Narratives of Trauma

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Narratives of Trauma: Recreating a Framework for Understanding enslaved behaviour in the 19th century

A Seminar Paper by

Chrisl Anya Thomas Mphil candidate (History)

April 15th 2010

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The human mind fits itself to its situation, and to the demands which are made upon its energies. Cut off hope for the future and freedom for the present; super add a due pressure of bodily sufferings and personal degradation; and you have a slave, who, of whatever zone, nation or complexion, will be, what the poor African is … (“Negro Slavery” 8).

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Glossary of terms

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Behaviour (psychology) the aggregate of the responses, reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation

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Internalization In psychoanalytic theorizing the term is often used synonymously with introjection or identification and describes the adoption of attitudes or behaviour patterns by an individual. This individual usually attempts to take on the characteristics of someone he deems more important than himself. (Harré)

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Involution Regression to an earlier stage of development of mental or physical capacities (Sutherland)

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Involutional psychotic reaction, involutional melancholia

An obsolete term for

prolonged depression with first onset in middle or late life. (Sutherland) -

Neurosis A mental disorder, mild as compared with a psychosis, in which the patient does not lose contact with reality, and which is thought not to be due to a brain disorder. It is usually accompanied by anxiety (Sutherland)

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Maladaptive As with definitions of normal and abnormal, there is no hard-and-fast line between adaptive and maladaptive or between functional and dysfunctional: The differences are a matter of cultural standards. It is the extent to which that behaviour is damaging to the person’s or the society’s well being that matters. ( Bornstein11)

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Mania Pathological over-excitement, often involving extreme agitation, excessive optimism, restlessness, flights of idea, and incoherent speech; it can occur in the manic phase of bipolar manic-depressive disorder (Sutherland)

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Manic-depressive disorder A severe affective disorder in which the patient has episodes of depression or mania (or hypomania). (Sutherland)

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Mental Illness The state of having severely disordered behaviour, thoughts, or feelings, usually taken to exclude cases where the disorder arises from low intelligence or as a result of strokes or other direct brain injury ( Sutherland)

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Multi generational trauma Caused by the inability of the oppressed to discern truth from falsehood resulting in self-perpetuating subjugation. The oppressed eventually oppress themselves and others; the enslaved-self subjugates the free self and does so to the next generation. (Raya 321)

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Psychoanalysis A subject linked inextricably with the name of its originator, Sigmund FREUD. Freud (1916) pointed out that the word as he used it referred to three subjects: a general psychology, a treatment (a form of psychotherapy), and a research methodology. ( Harré)

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Psychohistory The application of already discovered psychological principles to historical events and persons ( Harré)

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Psychopathology The scientific study of psychological disorders (Bornstein)

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Psychosomatic In general, pertaining to something that has both bodily and mental components, but usually used more specifically of a physical symptom caused partly or wholly by psychological factors (Sutherland)

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Schizophrenia A psychosis that begins before about 45 years of age, and is marked by a great variety of symptoms, including hearing voices; feeling one’s thoughts, actions, and emotions are controlled by an outside agency; delusions; and flatness or inappropriateness of affect. (Sutherland)

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Overview

This paper introduces the reader to an alternative interpretation of enslaved behaviour. It emphasizes that the current discourse on enslaved behaviour is fragmented and inconsistent and discusses the general ways in which these behaviours have been explained and interpreted throughout the historiography. This chapter argues that extant interpretations cannot explain the totality of enslaved behaviours because they pay little attention to the concept of psychological motivation, which is a part of historical explanation. All behaviour is psychologically motivated and the psychology of an individual is dependent on his/her external environment. Most would agree that British Caribbean chattel slavery created a hostile, abusive and traumatic environment for the enslaved African. This paper attempts to create a framework in which one could argue, by means of psychoanalysis, that the trauma induced by British Caribbean Chattel Slavery influenced the behaviours of the enslaved Africans. This approach to the discourse, inserts this paper into the controversial realm of Psycho-History.

