Generational Progression

During the Algerian War, Frantz Omar Fanon found his practice of treatment of native
Algerians ineffective due to the continuation of the horror of a colonial war. He
emphasized about the social origin of traumas, joined the liberation movement and
urged oppressed people to purge themselves of their degrading traumas through their
collective liberation struggle. He made the following remarks in his letter of resignation,
as the Head of the Psychiatry Department at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria:
"If psychiatry is the medical technique that aims to enable man no longer to be a
stranger to his environment, I owe it to myself to affirm that the Arab, permanently an
alien in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalization." Inculcation of
horror and anxiety, through widespread torture, massacre, genocide and similar
coercive measures has happened frequently in human history. There are plenty of
examples in our modern history. Tyrants have always used their technique of
"psychological artillery" in an attempt to cause havoc and confusion in the minds of
people and hypnotize them with intimidation and cynicism. The result is a collective
trauma that will pass through generations. There is no magic formula of rehabilitation.
Page 67 of 137