The Psychology of Slavery

                James Sweet does something very interesting in his work Domingos Alvares: African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World. While reading, I was quickly reminded of my final last semester for Historiography in which a certain grouping of second wave feminists turned towards psychoanalsis as a means to understand Gender History. Though James Sweet’s analysis of the African slave trade and Domingos doesn’t enter such a realm, the connection in my mind is distinct. In adhering towards his goal of understanding “the ways that Africans and their descendants engaged European institutions and ideas, [and] employing them for their own ends” (4) he makes it clear that he wishes to observe the events surrounding Domingos from a heavily African viewpoint. (41) In doing so, something new arises that I feel we haven’t encountered to such a degree in the works covered thus far. This is the ‘psychology’ of slavery.

                I hear have used the term psychology in a broad sense to mean that he places much emphasis on the minds of the enslaved. Mental health is described and brought up time and time again to such an extent that I find it core to much of Sweet’s analysis. To start with, he engages in an investigation into African identities in relation to their local religions or voduns and its connection with military conquest and the formation of new identities such as Mahi. Sweet correlates the military conquest of Dahomey to one based off of the psyche. He strips the events of their traditional materialistic investigations and applies to it the lens of the psyche.

                Mental health as a concept comes up again and again. He speaks of it during the conquests and the treks to the coast. The capture, enslavement, and transportation of slaves cost a psychological toll as much as it did physical and Sweet makes this well known. He accentuates this even further with the stories of perceived European cannibalism and the treatments of the slaves by the slavers. As these slaves arrive in their new places of work, they already start creating new experiences, new bonds, and new identities that reshape their sense of self. This directly impacts European institutions and ideologies. In a sense, as we have done several times, I would argue that Sweet believes in the power of ideas as the agent of historical change. He never rejects a materialistic understanding, but definitely adheres to the psyche.

                This brings up an interesting debate in historical analysis. As historians we are taught to stay out of the realm of psychology. We can better understand what people mean, intend, report, and portray. But, to delve into a specific individuals psychology is out of the realm of historical methodology for a number of reasons. I find it interesting, however, that more historians don’t utilize psychological approaches to populations and peoples. I mean this insofar as describing the slaves in such terminology as “depressed” and “ptsd”. It is quite evident, to me, that these peoples suffered greatly from such afflictions when put into such dire circumstances. To state that Domingos himself suffered from any of these mental afflictions would be purely conjecture from a historical analysis. This is self-evident, but I still believe these terms to be useful and yet wholly missing in such a dialogue.