The Mythical Mind and the City: Ethnology, Decolonisation and the Birth of Ethnopsychiatry in New Caledonia (1967–1991)

Summary This article explores New Caledonian ethnopsychiatry’s origins amid the 1960s socio-economic boom, Kanaks migration to Nouméa and decolonisation struggles. During this time, the city of Nouméa became a colonial laboratory for psychiatric knowledge, wherein the impact of urban development on mental illness, a fundamental trope of transcultural psychiatry, could be examined. The article reviews 1967–1991 works by psychiatrists and ethnologists in New Caledonia. It describes how the reappropriation of Kanak culture by colonial psychiatrists reified it and depoliticised Kanak struggles taking place during that same period. Specifically, it discusses how the revisiting of Maurice Leenhardt’s ‘mythical mind’ by twentieth-century psychiatrists, in the backdrop of New Caledonia’s independence movement, supported the view that Kanaks couldn’t assimilate into urban life. The article also highlights Dr Georges Zeldine’s writings, showcasing how his pursuit of humanist psychiatry ironically aligned with far-right opposition to Kanak independence.