Dr. Louis Mars’ footprints are recognizable in the field of psychiatry, Haitian politics but publicly at Mars and Kline Psychiatric Center, Haiti’s only hospital for acute mental illness
The impact of Dr. Louis Mars on the field of Ethnopsychiatry in the twentieth century is significant. Son of the Haitian founder of Ethnology, Jean Price-Mars, Dr. Louis has re-written the practice of psychiatry by exploring Vodou in treating mental health in Haiti.
Former President of the State University of Haiti (1958), Doctor honoris causa at the university of Liberia (July 1958) and Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Louis Mars’ footprints are recognizable in the field of psychiatry, Haitian politics but publicly at Mars and Kline Psychiatric Center, Haiti’s only hospital for acute mental illness, located in the heart of country’s capital Port-au-Prince. The Center was created in 1959 by Dr. Mars and American psychiatrist Nathan S. Kline.
This conversation with Dr. Evan Auguste conducted in February. It follows a groundbreaking article on Dr. Mars published by Dr Auguste in 2023 in the prestigious journal American Psychologist.
Photo of Dr. Evan Auguste.
The publication highlights Dr. Mars’ pioneering work in the field and the historically-rhetorically-symbolically-incarceration of his contributions to the Western and contemporary world.
Dr. Auguste is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His work examines, overall, how the U.S.’s history of anti-Blackness has shaped psychological realities both in and outside of the country’s borders. He is the director of the A.S.I.L.I. Collective, a research group whose work focuses broadly on addressing the mental health consequences of structural anti-Blackness through the lens of Black liberation psychology.
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For his work, Dr. Auguste has received numerous awards including the Santander International Internship Fellowship, the Association of Black Psychologists President’s Service Award.
AyiboPost: Let us start with the return of Dr. Louis Mars in Haiti in 1936 to become the only trained psychiatrist in activity in the country. At “Camp Beudet”, the first psychiatric center in Haiti, he observed that more than 250 people in constant struggles with mental issues, were assisted by a general practitioner and under-trained nurses. And in 1966, he denounced the facility conditions and the lack of services at the Camp. Do you have a more detailed account of his early days as a psychiatrist in the country? What could have been his struggles in this past immediate U.S. occupation (1915-1934) of the country?
Dr. Evan Auguste: From my readings and interviews, it seems that Louis Mars was deeply pained by how those struggling with various types of mental illness were treated in Haiti, and he very quickly realized the limitations of Western conceptions of illness in the Haitian context. Dr.
Mars, through his own readings and in the legacy of his father, had a deep respect for the culture and religion of Vodou and observed how it was intricately woven into the tapestry of Haitian life. However, it was broadly assumed by Western psychiatrists and psychoanalysts at the time that African peoples were incapable of the type of complex thought that made them worth psychological understanding. Within this context, Dr.
Mars found a punitive infrastructure of imprisonment for those with mental health problems left behind in the wake of the occupation and a field that was ill-equipped to tend to the needs of Haitian people.
It was in this context that Dr. Mars accepted the challenge of adapting and creating new nosologies of mental health to consider indigenous African religion in this context of psychiatry at the individual and systemic levels.
Mars found a punitive infrastructure of imprisonment for those with mental health problems left behind in the wake of the occupation and a field that was ill-equipped to tend to the needs of Haitian people
To do a follow-up, neuro-psychiatrist Dr. Legrand Bijoux stated in 2010, “Before Mars’ return to the country, mental health caregivers were voodoo priests, traditional healers and freemasons”, which appears to make some sense since, back in the days in Haiti and until today in certain circles, mental disorder was [is] really stigmatized, and many thought [or continue to think] it was caused by Voodoo. As a Western-trained psychiatrist, some people claimed that Dr. Mars wanted to distance himself in the beginning from the involvement of traditional and spiritual healing in the provision of mental health services. Have you confronted with this viewpoint in your work?
There’s a nuanced perspective there. From some readings, it seems that Dr. Mars did not have the same affection for Vodou that his father possessed, and in some writings regards it with a level of elitism (in some cases referring to it as peasant superstition). It should be named though that even in this elitism, Dr. Mars was also emphasizing that such superstition revealed the complexities and intricacies of the human psyche in the context of Haiti’s culture and history. In that way, Dr.
Mars was highly critical of both Western psychiatrists who dismissed Haitian vodou completely and of Haitian elites who sought to erase it from their history. He was also critical of Western writers who romanticized Vodou in ways that dehumanized the Haitian people.
As it pertains to treatment, Dr. Mars also held a nuanced perspective here. He uplifted the clear evidence he saw of people achieving healing in the context of Vodou ceremony, while also clearly naming instances of individuals faking their experiences of possession. This nuance was clear, he believed that psychiatry, once grounded in Haitian culture, was necessary to contribute to healing within the context of Vodou.
In 1966, Dr. Mars published his seminal book “Témoignages I: essai ethnopsychologique” in which he explored the role Voodoo played in treating mental illnesses affecting many Haitians. However, until today, many scientists and caregivers are reluctant to rely on Voodoo as the “primary source of mental and spiritual health” even within communities with scarce services. Do you think this “distance” is motivated by the sigma of Voodoo, a lack of scientific evidence or other preoccupations or misconceptions?
I think that’s it exactly. In many instances, African religions, histories, movements, and practices are often not seen as ways of knowing. Rather, they’re either treated as things to be observed and either dismissed as primitive or universalized in Western language and made valuable by the academy. Even in the current day, Western psychologists have made billion-dollar industries incorporating aspects of Buddhism and other broadly Eastern faith-based systems into cognitive behavioral therapies.
