This past fall, I had the privilege of making an outreach visit to Atlanta at the invitation of the Atlanta Foundation for Psychoanalysis and the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. R. Peery Grant, president of the Atlanta Foundation, told me of the foundation's interest in continuing to develop relationships with Atlanta's African-American community. Previous visits by Dorothy Holmes, a supervisor and training analyst with the Baltimore-Washington Institute, and by Carl Bell, CEO of the Community Mental Health Council, Chicago, had made an outreach impact. Grant hoped that my visit would build on what had been begun.
Because I have only relatively recently completed my psychiatric training and board certification and have yet to complete my psychoanalytic training, I initially questioned what I could offer as a visiting psychoanalyst. However, as Grant shared his vision with me, he gradually convinced me that I had the right credentials: fresh familiarity with psychiatric residency and the interest in intrapsychic aspects of race and racism that had fueled my interest in psychoanalysis. My prior career in broadcasting and community relations and personal historical ties to Atlanta were also assets. Thus, in November 1999, I made a three-day visit to Atlanta which I very much enjoyed.
The itinerary was, at first glance, daunting. With support from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, the Atlanta Foundation had hired a publicist who arranged interviews with print and radio media. Before I left Seattle, I talked by phone with Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter John Head. He is also a Carter Center Fellow, researching his own book on African-Americans and mental health. Once I arrived in Atlanta, he attended most of the presentations I made and actively participated in discussions, seeming to have a keen interest in what psychoanalysis might have to offer African-Americans or contribute to the understanding of racism.
The first day of my visit began with an interview with a reporter for the Atlanta Daily World, a respected newspaper in the African-American community. The interview actually took place in the Auburn Avenue Research Library; a repository of documents relating to African-Americans — some pre-dating emancipation. The reporter had a particular interest in what psychoanalysis could contribute to understanding the transgenerational effects of slavery and in the dramatic film on slavery that I would discuss that evening.
From Auburn Avenue, Atlanta Foundation board member Lawrence Ginsburg (who provided transportation and thoughtful feedback throughout my visit) took me to Emory University. There I met with graduate students in the Psychoanalytic Studies Program directed by Robert Paul. The participants in this lunchtime forum came from several disciplines in arts and sciences and from several cultural backgrounds. We reflected about experiences of race and racial difference and on how these had had an impact on our lives and on our work — scholarly rather than clinical work for most of the participants.
Afterwards, I had a telephone interview with a Jungian psychologist who writes a regular column on psychology for a weekly lifestyle magazine called Creative Loafing. The reporter expressed his own disaffection with clinical practice and, while not really hostile to psychoanalysis, seemed skeptical about its contemporary relevance.
That evening, I presented the film Sankofa to a public audience at Emory University. Ninety percent of the audience of about 100 people were African-Americans. Many stayed after the two-hour film to discuss its rich content. Sankofa is an Akan word meaning “one must return to the past in order to move forward.” This 1994 film, by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, explores the discovery of identity in the historical context of slavery. That evening, it evoked discussion of a variety of experiences — such as narcissistic injury, alienation, and false and authentic self — in a context with personal meaning for this audience. It was nearing midnight when we brought the discussion to a close.
On the second day, at the invitation of Steven Levy, vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory, I presented “Psychiatry: Change and Strain in the New South Africa” at the department's grand rounds. The talk drew on my experiences in visiting South Africa in 1996 and 1998 and addressed the state of public psychiatric practice and psychoanalytic influence in the post-apartheid era.
There is in South Africa little overlap between psychiatry and psychoanalytic influence. I talked about my perspectives on how race and apartheid had affected South African psychiatry. I also spoke about how psychoanalytic ideas might help in understanding both psychological factors contributing to apartheid and the psychological effects of apartheid on the South African people over time.
After the grand rounds presentation, I had lunch with psychiatry residents from Emory and from the Morehouse University School of Medicine. Morehouse is an historically black institution. This luncheon became the first joint meeting between residents in these two programs. Over lunch, I had the opportunity to talk to residents about their backgrounds and career interests. These men and women in training represented several continents and several decades with respect to age. Their professional interests ranged across academia, public sector psychiatry, and private practice. I talked with them about the ways in which psychoanalytic perspective and psychoanalytic training have enriched my work with patients in a variety of practice settings. I encouraged them to remain open to psychoanalytic influence in their training, and I promoted the American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship program, giving personal testimony with respect to its value to me during my fellowship year and afterwards as a Former Fellow.
After lunch, I went to Morehouse to hear case material presented by the Morehouse residents. The incoming residency training director, John Gaston, and several members of the Morehouse Department of Psychiatry were present. Also present were Dorcas Bowles, dean of the Clark-Atlanta University School of Social Work, and several members of her faculty. Clark-Atlanta University, along with Morehouse, Spellman, and Morris Brown Colleges, form the Atlanta University Center, a focal point for higher education for African-Americans for generations.
Sandra C. Walker, M.D., is a fourth-year clinical associate at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, co-chair of the APsaA Committee on Public Information, and a member of the board of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation.
In hearing and commenting on the cases presented to me by Morehouse residents, I became more aware of — and was able to begin to convey — something of the richness that a psychodynamic perspective can bring to evaluation and treatment of patients. We talked about transference and countertransference in working with medication management patients and about how psychodynamic understanding of developmental and cultural issues can add depth to the evaluation of hospitalized adolescents or adults.
After the case conference, Bowles invited me to the Clark-Atlanta University Library, where I enjoyed some of the University's collection of African-American art. By coincidence, a 1952 letter from my uncle, Rufus E. Clement, a former president of Atlanta University, to artist Romare Beardon had recently been found in the university archives. The letter was a diplomatically phrased entreaty to Beardon not to withdraw from exhibiting his work in the university's annual exposition of Negro art. Beardon had protested the fact that the show was closed to white artists. My uncle pointed out to Beardon that he had polled more than 200 people interested in the exposition who were unanimous in the view that, for that time, a uniquely Negro exposition was a necessity.
That evening, I enjoyed the hospitality of the Atlanta Foundation at the home of board member Susan Harte. The evening gave me an opportunity to become more familiar with the psychoanalytic community in Atlanta. It also provided a sobering reflection. Although invitations had been extended to a number of African-Americans, none were able to attend. The only other African-American at the party was a bartender who was working her way through school to study architecture. I wondered whether this was coincidence. Having spent my latency years on the campus of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, I was reminded of Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Compromise” address of a century ago, in which he described the races as separate as the fingers in all things purely social. This separation continues as both a social and an intrapsychic phenomenon.
I concluded my visit the following morning with a radio interview at a black-owned, top-forty-format, CBS affiliate radio station. Like other interviewers during my visit, the reporter wanted to know about me as an African-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. There are only about 2,000 African-American psychiatrists in the United States. African-American psychoanalysts, regardless of the type of their clinical or academic degree, are rare, and the black press found this interesting. Apart from psychoanalytic ideas, some reporters also wanted to know my opinions about subjects of interest to their listeners or readers, such as how to handle holiday depression or how far women should go in their sexual fantasies. At this point, I realized that my psychoanalytic training, as much as my experience in the media, helped me handle surprises.
Michelle Morgan, co-chair of the American's Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity, plans to work with the Atlanta Psychoanalytic Foundation to help continue outreach to the African-American community. CORED has facilitated an outreach visit by Dorothy Holmes to the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and will facilitate future visits by Salman Akhtar to the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute and by Harold Blum and Kelly Reid to the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis. These visits are also being supported by the American Psychoanalytic Foundation.