Slavery in the White Psyche

Abstract

This article was born out of the hypothesis that slavery—as historical reality, signifier, and symbol—has deep psychological implications for contemporary white Americans. Using data collected in an exploratory, qualitative study, my participants’ responses serve to illuminate the psychic structure of whiteness, which functions as a distortion that gets passed down intergenerationally (and horizontally) through a white collective unconscious. Housed in individual psyches, I suggest that this distorted structure of self actively resists and prevents white Americans (as a collective) from making contact with the racialized realities, both past and present, that would potentially lead to opportunities for choice, reparation, and transformation.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• slavery
• intergenerational transmission of trauma
• racism
• race
• collective unconscious

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Beth Kita, Teresa Mendez, and Dan Buccino for their incredible generosity and unending support, without which this article would not be published; and would also like to thank Katie Gentile, Lynne Layton, Carnella Gordon-Brown, and Cathy Eisenhower for their close reading and thoughtful responses; deep thanks also to ANP and RP. Previous versions of this article have been presented at conferences of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work and Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, and at meetings at Austin Psychoanalytic and Austin State Hospital.