Theorizing about the primitive mind began in earnest in the nineteenth century. It was not until the 1920s, however, when asylums appeared in the colonies of Britain and France, that first-hand research into mental illness among African peoples was begun. The psychiatry of the colonial period was distinctive in various ways: the environment, the patients and the social location of physicians all differed from those encountered in the metropoles. In colonial Africa as in Europe, however, the profession was dominated by men. Arguably their masculinity influenced the way practitioners denned the ideal citizen, and the emphasis they placed upon violence. Margaret Field, the only woman among their ranks, produced unconventional work.

In terms of philosophy, the ethnopsychiatrists were a disparate group. Their intellectual affiliations ranged from British eclecticism to psychoanalysis. They worked independently of each other, most often in intellectual isolation. They had no professional association, no journals, and we know from Carothers that they did not have access to each other's research. It seems likely that Fanon was the first psychiatrist to have read the work of both Francophone and Anglophone specialists. Despite their differences, the work produced by European psychiatrists conformed so well to a coherent set of ideas about race, class and gender that the ethnopsychiatrists can be classified as a school.

The ethnopsychiatrists shared a number of professional and intellectual interests. They were all senior state employees and, as male members of ruling minorities, shared a common social position.