Pastoral Psychology

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Pastoral Psychology Singing the Blues : Reflections on African American Men, the Emergence of Melancholic Selves, and the Search for Transformational Objects --Manuscript Draft-Manuscript Number: Full Title:

Singing the Blues : Reflections on African American Men, the Emergence of Melancholic Selves, and the Search for Transformational Objects

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Topical Overview and Application

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melancholia; transformational objects; African American males; psychoanalysis, faith

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Ryan Williams LaMothe, Ph.D. Saint Meinrad School of Theology St. Meinrad, IN UNITED STATES

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Saint Meinrad School of Theology

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Ryan Williams LaMothe, Ph.D.

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Ryan Williams LaMothe, Ph.D.

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Click here to view linked References 1 2 3 4 Singing the Blues1: Reflections on African American Men, the Emergence of Melancholic 5 6 Selves, and the Search for Transformational Objects 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Abstract This article examines the texts of four African American men, arguing that the texts 15 16 reflect, in part, the emergence of a melancholic self. This melancholic self arises as a result of 17 18 19 internalizing the ubiquitous negative projections that come from social, political, economic, and 20 21 cultural institutions or disciplinary regimes and the attending narratives that support, foster, and 22 23 enforce racist beliefs (e.g., white superiority, black inferiority). The internalization of negative 24 25 26 projections, I contend, means that the black child struggles to discover a positive sense of self in 27 28 the public realm and it is this ongoing encounter that gives rise to a melancholic faith, wherein 29 30 31 the child can expect not fidelity, trust, and hope vis-à-vis the public realm, but rather betrayal, 32 33 distrust, and futility vis-à-vis the world ever presenting to him a positive self. These texts also 34 35 36 indicate that each man identifies a moment in his early life when he became conscious of racist 37 38 projections, the accompanying humiliations, as well as the presence and power of his 39 40 melancholic self. At the same time, this awareness initiates a search for a transformational 41 42 43 “object” that will liberate them from being in bondage to the melancholic self and its 44 45 accompanying racial logic and faith, which, in turn, transforms their agency. 46 47 48 Keywords Melancholia, Transformational Objects, African American Males, Psychoanalysis, 49 50 Faith 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 1 I selected “Singing the Blues” as a title in part because of its reference to African American culture and its 58 59 association with sadness or melancholia. That said, the article does not address the Blues. 60 61 62 1 63 64 65

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He was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him. (Baldwin, 1984, p.4). