Red Medicine Frantz Fanon w/ Adam Shatz
Jan 23, 2024
Adam Shatz, writer and editor who authored a biography of Frantz Fanon, explores Fanon’s life as psychiatrist, revolutionary, and thinker. They discuss Fanon’s therapeutic innovations, his ties to anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, and why his ideas resonate today with movements like BLM and Palestine. The conversation traces intellectual roots, psychiatric writings, and the political role of the clinic.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Teaching Fanon In Prison
- Shatz taught Fanon to men in a maximum-security prison through the Bard Prison Initiative and found deeply engaged, mixed-race students.
- Prisoners connected Fanon's descriptions of the gaze and humiliation to their lived experience behind bars.
Saint-Alban's Influence
- Saint-Alban's wartime resistance and therapeutic innovations shaped postwar radical psychiatry.
- Fanon learned about these practices and later applied and adapted them in his own clinical work.
Exploded Transference Concept
- Tosquelles's group therapy idea replaced one-to-one transference with a collective caring dynamic called collectif soignant.
- Fanon adopted this 'exploded transference' model to reshape psychiatric practice toward social healing.
