THE TRAGEDY OF POST- COLONIAL CITIZENS
Depersonalisation Syndromes among Indigenes of
Developing Nations
By:
Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, (D. Sc. in Psychometrics)
Consultant
Clinical Psychologist & Existential Family Therapist,
MD Kenez
Health Klinik & Happy Family Network International,
E-mail: saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk or Phone: 0803-9097614
Website: www.happyfamilynetwork.hapge.com
PREAMBLE:
Where I was born, we have this local
saying; ‘He who does not know where the rainfall starting beating him, will
never know where it stopped’. Another warns; “A rat that joins a lizard
in playing in the rain, to remember that when the lizard is dry, it will still
be wet.” In my culture, one does not interpret proverbs. I dare do so for
my readers who are non-indigenes of Igbo land; both idioms imply that anyone
who does not know who he is or where he is coming from will definitely not know
where he is going!
The words of the elders of my people of Biafra are definitely words of wisdom. They can write a
doctoral thesis with just an idiom or a statement of the fact with a simple
analogy!
Let’s look at these:
- The bat is totally blind and is neither an animal of the sky nor of the land!
- The bat is neither a bird nor a rodent for it hasn’t any feathers yet it flies! And though it has the anatomy of mammals and a skin with furs it neither crawls nor runs on all fours, yet it feeds like birds, amphibians and rodents!
- The bat says he knows how ugly it is, so it has resolved to fly only at night!
But
not the citizens of underdeveloped or developing nations of the world! They
have not learnt any lessons from the bat or applied that wisdom. Rather, they
fly by day or night unperturbed and even borrow feathers of all shades of colour
and revel in wearing the furs of their erstwhile colonial masters! What a
tragedy!
The picture of the bat, the only mammal that can fly captured with special
night vision camera
|
|||
bat [bat]
(plural bats)
noun
[Late 16th
century. Alteration of backe < N Germanic]
have bats in
the belfry to be slightly
but harmlessly eccentric (informal)
like a bat out
of hell extremely fast (slang)
|
Microsoft®
Encarta® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
To establish a universe of discourse I owe
you the duty of defining the most important terminology in this dissertation from
a purely western-oriented scientific point of view, but the witty elders of my
nation have dimissed it with a few pragmatic analogies.
Depersonalisation,
in clinical psychology, is a state in which an individual feels that either he
himself or the outside world is unreal. In addition to a sense of unreality,
most depersonalisation syndromes may involve the feeling that;
·
one's mind is
dissociated from one's body; that
·
the body
extremities have changed in relative size; that
·
one sees
oneself from a distance; or that
·
one has become
a machine.
Mild feelings of depersonalisation
normally occur during the normal processes of personality integration and individuation
in a high percentage of adolescents and young adults, and it need not impair
social or psychological functioning.
Such feelings may also occur
in adults after long periods of emotional stress. When such significant
social or occupational impairment continues, however, an individual is
considered to have a disorder that should be treated.
Feelings of depersonalisation
may also be present as features of some personality disorders and as symptoms of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
Depersonalisation as a
characteristic of psychological disorder is a prominent theme in existential
and neoanalytic theories of personality. The term depersonalisation has also
been used to refer to social alienation resulting from the loss of
individuation in the workplace and the community.
The irreversible loss of
personality identity of the indigenes had been subconciously programmed through
the imported brands of religion, politics, socialisation and early education
offered them by their rulers. They imbibed foreign mannerisms, through aping the
imported culture and dressing codes of their colonial masters. These habits and
traits remain intact after long years of colonisation and are not erased for
lifetimes of those individuals who grew up idolising them. To barely glimpse at
the psychological programming techniques that produced half-natives we might as
well look at the relevant subtle and subliminal methods employed by these
colonial masters.
