The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter is a pioneering reflection on the psychology of racism and its impact on us all. With the intimacy of personal experience and depth of analytic exposition, the authors expose racism’s searing effects on personal, clinical, and community interactions while providing pathways for change.

This book asserts that the insights and practice of psychoanalysis, applied behind the couch and in the community, create unique opportunities for change. Essayists address racially derived mental health inequities, including distortions, projections, stereotypes, and historical tropes. The Trauma of Racism invites personal and clinical exploration of how people learn, confront, and re-learn views on race. Narratives of the loss and grief and the burdens of slavery that crisscross the African American community are present. They are complemented by those of the psychological burdens and inspired acts of personal responsibility that respond to unequal access to wealth and opportunity along racial lines. In moving accounts portraying experiences of racism and access to privilege, the authors grapple with the possibilities of mutual understanding.

Readers concerned about racism will find themselves challenged and engaged. This book is intended for the general reader and for clinicians at any career stage. Likewise, scholars in the humanities, law, education, or public policy will find new opportunities to reflect and to act.

Introduction Part 1: Historical Perspectives 1. Racism and Health Equity: A Challenge for the Therapeutic Dyad 2. Race and Racism in Psychoanalytic Thought: The Ghosts in Our Nursery, 2nd edition 3. Race, African Americans, and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation Part 2: Living with the Trauma of Racism 4. African American Boys: Adolescents Under the Shadow of Slavery's Legacy 5. Loss, Grief, and Fear in Everyday Lives of African American Women 6. Everyday Racisim: Psychological Effects 7. Thinking Clinically about Post-Traumatic Reactions to Racial Trauma 8. From the Racially Provocative to the Evocative: Shaping the Destiny of the Racist Moment 9. "And How Are the Children?": Intergenerational Trauma and the Development of Black Children in America 10. Black Rage: The Psychic Adaptation to the Trauma of Oppression 11. Observations on the Use of the N-Word Part 3: Learning and Re-Learning Race 12. Racial Socialization and Thwarted Mentalization: Psychoanalytic Reflections from the Lived Experience of James Baldwin's America 13. From Multicultural Competence to Radical Openness: A Psychoanalytic Engagement of Otherness 14. On Psychoanalysis, Race and Class in an Urban ER Part 4: Being Aware of White Privilege 15. How I Came to Understand White Privilege 16. On Racism and Being White: The Journey to Henry's Restaurant 17. "Am I the Only Black Kid that Comes Here?" 18. White Privilege and its Fissures: A Personal Perspective 19. "It Takes One to Know One" 20. Psychoanalysis by Surprise: An Ad Hoc Experiment in Community Psychoanalysis on a South African Wine Farm Part 5: Interpreting Racism in Jordan Peele's "Get Out" 21. Get Out of My Head: Experiencing Cultural Paranoia in Jordan Peele's "Get Out" 22. From "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" to "Get Out": Attaining Psychic Freedom and Emancipation Across the Racial Divide