The ways that African religions both hold some of the earliest inquiries into the mind as well as some of the earliest rejections of European colonialism, land dispossession, enslavement, and White supremacy remains overlooked. African-centered psychology is among the first psychological disciplines to specifically articulate a praxis for psychospirtual and political healing rooted various African ways of being.
Even in the current day, Western psychologists have made billion-dollar industries incorporating aspects of Buddhism and other broadly Eastern faith-based systems into cognitive behavioral therapies.
For those within African-centered psychology, Haitian Vodou is among the most valuable religious systems in how it has shaped history, created to senses of identity, interconnected distinct peoples, and articulated a distinct theory of how the mind and spirit are linked. Science has often followed culture, and the White supremacist roots of the culture that articulated Western psychology and psychiatry could not bring itself to recognize such value in a Haitian religion.
From your perspective and many others, Dr. Mars re-wrote the practice of psychiatry/psychology by coining the term Ethno-psychiatry and even created the field. “Unfortunately, the significance of his contributions to ethno-psychiatry, ethno-drama, and the subsequent field of psychology has effectively been erased from the disciplinary canon”, you and your peers wrote in the 2023 article “La Lutte Continue: Louis Mars and the Genesis of Ethno-psychiatry”, American Psychologist 78(4), p. 469-483. How do you explain this longstanding silence about his work in the field of Ethno-psychiatry?
As noted above, African and Black peoples have historically not been seen as the ones who create or hold theory and knowledge. Rather, they’re seen as things from which Western academics extract and produce knowledge. Despite Dr. Mars articulating ethnopsychiatry and putting it into practice, Haiti was not seen as a generative site for knowledge.
What was the most surprising to me is the fact that the Hungarian-born, French and U.S.-trained ethnologist and psychoanalyst, Georges Devereux who’s credited as the architect of ethno-psychiatry, admitted in 1982 that Dr. Mars invented the term ethno-psychiatry, but many psychiatrists refused to properly credit him. Is it a sort of bias against his contributions or a tentative of epistemicide?
Reading over the history, it seems like clear epistemicide. There are general credits to him as someone who created the name, but none of the credit is given to Dr. Mars for playing such a key role in the re-writing of how psychiatry should be grounded in local culture. There’s a clear rejection of not just Dr. Mars, but of Haiti as a place that can contribute on the world stage, despite having played such an indelible role in shaping history.
Another very important point is the fact that Frantz Fanon and Dr. Mars are contemporaneous, and they were both engaged with mental health through the lens of racial alienation, anthropological engagement, colonial pathologies… but Fanon’s body of work on psychiatric has significantly increased and contemplated over the last three decades, specifically with the rise of post-colonial studies, but Dr. Mars has not been (or never been) subject to the same amount of attention. How to approach this double-standard?
I think this has to do with the immediate political relevance of their works. Fanon’s work served as a prophetic for many around the world engaged in liberatory struggle, from South Africa to the U.S., to Palestine. His work met the urgency of the moment and helped shape generations of decolonial movement and helped people articulate the effects of colonial violence. Conversely, Mars’ work took place in the wake of occupation and sought to more effectively heal a population still reeling from generations of enslavement and violence. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s a renewed interest in his work as people are more intentionally seeking to wed their decolonial struggles for liberation with healing movements.
Dr. Mars also served as an ambassador, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of religious affairs of Haiti under the Francois Duvalier regime and lauded the tyrant on multiple occasions. Dr. Mars was also a fierce critic of communism in the Caribbean while trying to maintain a good relationship with the founder of Haiti’s Communist party, Jacques Roumain. For me, the article is complacent on him by trying to disparage the scientist to the politic. Let the truth be known, otherwise it is miscommunication. How do you explain this complacency?
We didn’t seek complacency as much as laying clear a contradiction that was apparent among many of the Haitian intellectual class. By all that I’ve read, it’s not just that he tried to maintain a good relationship with Roumain, I cannot find anything to indicate they had anything other than a solid intellectual relationship as they regularly held dialogues on the negritude movement in Haiti together.
In my opinion, and drawing from some of the contradictions I’ve been made aware of in my own family history, I believe that for many among the elite there was a desire to nation-build and protect the project of Haiti, and political service was among the highest forms of these efforts. In the case of Dr. Mars, it seems trying to walk this contradiction is part of what led to his initial downfall, in that he found himself exiled, in part, for his constant advocacy for an improved mental health system in Haiti.
For someone who made significant contributions to the mental health field in the areas of research, treatment, and advocacy in the world, how do you think we should celebrate Dr. Louis Mars? Should we see him like a gem? How does your work or personal journey relate to him?
I believe Dr. Mars is an ancestor, among many others, we should seek to honor and exalt. Today, there are so many people seeking to effectively create models of community care the honor indigenous traditions and don’t require incarceration. For a brief wondrous period, Mars had co-created such a model in Haiti, and this cannot be erased. In honoring Sankofa, we can build forward by reaching back and looking into such models and intellectual contributions.
For a brief wondrous period, Mars had co-created such a model in Haiti, and this cannot be erased.
Moreover, we can continue this work. Since writing this article, I’ve had the honor of meeting Dr. Mars son, Louis-Henri Mars who is doing the fantastic work of leading Lakou Lape in an effort to intervene on the rampant community violence in Haiti. Both of these individuals are evidence that we can create the types of relationships, communities, and societies that we want through commitments to liberation and our ancestral traditions.
For my own journey, as someone trained in clinical and forensic psychology and someone who seeks to be guided by movement work, they have offered a path towards building the types of programs and interventions that can aid in our collective healing. Indeed, my work in co-developed the Sawubona Healing Circle program and my forthcoming edited volume on Black Liberation Approaches to Forensic Psychology honor these legacies.
By : Websder Corneille
Cover : Frustrated black woman rubbing eyes after getting bad news at doctors office. Photo : Freepik
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