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216 THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHCOLONIAL WAR AND MENTAL DISORDERS217that the national consciousness will disintegrate. The individualis "knocked" into shape. The individual's reward is being sparedtorture or being allowed to eat.a. You must confess you are not a member of the FLN. It hasto be shouted collectively and repeated for hours.b. Then you have to confess to being in the FLN and nowadmit it was wrong. Down with the FLN.Then comes the next stage: the future of Algeria is French, itcan only be French. Without France, Algeria would return to theDark Ages.Finally, you are French. Long live France.The disorders encountered here are not serious. It is the bruised,suffering body which cries out for peace and calm.SERIES DPSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERSThe increasing occurrence of mental illness and the rampantdevelopment of specific pathological conditions are not the onlylegacy of the colonial war in Algeria. Apart from the pathologyof torture, the pathology of the tortured and that of the perpetrator,there is a pathology of the entire atmosphere in Algeria, acondition which leads the attending physician to say when confrontedwith a case they cannot understand: "This will all becleared up once the damned war is over."We propose grouping in this fourth series the illnesses encounteredin Algerians some ofwhom were sent to internment camps.They can all be characterized as being psychosomatic.The name psychosomatic pathology is given to the generalbody of organic disorders developed in response to a situation ofconflict. 35 Psychosomatic, because its determinism is psychic in35 This term which expresses an idealist notion is being used less and less.The cortico-visceral terminology, in fact a legacy of Soviet research-especiallyPavlov-has at least the advantage ofputting the brain back in its place,of considering it the matrix where precisely the psyche is elaborated.origin. This pathology is considered a way the organism can respond,in other words how it adapts to the conflict, the disorderbeing both a symptom and a cure. More exactly it is generallyagreed that the organism (here again it is the former psychosomatic,corti co-visceral body) outwits the conflict using the wrong,but nevertheless economic, channels. The organism chooses thelesser evil in order to avoid a complete breakdown.On the whole this pathology is widely accepted today, althoughthe various therapeutic methods such as relaxation and suggestionare highly uncertain. During the Second World War air raidson England and the siege of Stalingrad, for example, in the SovietUnion, the number ofdisorders reported increased dramatically.We now know perfectly well that there is no need to bewounded by a bullet to suffer from the effects of war in bodysoul. Like any war, the war in Algeria has created its contingentof cortico-visceral illnesses. Except for group g below all the disordersencountered in Algeria have been reported during"conventional"wars. We found group g specific to the colonial warin Algeria. This particular form of pathology (systemic muscularcontraction) already caught our attention before the revolutionbegan. But the doctors who described it turned it into acongenital stigma of the "native," an original feature ofnervous system, manifest proof of a predominant extrapyramidalsystem in the colonized. 36 This contraction, in fact, is quitesimply a postural concurrence and evidence in the colonized'smuscles of their rigidity, their reticence and refusal in the faceof the colonial authorities.Psychosomatic Symptoms Encountereda. Stomach ulcersVery numerous. The pain is mainly felt at night accompaniedby severe vomiting, loss of weight, melancholia and depression;36 The higher one is on the neurological scale, the less one is extrapyrami.dal. Manifestly everything seems to tally.