Psychological knowledge in a colonial context: Theories on the nature of the "native mind" in the former Dutch East Indies.

Abstract

This article analyzes the views of 3 Dutch physicians working in the former Dutch East Indies during the first part of the 20th century. These physicians based ideas about the nature of the normal indigenous psyche on both their analysis of Indonesian individuals suffering from mental illness and on casual observations that represented widely shared cultural stereotypes. On that basis, they advocated a psychological colonial policy, which was to be based on a scientific understanding of the psyche of the Indonesian people. Using these ideas, they advocated political repression, justified inequality and racism, and limited educational opportunities for Indonesians. Representatives of the Indonesian nationalist movement vigorously protested against these ideas.

Women's Struggle Against Colonial Imperialism in the Tetralogi Novel Bumi Manusia by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

“…All these realities escape from newspaper coverage, this is deliberately covered so that the Natives remain silent not to resist and remain under the rule of Dutch colonialism. The colonial people did not want that reality to open their eyes and inspire the Indies natives [9].…”

“…History recorded for centuries, Dutch colonialism Hinda alienate the Native fighters who are considered to hinder his goal. Exile-exile against the Native warriors is one of the efforts to drain the nation's natural resources [9].…”

Suggestions of Power: Searching for Efficacy in Indonesia's Hypnosis Boom

“…While Mesmer believed his therapies to be physiological in nature, others, such as Braid, considered them psychological phenomena caused by “suggestion,” “autosuggestion,” and “imagination.” This latter stance became dominant following the publication of Hippolyte Bernheim's influential writings on suggestion and by 1900 had become orthodoxy (see Borch ; Mayer ; Stäheli ). It was brought to the Netherlands East Indies by colonial psychiatrists and administrators, who saw in Indonesian animism and sorcery beliefs evidence of a highly suggestible native mind (Pols ). But although such conceptions of hypnosis and suggestion informed colonial policy and practice, and were latched onto by Indonesian nationalists—Mohammad Hatta (, 266–67) famously proclaimed his countrymen victims of a “colonial hypnosis”—substantive engagement with psychological discourses of hypnosis has, until recently, remained the preserve of a highly educated minority.…”

The naturalization of psychiatry in Indonesia and its interaction with indigenous therapeutics

“…Many studies critically document the development of psychiatry in the West (Foucault 1965;Doerner 1981;Digby 1985) and also in the colonies (Arnold 1988; Ernst 1991Ernst , 1997Pols 2006). All of them show that psychiatry's culture (Littlewood 1996) is itself part of, and has been influenced by, local political cultures.…”

“…It is uncertain how prevailing ideas about race manifested themselves in these asylums (see Ernst 1997;Littlewood and Lipsedge 1982), but we can presume that the late nineteenth-century colonial understanding of natives as childlike and backward (Gouda 1995) was at work, not just in hospital conditions, but also in the rhetoric used to describe these patients (Pols 2007).…”