Fragmented Narratives The behaviours of the enslaved Africans are well documented within British Caribbean and even American historiography. Though in this paper the descriptions of these behaviours are specific in nature they are meant to bring to life the contradictory nature of the general notions of enslaved behaviours that exist in the literature. The writings of Lady Nugent for example portray the enslaved Africans as the “happiest set of people to have ever lived” (53). Similarly, while

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observing the enslaved Africans on his plantation, Mathew Lewis, an absentee planter in Jamaica, admitted that he never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly happy. He even gives the description of a happy and grateful enslaved African man named Strap, who according to Lewis, “thinks that he can never express his gratitude sufficiently; and whenever he meets me in the public road, or in the streets of Savannah la Mar, he rushes towards the carriage, roars out to the postilion to stop, and if the boy does not obey instantly, he abuses him with all his power; “for why him no stop when him want talk to massa?”- God bless you massa! Me quite, quite glad to see you come back, my own massa! And then he bursts into a roar of laughter so wild and so loud, that the passers-by cannot help stopping to stare and laugh too (Lewis 187). Though Mathew Lewis’ journal largely testifies to the happiness of the enslaved Africans and of the latter’s gratitude for the kind treatment received under slavery, other records question the sincerity of this happy and grateful behaviour. A correspondence between John Gladstone and James Cropper for example, contradicts the description of the “happy slave”. In fact according to Gladstone’s account of the revolt in Demerara: “wherever any resistance was made, the whites were insulted, beaten and wounded, and many so severely, that the limbs of several have since been amputated…the general conduct of the Negroes, where ever they had the superiority, was most ferocious and brutal” (“The Correspondence”). In his interpretation of the inconsistency of enslaved behaviour, Edward Long (1734-1813), a Jamaican planter, admitted that he was not at all convinced by the outwardly happy, loving and

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loyal behaviour of the enslaved Africans. In fact, from the outset Long described the enslaved Africans as, among other things, rebellious, crafty and vengeful. Long believed that In their tempers [the Africans] are in general irascible, conceited, proud, indolent, lascivious, credulous, and very artful. They are excellent dissemblers, and skilful flatterers. Their memories soon lose the traces of favours conferred on them but faithfully retains a sense of injuries: this sense is so poignant, that they have been known to dissemble their hatred for many years, until an opportunity has presented of retaliating [with] a blind anger and brutal rage… (2: 407) As one may come to realize from this quotation, Edward Long did not describe the Africans as “happy”. On the contrary, Long believed that the Africans were hateful and that if they displayed any sign of “happiness” at all it was because they were dissembling “their hatred … until an opportunity to retaliate presented itself.” One therefore notes that while some sources describe the behaviour of the enslaved Africans as happy and cheerful, other sources describe their behaviour as hateful and malicious. But descriptions and interpretations of enslaved behaviour are even more varied and inconsistent than these. Different explanations are offered in the literature for the ways in which the enslaved Africans responded to the physical brutalities of slavery. In an extract written by a Trinidadian planter concerning his embarrassing experience with an enslaved African called Raphael Faxa, one learns that the latter simply refused to obey the orders of his enslaver despite the threat of being physically punished. The planter relates that he came home one Sunday after church at around 5 o’clock expecting his diner to be fixed but instead he found that Raphael had already left for his home without making a meal for him. When he began to question Raphael, the latter raised his voice

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very loudly and insulted him. So the next Monday the planter ordered that Raphael be whipped. However, even in this was the planter robbed of his sense of justice, for Raphael Ne profera aucune parole pendant les coups qu’il recevoit, mais le fouet cessant, il resta un gros moment debout dans la meme posture, après quoi pour braver son maitre, it dit, est ce tout? Resta la quelque minutes et s’en fut!!!1 (“ The slave colonies of Great Britain”)

Interestingly, although Raphael showed no sign of being affected by the punishments inflicted upon him by his enslaver, his response is not to be expected from all enslaved Africans. While some enslaved Africans displayed behaviours that spoke of them braving their fate, others tell of the emergence of melancholic behaviours amongst some enslaved Africans. One source, for example, tells of an “old African negro” who “possess[ed] a sound and superior mind, and was reckoned the best watchman on the estate” (Negro Slavery). This man was placed to watch the provision-grounds for the use of the overseer’s house. These were robbed, and the robbery was imputed to his neglect, [and] he received a severe flogging…this flogging made a great alteration in the old man, and he never seemed well after it. In two or three weeks another robbery occurred, he

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Raphael uttered not a single sound while being flogged, but when the flogging was over, stood tall in the

same position for a considerable time longer; after which, to intimidate his enslaver, he asked “is that all?”. Stood up a while longer again, and then left. (Trans. Chrisl Anya Thomas).

