The Politics of Ethnopsychology

During the Long Moment of Decolonization

To what extent did the end of the colonial empires pose a challenge to the human sciences, and with what implications? On a worldwide scale, debates in the age of decolonisation took place about the nature of the human psyche, its universality and particularity. Notions of culture and race were negotiated in fora such as the World Health Organization and across various strands of the psychological disciplines. This discussion examines the case of a small group of Swiss psychoanalysts who belonged to the anti-fascist generation of the European left and who conducted psychoanalytic conversations in West Africa from the 1950s onwards. The group’s publications were widely received by the New Left after 1968. The case study aims to contribute to a new understanding of how decolonisation impacted the political and intellectual landscape of Europe, and more generally the history of psychology.