THE
TRAGEDY OF POST-COLONIAL CITIZENS ALL OVER THE GLOBE:
The causes of
depersonalisation syndromes in human beings are obscure, and there is no
specific treatment for it. When the symptom arises in the context of another
psychiatric condition, clinicians opt for treatment that is aimed at that particular
mental illness and gradually attempt to re-integrate the patient into one
self-actualising individual over a long period of psychotherapy sessions. In
our study, however, no post-independence indigene realised that s/he even had a
depersonalisation problem. That is the irony of the scenario. Abnormality here
disappears as more than 99 % of the population are immersed in it.
In our research efforts on depersonalisation among formerly colonised
peoples, we intend to bring to consciousness the subtle and bizzarre
conditions it thrives on and then explain the hurdles that one who is immersed
in two contrasting cultures must deal with. Just like the patient in my clinic who
perceives his/her body or self as being odd, unreal, strange, altered in
quality or quantity, the colonised citizens of a country that has recently won
its independence have generalised identity crises. This state of
self-estrangement may take the form of feeling as if one is a robot designed by
dissimilar architects and constructed by two unfamiliar engineers who studied
in different universities.
The ex-colonialist is living
in a dream world. Psychologically, s/he has been uprooted half-way from her/his
sociocultural milieu and transplanted into unfamiliar territories. Having little
or no time for the transition, s/he is not in control and may never be in real control
of the environment both physically and
emotionally. Here is when, how and where the wisdom of our elders comes in.
Most post-colonial literates are never masters of their intellectual faculties.
In short, one is not in control of one's actions.
De-realisation is another variant of the problems faced
in this scenario. The feelings of unreality concerning objects outside oneself
occurs at the same time as they occur in
mental life. Post-colonial depersonalisation may occur alone in neurotic
persons but is more often associated with phobic, anxiety or depressive
symptoms emanating from learned haphazard inculturation processes. This variant commonly occurs in younger men and women
and may persist for many years after political independence has been won. This
group finds the experience of depersonalisation intensely difficult to describe
and often fear that others will think them insane. As with other neurotic syndromes, we see many
different symptoms of regressive behaviour than depersonalisation alone. (Culled from my 1981 UNIBEN Ph.D. thesis
proposal relating to the Psychopathology of Fanaticism)
THE ROLE OF COLONIAL PROPAGANDA IN DEPERSONALISATION
Propaganda is the more or less systematic
effort to manipulate other people's beliefs, attitudes or actions by means of
symbols (words, gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, insignia,
hairstyles, designs on coins and postage stamps and so forth). Deliberateness
and a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from
casual conversation or the free-and-easy exchange of ideas. The propagandist
has a specified goal or set of goals. To achieve these he deliberately selects
facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and presents them in ways he thinks
will have the most effect. To maximise effect, he may omit pertinent facts or
distort them, and he may try to divert the attention of the reactors (the
people whom he is trying to sway) from everything but his own propaganda.
Comparatively deliberate selectivity and
manipulation also distinguish propaganda from education. The educator tries to
present various sides of an issue—the grounds for doubting as well as the
grounds for believing the statements he makes, and the disadvantages as well as
the advantages of every conceivable course of action. Education aims to
inducing the reactor to collect and evaluate evidence for him/herself and
assists him in learning the techniques for doing so.
It must be noted, however, that a given
propagandist may look upon himself as an educator, may believe that he is
uttering the purest truth, that he is emphasising or distorting certain aspects
of the truth only to make a valid message more persuasive and that the courses of action
that he recommends are in fact the best actions that the reactor could take. By
the same token, the reactor who regards the propagandist's message as
self-evident truth may think of it as educational; this often seems to be the
case with “true believers”— dogmatic reactors to dogmatic religious or social
propaganda; thus “Education” for one person may be “Propaganda” for
another.
THE ROLE OF COLONIAL EDUCATION IN DEPERSONALISATION
Education is a discipline that is concerned with
methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as
opposed to various non-formal and informal means of socialisation
such as in rural development projects and education through parent-child
relationships.