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received a still more severe flogging than before…the poor old man from this time was never well or cheerful, and he soon afterwards died. (“Negro Slavery”)

Understanding enslaved behaviour It is apparent that the severe beating that the enslaved man received “altered his mind” from being a “sound” one, to one that was “never cheerful”. On a similar note, Dr Williamson, A European doctor who examined the behaviours of enslaved Africans in the 19th century, confirms that Africans were “very liable to affectations of the mind,” which he said, produced “diseases of various kinds” (“Negro Slavery”). In fact the existence of depression and despondency amongst some enslaved Africans is fairly common in the historiography. John Stewart for example mentions “a poor elderly negro woman, “who had always been recognized for “cheerfulness, alacrity and an animated attention to herself and her family” (282). According to Stewart, this woman sank “into a gloomy listlessness and despondency” after hearing the preaching of religious doctrines (282). Furthermore Stewart maintains that this woman was so depressed that “she neglected herself [and] her family [and] would not even exert herself to provide the most obvious and urgent wants”(282). When reproved for her changed behaviour, the woman replied, with a “piteous look and whining tone”, “the Lord would help his servant” (282). In the example given above, religious indoctrination, which was an aspect of chattel slavery, was said to have a behaviour altering impact on the enslaved African woman. The “unkind treatment of masters” is also used to explain abnormalities in enslaved behaviours. In the British West Indies for example dirt-eating became a fairly common practice amongst the enslaved Africans. “This disorder”, a professional planter goes on to say, “[was] one of the most obstinate and troublesome

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that negroes are afflicted with [for] it disables them from effective labour for a very considerable time, sometimes for years” (“Practical Rules”). This professional planter, as he calls himself, then stated that this fatal practise was more common amongst enslaved Africans with “unkind” masters. “Unkindness” was not the only explanation used to describe maladaptive behaviours. Lewis argued that “want of sleep and terror” could also cause the same. In his journal, one reads of a “poor negro” who “knew himself to be so great a sinner that nothing could save him from the devil’s clutches, even for a few hours, except singing hymns”(174). Lewis further remarks that this man “kept singing so incessantly day and night, that at length terror and want of sleep turned his brain, and the wretch died raving mad. (174)” In yet another source document Mr. Gilgrass, a white minister, testifies that ‘a kind of madness’ occurred amongst an enslaved African woman on his estate. But this “madness” was brought on, not by a lack of sleep or terror, but because the enslaved African woman had her two children taken away from her and sold off in quick succession. The sale of her first child caused the woman to commence “a hideous howling”, but the sale of her second child:

turned her heart within her, and impelled her into a kind of madness. She howled night and day in the yard, tore her hair, ran up and down the streets and the parade, rending the heavens with her cries, and literally watering the earth with her tears. He constant cry was, “Da wicked Massa Jew, he sell me children. Will no Bukra Massa pity nega? What me do? Me no have one child.” As she stood before my window she said, “My Massa, (lifting up her hands towards heaven,) do me, Massa minister, pity me? Me heart do so (shaking herself violently,) me heart do so, because me have no child. Me go a Massa house, in Massa yard, and in me hut, and me no see em;” and then

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her cry went up-to God. I durst not be seen looking at her ( “A defence of the Wesleyan Methodist” ).

Mr. Gilgras was not the only colonist to notice a “kind of madness” amongst the enslaved Africans. In fact Governor E. J. Murray Macgregor of Barbados sent out a despatch concerning the case of three “insane” Africans in which he stated that “physical punishment” was leading to the “mental degradation” of the enslaved population (Barbados 2: 162). The relation between physical punishment, the sale of children and “madness” is also present in American historiography. In fact in the story of Mattie J. Jackson one reads about the wife of an enslaved African man referred to in the literature as Mr. Adams. Mr. Adam’s wife “had a number of children, and Capt. Tirrell had sold them down South. This cruel blow, assisted by severe flogging and other ill treatment, rendered the mother insane, and finally caused her death” (Six Women 22). Perhaps the most thought provoking and detailed explanation for enslaved behaviour comes from the personal testimony of an enslaved African by the name of Nat Turner. When asked to give a history of the motives which induced him to plan and execute an insurrection this was in part Turner’s reply:

