drapetomania

The desire of slaves to run away, viewed as a mental illness.

To prevent the full-blown development of drapetomania, exhibited by the actual running away of the slave, whipping is recommended as medical therapy; in a revealing allusion to its historical origins, the treatment is called "whipping the devil out of them."

Over the years, psychiatrists have quite properly rejected many other "disorders" that reflected earlier cultural prejudices, such as drapetomania, lack of vaginal orgasm, childhood masturbation disorder, masochism, and nymphomania (Wakefield, 1992).

An overwhelming urge to run away (from home, a bad situation, responsibility, etc.).

One of these is a supposed form of mental disease, termed by him "Drapetomania, which, like a malady that cats are liable to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity to run away."

I thought I was a hypochondriac because my friends said that I was showing unnecessary concern about my health. Thanks to Dr. Cartwright I now know that I am a diseased man. I suffer from the acute stages of a chronic disease: drapetomania. I have the obsessive desire to run toward freedom. You have the right to know that a diseased man is near you because, and I say this carefully, drapetomania is contagious, and I am glad about it. As a drapetomaniac, I belong at a Freedom Fund Banquet.