Psychoanalysis is a relatively recent activity in Martinique. West Indian intellectuals studying in Paris in the 1930s nevertheless showed an early interest in it. Martinican students could thus declare, in the review Légitime defense (Legitimate defense): "As for Freud, we are ready to use the immense machine for dissolving the bourgeois family that he set in motion."

The poetic works of Aimé Césaire began to be published in 1939 and were hailed by André Breton as "The greatest lyrical monument of our time [. . .] a general abdication of the mind." There is a definite influence of a Surrealist version of psychoanalysis on a poetic project that set as one of its major goals the exploration of the depths of the black psyche.

Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist, criticized psychoanalysis in 1952. He claimed that Freud, Jung, and Adler had not thought of blacks in their research. Similarly, he saw the Oedipus complex as being impossible in West Indian families. For more than twenty years the complex conflicts surrounding decolonialization in the West Indies were to make Fanon's critique the breeding ground for resistance to psychoanalysis in the name of a cultural determinism with uncertain principles. The few people who took any interest in psychoanalysis had no more than a bookish knowledge of it.

The first psychoanalytically-informed work in Martinique began in 1973: interpreting children's drawings, a seminar directed by the French child psychiatrist Bernard Bousquet. But the true beginning of psychoanalysis in Martinique dates from 1974. It derived from the presence of a Swiss couple, Pierre and Lucette Stittelmann, two non-physician psychoanalysts. Shipwrecked on their way to the Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea), they had to land on the island. Their stay was extended until 1980. The Stittelmanns had been trained by and were members of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society (affiliated with the International Psychoanalytical Association [IPA]). They thus provided analysis, training and supervision for all who wished to become psychoanalysts.

In October 1975 the first psychoanalytic group came into being: the Groupe antillais de recherche, d'étude et de formation psychanalytique (GAREFP; The West Indian Group for Psychoanalytic Research, Study and Training), the founding members being Héliane Bourgeois and Luce Descoueyte, along with Mrs. Marcel Manquant and Mrs. Raymond Saint-Louis Augustin. From 1975 to 1980 this group worked to secure theoretical training of its members with analysts from the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, affiliated to the IPA. Among the members were Florence Guignard, Jean Bégoin, René Diatkine, and Michel Neyraut. There was also an initial collaboration with Roberto Fontaine of Venezuela for transactional analysis. Dr Mauriello, a Martinican psychoanalyst living in Quebec, also contributed to the effort.

Following the trauma occasioned by the departure of the Stittelmanns in 1980, the GAREFP developed a Lacanian orientation that increased with time, some of the founding members having decided to withdraw from the group.

December 1990, saw the birth of another association, the Forum, the founding members being Benedetta Jumpertz, Marcel Manquant, and Guillaume Suréna. It organized the first Martinican symposium on psychoanalysis in March 1991. It organizes training for its own members and is not affiliated with any external psychoanalytic associations. Its members come from various different backgrounds but it sees Freud's work as its cornerstone. In this sense it could be said to identify with the IPA orientation, although it is not a member.

The absence of West Indian doctors and academics is easily noticeable. Twenty-five years after the introduction of psychoanalysis, there were only two Martinican psychiatrists practicing psychoanalysis there and the two existing associations had been founded by non-physicians. Psychoanalysis has no direct influence on either the medical or the academic world. The paramedical and in the psycho-educational sectors have displayed a certain amount of interest.

As of 2005, psychoanalysis does not yet play any significant role in West Indian culture. It is not present in questions of national identity, literary debates, or political aspirations. Martinican psychoanalysis has not yet created distribution networks. A very small number of individuals have written clinical and theoretical papers but there has been no substantial contribution to psychoanalytic theory.

This psychoanalysis is evolving in isolation in relation to the Caribbean, like Martinique itself. There are a few practitioners in Guadeloupe, but no organized movement. Our ignorance of what is happening in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries is proportionate to the divisions established by five centuries of European rivalry in the Caribbean.

In conclusion, we can say that psychoanalysis exists in Martinique in spite of all. Changes coming from the inside will probably ensure the development of fecund psychoanalytic thinking.

GUILLAUME SURÉNA

See also: Fanon, Frantz.