The Wretched of the Earth

This last part shifts the focus from the social impact of colonization to the psychological one. As practicing psychologist, Fanon observed and treated firsthand a wide range of cases caused by various aspects of the liberation struggle. In the following subsections he attempts to classify them by their symptoms and gives specific examples.

Fanon calls these five cases “mental disorders of the reactionary type” (204).

In the first example a taxi driver, who married for duty rather than love, and who has a young daughter, gets involved with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), Algeria’s nationalist political party. After his involvement is discovered, he is forced to flee the city and hide in the countryside. After some time he learns that the French police took his wife for interrogation and that she was raped repeatedly by her interrogators. Such a fate is considered extremely shameful for the woman, and by extension, her husband. After learning this the taxi driver feels great shame and guilt, particularly because he does not love his wife and did not treat her particularly well. Anything related to her, such as sex, becomes repugnant, resulting in his impotence.

The second example concerns the sole survivor of a village massacre who saved by the FLN.