Education can equally be thought of as the
transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this
sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialisation or enculturation. Human
babies are born with what ancient and modern philosophers term “tabula-raza”,
which literally translates into “a clean slate”. Their brain is a new blackboard
for teachers to write on. Imprinting begins at birth just as in birds!
Children—whether conceived and reared among the
Zulus of South Africa, Biafrans in West Africa, New Guinea tribe’s people, the Renaissance
Florentines, the Red Indians of North America or the middle classes of Manhattan in USA —are born without culture.
Education is designed to guide them into learning a culture, moulding their behaviour
in the ways of adulthood and directing them toward their eventual role in
society.
In the most primitive cultures, there is
often little formal learning, little of what one would ordinarily call school
or classes or teachers; instead, frequently, the
entire environment and all activities are viewed as school and classes, and
many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however,
the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next
becomes more than any one person can know; and hence there must evolve more
selective and efficient means of cultural transmission.
As society becomes ever more complex and
schools become, ever more institutionalised, educational experience becomes
less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in
the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a
matter of distilling, telling and learning things out of context. This
concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far
more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and
imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education,
it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization and
strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of
the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of
education.
The outcome is colonially structured formal
education—the schools and the specialists called the teachers, lecturers and
professors become agents of transferring colonial hierarchy of values. The
worst hit by this variant are those who travel overseas to study in home
countries of the colonial masters! As scholarships abound, many of these
indigenes study in other countries and on return what we have are professors
still tied to the apron strings of the varied backgrounds vaunting their
foreign accents. That is the beginning of the confusion that results in
depersonalisation syndromes among the elite! One can only begin to imagine the
role confusion the students they produce will bear for the rest of their lives
after studying in a department where lecturers who studied in Britain, Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and USA groomed them for bachelors,
masters or doctorate degrees! That is depersonalisation unlimited forever!
THE ROLE OF COLONIAL PROPAGANDA IN RELIGION & POLITICS
The archaeological remains of ancient
civilizations indicate that dazzling clothing and palaces, impressive statues
and temples, magic tokens and insignia, elaborate legal and religious arguments
have been used for thousands of years, presumably to convince the common people
of the purported greatness and supernatural prowess of kings and priests. Instructive
legends and parables, easily memorised proverbs and lists of commandments (such
as the Analects of Confucius, the Judaic Ten Commandments, the Hindu
Laws of Manu, the Buddhists' Eightfold Noble Path), and highly selective
chronicles of rulers' achievements have been used to enlist mass support for
particular social and religious systems.
Very probably, much of what was said in
antiquity was sincere, in the sense that the underlying religious and social
assumptions were so fully accepted that the warlords' spokespersons, the
pharaohs' priests and their audiences believed all or most of what was
communicated and hence did not deliberate or theorize very much about
alternative arguments or means of persuasion. The systematic, detached and
deliberate analysis of propaganda, in the West, at least, may have begun in
Athens about 500 BC, as the study
of rhetoric (Greek: “the technique of orators”). The
tricks of using sonorous and solemn language, carefully gauged humour, artful
congeniality, appropriate mixtures of logical and illogical argument, and
flattery of a jury or a mob were formulated from the actual practices of
successful lawyers, demagogues and politicians.
The earliest ethical teachers such as Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle compiled rules of rhetoric thus; (1) to make their own
arguments and those of their students more persuasive and (2) to design an effective counterpropaganda
against opponents and also (3) to teach their students how to detect the
logical fallacies and emotional appeals of demagogues. The spread of all
complex political systems and religions probably
has been due very largely to a combination of earnest conviction and the
deliberate use of propaganda.
This mixture can be detected in the recasting
in various times and places of the legends of the Judaeo-Christian messiah, of
heroes of the Hindu Mahābhārata, of the Buddha, of the ancestral
Japanese Sun Goddess, of the lives of Muḥammad and his relatives, of the
Christian saints, of such Marxist heroes as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin,
and even in the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Scattered and sometimes
enlightening comment on political and religious propaganda has occurred in all major
civilisations. They refer to such propaganda stratagems as the seizure and
monopolisation of propaganda initiatives, the displacement of guilt onto others
(scape-goating), the presentation of oneself as morally superior, and the
coordination of propaganda with violence and bribery. For all these the
primitive people that colonialists met on arrival had no answers. Therefore,
they were disadvantaged! They could not resist!
A RETURN
TO THE BASICS IN TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IS THE PANACEA
The role of primitive education in pre-colonial cultures had all along been ignored by the prejudiced notion that the people are uncivilised. The colonialists were always in a hurry to teach them their own modes of socialisation. In their selfish interest to communicate their political structures so as to maximise their economic profits, the first thing that the subjugated people must be taught is their own language. Next is their taxation rule! This is the genesis of the depersonalisation process. Any therapeutic remedy that ignores a return to the original traditional educational programme is bound to fail. The abrupt truncation of this traditional education was, is and will still be the remote cause of de-realisation syndromes in post-colonised mentality.
So let us explore this notion and witness what most anthropologists found out!
“The purpose of primitive education
is to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a
marked emphasis upon training for citizenship, because primitive people are
highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the
thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from pre-puberty to
post-puberty. Because of the variety in the countless thousands of
primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform
characteristics of pre-puberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are
practiced commonly within cultures.”
Therefore, I dare affirm that the term; ‘education’
can also be applied to primitive cultures in the sense of enculturation, which is the process of cultural
transmission. A
primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a
relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The
model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one
generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education,
it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive
cultures.
Children
actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their
participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead
has called empathy, identification and imitation. Primitive children, before
reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their
teachers are not strangers but, rather, their immediate community.
In contrast to the spontaneous and rather
unregulated imitations in pre-puberty education, post-puberty education in some
cultures is strictly standardised and regulated. The teaching personnel may
consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are
his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated
from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other
initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate's deep
attachment his family and by the initiation programme steering away to
establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his kindred’s culture.
The initiation “curriculum” does not usually
include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural
values, tribal religion, myths, philosophy, history, rituals and other
knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge
constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal
membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the
most prominent place. It is the deliberate removal or omission of inculcating these
traditional values in present-day indigenes that constitutes the crux of the
depersonalisation and de-realisation syndromes!
THE PROPER ROLE OF PRE-COLONIAL EDUCATION IN AFRICA
Education
is the process, which provides the young with the knowledge, skills, and values
that a society believes are necessary. Various forms of traditional education
have existed in Africa for hundreds of years before the arrival of the first white man on our
shores. Traditionally, education is usually
information about survival in one’s cultural milieu. The child learns from his
parents and from elders the importance of traditional religion and customary
law. He learns the traditions and history of his people. He imitates the habits
and customs of his parents and elders. Over a period, he learns the customs and
the way of life of his people. In some communities when the child grows up, he
has a short period of formal instruction with his age mates in an initiation
school and may perform some sort of initiation ceremony before he is accepted
as an adult member of the community.
Formal education in modern times takes
place in nursery, primary and secondary schools; followed by institutes, colleges
and universities modelled after western styles. These teach young people the
skills and knowledge that will be useful in getting a job.
The economic development of a country
depends on the quality of these schools and universities, and on the quality of
their teachers, pupils and students. If a country does not have enough skills,
the country cannot develop. Therefore, governments treat education as an
investment for the future. Governments, therefore usually work out some form of
educational planning.
For example, in 1973 the National Council
of Education in Nigeria met in Lagos to establish a national policy for education. They discussed two important ideas: should
the government provide education for its own sake to develop the full
personality of the pupil? Or should education prepare pupils to
undertake specific jobs which will change their environment. The conference
decided that both were essential and drew up a 4-year plan that had specific
aims.
