Exploring the
Unconscious
PSYCHOANALYTIC
UNDERSTANDING OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN
YOUTH, SOCIAL JUSTICE,
AND VIOLENCE IN
AMERICAN
NAKIA M. HAMLETT, PH.D.
YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
OCTOBER 7, 2105
Overview
 Introduction
 Sociocultural Context
 Statistics
 Conceptual Models
 Parenting Issues & Attachment
 Policing
 Conclusions
Learning Objectives
 At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will
be able to better:
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Understand the ways in which institutional and historic forms
of cultural marginalization, racism, and prejudice impact on
African American youth and families.
Understand conceptual models of racial and social identity
development specific to African American males.
Understand the implications of trauma exposure on the
cultural, identity, and psychic development in African
American males.
Plan and implement more culturally-sensitive and
developmentally appropriate psychotherapy interventions for
African American males.
Free Associations
1. What is your sense of current race relations
and prejudice in America?
2.What are some of your ideas, biases, about
AA youth?
3.What was your initial reaction to incidents
like Ferguson and the killing of black youth?
4. How do you view yourself in relation to AA
youth?
5.What are some statistics/facts you know
about outcomes for African American youth?
Free Associations
 What are you afraid or embarrassed for people to
know about how you:
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Think about black males
Feel about black males
Expect black males to behave
And any other biases
Points to Consider
 Barriers to accepting on an EMOTIONAL level that:
1. Blacks have been traumatized by their experiences in
contemporary America
2. Separate but equal has not yet happened
3. Whites have privileges and opportunities that the average
black person may not
4. Maintenance of the status quo benefits whites and hurts blacks
5. These facts may greatly influence how a white clinician
experiences (and helps) a black patient
How Do We Move Past:
 White guilt
 Denial
 Impartiality
 Other defensive postures
 Blaming the victim
 Reaction formation
 Sublimation
African American Youth, Social Justice & Violence
 “I hadn't cried in years, but the morning after the
decision to not charge Darren Wilson was a lonesome,
teary one. I teared up while ironing my clothes for
these brothas who died and who were getting further
devalued and disrespected post mortum. We've paid
our dues and protected this nation in every conflict in
American history, but still racism trumps patriotism.
Black men remain in a defensive posture, targeted by
our tax paid protectors in the name of fear, treated as
if this isn't really our country, never quite sure that our
skin color and hair texture won't get us in trouble. ”

Robert Graham, Ph.D. student in Education (and one of my
dearest friends)
It’s Hard Not to Know
 “It starts with the “click, click, click” of car doors locking
as you pass by. It continues with the quick look over the
shoulder glance, to see if you’re a safe distance away. It’s
noticed when shoppers squeeze shoulder bags and
pocketbooks to their bodies like birds protecting their
young. You know people fear you because of who you
are-young & black” (Green, 2014, p. 287)
 Racist experiences become a self-fulfilling prophecy that
creates a sense of failure & poor self-worth”-a culture of
failure & isolation” (Alonso, 2014, p. 25)
 Negative identity popularized in the media, mainly
through hip-hop, becomes the easiest to identify with &
internalize

Glorification of “ghetto life” suggests a lack of choices & options for
urban black youth.
Sociocultural Context
 African Americans confused about racism in 5 ways:
 Rejecting the genuine positive regard & support from Whites
may be as great an error as trusting a EA who harbors racist,
negative stereotypes
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African Americans can’t tell “who’s who”
Hard to know if one is being tolerated or genuinely accepted by
EAs
AA have difficulty distinguishing between supportive efforts of
individual EAs & destructive actions of EAs as a group
Hard to know when, where, & how to resist oppression, and
when to ignore or bear it
Hard to know when you are in control of your destiny vs when
there are some external factors, visible & invisible, at play that
prevent you being in control
Sociocultural Context
 Social Capital
 Ethnic group status
depends on stability of
privilege and acquisition in
this country
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Individual status depends
on overall group status
Individual vulnerability tied
to group vulnerability
Networks of support in
places of power
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Make opportunities more
readily available
 Levels of Racism
 Individual
 Institutional
 Cultural
Sociocultural Context
 Racial context:
 Shift from industrial to technological & service-based economy
disproportionately affected BMs
 BMs left with low-paying, dead-end jobs in poor inner cities
(Zinn, 1989)
 Welfare system only provided financial support to unmarried
women (Blau et al., 2004)
 Real estate and financial bias lead to decreased opportunity to
obtain mortgages and business loans (Blank et al., 2006)
Leads to unofficial segregation (Bates et al.,2005)
 Substandard housing, environmental hazards (Ringquest, 2005)

