The writer and sociologist Dibakana Mankessi chose a particularly eye-catching angle to embody the political turmoil that shook his country, the Republic of Congo, newly independent in the 1960s. The Psychoanalyst of Brazzaville, his third novel, indeed gives the speech to a host of characters, men and women, unknowns and celebrities, Africans and Europeans, eager to find answers to the psychological problems they are experiencing during this period.
They all follow one another and speak confidently on the couch of Doctor Kaya, a former hospital general practitioner who trained in psychoanalysis before opening the only Freudian therapy practice in the Congolese capital. Mr. Kaya lived as a child with a deaf and mute father whose disability made him angry and violent. Having become a professional listener, he offers his patients the conditions for free speech in a peaceful and non-judgmental setting, while expressing himself for himself in a logbook where he records his dreams and reflections on daily life as well as his professional notes.
The second important protagonist of the novel, a young woman named Massolo, allows us to evoke the social history of the Congo. Coming from a relatively wealthy family, with a law degree, Massolo found herself demoted and orphaned overnight, following the dismissal of the head of state, Fulbert Youlou. A lonely mother, refusing to corrupt herself to obtain a job, she poses as a cleaning lady and enters the service of Doctor Kaya.
“My man is turning into a leopard.”
Reading pleasure assured by this novelistic device allowing one to observe the private life of Massolo and to interfere in turn in the intimacy of the therapist and that of his patients. Especially since the latter consult for a wide variety of reasons, which can range from participation in a political assassination (such as the sinister execution of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo), to the harsh reality suffered by women from a patriarchy coupled with sexism (sine qua non condition for admission to exams or access to the professional world), including the most surprising fantasies.
“Doctor, at night, as soon as midnight strikes, my man transforms into a leopard,” declared a previously perfectly rational patient one day. During his appointments, Doctor Kaya, who must content himself with acquiescence and follow-up questions, finds himself more than once… speechless.
In the background of the meetings and over the months and years of consultation, the complex news of Congo-Brazzaville as well as the African continent emerges, as well as international events and issues. The novel thus revisits the theme of the Cold War and its impacts as well as the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the successive marriages of President Léopold Sédar Senghor in Senegal, the seizures of power or the dismissals of heads of state (Fulbert Youlou, Mobutu Sese Seko, Nikita Khrushchev…), cultural news.
Is he really a doctor?
Dibakana Mankessi makes the words of his protagonists all the more credible as they have in common that they belong to an elite interested in the evolution of the planet and committed to the principles of psychoanalysis. But the novelist also shows that in the eyes of other categories of the population, the activity of Doctor Kaya is considered unusual, even suspicious. Starting with the therapist’s own wife who was so suspicious of him that she left him. Doctor Kaya’s explanations to the police authorities confirm the skepticism of his interlocutors more than they convince them:
“–I’m a therapist. I receive patients whom I support in reducing their suffering, in resolving their psychological conflicts.
– Their conflicts p’chi what?
– The unconscious barriers that prevent them from living their lives to the fullest.
– That’s to say ?
– Their difficulties of existence…
– That’s to say ?
– I help them cope with their lives…”
In a country that has become Marxist, the psychoanalyst sows doubt: is he really a doctor? Is he helping or rather monitoring his patients? Listening, surveillance, silence and confessions: the improbable office of Doctor Kaya concentrates the small and the big story.
Mixing real and imaginary characters, moving from a social novel to a spy book, and from the political dimension to the sentimental angle, The Psychoanalyst of Brazzaville offers a delightful rereading of the history of the Congo. And poses, under the alert pen of Dibakana Mankessi, a big question to those who would like to solve the “problems of Africa”: shouldn’t good psychoanalysis be available to all those who wish it in order, as the doctor Kaya, to “help them live their desires, their dreams, their failures, etc. »?
