Chapter 5 Flashcards
(26 cards)
What can Fanon’s critical psychology be called?
Psychopolitics.
Define psychopolitics.
An explicit politicisation of the psychological.
An awareness of the role politics (relations of power) play within the domain of the psychological.
Name 2 approaches of psychopolitics:
- The politics of psychology.
- The psychology of politics.
Fanon’s main focus:
The juxtaposition of black and white within the context of colonisation.
Trans-historical.
Across all historical settings.
What did Fanon believe?
Black people desire to be white.
Define NEUROSIS.
An emotional disorder, manifest at the level of personality, which stems from the conflict between a fundamental impulse and the need to repress this instinct.
Define neurosis of blackness.
The ‘dream of being white’, since the conflict exists of being in a black body and living in a racist society makes this dream impossible.
What’s the difference between Freud’s and Fanon’s concepts of neurosis.
Freud’s concept of neurosis is rooted in individual psychology, WHEREAS, Fanon’s is more explicitly social psychological phenomenon specifically within the context of colonisation.
What’s the difference between Freud and Fanon’s causes of neurotic disturbances?
Freud believed that to look at the CAUSE of neurotic disturbances, one should look at the child’s history.
- neurosis is linked to physical trauma and multiple repeated traumas.
Fanon states that neurosis of black peoples can be fantasised, it doesn’t have to happen in the real.
Define collective catharsis.
A psychological process where distressing or damaging emotional material is “purged”.
Define scapegoating.
Projection of blame onto another person or object, who then becomes blameworthy for something I am guilty for. It is a way of avoiding guilt and responsibility.
Define projection.
Process by which aspects of the self, or impulses or wishes are imagined in something or someone else. The person can avoid confronting certain truths about themselves - functions as a means of avoiding guilt.
Where does cultural neurosis of race exist?
On the surface.
According to Fanon why does racism arise?
Due to a person’s need to deal with feelings of guilt for the violent acts and oppression perpetrated on a certain racial group.
Fanon developed 2 terms to explain the relationship between psyche and society:
Internalisation = process of turning external reality into internal and subjective reality.
Epidermalization = underscores the transformation of economic inferiority to subjective inferiority.
2 basic psychoanalytic notions of phobogenic object:
1- phobic object
2- ambivalence
Define ambivalence.
Phenomenon in which powerful emotional reactions seem to coexist with contrary impulses.
Give 2 examples of ambivalence.
Love and hate.
Fear and attraction.
Define phobogenic.
Fear causing person or object.
How do we respond to the phobic object?
With paranoid anxiety.
Define collective unconscious.
Idea that all human beings share a supply of innate ideas.
Define European collective unconscious.
Fanon’s adaptation of the Jungian notions by saying the collective unconscious is not dependent on innate/hereditary, but rather dependent on the imposition of a culture.
Define racial distribution of guilt.
A way of attempting to compensate for one’s own experiences of oppression.
Projection on another group.
