Freud and His “Negro”: Psychoanalysis as Ally and Enemy of African Americans

Freud… paid regular visits to Vienna. He went there on July 8 and returned on September 27. He took with him an American patient, whom he referred to as his “negro.” He had told us of this old joke, dating back to 1886, but curiously enough none of his children were familiar with it.

On the face of it, psychoanalysis might seem like a weapon that humanists and social scientists of African descent would eagerly employ in their works to articulate the complex effects of racism on Americans of all origins. After all, what could be more useful in opposing racism than a practice designed to expose and undermine the deep psychological foundations of destructive attitudes and behaviors—of which racism is an exemplary instance? The fact is, though, that black scholars have not rushed to embrace psychoanalysis as an ally in their struggle against this particular psychopathology of white people. In fact, African American scholars have generally been rather hostile toward psychoanalysis.

Why is this the case? Is it simply an oversight, the result, perhaps, of a lack of familiarity on the part of many black scholars with psychoanalysis? Might it be due to their recognition that psychoanalysis, as a practice of individual psychotherapy, can never affect more than an extremely small portion of the millions of individual white racists that populate our nation and the globe? Or could the eschewing of psychoanalysis by African American scholars be the result of their recognition that psychoanalysis may not be the unambiguous ally to their cause that it would seem to be?

I believe that all three of these possibilities have some validity. It is certainly true, for instance, that psychoanalysis is and has been primarily a resource for the well-to-do and that far fewer black people than white are included in this category. And it is also the case that as a form of individual therapy, psychoanalysis offers no clear and immediate path t