image. When I asked him to describe this woman who was haunting, even persecuting, him he told me she was no stranger, that he knew her very well and he was the one who had killed her. The question was then of knowing whether we were in the presence of an unconscious guilt complex after his mother’s death, as Freud describes in his “Mourning and Melancholia.” We asked him to tell us more about this woman since he knew her so well and was supposed to have killed her. That is how we managed to reconstruct the following story:

  “I left the town where I had been a student to join the underground resistance movement. After several months I received news of home. I learned that my mother had been killed at point-blank range by a French soldier, and two of my sisters taken to the barracks. To this day I don’t know where they are. I was terribly shaken by my mother’s death. My father had died some years back, I was the only man in the family, and my sole ambition had always been to do something to make life easier for my mother and sisters. One day we went to a large estate owned by white settlers where the manager, a notorious colonial, had already killed two Algerian civilians. It was night when we arrived at his house. But he wasn’t at home. Only his wife was in the house. On seeing us, she begged us not to kill her: ‘I know you have come for my husband,’ she said, ‘but he isn’t here . . . How many times have I told him not to get mixed up in politics.’ We decided to wait for the husband. But I kept looking at the woman and thinking of my mother. She was sitting in an armchair and her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. I was asking myself why we didn’t kill her. And then she noticed I was looking at her. She threw herself on me screaming: ‘Please . . . don’t kill me . . . I’ve got children.’ The next minute she was dead. I’d killed her with my knife. My commander disarmed me and gave me orders to leave. I was interrogated by the district commander a few days later. I thought I was going to be shot, but I didn’t give a damn.24 And then I began to vomit after eating and I slept badly. After that this woman would come every night asking for my blood. And what about my mother’s blood?”

  As soon as the patient went to bed at night the room was “invaded by women,” all the same. It was the same woman duplicated over and over again. They all had a gaping hole in their stomachs. They were bloodless, sickly pale, and terribly thin. The women tormented the young man and demanded their blood back. At that moment the sound of rushing water filled the room and grew so loud it seemed like a thundering waterfall, and the young patient saw the floor of his room soaked in blood, his blood, while the women slowly got their color back and their wounds began to close. Soaked in sweat and filled with anxiety, the patient would wake up and remain agitated until dawn.

  The young patient has been treated now for several weeks and the oneiroid (nightmare) symptoms have virtually disappeared. His personality, however, remains seriously flawed. As soon as he thinks of his mother, this disemboweled woman looms up disconcertingly in her place. As unscientific as it may seem, we believe only time may heal the dislocated personality of this young man.

  Case No. 4—A European police officer suffering from depression while at the hospital meets one of his victims, an Algerian patriot suffering from stupor

  A — —, twenty-eight years old, married without children. We have learned that he and his wife have been undergoing treatment for several years to try and have children. He is referred to us by his superiors because of behavioral problems.

  The immediate rapport proved to be fairly good. The patient spoke to us spontaneously about his problems. On good terms with his wife and parents-in-law. Good relations with his colleagues at work and well thought of by his superiors. What troubled him was having difficulty sleeping at night because he kept hearing screams. In fact, he told us that for the last few weeks before going to bed he closes all the shutters and stops up the windows (it is summer) to the utter despair of his wife who is suffocating from the heat. He also stuffs cotton in his ears so as to muffle the screams. Sometimes in the middle of the night he switches on the radio or puts on some music so as not to hear the nightly din. He consequently explained to us his tribulations in great detail:

  A few months ago he was transferred to an anti-FLN brigade. To begin with he was assigned to watching a few buildings and cafés. But after a few weeks he was working almost full time at the police headquarters. That was where he came to be involved in interrogations which always implied some form of “roughing up.” “The thing is they never wanted to confess anything.”