I had a vision- and I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened- the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in the streams-and I heard a voice saying, “Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bear it”…and on the 12th May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the

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heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first….and by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work- and until the first sign appeared, I should conceal it from the knowledge of men-And on the appearance of the first sign (the eclipse of the sun last February) I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons… immediately on the sign appearing in the heavens, the seal was removed from my lips, and I communicated the great work laid out before me to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence, (Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam)-It was intended by us to have begun the work of death on the 4th July last (Andrews 252-253). Although in many instances an attempt is made to highlight the specific event that triggered a particular behaviour amongst the enslaved Africans, like for example severe floggings there has been some attempt to offer a general interpretation of all enslaved behaviour. John Stewart, for example, made an early attempt to interpret the manifestations of enslaved behaviour. According to Stewart, “the different tribes or nations of the negroes are, like the different nations of Europe, of various characters and dispositions. Some are mild, docile and timid- while others are fierce, irascible, and easily roused to revenge” (Stewart 246). It is therefore evident that Stewart associated the behaviour of the enslaved African to the “tribe” and “nation” to which the African belonged. By 1825 there is written evidence that some of the behaviours that were manifested amongst the enslaved population were being ignored and denied by some planters for racist reasons. James Mc

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Tear of Tobago, claimed for example that not a single case of madness was found amongst the Africans. This he said was because the “disease is most common in countries where intellect is most cultivated and rarest where people make least use of their understanding. (Mc. Tear)” Other writers, opted to use pseudo medical terms to understand enslaved behaviour. In fact, by 1851, Samuel Cartwright came up with a disease which he called Dysaesthesia Aethiopis. This he described as a “disease affecting both mind and body, with ‘insensibility’ of the skin and ‘hebetude’ of mind, commoner ‘among free slaves living in clusters by themselves than among slaves in our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise etc’” (qtd. in Fernando 102). He described the symptoms of the disease as follows They break, waste, and destroy everything they handle- abuse horses and cattle,- tear, burn, or rend clothing, and paying no attention to the rights of property, they steal from others to replace what they have destroyed…They raise disturbances with their overseers and fellow servants without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subject to punishment (qtd. in Fernando 102).

Again, in the above quote one sees the racist overtones of the discourse on enslaved behaviour. Like Mc. Tear, Cartwright argues that there was no “cause or motive” behind the enslaved African’s behaviour. The racist ideologies of the 19th centuries caused observers to offer a superficial attempt at establishing what was in fact causing these behaviours amongst the enslaved. The latent struggle to explain and understand enslaved behaviours followed well into the twentieth century, when, in 1967, Orlando Patterson categorized the interpretations of enslaved behaviours into three main categories.

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Firstly, Patterson speculated that what was deemed to be enslaved stereotypical behaviour was really just “a stereotyped conception held by the whites of their slaves” (178). The notion then is that these behaviours did not really exist amongst the enslaved Africans. Instead the whites at the time were describing the Africans in this manner to bring a measure of comfort and a sense of security to themselves. Indeed, Hilary Beckles argued that “the slave owning community, considerably outnumbered by subordinate groups, devised systems of governance by which it could reproduce its dominance” (208). Furthermore he states that for the whites “to function within this environment it was necessary to psychologically read, write and imagine subordinate black[s]” (208). Secondly, Patterson reasoned that the behaviours could have also been “a response on the part of the slave to this stereotype.” (178). This assertion suggests for example, that the Africans enslaved on Caribbean plantations deliberately behaved in those ways in response to the prejudiced stereotypes that they knew the whites had of them. C.L.R. James for example noted “that the majority of slaves accommodated themselves...by a profound fatalism and a wooden stupidity before their masters” (15). These behavioural accommodations were for the purposes of resistance and survival during the period of slavery. Shortcomings of extant interpretations Though these two categories of descriptions prove useful in explaining common types of enslaved behaviour they do not adequately explain all enslaved behaviours. Madness, depression, suicide and despondency for example, cannot all be explained as deliberate responses to white prejudice. Neither can the prevalence of racism during the time period in question belittle the fact that traumatic aspects of slavery, like the separation from kin, led to the emergence of madness amongst

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some enslaved Africans. None of the aforementioned interpretations admit that there was a psychological dimension to these behaviours; in fact, although the historiography does mention religious indoctrination, beatings, lack of sleep and the breaking up of families, as triggers for behavioural changes, no category of interpretation existing in the historiography takes into account the trauma of slavery and its effect on the mind and behaviours of the enslaved Africans. For these reasons, this paper attempts to forge a framework through which one could substantiate Patterson’s third category of interpretation, which states that the behaviours displayed by the enslaved Africans were a “psychological function of the real life situation of the slave” (178).

