The revolutionary group

Abstract

The doctor and anticolonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon trained in and radicalized a 20th-century clinical tradition known as institutional psychotherapy. Building on the idea of the ‘transferential constellation’, Fanon proposed that clinical work required shared world-building between patients and doctors. When this work was undertaken in profoundly politically and racially alienated contexts, like that of French Colonial Algeria, the boundaries between clinical and political transformation came ever more into question. Building on the recent translation of a new spate of Fanon’s clinical writings into English, this short paper maps the contours of Fanon’s technique, charts several productive failures in his clinical career, and narrates the changes in his practice as he joined the Algerian anticolonial struggle. In this, it suggests points of overlap and friction with other 20th-century clinical traditions focused on the group and collective, including group analysis.