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Substandard educational opportunities
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Includes the assumption of inferiority and lack of access to &
advancement in institutes of higher education
Sociocultural Context
 Legal System
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Jury bias (Schroeder et al., 2005)
Unfair mandatory sentences for nonviolent crimes (Free, 1997)
Racial profiling by police (Hayes, 2000)
Overwhelming disproportionate incarceration (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2006)
Overrepresentation in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems

Racial bias in the subjective measures of child maltreatment (Berger,
2005)
 Health Risks (Anderson, 2004)
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Limited and inadequate access to health care
Substandard food options due to costs and lack of adequate venues
(urban food deserts)
Heightened risk for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer,
HIV/AIDS & poorer outcomes once diagnoses
Mistrust of medical professionals/discriminatory practices toward
blacks
Psychiatric Impairment in AA Males
 Suicide rate among AA 4 times higher than among
AA women
 Rates for various behavioral health outcomes higher
among AA males
 African Americans have higher lifetime prevalence
rates than Whites (National Comorbidity Study,
1996)
 African American males may be disproportionately
diagnosed with schizophrenia or other psychotic
disorders
African American Males
 Violence and homicide leading causes of death
 Disproportionately incarcerated
 In 2005, 5% of black males incarcerated, more than twice the %
of Latinos, and nearly 7x that as white males
 More blacks imprisoned today in America than in South Africa
during apartheid (Speilberg, 2014)
 By late 20s, this rate goes up to 12% (B of Justice, 2006)
 22% have record by age 30
 Black males represent 50% of prison population

30% more males in prison than in universities (Justice Policy
Institute, 2002)
 Black youth as young as 6 often have traumatizing
experiences with police, community, and schools
African American Males
 Heightened risk for a laundry list of problems:
 Developmental and learning delays
 School failure/expulsion
13.5% of black males age 16 to 24 are high-school drop-outs
compared to 7% of white males
 55% of high school AA males do not graduate with classmates,
25% disparity between black and white males (Holzman, 2006)
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Defined, described, and treated as “delinquent”
Incarceration
Injuries/accidents
Homicide
HIV/AIDS
Life expectancy 6 years shorter than for white males
School Issues
 By 4th grade (Holzman, 2006):
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Noticeable decline in academic achievement
Denied access to gifted programs
In part due to subjective ratings of teachers
 Black teachers tend to view black students’ behaviors more positively
than white males (Downey et al., 2004)
 Black teachers less often place B students in spec ed & more often in
gifted classes
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Black students 3x more likely to be placed in special ed, with white
students 3x as likely to be placed in gifted classes
 Discrepancy perceptions of what school SHOULD be like
and actual experiences leads to (White, 1999):
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Confusion
Withdrawal from school
Loss of confidence in academic competence
School Issues
 By 4th grade:
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Black males make up 20.63% of students classified as mentally retarded
21.67% of “seriously emotionally disturbed” students
12.86% of those with specific learning disability
Black students with disabilities 3.1 times more likely to receive shortterm suspension 2.56 times more likely to receive long-term suspension
(Civil Rights Project, 2000)
All stats disproportionate to 8.7% of students who are black males
Teachers may begin to fear black male students & have lower
expectations for their overall academic abilities (Roderick, 2003; Rong,
1996)
As protection from the pain of teacher hostility & rejection some AA
boys convince themselves that they don’t care about school & academic
achievement & take on an oppositional “tough” persona stereotyped in
the media (Schmader et al., 2001; Steele, 1997, Graham, 1997)

