Getting Next to Ourselves: The Interpersonal Dimensions of Double-Consciousness

Abstract

This essay explores, in a speculative and reflective, rather than heavily researched, mode how we might think as psychoanalysts about the interpersonal dimensions of double-consciousness. I begin by sharing briefly the convergence of ideas and disciplines that I am bringing together: the original conceptualization of double-consciousness in Black studies and critical race theory; and psychoanalytic discussions of intersubjectivity. I then tell two stories, both involving my experiences of incidents of racial tension in educational settings. These experiences inspired me to perform an informal online review of writing in the mental health field on guilt and rage—the powerful pair of feelings that seemed to emerge, repeatedly and consistently, in scenes of public racial discussion and confrontation. I then turn to discussing “White double-consciousness” and “Black mirroring,” extending psychoanalytic interpretations and their application to the psychic dynamics of interpersonal, interracial, relating. Double-consciousness is placed in dialogue with understandings of the mirror stage, intersubjectvity, radical openness, and thirdness, theorized, respectively, by Jacques Lacan, Philip Bromberg, Anton Hart, and Jessica Benjamin. Along the way, I also draw from the work of Frantz Fanon. Ultimately, my goal is to think with and respond to a recent call by Lynne Layton for us to develop a psychoanalytic framework for thinking about White double-consciousness.

Keywords:

• double-consciousness
• interpersonal
• intersubjectivity
• Whiteness
• Blackness
• projections versus enactments

Notes

1 My appreciation and thanks to editor Sarah Schoen for helping me clarify key features of this comparison and line of thinking throughout.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_guilt

3 Harris compiled six volumes of Uncle Remus stories between 1881 and 1907; a further three books were published posthumously, following his death in 1908. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

4 For one articulation of the differentiations between these psychoanalytic concepts, see chapter 8, “Projective Identification, Enactment, and the Transference” in Goldstein & Goldberg, 2004, pp. 59–69).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Stephens

Michelle Stephens, Ph.D., LP, is a Psychoanalyst, Professor of English and Latino and Caribbean Studies, and Dean of the Humanities at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914 to 1962 (Duke University Press, 2005) and Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer.