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The only reason this paper merits review is that it is one of the more complete guides to the lowest levels of psychiatric thinking and writing, an example of psychiatry in the service of class prejudice.
To prove his remarkable conclusion, 'African peculiarities can be explained as due to a relative idleness of the frontal lobes', Carothers goes through the following maneuvers: first he summarizes observations made in a previous article on African (Kenya Colony) mental derangement, viz. (a) there is a low incidence of insanity among Africans living in their natural environment; (b) general paralysis, arteriosclerosis, paranoia and manic depressive insanity are rare; (c) involutional melancholia occurred but consistently without ideas of guilt; (d) 'frenzied anxiety' is common, and (e) obsessional neuroses are never seen. He then adds his current feeling that the African resembles the European psychopath in that 'his behavior is largely determined by his passing emotions, he lacks foresight, perseverance and sustained determination, and his unreliability and irresponsibility are notorious from a European viewpoint' (italics added). To illustrate the African's lack of 'social sense' the author cites an example: 'the attendants of a condemned murderer are quite likely to jest crudely about his future in his presence'.
The choicest part of the paper concerns a study of African 'reliability'. Employers of even the most intelligent and well-educated Africans are frequently 'let down' by them. Here are some examples with Carother's complaining interpretations in parentheses: A cook took a basket of vegetables out of a car and left the back door open so that it broke when the car was driven into the garage. ('From the cook's point of view the car door was merely something to open to collect the vegetables; the other aspects of the door's situation in space and time would hardly occur to him.') A good mental hospital attendant of fifteen year's service, after his nor