ABSTRACT
Mannoni is a French psychoanalyst who worked as a civil servant in Madagascar, the French possession off the eastern coast of Africa that gained its independence soon after the Second World War. This chapter presents Mannoni's psychological reports. He reports the result when individuals in a static and primitive society, first involuntarily and then voluntarily, become attached to members of a very advanced culture. And he reports the intensification of anxiety when these asymmetrical attachments are threatened with severance. Madagascar, as it approached independence, Savagery was perpetrated by both colonials and colonized—by categories of people whom colonials respectively deem civilized and savage. Mannoni concentrates on the tension inside men of ancient and primitive culture who can no more readily return to it after living with people of advanced culture than a teenager can return to childhood.
