Black Hamlet. [First edition].

280 p. Cover rubbed and bumped, slightly browned due to paper, thin pencil annotations throughout. ERSTAUSGABE. - In the year 1928 I began studying natives at an African Mental Hospital. My work there was primarily research on the Vegetative Nervous System, though I also made use of the opportunity for psychological observation. And it was not long before I made what was to me a startling discovery. I discovered that the manifestations of insanity, in its form, content, origin, and causation, are identical in both natives and Europeans. There is, perhaps, a slight difference in the nature of the delusions and complexes of the native as compared with those of the European; but the difference is no greater than that found in comparing the insane Englishman with the mentally deranged Frenchman or German. This discovery made me inquisitive to know if the working fundamental principles of the mind in its normal state were not also the same. I had difficulties in approaching this problem, for many reasons. To begin with, it was difficult to find a native who would be willing to become the object of a deep and protracted psycho-analytical study. It was easy to find natives who were willing to subject themselves to various psychological experiments —such as mental tests; but examinations such as these have been carried out many times, without, in my opinion, leading to any appreciable understanding of the black man. Every psychologist knows now that a mere collecting of answers to questions submitted does not result in an insight into the mind. I believe that under no circumstances can a knowledge of human beings be obtained merely from a superficial observation of a limited number of people.