Academic dis-identification
School Issues
 “Feeling that one is damaged or can damage others is
antithetical to the freedom to explore one’s thoughts
including those on academic future. Consequently,
many AA men close their minds to school; their
attention spans suffer, and their thinking becomes
less expansive as they struggle with the feeling that
they must overcome impossible expectations to work
against type. Their experiences in school take on the
powerful voice of a new and critical parent, one that
intrudes on their own thought processes.” (Spielberg,
2014, p. 59).
Law Enforcement & AA Youth
 AA youth learn early that officers are not necessarily
“friends”
 Proactive parents model or explicitly teach rules for
appropriate youth engagement with police
 Whites and blacks have differing views on police
 Community interactions one-on-one in non-coercive
situations lead to better perceptions & relationships
Police Enforcement & African American Males
 “The policeman develops a perceptual short-hand to
identify certain kinds of people as symbolic
assailants, that is, as persons use gesture, language,
& attire that the policeman has come to recognize as
a prelude to violence…the policeman responds to
these vague indications of danger suggested by
appearance…the patrolman (in Westville and
probably most communities, has come to identify the
black man with danger” (Justice Without Trial: Law
Enforcement in Democratic Society, Skolnick, 1993)
Law Enforcement & AA Youth: Things to
Consider
 “Something I don’t believe the white community
understands yet is that, the object was to bring a
black body in, not necessarily the person who
committed the crime”

Tennessee judge who overturned a conviction of black man
accused of rape in 1960 (Jones-Brown, 2014)
 Tennessee vs. Garner (1985)
 Supreme court ruled police force limited use of deadly force to
situations in which fleeing individuals are suspected of posing
serious threat of death or serious physical injury to others
 Questions:
How is “serious threat determined”?
 Is this statute routinely followed?

Single Mothers & AA Males (Gant & Greif, 2014)
 Parenting Strategies to Protect Sons
 Shield from negative influences
 Help avoid harm
 Praying
 Educating
 Interpreting social phenomena
 Provide social support
 Connect to fathers or father figures
 Provide resources
 Set expectations
 Instill positive AA identity
 Promote responsibility
Fathers & Black Males
 Historical Context
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Financial disparities & lack of opportunities make providing for family
more challenging
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Fathers often had to leave families to travel to find work
Legacy of slavery made black fathering ambiguous

AA father was authoritative with children but the slave owner was the
ultimate father (Blassingame, 1972)
 Modern Day Challenges
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Father absence in AA homes is a clear concern
Bias in research may put negative spin on this issue
Non-resident fathers may not have regular contact with children due to:
Mental health issues or substance abuse problems
 Incarceration
 On-going conflict with mother/new family
 Lack of emotional & financial resources