Psycho-Analysis and History: A Review of the Literature This paper is not the first to analyse and discuss “negro” behaviour. In fact most 20 th and 21st century scholars acknowledge that maladaptive behaviour patterns are very present amongst the African diasporic population. Psychiatrist, L.K. Hemsi for example states that “mental illness, especially incidences of personality disorders, is more likely to occur amongst black West Indians than among any other group of migrants”. Similarly one finds in the 1961 report on the census of mental hospitals in the Caribbean, a list of specific behaviours that were detected amongst Caribbean people in a “patient population that was predominantly Negro”( Report 9). Of the behaviours outlined, one finds schizophrenic reactions, manic depressive reactions, involutional psychotic reactions, alcoholism, psychoneurotic disorders, personality pattern disturbances, chronic brain syndrome, syphilitic brain syndrome and mental deficiency (Report 5-7). Detailed though these reports may be, they do not explain why these behaviours were so prevalent amongst what they called the “Negro” population.

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There are other notable authors that offer explanations for the prevalence of mental illness and other psychosomatic disorders amongst the “Negro” population. Calvin Thomas, Barbara Fletcher, Frantz Fanon Barbara Bush and Michael Craton are amongst these novel writers. Calvin Thomas for example was very creative in fashioning a non medical definition for “mental illness”. He devised a formula to explain the cause of mental illness amongst the same: white fear + racist+ racism+ white supremacy = black mental illness. Thomas argues that “black people suffer from unconscious states of mental illness” (17). In one of his descriptions of the same he explains that in junior and high school, the dark complexioned Black girls with short hair caught pure hell when it came to boyfriends. Campus Cutest, band Majorette, and Homecoming Queen were titles reserved for the fair-complexioned Black girls with long or short curly hair. These girls were also the choices, at least in the daytime, of the football, basketball, baseball and track stars. The same fellows would gather themselves together at night and seek out the darker complexioned girls with short hair to have their way with them in the dark cracks of the community, totally ignoring them the next day on campus, as they laughed and bragged to other of how they had sexually exploited these darker skinned girls (19). Though admitting that he was no psychologist and that he was not trained in any field dealing with mental illness, Thomas proposes that what the aforementioned example speaks of “is some mutated form [of mental illness], mutating from the many mental illnesses people who look like me and you have suffered from since being kidnapped and brought to these American shores” (25). While it is evident that Thomas makes reference to the traumatic event of slavery, which caused

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millions of Africans to be forcibly removed from the continent and brought to the West Indies and America, his focus more so rests on modern day examples of this “mental illness” and the modern day tools that are used to perpetuate this condition. On the contrary, some authors have placed greater emphasis on attributing the sufferings and psychological stresses of African persons in the diaspora to the trauma of British Caribbean chattel slavery. Barbara Fletcher for example, in her work entitled Mental Slavery Psychoanalytic Studies of Caribbean people, argues that ‘trauma on a massive scale has been handed down through the generations [and] is still being handed down” (Introduction 7). Fletcher believed that fear, distortion of the relations between men and women, distortion of power-relations between men based on skin colour, a deep-rooted mistrust of women and emotional pain were but some of the contemporary manifestations of trauma inflicted on the race during chattel slavery. In the same vein, the wider thesis tries to provide an explanation for the prevalence of mental illness and other psychiatric disorders amongst Africans in the diaspora today, by analysing the trauma of British Caribbean chattel slavery and its impact on the behaviour of the enslaved African in the 19th century. But although Fletcher highlights slavery as an underlying cause of the psychotic illnesses she focuses on the effects of a more recent migration, from the West Indies to the United Kingdom, and her source date is taken from novels and psychiatric case studies and not from the historiography. Like Fletcher, Frantz Fanon, in his work, entitled Black Skins, White masks also uses novels and psychiatric case studies, among other sources, in his analysis of what he called the pathology of the “Negro”. Similarly, they both write about “Negro” behaviour in a fairly modern period and use psychoanalysis to better explain and clarify their findings. Fanon however has offered a more

