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226THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHPorot does not evade this contradiction and in the April 1939issue of Sud Medical et Chirurgical he states, in collaborationwith his pupil Sutter, currently professor ofpsychiatry in Algiers:"Primitivism is not a lack of maturity, an interrupted developmentof the mental psyche. It is a social condition which hasreached the end of its evolution and is a logical adaptation to alife different from ours." Lastly, the professors address the verybasis of the doctrine: "This primitivism is not only a conditionresulting from a specific upbringing, its foundations go fardeeper, and we believe its substratum must lie in a specificconfiguration of the architectonics, or at least of the dynamichierarchical organization of the nervous system. We have observedthat the impulsiveness ofthe Algerian, the frequency andnature of his murders, his permanent criminal tendencies andhis primitivism are no coincidences. We are in the presenceof a coherent pattern of behavior and a coherent lifestyle whichcan be explained scientifically. The Algerian has no cortex, orto be more exact, like the inferior vertebrates he is governedby his diencephalon. The cortical functions, if they exist, areextremely weak, virtually excluded from the brain's dynamics.There is therefore neith~r mystery nor paradox. The colonizer'sreluctance to entrust the native with any kind of responsibilitydoes not stem from racism or paternalism but quite simply froma scientific assessment of the colonized's limited biologicalpossibilities,"Let us end this overview by requesting Dr. Carothers, an expertfrom the World Health Organization, to conclude with hisfindings throughout Mrica. This international expert collectedhis primary observations in a book published in 1954.41Dr. Carothers practiced in Central and East Africa but his findingsmatch those of the North Mrican school. For the internationalexpert, "The Mrican uses his frontal lobes very little. AllCOLONIAL WAR AND MENTAL DlSORDERS227the peculiarities of Mrican psychiatry can be envisaged in termsof frontal idleness."42In order to make his point clear Dr. Carothers establishes avery vivid comparison. He puts forward the idea that the normalMrican is a lobotomized European. We know that the Englishspeakingschool believed they had found a radical therapy fortreating certain serious mental illnesses by practicing surgicalincision in the front of the brain. This method has been abandonedsince discovering the major damage it caused to the personality.According to Dr. Carothers the similarity between thenormal Mrican and the lobotomized European is striking.After having studied the work of various researchers practicingthroughout Mrica, Dr. Carothers gives us a conclusion thatestablishes a uniform concept of the Mrican. "These are," hewrites, "the data ofthe cases that do not fit the European categories.They are culled from several parts of Mrica - east, west, andsouth -and, on the whole, the writers had little or no knowledgeof each other's work. Their essential similarity is therefore quiteremarkable."43Before concluding it is worth pointing out that Dr. Carothersdefined the Mau-Mau revolt as the expression of an unconsciousfrustration complex whose recurrence could be scientificallytreated by radical psychologically appropriate methods.So it was the unusual behavior such as the Algerian's recurringcriminality, the triviality of the motives and the murderous andalways highly bloody nature of the quarrels that posed a problemfor observers. The proposed explanation, which is now taughtas part of the curriculum, seems in the last analysis to be as follows:The configuration of the North Mrican's brain structureaccounts for the indolence of "the native," his mental and socialinaptitude as well as his virtual animal impulsiveness. Thecriminal impulsiveness of the North Mrican is the transcription41 J. C. Carothers, The African Mind in Health and Disease: A Study inEthnopsychiatry (World Health Organization).42 Ibid., p. 157. 43 Ibid., p. 158.