  “Sometimes,” he went on to explain, “you feel like telling them that if they had any consideration for us, they’d cough up and not force us to spend hours on end squeezing the information out of them word by word. But you might as well talk to the wall. Every question gets the answer: ‘I don’t know.’ Even when we ask for their names. If we ask them where they live, they answer, ‘I don’t know.’ So of course we had to give them the works. But they scream too much. At first it made me laugh. But then it began to unn
erve me. Today I can tell just which stage the interrogation has reached by the sound of the screams. The guy who has been punched twice and given a blow behind the ear has a certain way of talking, screaming, and saying that he is innocent. After he has been hanging by his wrists for two hours, his voice changes. After the bathtub, a different voice. And so on. But it’s after the electricity that it becomes unbearable. You’d think he was going to die at any moment. Of course there are those who don’t scream: those are the hardliners. But they imagine we are going to kill them immediately. But we’re not interested in killing them. What we want is information. We first try and get them to scream, and sooner or later they give in. That’s already a victory. Then we continue. Mind you, we’d prefer not to. But they don’t make things easy for us. Now I can hear those screams even at home. Especially the screams of the ones who died at the police headquarters. Doctor, I’m sick of this job. If you can cure me, I’ll request a transfer to France. If they refuse, I’ll resign.”

  Under the circumstances I put him on sick leave. Since he refused to be admitted to hospital, I treated him as a private patient. One day just before our session was due to begin, I was called back to the ward for an emergency. When he arrived at my house, my wife told A- - he could wait, but he said he preferred to go for a walk in the hospital grounds, thinking he might find me there. A few minutes later, on my way back home, I found him leaning against a tree, covered in sweat and having a panic attack. I put him in the car and drove home. Once we had settled him on the sofa, he told me he had encountered one of my patients (an Algerian patriot) who had been tortured at police headquarters and who was being treated for post-traumatic stress. I then learned that this police officer had been actively involved in torturing this patient. I gave him some sedatives, which calmed his anxiety. After he had left, I visited the ward where the Algerian was being treated. The staff hadn’t noticed anything. The patient, however, was nowhere to be found. We eventually discovered him hiding in a bathroom where he was trying to commit suicide. The patient had recognized the police officer and was convinced he had come looking for him to take him back to police headquarters.

  A — — came back to see me several times, and after his condition improved rapidly he was eventually repatriated on medical grounds. As for the Algerian patriot, it took a long time for the staff to convince him he had been deluding himself, that policemen were not allowed inside the hospital, that he was tired, and he was here to be cared for, etc. . . .

  Case No. 5—A European police inspector tortures his wife and children

  R — —, thirty years old, referred himself to us of his own free will. He is a police inspector who for some weeks realized that “something was wrong.” Married with three children. Smokes a lot: three packs a day. He has lost his appetite and his sleep is disturbed by nightmares. These nightmares have no particular distinguishing features. What bothers him most is what he calls his “fits of madness.” First of all he does not like to be contradicted: “Doctor, tell me why as soon as someone confronts me, I feel like hitting him. Even outside work I feel like punching the guy who gets in my way. For nothing at all. Take for example when I go to buy the paper. There’s a line. So you have to wait. I hold out my hand to take the paper (the guy who runs the newsstand is an old friend of mine) and someone in the line calls out aggressively: ‘Wait your turn.’ Well, I feel like beating him up and I tell myself: ‘If I could get you, pal, for a few hours, you wouldn’t mess with me.’”

  He can’t put up with noise. At home he has a constant desire to give everyone a beating. And he violently assaults his children, even his twenty-month-old baby.

  But what frightened him was one evening when his wife had bitterly protested he was being too hard on the children (she had even said to him: “For goodness sake, you’re crazy. . .”) he turned on her, beat her, and tied her to a chair shouting: “I’m going to teach you once and for all who’s the boss around here.”

  Fortunately his children began to cry and scream. He then realized the full gravity of his behavior, untied his wife, and the next morning decided to consult a “nerve specialist.” He had never been like that, he says; he seldom punished his children and never quarreled with his wife. The present problem had occurred since “the troubles.” “The fact is,” he said, “we’re now being used as foot soldiers. Last week, for example, we operated as if we were in the army. Those guys in the government say there’s no war in Algeria and the police force must restore law and order, but there is a war in Algeria, and when they realize it, it’ll be too late. The thing that gets me the most is the torture. Does that mean anything to you? . . . Sometimes I torture for ten hours straight.”

