Black Hamlet

Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1947. Reprint, perhaps first printing thus. Hardcover. good. 324 pages, boards somewhat soiled, board edges worn & corners bumped, some edge soiling, ink notation on front endpaper. Signed by the author. Wulf Sachs was born in Russia and trained at the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. A citizen of South Africa who resided in Johannesburg, he was a practicing psychoanalyst and the author of many books on psychiatry and literary criticism. Classic account of a 2-1/2 year psychoanalysis of a South African witch doctor. This book was earlier published with the title Black Anger. Derived from a review posted on-line: Black Hamlet is at the same time a case study in psychoanalytic therapy, the report of a scientific investigation, a political polemic, a collection of ethnographic observations, and the biography of a common man whose remarkable features would otherwise have been overlooked. It was first published in 1937; a revised and expanded postwar edition appeared several times as Black Anger. The current edition reprints the original text, with extended introductory essays by two contemporary scholars whose respective fields are psychoanalytic literary theory and the history and ideology of South African apartheid. Wulf Sachs's writings now comprise a primary document of sorts. This edition as a whole-with the introductions by Saul Dubow and Jacqueline Rose-is a new contribution to the history of medicine (in particular, the history of psychiatry in a colonial setting).