“The Native Is Indeed a Born Addict, but So Far He Has Not Yet Found His True Poison”: Psychiatric Theories on Overconsumption and Race in the Colonial Maghreb

Abstract

In 1937, the French psychiatrist Pierre Maréschal presented a paper on “Heroin Abuse in Tunisia,” in which he claimed that all Tunisians were “born addicts,” comparing their allegedly excessive nature with the habits of European addicts. Their predilection toward overconsumption was explained through the theory of a “primitive mentality” shared by all North Africans, proposed by the psychiatric École d’Alger. Many colonial psychiatric sources claimed that when it came to both harmful and harmless substances, Muslim North Africans either remained abstinent or consumed excessive amounts; moderate consumption was believed to be racially impossible among them. French colonial psychiatrists suggested that some of the addictions they observed among North Africans who were colonized were a direct result of French colonization. Their worldview of colonialism as a force for good was shattered by their perception that, under French influence, Muslim Algerians were newly taking up alcohol and heroin.