A government has to decide how much to
invest in education, and how much each part of the educational system will
receive. For example, in the Nigerian 4-year development plan that started in
1973, the government decided to spend about 278 million naira (about 140
million pounds sterling) on education. This was about 13.5% of the total budget.
The government decided to spend about 67 million naira on primacy education,
about 57 million on secondary education, about 24 million naira on technical
education, about 26 million naira on teacher training, about 82 million naira
on university education and about 20 million naira on adult and other forms of
education.
Different educationists have different
ideas about which part of the education system is important. Many believe that
primary education is the most important. Many of the newly independent governments
would like primary education to become free and compulsory for all the children
in their county. This would naturally lead to free secondary education. Others
say that technical, scientific and agricultural educations are more important. They
argue that a developing country needs skilled farmers, engineers, doctors,
plumbers, mechanics and electricians so that it can develop faster and more successfully.
However, not many of the developing countries
have programmes for adult education yet. Some educationists say that much
education takes place outside the school – at home, on the job, in adult
programmes, in agriculture and health and in other forms of community
development. They say that unless there is adult education, it will be
difficult to get rid of illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, hooliganism and diseases
among the older members of a country. Governments of these newly independent
nations also have to decide which regions of their county will receive money
for education.
“A common problem in all countries of Africa is the difference
between education in the big cities and education in the rural communities. Schools
in the community claim that they do not receive enough money and that most city
teachers do not want to come and work in the rural areas of the country. Each
government tries to work out a system of education that is best suited to its
own country. They work out how much they can spend, how much they will give to
each part of the educational system and to each region of their county and they
try to keep as their basic aim the need to produce skilled people who will find
useful jobs and help their county to develop.”
(Ref. African Encyclopaedia (1974) Oxford University Press)
You can see that no one ever mentions education in
traditional values of the indigenes. It is presumed that education only refers
to acquisition of foreign languages, dress codes, science subjects, religious
knowledge and mannerisms that shows that one is now as ‘civilised’ as the
colonial masters. There lies the trap. Top government officials are equally
suffering from depersonalisation syndromes!
BRIEFS ON SOLUTIONS TO THE UNDER-DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA
Africans in the African colonies
were indoctrinated with the notion of the inherent supremacy of European
culture through everyday interaction with Europeans and through the few
colonial schools Europeans established. The political systems of the indigenous
African peoples were transformed, as traditional African rulers were usually
forced to act as pawns of the colonial administration. Colonialism also had a
major economic impact on Africans, as agricultural commodities, minerals, and
people were usually exported from the African colonies to Europe and the New World rather than being used for the
direct benefit of Africans. Roads, bridges, ports, and other facilities were
built only to facilitate this export trade.
Slavery and the colonial system
were hated by Africans and were institutions that the Pan-African movement, a
socio-political organisation embracing citizens across the globe, arose to combat.
Pan-Africanism also developed to overcome the obstacles facing the African
Diaspora—a scattered, diverse and often disadvantaged population of people of
African descent who were born in and were living in Europe and America. Pan-African thinkers maintained that, although they were
dispersed throughout the world, African people and people of African descent
were a unified people and should try to work together for the good of all. Had
that noble objective been allowed to succeed, the issue of these psychopathologies
we are discussing here could have been nipped in the bud. However, this was not
to be, as the initiators were forced to capitulate by foreign political and
religious administrators! The organisation was stifled by colonial legislations
and outright assassinations of the vibrant leaders who were seen as threats to
dominance!
In 1957, Ghana became the first
sub-Saharan African state to gain independence and the dynamic Nkwame Nkrumah
became its first prime minister. Nkrumah held the Pan-Africanist view that the
independence of Ghana would be incomplete without the
independence of all of Africa. To work toward this goal, he appointed Padmore to establish a
Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government. “The secretariat
pursued the twin goals of total African independence and continental political
union in two series of international conferences, held between 1958 and 1961:
First, the All-African Peoples’ Conferences were held to stimulate independence
movements in other African colonies. Second, Nkrumah organized the Conferences
of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the
political union of Africa. By inviting representatives from independent North African states to
the conferences and by holding the 1961 All-African Peoples’ Conference in
Cairo, Egypt, Nkrumah’s intent was clearly to unite the entire African
continent.”
