Race, African Americans, and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation

Abstract

Both historically and currently, assaults on the black body and mind have been ubiquitous in American society, posing a counterargument to America as a postracial, color-blind society. Yet the collective silence of psychoanalysts on this societal reality limits our ability to explore, teach, and treat the effects, both interpersonal and intrapsychic, of race, racism, racialized trauma, and implicit bias and privilege. This silence, which challenges our relevance as a profession, must be explored in the context of America’s racialized identity as an outgrowth of slavery and institutional racism. Racial identifications that maintain whiteness as a construct privileged over otherness are an obstacle to conducting analytic work. Examples of work with racial tensions and biases illustrate its therapeutic potential. The challenge for us as clinicians is to acknowledge and explore our racial bias, ignorance, blind spots, and privilege, along with identifications with the oppressed and the oppressor, as contributors to our silence.

Anti-Racist Racism: Trauma, Traumatism, Traumatophilia

“…My starting point is that our field continues to have difficulty naming racial trauma and recognizing its sequelae and present-day manifestations, both in the clinic and in our institutions. Colleagues of color have been sounding that alarm bell for some time (Holmes 2016(Holmes , 2019Powell 2018Powell , 2020Stoute 2017Stoute , 2018White 2002). Lara and Stephen Sheehi specifically coin the term psychoanalytic innocence (2021) to refer to how our field's disavowed racism hides behind "good" intentions and liberal politics, even as it explicitly names and "addresses" them; bond's challenge, I believe, will help us discern more clearly the role that traumatophobia plays in that process.…”

Time for space at the table: an African American ‐ Native American analyst‐in‐training’s first‐hand reflections. A call for the IAAP to publicly denounce (but not erase) the White supremacist writings of C.G. Jung

“…I find no pleasure in designating another as a White supremacist, especially when the subject has not publicly self‐identified as such and I have never interacted with them. Contrary to being talion, mapping the attitudes and influences of a very powerful man grants the IAAP opportunities for greater practical and theoretical balance: ‘Racial identifications that maintain whiteness as a construct privileged over otherness are an obstacle to conducting analytic work’ (Powell 2018, p. 1021).…”

“…Jung stood no more than seven bodies in front of America’s first African American psychiatrist, Solomon Carter Fuller (1872‐1953) in a group photo for the event coordinated by the university’s president, G. Stanley Hall. The only person of colour to attend those lectures, ‘Fuller was Hall’s personal physician and perhaps his analyst, and there was evidence that Fuller corresponded with Freud’ (Powell 2018, p. 1026). Fuller, then a pioneer in the study of Alzheimer’s disease, was also a speaker at the conference (Terry 2008).…”

Psychoanalytic Neutrality, Race, and Racism

“…Decrying the fact that psychoanalysts avert their gaze from race and racism by not talking about either in the treatment setting, Powell (2018) argues that such silence not only “limits our ability to explore, teach, and treat the . .…”