Decolonzing the Psyche: the Politics of Ethnopsychology, 1930–1980

Swiss National Science Foundation Eccellenza Project
Duration: Sept. 2021 – Aug. 2026
Total funding: CHF 1’512’000.–

The project sheds new light on the world-historical process of decolonization by retracing political debates on the universality and particularity of the human psyche. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, ethnopsychology, a scientific field at the intersection of the disciplines of psychology and anthropology, emerged. Ethnopsychology provided an institutional framework for reflections and negotiations on the human psyche: was the psyche universally the same? Or was it culturally distinct? These questions – pondered by anthropologists, colonial psychiatrists, anti-imperial activists, and global mental health organizations alike – gained tremendous political urgency during the long process of decolonization. With a perspective from the history of science, the project examines how psychological experts conceptualized the psyche of non-Western people. For that purpose, we reconstruct the history of the dialogue between anthropology and psychology across three different sub-disciplines: psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and psychiatric epidemiology. A central hypothesis of the project is that ethnopsychology was a technique for attempting to come to terms with, and even to manage, the end of empire, all the while acting as a factor catalyzing it. Thus, we aim for a more thorough understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of decolonization and, especially, its impact on Europe.

Project Website: Decolonizing the Psyche

22–24 May 2024: International Conference “Re-measuring Self and Society after Empire: The Human Sciences in Decolonization”, Geneva Graduate Institute.

Keynote: Helen Tilley (Northwestern U); Papers by Nancy Rose Hunt (U Florida), Nana Osei Quarshie (Yale), Pokuaa Oduro-Bonsrah (IHEID), Sloan Mahone (Oxford), Rosa Eidelpes (U Wien), Sebastián Gil-Riaño (U Pennsylvania) Ishita Pande (Queen’s U, Ont.), Allison Sanders (EHESS), Zine Magubane (Boston Coll.), Erik Linstrum (U Virginia), Carolyn Biltoft (IHEID), Anne Schult (Washington U, St. Louis), Joshua Klein (IHEID), Ian Merkel (U Groningen), Damiano Matasci (U Genève), Leighan Renaud (U Bristol), Richard Philipps (U Sheffield), Mischa Suter (IHEID).

15–17 September 2023, Workshop “Recovering Voices? Social History and the Problem of Experience”, Geneva Graduate Institute.

Meeting of the “Social History’s Toolkit” working group: Gadi Algazi (U Tel Aviv), Simona Cerutti (EHESS), Simone Derix (U Erlangen), Michaela Hohkamp (U Hannover), Martin Gierl (U Göttingen), Margareth Lanzinger (U Wien), Joseph Morsel (Sorbonne), Simon Teuscher (U Zürich).

6– 8 October 2022: Workshop “Psychopolitics in the Era of Decolonization”, Geneva Graduate Institute.

Papers by Camille Robcis (Columbia U), Dagmar Herzog (CUNY GC), Emmanuel Delille (Centre Marc Bloch), Ana Antić (U Kopenhagen), Joshua Klein (IHEID), Pokuaa Oduro-Bonsrah (IHEID), David Robertson (Princeton), Lisa Schmidt-Herzog (U Lübeck), Romain Tiquet (CNRS), Paola Juan (U Lausanne).