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These Erlebnisse are repressed in the unconscious.
What do we see in the case of the black man? Unless we make
use of that frightening postulate—which so destroys our balance—
offered by Jung, the collective unconscious, we can understand
absolutely nothing. A drama is enacted every day in colonized
countries. How is one to explain, for example, that a Negro
who has passed his baccalaureate and has gone to the Sorbonne
to study to become a teacher of philosophy is already on guard
before any confl ictual elements have coalesced round him? René
Ménil accounted for this reaction in Hegelian terms. In his view
it was “the consequence of the replacement of the repressed
[African] spirit in the consciousness of the slave by an authority
symbol representing the Master, a symbol implanted in the subsoil
of the collective group and charged with maintaining order in it
as a garrison controls a conquered city.” 5
We shall see in our section on Hegel that René Ménil has made
no misjudgment. Meanwhile we have the right to put a question to
ourselves: How is the persistence of this reaction in the twentieth
century to be explained when in other ways there is complete
identifi cation with the white man? Very often the Negro who
becomes abnormal has never had any relations with whites. Has
some remote experience been repressed in his unconscious? Did
the little black child see his father beaten or lynched by a white
man? Has there been a real traumatism? To all of this we have
to answer no. Well, then?
If we want to answer correctly, we have to fall back on the
idea of collective catharsis. In every society, in every collectivity,
exists—must exist—a channel, an outlet through which the forces
accumulated in the form of aggression can be released. This is
the purpose of games in children’s institutions, of psychodramas
in group therapy, and, in a more general way, of illustrated
magazines for children—each type of society, of course, requiring
its own specifi c kind of catharsis. The Tarzan stories, the sagas of
twelve-year-old explorers, the adventures of Mickey Mouse, and
all those “comic books” serve actually as a release for collective
5. A quotation borrowed from Michel Leiris, “Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti,” Les
Temps Modernes, February, 1950, p. 1346.

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