The Harlem Family Institute continues its Saturday Talks series Harlem’s Psychoanalytic Renaissance, with Dr. Beverly J. Stoute presenting a radical re-interpretation of a key Freudian text and the framework of the "Rage Out Rage" paradigm.
Contemporary psychoanalytic theory has shown culture and history to be constituent elements of the unconscious. Cultural propositions about race are internalized, and the inclination to discriminate shapes our intrapsychic perceptions of self and Other. The action of these cultural processes within society has made racism all but intractable. A radical re-interpretation of Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) expands Freud’s theory of aggression, proposing that a dynamic structure exists in the cultural unconscious for a group enactment of sadism. Over generations, this destructive sadism through a repetition compulsion has resulted in learned silence and in group enactments of racism inflicted on African Americans – the socially-sanctioned Other in our social and educational institutions, and in our everyday life. Mobilizing Rage has been constructed as a defensive adaptation. Examples of racial enactments in the consultation room and the psychoanalytic institute will be discussed. A Rage Out Rage paradigm is formulated as a universal heuristic.
This program offers two New York State continuing-education contact-hour credits for New York State Licensed Psychoanalysts, Social Workers and Psychologists. It also offers Certificates of Attendance.
Learning Objectives:
As a result of attending this presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Identify the developmental trajectory for children of when and how cultural propositions are internalized in the process of racial and ethnic socialization and how that unconsciously and universally impacts the awareness of racial attitudes in adulthood.
2. Identify the cultural history of sadism proposed that serves as the template for racial enactments.
3. Discuss three ways that silence is perpetuated as an enactment in psychoanalytic terms. |