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Throughout the process of my formal psychoanalytic training and continuing to this day I find myself constantly asking how factors such as gender, ethnicity, and the political climate affect unconscious processes, psychopathology, and styles of adaptation.
These questions have particular relevance to me as a black female who had the good fortune to be a young adult at a time of tremendous social and political expansion for my ethnic group. Over the last two decades, black Americans have become able to vote without fear, to have greater freedom in the selection of educational institutions for formal training, and to have legal recourse when faced with discrimination. In fact, it seemed to me that I was part of the last generation to have experienced legal second class citizenry.
Armed with optimism, but not naivete, I began my work as psychologist. My practice has included a number of young, well-trained, bright, black women whose achievement represented the efforts of our fathers' struggles for greater mobility.
I began my work with a question: What affect would these changes have on the psychological development of these patients? The literature that addresses the issues of minority patients in psychotherapeutic treatment seems consistent with the social climate of the last two decades. The earliest research focused on the psychological effects of discriminatory laws and racial attitudes and practices (Kardiner and Ovesy, 1951; Butts, 1964; Comer, 1969; Penderhughes, 1969). Most of the research was written at the height of the civil rights movement. At that time the
Dr. Thompson is Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry, UMDNJ, Newark, New Jersey, and Chairman of Minority Affairs, New Jersey Psychological Association.