Black Psychopathology – Healing Traumas of the Past

Jan 13, 2019 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Author: Dr. Joy DeGruy
Critic: Dr. Glenville Ashby

Slavery yielded stressors that were both disturbing and traumatic, exacting a wound upon the African American psyche which continues to fester. (P.112)
During my psychoanalytical training, I contested, to the frustration of my supervisor, that Sigmund Freud was irrelevant to understanding the black child. More than any other book since Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s ‘’Isis Papers’, ‘The Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ holds this argument to be true.
According to author Joy DeGruy, the black construct cannot be divorced from the social, psychological and spiritual injuries sustained over slavery’s centuries-long existence. Race and colour make up a child’s identity from its most nascent stage of development.
At the outset, DeGruy dismantles the position that slavery is forgivable, because it was an accepted institutional practice, part of a zeitgeist experienced throughout history. “Perhaps this is just another effort to trivialize or justify America’s crime. Perhaps it’s another way people try to resolve their internal conflicts. Whatever the motivation, the lengths people will go not to confront their own history has never ceased to amaze me,” she writes.
DeGruy methodically maps out troubling attitudinal patterns that are traceable to plantation life. Her diagnosis is credibly insightful. She states, “In the face of injuries, those traumatized adapted their attitudes and behaviors to simply survive, and these adaptations continue to manifest today.”
Her example is poignant: “Through the historical lens of slavery and its aftermath, one may better understand the hesitancy of African American mothers to acknowledge the fine qualities of their children. When we roll the scene back a few hundred years we see a slave master walking through the fields coming upon a slave woman. The slave master approaches her and her children and remarks, ‘Well now, that Mary of yours is really coming along.’ Terrified that the slave master may see qualities in her daughter that could merit her being raped or sold, says, ‘Naw Sir, she ain’t worth nothin…’
Slave mothers and fathers has been belittling their children in an effort to protect them for hundreds of years. Yet, what originally began as an appropriate adaptation to an oppressive and danger-filled environment has been subsequently transmitted down through generations.”
DeGruy examines the pseudoscientific theories used to justify racism, such as, Limneaus’ taxonomy, phrenology and Jeffersonian reasoning, while emphasizing the gulf that still exists between white and black America.
“The problems engendered by race are seemingly intractable,” she argues. “The distrust many blacks have for whites is often palpable. The indifference of most whites to the black experience is contemptible…We also need to ‘notice’ because so little understanding exists between black and white America. To me, noticing difference (…) is the first step in arresting the national hemorrhaging of African Americans.”
Central to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome are riveting snapshots of racial violence against blacks long after emancipation. From lynchings to unlawful medical experiments and pogroms, the American psyche is infected by its own self-induced pathology.
Even attempts at leveling the playing field through education have been challenged in the nation’s highest court. DeGruy posits, “While Affirmative Action comes increasingly under attack, children of advantaged white families continue to get preferential treatment (given to children of alumni, donors and employees at elite private and public universities); in some of these schools, many times the number of students are admitted each year through such preferences as are admitted through Affirmative Action”.
More behaviorally clinical than psychoanalytic, DeGruy replaces classical psychosexual theories with symbolism and archetypal paradigms. Her Jungian viewpoint explains her emphasis on culture and its endemic impact on the collective unconscious. Undoubtedly, the African American carries particular cultural imprints from Africa. Hence, learning and behavioral patterns sometimes compete with Western values. Further, adaptability has been complicated by lingering prejudice.
Of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, DeGruy pens, “Up until recently, American historians have been unwilling to confront the realities of this ‘great suffering’ by the usual absence of these events from our public school curricula and textbooks.”
Outside of academia, the Black Holocaust or Maafa is far removed from American consciousness.
DeGruy contends that the self-effacing scars of slavery are so profound that they have become generational constructs that unconsciously perpetuate destructive behaviors. Failure to understand these impulses has prolonged ailments in black society. Violence, anger, the ‘crab in the barrel’ mentality, self-deprecation, and more, are symptomatic of deep-rooted psycho-emotional scarring.
DeGruy avers, “Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in society leads to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
The author recognizes the Herculean task of effectively addressing these social and psychological stressors. Interesting, though, is her identification of disrespect as one trigger that leads to aggression and even violence.
“The antecedent most likely to produce anger and violence in African American male youths is disrespect,” she notes.
In response, she advocates for positive racial socialization that, when done correctly, [provides] “young people with the coping mechanisms and skills necessary to thrive in [adverse] environments.”
Positive racial socialization engenders awareness of the African American experience and teaches children how to lean on faith and family and education.
Of the several approaches to healing, story-telling demands particular attention, if only for its redemptive quality.
“Black families,” DeGruy articulates, “have a wealthy store of memories about struggle, perseverance and victory. She explains that “antagonists and villains along with the heroes and heroines provide colorful depictions of our family tapestry [that] will build continuity across generations, and with greater continuity will come a growing understanding of, and confidence in, our power to survive, overcome and flourish.”
Undoubtedly, DeGruy has added substantively to the discourse on racial identity and healing. Moreover, her seamless ability to inject irrepressible historical currents into a pervasively black construct places ‘Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ on the exclusive list of essential reads.

Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Published by Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-9852172-0-4
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Essential

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