It is very exciting to see the changes in the psychoanalytic terrain. One such change is the establishment of the Community Symposium at the upcoming meeting on January 13 from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. Dorothy Holmes and I will address the topic of the black nanny–white family syndromes, chaired by Bruce Sklarew. Our organizations are reflecting the changes in sensitivity to the myriad aspects and kinds of relationships in the general American culture. As the diversity in American culture is more widely celebrated, it becomes evident that we must look hard at the formerly intentionally silent transference and countertransference issues in both professional and personal relationships. At this year's Community Symposium we will consider the voices of people who in the past would have been ignored, despite the importance of their presence in the lives of so many people, including some of us. The nurturing child care workers of a different race have always had a profound developmental effect on their charges. The psychodynamics of the black nanny's impact on the identity of the white child have been largely unexplored if not ignored in the psychoanalytic setting until recently.
As a black psychoanalyst, however, I have treated white patients who have presented with primary black identities, having had significant relationships with women of color during infancy and childhood. I have encouraged therapists to look for these people in the history-taking process and termed the relationship “other mother love.” The American culture is finally ready to observe, recognize, and even delve more deeply into these relationships in order to better understand race relationships: differences in dual white identities; black anger; and secret white love of blacks, even in a hostile racial geographic area.
Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the movies. For the first time, a high level of attention is being given to the psyches and emotional dynamics of these people. The unimportant have become important and have become the centerpieces of dramas that win movie Oscars. The most recent and outstanding example is The Help, in which a sympathetic young white woman journalist takes the risk of giving a voice to numerous black maids working for a variety of white women in segregated Jackson, Mississippi. She, too, had had a black nanny who shaped her self-confidence and personality. In the face of outright racism and personal oppression, these working-class black women maintain their dignity and contain and express their anger in a variety of ways. We will analyze their defense mechanisms and compare them to the defenses used during slavery. The movie takes the viewer into the community inner sanctums of the black Southern Baptist church and the modest homes of the maids and shows the role of survival religion and community support in maintaining the stamina of these women as they face the day-to-day overt psychological ignorance and prejudice of their white employers, residing in old plantation houses. One is constantly left with the question of how the flaky, racist, white women represented could leave their infants and young children in the care of people whom they demean and treat so carelessly, and how the black maids could love their white charges so warmly and largely unconditionally. Clearly, a split in the ego is required of both the care-giver and the employer.
The movie captures the emotional conflict of the black maids but shows different types of white women, some racist and hardened to introspection and others who do not share the same racist views but are afraid to push against the conformity of the peer group. What is blatantly missing is the liberal, wealthy, well-born, supportive white mistress of the time who was generous as well. (Leontyne Price, the great opera singer, was sent to the Julliard School by her mother's white mistress.) Is there such a thing as a “good white woman”? Can a domestic servant be happy in a subservient role with no possibility of advancement? Can a white person in a superior role find the balance between control for control's sake and empathy for a person whose life is controlled by poverty and limited opportunities? Most important, when does the small, loving child, raised by the nanny of a different color, switch identities and become identified with the hostile biological mother, and how does the switch take place?
Carlotta Miles, M.D., who practices psychoanalysis and adult and child psychiatry in Washington, DC, is a nationally known speaker and writer on psychological development. She served on the faculty of George Washington University Medical School and Howard University Medical College.
Today's movies are taking the viewer into places never before visited. In the '50s, the Broadway play, Member of the Wedding, set the stage. Black cook, nanny—and her young charge, an eight-year-old white girl—never left the kitchen, which said it all. They lived there and talked. Today, the movie Precious takes the viewer into the world of a poverty stricken, teenage, obese incest victim whose defense system (fantasy and mental escape) saves her from failure. Another current movie, A Better Life, follows an illegal Mexican immigrant, a lawn worker, through his day as he struggles to provide for his 15-year-old son, whom he wants to benefit from American opportunities. Meanwhile, he has no bank account, no car, no credit, and no green card. He travels between Hollywood palaces and his own tiny little domicile, which he shares with his son. Will his son identify with him and his struggle or with the America that is a constant threat of deportation? Another split.
This Community Symposium will also address the near disappearance of the American black domestic. She has been replaced by other women of color—Caribbean, Filipino, and African, to name a few, along with European au pairs. The conflicts may remain, although without the black/white history of slavery. The psychodynamics of women of color working in other racially mixed employment situations will be covered as well.
Looking at a future filled with diversity, we must understand that what we are accustomed to seeing and hearing is not all that there is to know. Diversity in our practices is growing at a rapid rate, and it is our duty to understand, develop, and recognize the complexity of other cultures, and to do so without judgment.