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Psychiatry and Empire pp 172–196Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Nature of the Native Mind: Contested Views of Dutch Colonial Psychiatrists in the former Dutch East Indies

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Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

In the middle of December 1923, during the wet season in the former Dutch East Indies, members of the notorious pro-business and reactionary Politiek-Economischen Bond [PEB; Political-Economical Union], held a meeting in Surabaya. The Union advocated free competition, the maintenance of law and order by abrogating the political rights of Indonesians, and reducing spending on educational facilities open to them. The invited speaker of that meeting was not a politician but a psychiatrist, Dr Travaglino. He had spent 9 years in the Dutch East Indies as the medical superintendent of the mental hospital near Lawang, about 20 kilometres to the south. It might appear unusual that a psychiatrist would address a meeting of a political party representing plantation owners and the sugar syndicate, although it should be noted that, in his speech, he addressed the importance of a scientific understanding of the native mind to rule colonial society justly and effectively. In fact, psychiatrists in the Dutch East Indies regularly addressed meetings and published their ideas in popular magazines and newspapers. In the former Dutch East Indies, psychological discourse on the nature of the native mind was rather common-place.

I made a special study of the STOVIA (the medical school for the natives). After all, most of those promoting the awakening of Asia were doctors, and not lawyers as was the case in Europe. Perhaps the movements for enlightenment in Europe were motivated by the violation of people’s sense of justice. In Asia the awakening was inflamed by the awareness that society was sick and must be cured.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, House of Glass [Vol. 4 or the Buru Quartet], 1988.1

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Notes

  1. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, House of Glass (New York: 1997 [1988]), p. 62. STOVIA stands for School ter Opleding van Inlansche Artsen, the School for the Education of Indigenous Physicians. The ‘I’ in the quote is the character of Pangemanann, member of the Algemeene Secretariaat, who collects intelligence and monitors the nationalist movements in the Dutch East Indies. Pangemanann made a special study of Tirto Ady Suryo, who was a student at the STOVIA for a few years and who became one of the first nationalist leaders of Indonesia. Toer’s Buru Quarter is a literary rendition of Tirto’s biography.

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  2. See Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 (Amsterdam: 1995), pp. 24–27. The principles of the ethical policy were most clearly outlined in Conrad Theodor van Deventer, ‘Een Ereschuld [A Debt of Honour],’ Indische Gids, 3 (1899) 205–57.

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  3. Robert van Niel, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (The Hague: 1960), places the demise of the ethical culture in 1920.

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  4. For the STOVIA, see A.M. Luyendijk-Elshout, ed., Dutch Medicine in the Malay Archipelago, 1816–1942 (Amsterdam: 1989);

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  5. A. de Knecht-van Eekelen, ‘Tropische Geneeskunde in Nederland en Koloniale Geneeskunde in Nederland-Indie,’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 105, 3 (1992) 407–28;

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  6. and A. de Waart, ed., Ontwikkeling van het Geneeskundig Onderwijs te Weltevreden, 1851–1926 (Uitgave ter Herdenking van het 75-Jarig Bestaan van de School tot Opleiding van Indische Artsen (STOVIA)) (Weltevreden: 1926). Today, the buildings which once housed the medical school are now home to the Kebangkitan Nasional [Museum of National Awakening], which celebrates the founding of Budi Utomo, the first nationalist movement in 1908, and the significant involvement of physicians in the nationalist movements of Indonesia.

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  7. P.H.M. Travaglino, ‘Politiek en Psychologie [Politics and Psychology],’ PEB: Orgaan van den Nederlandsch-Indischen Politiek-Economischen Bond, 5, 8 (1924) 89.

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  8. Ibid., 87. Travaglino was not the first physician to argue for a psychological colonial policy. See, for example, J.H.F. Kohlbrugge, Blikken in het Zieleleven van den Javaan en Zijner Overheerschers [Views on the Mental Life of the Javanese and Their Rulers] (Leiden: 1907);

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  10. J.H.F. Kohlbrugge, Zielkunde Als Grondslag Van Koloniaal Beleid [Psychology as a Foundation for Colonial Policy],’ De Militaire Gids: Orgaan voor Weermacht en Natie, 27 (1908) 229–51.

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  11. Travaglino had elaborated on this topic previously: P.H.M. Travaglino, ‘Het Karakter Van Den Inlander [The Character of the Native],’ PEB: Orgaan van den Ned.-Ind. Politiek-Ekonomischen Bond 5, 27 and 28 (1920) 343–47; 357–60.

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  12. Travaglino had reported these findings earlier in the medical press: P.H.M Travaglino, ‘De Psychose van den Inlander in verband met Zijn Karakter [The Psychosis of the Native in Relation to His Character],’ Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlands Indië, 60 (1920) 99–111;

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  14. P.M.H. Travaglino, ‘De Schizophrenie en de Javaanse Psyche [Schizophrenia and the Javanese Psyche],’ Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen, 31 (1927) 416–25.

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  15. Christoph Bendick, Emil Kraepelins Forschungsreise nach Java 1904: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Ethnopsychiatrie, vol. 49, Kölner Medizinhistorische Beiträge (Köln: Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Universität Köln, 1989). The mental hospital near Buitenzorg had opened in 1882;

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  16. for an overview of its early history see Johan Wilhelm Hofmann, Bericht ueber Die Landesirrenanstalt in Buitenzorg (Java, Niederl.-Ostindien) Von 1894 Bis Anfang Juli 1901 (Batavia: 1902).

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  17. Emil Kraepelin, ‘Vergleichende Psychiatrie,’ Centralblad für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 27 (1904) 433–37;

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  18. Emil Kraepelin, ‘Psychiatrisches Aus Java,’ Centralblad für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 15 (1904) 468–469. Several commentators have later claimed that Kraepelin’s visit to Java constituted the birth of comparative or cross-cultural psychiatry.

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  19. See, for example, Alexander Boroffka, ‘Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) and Transcultural Psychiatry: A Historical Note,’ Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, 25 (1988) 236–39;

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  21. for a broader history see Ana Maria G. Raimundo Oda, Claudio Eduardo M. Banzato, and Paulo Dalgalarrondo, ‘Some Origins of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry,’ History of Psychiatry, 16 (2005) 155–69.

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  22. Kraepelin’s ideas on Völkerpsychologie were inspired by his former teacher Wilhelm Wundt. See Rainer Diriwachter, ‘Volkerpsychologie: The Synthesis That Never Was,’ Culture & Psychology, 10, 1 (2004) 85–109.

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  23. P.H.M. Travaglino, ‘Het Karakter Van Den Inlander [The Character of the Native],’ PEB: Orgaan van den Nederlandsch-Indischen Politiek-Ekonomischen Bond, 5, 28 (1920) 359.

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  24. See Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas, in particular Chapter 4, ‘The Native “Other” as the Medieval, Childlike, and Animal “Self” (or as Fundamentally Different): Evolutionary Ideas in Dutch Colonial Rhetoric in Indonesia’; and Jan Breman, ed., Imperial Monkey Business: Racial Supremacy in Social Darwinist Theory and Colonial Practice (Amsterdam: 1990).

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  25. See J.F. Holleman, ed., Van Vollenhoven on Indonesian Adat Law (The Hague: 1981).

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  27. For similar observations in an entirely different colonial context, see Jonathan Sadowsky, ‘Psychiatry and Colonial Ideology in Nigeria,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 71, 1 (1997) 94–111.

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  28. See Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: 1999) for similar thoughts on the government of Western countries. The need and desire to acquire knowledge of the indigenous population not only reflects this trend in Western societies, but also reflects the specific political situation in the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s.

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  29. Van Loon elaborated on these findings in his many other articles, among them F.H.G. van Loon, ‘Acute Verwardheidstoestanden in Nederlands-Indie [Acute States of Confusion in the Dutch East Indies],’ Tijdschrift voor Geneeksunde in Nederlands Indië, 62 (1922) 658–90;

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  30. F.H.G. van Loon, ‘Amok and Lattah,’ Journal of Abnonnal & Social Psychology, 4 (1927) 434–44;

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  31. F.H.G. van Loon, ‘Rassenpsychologische Onderzoekingen [Investigations in Racial Psychology],’ Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen, 32 (1928)190–26;

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  32. F.H.G. van Loon, ‘Protopathic-Instinctive Phenomena in Normal and Pathological Malay Life,’ British Journal of Medical Psychology, 8 (1928) 264–76.

