The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and Envious Attacks on the Black Other

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the baby’s annihilation anxiety and dependence on the m/other are metaphorically paralleled to the colonial White-self’s annihilation anxiety and dependence on the Black-slave-other. In so doing, I demonstrate how White defenses developed and are perpetually acted-out in the White-Black dichotomy. This parallel requires an historical exploration of the creation of the concept of “Whiteness” and the corresponding constructs of White superiority and Black inferiority. Colonial White males were societally and legally sanctioned to utilize enslaved Blacks for their dependency and survival needs; this resulted in quelling annihilation anxieties. These psychological dynamics persist today through transgenerational transmission. As a result, the Black person has been psychically mutated into a servile part-object “black body.” Thus, when the black body does not gratify the various dependency needs of the entitled White other, envious attacks on the Black other ensue, to inferiorize the Black other, which restores White psychic equilibrium. I elucidate these dynamics with clinical material using Klein’s theory of the paranoid-schizoid position; specifically, how annihilation anxiety, dependency, loss, and paranoia in the infant parallel similar psychic experiences in the colonial White male and his White female counterpart, and show how such dynamics persist in present day White relations to Blacks.

KEYWORDS:

• Envious Attack; Black; white

Acknowledgments

I want to thank several women of diverse ethnicities, generational ages, countries of origins, and orientation, to include Nydia Pieczanski, MD, Constance E. Dunlap, MD, Robin Mustain, LCSW, Vittoria DeLucia, MD and Flavia DeSouza, MD who guided and supported me with this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Primitive in this paper refers to the very earliest functioning of the mind (Hinshelwood, 1994). It is not used to connote negative meaning as it has been utilized to derogate “others.”

² According to the American Psychoanalytic Association, only 24 of our 3000 members are Black (Fuller et al., 1999).

³ Control can be on a continuum of behavior from being unwelcoming, belittling, terrorizing, and killing Black people.

⁴ According to Klein, gratification is a reaction to the mother who gratifies the infant by providing love, care, and food. I include food, love, care, and libidinal soothing as ways Blacks gratified Whites.

⁵ Bion, 1962b) explains that the function of containment is to help the baby deal with emotions that are so frustrating the baby is unable to think. The mother or analyst can perform the function of taking in the baby’s projections and giving them back in a more tolerable form.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ebony Dennis

Ebony Dennis, PsyD, is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington DC.