… in late 1956, in his letter of resignation to the governor-general of Algeria, Robert Lacoste, in which he insisted that taking care of madness is about returning freedom to the mad: “Madness is one of the means by which the human being can lose their freedom” and that “psychiatry is the medical technique that proposes to help the human being no longer be a stranger to their environment.” He added, “The social structure existing in this country [colonial Algeria] is opposed to any attempt to put the individual back in their place,” and further explained that “the function of a social structure is to set up institutions to serve human needs. A society that drives its members to desperate solutions is a nonviable society, a society to be replaced” (Fanon 2001: 61).
Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics. by Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, p.x