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detailed listing of the types of behaviours that the “Negroes” in the French Antilles manifest. Using psychoanalysis, Fanon pin points the existence, of ego restriction, dislocation, affective erethism, obsession, la nevrose d’abandon and identification amongst the “Negro” French Antillean population. What is interesting, however, is that there is some evidence to show that British Caribbean historians have also used psychoanalysis to interpret historical events; perhaps even unwittingly so. In this, Barbara Bush’s and Michael Craton’s contribution to psycho-analytical study in history becomes quite commendable. In her essay entitled “The Family Tree is not cut: Women and Cultural Resistance in Slave Family in the British Caribbean” for example, Barbara Bush made mention of a type of resistance that she termed psycho-somatic resistance. Bush noted that, although prolific childbearing was honoured and fairly common in West African society, African women just arriving in the new world were usually sterile. She then sought to explain this phenomenon by resorting to psyhoanalysis whereby she explained that “certain deep and complex psychosomatic processes that inhibited childbirth may have been in operation” (125-126). Michael Craton must also be recognized for his brief analysis of the psychological dimensions of enslaved behaviour. Craton for example admitted that the enslaved Africans “resisted the white...at a high psychic cost”. This cost, he went on to explain, manifested itself in acts of “internalized rejection” which included, abortion, suicide and “even forms of madness”. In yet another publication, entitled “Jamaican Slavery”, Craton further admitted that “the social stability of the slave society depended on the psychological adjustment of the enslaved masses” (Jamaican Slavery 169-170).

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Both these historians, by using terms such as “psychosomatic” processes and by mentioning “internalized rejection” and “forms of “madness” have in a way sort to immerse themselves in a specialised form of historical writing known as psychohistory. This is particularly interesting because it evidences that although the discipline of psychohistory is a fairly modern one, the relevance of recognising the psychological dimension of all historical explanation is not entirely a new concept. Collingwood for example recognized the unique and dual nature of historical explanation. He contended that since history is sui generis, then hence by implication, historical explanation is also so. In his book entitled The Idea of History, Collingwood further elaborated that: The historian, investigating any event in the past, makes a distinction between what may be called the outside and the inside of an event. By the outside of an event I mean anything belonging to it which can be described in terms of bodies and their movements...By the inside of an event I mean that in it which can only be described in terms of thought...the historian is never concerned with either of these to the exclusion of the other. He is investigating not mere events (where by a mere event I mean one which has only an outside and no inside) but actions, and an action is the unity of the outside and the inside of an event... he must always remember that...his main task is to think himself into this action, to discover the thought of its agent (qtd. in Gardiner 46). Forging a Framework of Analysis Thoughts and psychological processes, guide the actions and behaviours of man. These psychological processes and thoughts are most times affected by one’s external environment. The trauma of British Caribbean chattel slavery, as seen for example through forced religious

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indoctrination, beatings, separations and the like all contributed to modifications in the enslaved Africans’ behaviour, leading for example to incidences of “madness” and “despondency” amongst the same. To explain the occurrence of “madness” amongst some enslaved Africans and its link to the traumatic experience of slavery, the wider thesis analyses an interesting discussion by Michael H. Beaubrun on “Cultural Change and Mental Health”. In it Beaubrun mentions that “where there was a meeting of Western and non-Western cultures, there seemed to be an increase of reported mental illness” (70). His research also reveals that “psychoneurosis and disorders of social pathology like alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide and delinquency are reported to increase...in a number of situations involving change; in particular detribalization, internal migration and sociocultural disintegration” (68). In an effort to clarify what is meant by socio-cultural disintegration, Beaubrun mentions its antithesis: Sir Aubrey Lewis’ theory on cultural advance. According to Lewis the most acceptable criteria that has been laid down for cultural advance are three: first it should satisfy the healthy psychological and physical needs of the individuals composing the society, more than did the cultural it grew out of or replaced; secondly it should promote to a higher degree the integration and stability of the society; and thirdly is should favour collective survival more (Beaubrun 69-70).

