Antoine Porot

Who is Antoine Porot?

Antoine Porot, was a French psychiatrist. He founded what was known as the Algiers School of psychiatry, which attempted to justify the inherent racism in the French colonial mission in Algiers on the basis that Algerians, i.e. the Muslim non-ethnically French inhabitants, were biologically inferior. Frantz Fanon discusses his theories and the impact on Algerian colonial society in his book, The Wretched of the Earth.

Porot had a son, Maurice Porot, who followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a psychiatrist, teaching at Alger then at Clermont-Ferrand.