Racial Socialization
 AA Parents:
 Parenting strategies geared toward survival can racialize socialization
 Teach their kids they have to be, do, and look better
 Vary in level of acculturation & emphasis on education
 3 forms of Adaptation
 Protective
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Proactive
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View world as distrustful & filled with racial hostility; learn caution and
strategies for success despite circumstance
Encouraged to focus on personal talent and cultural heritage, less on racial
hostility
Adaptive
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Integration of protective and proactive beliefs
 Black males integrate messages to form identity
 “You can be as much a man within the brotherhood of an AA community
as you can be a “N” outside of it”
Protective Factors
 Parents espousing cultural values, pride, and high
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educational standards
Authoritative parenting
Culturally sensitive education
Constructive, prosocial peer group
Natural non-parental mentors
Learning effective strategies for conflict resolution
Only supervised access to media
Clear, flexible, perspectives on masculinity
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Help males have choices for identity other than negative
stereotypes
Attachment Problems in Black Males
 Afraid to think (Fonagy & Target, 1997)
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Link between hostility in others and children’s inability to develop
self-awareness & advanced cognition
When care-givers & authority figures are rejecting, hostile, or difficult
to understand, young children become less open to understanding the
minds of others
This is an adaptive strategy of childhood victims of deprivation or
rejection
 Truly understanding the hostile thoughts of an adult would be terrifying
and overwhelming
 Closing minds to adults makes self-awareness limited
 They fear that their natural rebelliousness & self-assertion will
prompt retaliation from adults
 Leads to under-developed capacity to symbolize and think abstractly
about themselves and others
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• Undermines healthy separation, affective control and competence in
various domains
Identity Development
 Identity is achieved by “resolving the crises inherent in life
choices and making purposeful decisions and stable
commitments” (Frank, p. 23).
 Individuals develop goals and orientation toward education,
work, and goals through an evolution of ideological and
philosophical perspectives on the world and what is deemed
possible
 Intersection of black personality and racism (Jones, 1991)
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Black personality based on cumulative reactions to racism and African
cultural legacy
Black personality reflects cumulative adaptation to racial discrimination,
thus personality reflects changes in society
Theories of black personality must account for:
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Diversity of adaptations to fundamental realities of racialism
Coping has a profound impact on character development
Internalized Oppression
 “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of
always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity”.
—W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks (1903)
 Black males may find it difficult to stand up to racist aggressions due
to some belief that they are inferior and unworthy of better treatment
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When they do react, these reactions are often negative & counterproductive
 Capacity to be aware of racist actions is undermined by strong feelings
of inferiority
 Black males may have absorbed sense of being dangerous to others,
“lazy”, intellectually inferior
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Identity develops centered around internalized negative stereotypes
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Uneducated (school is not cool)
Tough
Ruthless, scheming, calculating, & relenting
Mysogenistic
Callous & unemotional
Intrapsychic Factors: AA & The “Other”
 Black men experience conflicts about aggression &
passivity because society does not allow them the
healthy expression of aggression, self-assertion, &
passivity (Douglas et al., 2014)
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Inappropriate channeling of aggressive drives & hostile
feelings lead to various forms of psychopathology
 Id Stereotypes (Pettigrew, 1971)
 Black people are:
Dangerous
 Dirty
 Covetous
 Aggressive
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Invisibility Syndrome
 Intrapsychic struggle for identity in black males
related to encounters with racism
 7 Principles
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One feels a lack of recognition or appropriate
acknowledgement
One feels there is no satisfaction or gratification from
encounter
One feels self-doubt about legitimacy (“Am I in the right place,
should I be here? Do I belong?)
No validation “Am I a person of worth”?
One feels disrespected
Ones sense of dignity is compromised and challenged
One’s basic identity is shaken, if not uprooted
Invisibility Syndrome
 “Judgments based on skin color make genuine
character invisible” (Franklin, 2014)
 Dealing with prejudgmental views of character
creates psychological tension and feelings of
invisibility
 Psychoanalysis is designed to help a person be
“known”, “validated” and “recognized” like never
before (Gabbard, 2010)
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Requires the ability to see beyond preconceived notions
May be more difficult with AA youth
AA men feel that others do not really know them
Invisibility Syndrome
 Clinical Evaluation to assess how the following
interact in an intrapsychic manner to lead to
visibility or invisibility
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Recognition
Satisfaction
Legitimacy
Validation
Respect
Dignity
Identity
Invisibility Paradigm
 Ego Development and Racial Identity
 Less mature ego: derives self-image from external sources
 More mature ego: derives self-images from experience, exploration, & integration
 Stress occurs from trying to determine:
 What to change about behaviors to gain acceptance
 What is risked by being one’s self
 AA men struggle to determine how to accept themselves and be a
person of AA descent in a culture where one’s group is a primary
object of prejudice and discrimination
 Developmental tasks can be too challenging causing regression or
take alternative paths to identity development
 If an individual makes a change with no positive result:
 Disillusionment sets in
 Confusion about appropriate road to acceptance
 Constant attempts at visibility and acceptance