Summary

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Conclusively, one hopes to show that chattel slavery did not represent a cultural advance for the African and that the brutal nature of his contact with Western civilization contributed to a barrage of enslaved behaviours that have formerly been interpreted from, at best, a common sense view point as opposed to a psychological one. By recreating the psychological dimension of the experience of slavery and reinterpreting their behaviours through the lens of psychoanalysis, one hopes to put forth a revisionist interpretation of enslaved behaviour.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

1. "A Defence of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the West Indies, 1817." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 6. 2. Barbados. 1836. MS. CO/28/162.

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3. Beckles Hilary. Freeing Slavery, Gender Paradigms in the Social History of Caribbean Slavery. Kingston: University of the West Indies press, 2001. Print. 4. Mc. Tear, James. "Journal of a Voyage to and Residence in the Island of Tobago, 1825-1839." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1995). 5. "Negro Slavery; Or, A View of Some of the More Prominent Features of That State of Society, as It Exists in The United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, Especially in Jamaica." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 8. 6. "Notes on the Present Condition of the Negroes in Jamaica." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 2. 7. "Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves, in Sugar Colonies by a Professional Planter." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 4. 8. Ridgeway, James. "British Colonial Slavery Compared with That of Pagan Antiquity, 1830." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 6. 9. "The Correspondence between John Gladstone and James Cropper on the Present State of Slavery in the British West Indies and the United States of America and the Importation of Sugar from the British Settlements in India." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 9.

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10. "The Slave Colonies of Great Britain; or a Picture of Negro Slavery Drawn by the Colonists Themselves; Being an Abstract of the Various Papers Recently Laid before Parliament on That Subject." Microform. Slavery Tracts and Pamphlets of the West Indiana Committee (1982): reel 5. Secondary Sources

11. Andrews, William L. and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Slave Narratives. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2000. Print. 12. Beaubrun, Michael H. United States. Congress on Mental Health. Cultural Health and Mental Health. 7th Cong. Cong. Doc. London: J.&A. Churchhill Ltd, 1969. Print.

13. Bornstein, Robert F. Abnormal Psychology. 6 vols. Rochester: Grange Plc, 2005. Print.

14. Bush, Barbara. "The Family Tree Is Not Cut: Women and Cultural Resistance in Slave Family Life in the British Caribbean." In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and AfroAmerican History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1986. 117-32. Print. 15. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1968.Print.

16. Fletcher, Barbara. Mental Slavery: Psychoanalytic Studies of Caribbean People. Great Britain: Barbara Fletcher Smith, 2000. Print.

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17. Gardiner, Patrick. The Nature of Historical Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. Print. 18. Hemsi, L. K. "Psychiatric Morbidity of West Indian Immigrants." Diss. Abstract. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 2 (1967): 95-100. Print. 19. "Jamaican Slavery." Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitativve Studies. Ed. Stanley L. Engerman. California: Center for Advanced Study in Behavioural Sciences, 1975. 249-84. Print. 20. James, Cyril Lionel Roberts. The Black Jacobins : Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Random House, 1963. Print.

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25. Patterson, Orlando. The Sociology of Slavery: An analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica. London: Maggibbon &Kee, 1967. Print.

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26. Raya, Patricia Diane. "Female Genital Mutilation and the Perpetuation of Multigenerational Trauma." The Journal of Psychohistory 37.No. 4 (2010). Print. 27. Report of the Census of Mental Hospitals in the Caribbean Working Paper for the Third Conference of the Caribbean Federation for Mental Health. Working paper. Confidential. Not for Publication, 1961. Print. 28. Riviere, Emmanuel. Passive Resistance to slavery in the New World. St. Augustine: University of the West Indies, 1972. Print. 29. Six Women's Slave Narratives. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print. 30. Stewart, John. A View of the Present and Past state of the island of Jamaica; with remarks on the Moral and Physical Conditions of the Slaves and on the Abolition of Slavery in the Colonies. New York: Negro University Press, 1969. Print.

31. Sutherland, Stuart. The Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology. 2nd ed. United Kingdom: Macmillian Ltd, 1995. Print.

32. Thomas, Calvin. The Long Road from Slavery to Mental Illness, white fear + racist+ racism + white supremacy= black mental illness. California: Milligan Books, Inc. 2005. Print.

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