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1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
KENEZIAN THERAPEUTIC CONCLUSIONS
Since peoples of African descent all over the world face
similar socioeconomic and psycho-political challenges, we need to form a
consortium of eggheads who will strive to create better futures for our
descendants. If the earlier international cooperation and shared strategies for
bringing about social change are the legacies of the founders and protagonists
of Pan-Africanism, what are the present generations of African intellectuals
waiting for?
The only vehicle that
transmitted the culture of a people prior to colonial policies is today excised
by the current craze of nursery and kindergarten education given to our
children in urban cities. None of the urban urchins ever learns or will ever know
the traditional folklores or idioms that our ancestors used to teach morals to
the youths! Even among parents who were the beneficiaries of university
education, no one makes the effort to nip in the bud the enslavement of his/her
children to these depersonalisation antics
used by their erstwhile colonial masters that caused this estrangement to
authentic African culture. Some children are even barred from speaking their mother
tongue, so that they will be more fluent in the foreign one. Even in the rural
areas, misguided youths brag about their acquisition of foreign accents and
inability to pronounce native names! This is a disaster! It is a shame!
The modern African literary writer thus only uses tradition as
subject matter rather than as a means of affecting continuity with past
cultural practices. The relationship between oral and written traditions and in
particular between oral and modern written literatures is one of great
complexity and not a matter of simple evolution. Modern African literatures
were born in the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn
from Europe rather than existing African traditions.
These halfway measures must stop if we aspire at reclaiming what has
been lost through many decades of colonial domination by the whites. We cannot
afford the luxury of aping them in everything we do or depend on finished
products and services from developed economies. To institutionalise therapeutic
measures will be difficult until Africans realise the depth of mental
enslavement all of us are in!
One social area where we are still mentally enslaved that has
refused us independence is RELIGION. Only Professor Chinua Achebe identified this factor early and bemoaned
its affront on the culture of his people:
“That night the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth
of the clan, weeping for her murdered son. It was a terrible night. Not even
the oldest man in Umuofia had ever heard such a strange and fearful sound, and
it was never to be heard again. It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept
for a great evil that was coming – its own death.”
The
writings of 20th-century Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe consider the impact of
the modern world on traditional African culture. Achebe earned international
renown with his first book, Things Fall Apart (1958), a novel set in eastern Nigeria under British colonial rule in the late
1800s. In the book, an exiled tribal leader returns to his village after seven
years, only to find that colonial laws and the Christian religion have weakened
the identity of the tribe. An actor recites this excerpt from the novel.
© Microsoft
Corporation. All Rights Reserved./(p) 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
It was and still is a tragedy that despite our high-sounding
academic degrees and literary prizes won at international circles, the majority
of Africans who studied abroad as well those at home are still victims of
depersonalisation and de-realisation syndromes! Like the earlier attempts at
Pan-Africanism, the present crops of intellectuals from independent African
nations, owe it a duty to their children and posterity to fashion indigenous
curricula that can douse the raging flames of neo-colonialism sweeping across
the nations of Africa.
This writer, a consultant clinical psychologist, is calling
on all who have benefited from tertiary education to deploy what they acquired
for the liberation of our kith and kin that do not realise that they are still
mentally colonised! Here, I rest my case!
Rev.
Prof. J. J. Kenez, a.k.a. Dr J. K. Danmbaezue, D. Sc.
The Vessel of the Holy
Spirit of the Creator & Medical Scientist/Therapist,
Telephone: 0812-7546470, 0803-9097614
or 0805-1764999
