Therapy of/for the Oppressed: Frantz Fanon’s Psychopolitical Pedagogy of Transformation

This chapter aims to offer an appreciative—if also critical—reading of Frantz Fanon’s contribution that encapsulates his distinctive psychopolitical perspective on therapy, and the necessary and constitutive role of personal questioning, healing and transformation for political mobilisation and change. The domain of the political, however, remains in the foreground: both the politics of therapy, and how politics enters into distress. Fanon’s interventions should be read alongside other contemporary developments in social psychiatry. There are key similarities with Group Analysis, but although Fanon acknowledges Anglo-Saxon models, he shows no evidence of knowledge of the work of Foulkes, the founder of Group Analysis. Many of Fanon’s papers, including joint conference papers and publications, were clearly interventions to promote progressive interventions within his professional community. In philosophy, Fanon has been hailed as being better than Foucault for situating his account of the social construction of identity within a specific material field of social relations.