Page 200 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 161

She turned toward a fi re. It was the fi re round which the Negroes were
dancing. She wanted to know the chief, and she approached him.
One Negro who had stopped dancing started again, but in a new rhythm.
She danced round the fi re and let the Negroes take her hands.
These sessions have clearly improved her condition. She writes to her
parents, receives visits, goes to the fi lm showings in the hospital. She takes
part in group games. Now, when some other patient plays a waltz on the
piano in the day room, this patient asks others to dance with her. She is
popular and respected among the other patients.
I take this passage from the notes of another session:

She began to think about the circles again. Each was broken into a single
piece, on the right of which something was missing. The smaller circles
remained intact. She wanted to break them. She took them in her hands
and bent them, and then they broke. One, however, was still left. She went
through it. On the other side she found she was in darkness. But she was
not afraid. She called someone and her guardian angel came down, friendly
and smiling. He led her to the right, back into the daylight.
In this case, the waking-dream therapy produced appreciable
results. But as soon as the patient was once more alone the tics
returned.
I do not want to elaborate on the infrastructure of this psycho-
neurosis. The questions put by the chief psychiatrist had brought
out a fear of imaginary Negroes—a fear fi rst experienced at the
age of twelve.
I had a great many talks with this patient. When she was ten
or twelve years old, her father, “an old-timer in the Colonial
Service,” liked to listen to programs of Negro music. The tom-
tom echoed through their house every evening, long after she had
gone to bed. Besides, as we have pointed out, it is at this age that
the savage-cannibal-Negro makes his appearance. The connection
was easily discernible.
In addition, her brothers and sisters, who had discovered her
weak point, amused themselves by scaring her. Lying in bed and
hearing the tom-toms, she virtually saw Negroes. She fl ed under
the covers, trembling. Then smaller and smaller circles appeared,

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