How, then, have black boys learned how to be “visible” in our society?
Invisibility Paradigm
 Micro-aggressions (Pierce, 1988)
 “Verbal offensive mechanisms and nonverbal, sometimes kinetic offensive
mechanisms that control ‘space, time, energy, and mobility of the Black,
while producing feelings of degradation, and erosion of self-confidence
and self-image” (p. 31)
 Micro-aggressions
 Subtle acts or attitudes experienced as hostile, which fit a personal history
and pattern of racial slights and disregard
 Representations: history of racial slights help determine response &
internalization/interpretation of events
 Covert assumptions in MA leads to:
 Blacks are confused about whether they are being tolerated or
accepted
 Blacks are confused about the supportive effort of individual
Whites vs. the destructive action by Whites as a collective
 Blacks are confused about when, where, and how to resist
oppression vs when and how to accommodate it
Invisibility Paradigm
 Black males have to struggle against society
stereotypes or be victimized by their predetermination of his personal identity (Gordon et al.,
1995)
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Most poor, uneducated black males do not have the
environmental tools necessary to battle this
 MA and racial slights from subtle yet malevolent
cross-racial interactions induce (1988):
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Disillusionment
Confusion
Chronic doubts about self and personal efficacy
Invisibility Syndrome (Franklin, 2014)
 “Where the African American person positions him/herself, in
terms of which identity traits he/she internalizes and how his
position mediates his behavior in the world, is important to his
resolution and management of challenges in his projection of
himself as a man of African descent” (Franklin, p. 17)
 Racism manipulates the rules of conformity and inclusion
 Discerning racism and responding consistent with one’s self
moves one toward visibility
 There is social pressure to assimilate and “tolerance”-not
acceptance is the normative code of behavior of the dominant
group
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Racist slights serve as “social status reminders” that are provocative,
emotionally stressful, anxiety producing, and anger inducing deepens
feelings of invisibility

The term “mopes” (O Wright will explain) is one example
The Brotherman Study (2001-Present)
 Designed to understand how black males interpret
intrapsychic and interpsychic experiences
 N= 40, from all SES strata (Upper, middle, lowerclass in NY)
 Five important findings emerged:
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Transgenerational transmission of trauma underlies identity
formation
A greater understanding of new stereotypes about black males
Differential attachment styles in families
The impact of experienced racism on attachment styles at school
Self-appraisal in relationship to media and law enforcement
The Brotherman Study: Trying Not To Know
 Primary Defensive Strategy
 Contrary to expectations, findings suggest young black males
try to avoid thinking about & seeing impact of racism on their
lives
 When racist events happen they try to avoid conscious
awareness until due to severity & over-load it becomes
impossible to do so
 Findings showed that those who avoided more had worse
outcomes vs those who developed and understanding and
strategy for managing racial prejudice in their lives
 Selective inattention and worse dissociation are culturally
prescribed
Mainstream promotion of “color-blind society” suggests we care
equally about all children
 When there is no control, people tend to overlook events &
behaviors that they find troubling

One Doctor’s Story: Dr. Geoffrey Moorer
Implications for Psychotherapy
 Understanding relevant theories of identity is critical to determining
the stage & perspective of the patient
 Clinical goals in a group include:
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Helping male patient voice his concerns and views on life as a black man in
American society
Helping him become aware that his life experiences are reflections of issues
experienced by other black men
Providing one another with support and suggestions
Build on the significance and symbolism of a “circle” in African American culture
Understanding of their experiences with racism and challenges to their dignity
and respect
Understand the trust issues, confusion, and paranoia caused by repeated
experiences of racism will impact therapy and it may take longer to build rapport
 Black men will be challenging to engage because:
 Talking to others about personal life struggles goes against gender codes of
survival (Anderson, 1990)
 Revealing vulnerability threatens personal image and alters necessary power
alignments between men
Implications for Psychotherapy
 AA men must be encouraged to “know” and
understand the hostility and racism directed toward
them in order to develop resilience and coping
strategies
 Help AA develop a “psychic shield” against “slings
and arrows” of racism
 Develop within psychoanalysis a “language” &
framework to discuss race and ethnicity

Lack of critical mass of people of color contributes to the
problem but psychoanalytic clinicians must be innovative &
creative in their work with people of color
CONCLUDING COMMENTS/THOUGHTS
 Changes in opinions or
perceptions about American
society and black males
 Feelings evoked by these
statistics and facts about
black males
 Connections to personal
experiences with black male
 Thoughts on how these facts
relate to current events