  “How does torturing make you feel?”

  “It wears you out, of course • . . It’s true we take turns, but the question is knowing when to let your colleague have a go. Everyone thinks he’s just about to get the information and is careful not to hand over the customer all nice and ready for the other guy to take all the glory. So sometimes we hand him over and sometimes we don’t.

  “We even offer the guy money, our own pocket money, to get him to squeal. Our problem is, are we able to get the guy to talk? It’s a matter of personal success; we’re sort of competing. We eventually messed up our fists. So we brought in the ‘Senegalese.’ But they either hit too hard and mess up the guy in thirty minutes, or not enough and nothing happens. In fact, you need to use your head in this kind of work. You need to know when to tighten your grip and when to loosen it. You have to have a feel for it. When the guy is ripe, there’s no point continuing to hit him. That’s why it’s best to do your own work, you can judge better how you’re doing. I’m against those who get others to work the guy over and then pop in every so often to see how he’s doing. The golden rule is never give the guy the impression he won’t get out alive. He’ll then wonder what’s the use of talking if it won’t save his life. In that case you’ll have no chance at all of getting anything out of him. He has to go on hoping: It’s hope that makes them talk.

  “But what bothers me most, is this business with my wife. I must have a screw loose somewhere. You’ve got to straighten me out, doctor.”

  Since his administration refused to give him a sick leave and the patient did not wish for certification from a psychiatrist, we treated him “while on duty.” It is easy to imagine the disadvantages of such a procedure. This man knew perfectly well that all his problems stemmed directly from the type of work conducted in the interrogation rooms, though he tried to blame everything on “the troubles.” As he had no intention of giving up his job as a torturer (this would make no sense since he would then have to resign) he asked me in plain language to help him torture Algerian patriots without having a guilty conscience, without any behavioral problems, and with a total peace of mind.25

  SERIES B

  Here we have collected cases or groups of cases where the triggering factor is first and foremost the atmosphere of outright war that reigns in Algeria.

  Case No. 1 —The murder by two thirteen- and fourteen-year-old Algerians of their European playmate

  This involves a medical and legal examination. Two thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, Algerian schoolboys, are accused of killing one of their European playmates. They have admitted to the act. The crime has been reconstructed and photos included in the file. They show one of the children holding their victim while the other stabs him with a knife. The accused did not go back on their statements. We have long conversations with them. The relevant extracts read as follows:

  a. The thirteen-year-old:

  “We were not angry with him. Every Thursday we used to go and hunt together with a slingshot up on the hill behind the village. He was our best friend. He had left school because he wanted to become a mason like his father. One day we decided to kill him because the Europeans want to kill all the Arabs. We can’t kill the ‘grown-ups,’ but we can kill someone like him because he’s our own age. We didn’t know how to go about it. We wanted
to throw him into a ditch, but this might only have injured him. So we took a knife from home and we killed him.”

  “But why did you pick on him?”

  “Because he used to play with us. Another boy wouldn’t have gone up the hill with us.”

  “But he was a friend of yours?”

  “So, why do they want to kill us? His father’s in the militia and says we all ought to have our throats slit.”

  “But he didn’t say anything like that to you?”

  “Him? No.”

  “You know he’s dead now.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does being dead mean?”

  “It means it’s all over, you go to Heaven.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sorry you killed someone?”

  “No, because they want to kill us, so . . .”

  “Do you mind being in prison?”

  “No.”

  b. The fourteen-year-old:

  This boy is very different from his classmate. He is almost a man, an adult, judging from his muscular control, his physiognomy, and the tone and content of his answers. He does not deny killing either. Why did he do it? He does not answer the question, but asks me if I have ever seen a European in prison. Has there ever been a European arrested and imprisoned for the murder of an Algerian? I replied that in fact I had never seen any Europeans in prison.

  “And yet there are Algerians killed every day, aren’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why are there only Algerians in prison? How do you explain that?”

  “I can’t, but tell me why you killed this boy who was your friend?”

  “I’ll tell you. . . . Have you heard about the Rivet business?”26