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  33. Akira Nagazumi, The Dawn of Indonesian Nationalism: The Early Years of the Budi Utomo, 1908–1918, vol. 10, LD.E. Occasional Papers Series (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1972).

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  34. See Eekelen, ‘Tropische Geneeskunde in Nederland en Koloniale Geneeskunde in Nederland-Indië.’ For the Society for Indigenous Physicians see: Jubileumnummer 1911–1936: Orgaan Vereeniging van Indische Geneeskundigen (Batavia: 1937), in particular W.H. Tehupeiory, ‘Onze Vereening: De Voorgeschiedenis van Hare Oprichting en Hare Kleuterjaren,’ in Jubileumnummer 1911–1936: Orgaan Vereeniging Van lndische Geneeskundigen (Batavia: 1937);

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  35. and J. Kayadoe, ‘Uit Roerige Jaren,’ in Jubileumnummer 1911–1936: Orgaan Vereeniging Van Indische Geneeskundigen (Batavia: 1937).

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  36. After 2 years of study in the Netherlands, Indonesian physicians qualified for the official title of physician. For an engaging account of two of the very first medical graduates of the STOVIA who went to the Netherlands for further study, the brothers Tehupeiory, see the following historical novel: Herman Keppy, Tussen Ambon en Amsterdam (Amsterdam: 2004).

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  37. For the Perhimpunan Indonesia, see John Ingleson, Perhimpunan Indonesia and the Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1923–1928, vol. 4, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia (Clayton VIC: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1975),

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  38. and Harry A. Poeze, In het Land van de Overheerser I. Indonesiërs in Nederland, 1600–1950 (Dordrecht: 1986).

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  39. The following information is derived from Joost Coté, ‘Colonial Designs: Thomas Karsten and the Planning of Urban Indonesia,’ Paper presented to the 15th Biennial ASAA Conference, Canberra, 28–31 June 2004 (2004).

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  40. Bond van Indonesische Artsen (Afdeeling Nederland), Verweerschrift tegen de Rede van Dr. F.H. van Loon over ‘De Psychische Eigenschappen der Maleische Rassen,’ Uitgesproken op de Vergadering van het Indische Genootschap in Den Haag op den 22sten Febuari 1924 [Writ of Defense], Vol. 1, Publicatie van de Bond van Indonesische Artsen, Afdeeling Nederland (Amsterdam: 1924).

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  46. For the autobiography of Hatta see: Mohammad Hatta, Mohammad Hatta, Indonesian Patriot: Memoirs, C.L.M. Penders ed. (Singapore: 1981).

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  47. For Perhimpunan Indonesia, see Ingleson, Perhimpunan Indonesia and the Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1923–1928. For the increasingly radical views of this group see Indonesiche Vereeniging, Gedenkboek 1908–1923 [Memorial Volume 1908–1923] (Den Haag: 1924). For Indonesian organisations in the Netherlands see: Poeze, In hetLand van de Overheerser I. Indonesiërs in Nederland, 1600–1950.

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  48. Mohammad Hatta, ‘Indonesië Vrij,’ in Verspreide Geschriften (Jakarta: 1952), 254; my translation.

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  49. See also Mohammad Hatta, Portrait of a Patriot: Selected Writings (The Hague: 1972), p. 245.

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  50. Mohammad Hatta, ‘Indonesia Free’ in Portrait of a Patriot: Selected Writings (The Hague: 1972), 258–59; see also Hatta, ‘Indonesië Vrij,’ 269.

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  51. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: 1967);

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  52. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: 1965).

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Authors
  1. Hans Pols
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Sloan Mahone (University Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Deputy Director) (University Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Deputy Director)

  2. Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford, UK

    Sloan Mahone (University Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Deputy Director) (University Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Deputy Director)

  3. Cambridge University, UK

    Megan Vaughan (Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History) (Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History)

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© 2007 Hans Pols

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Pols, H. (2007). The Nature of the Native Mind: Contested Views of Dutch Colonial Psychiatrists in the former Dutch East Indies. In: Mahone, S., Vaughan, M. (eds) Psychiatry and Empire. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593244_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593244_8

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52413-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59324-4

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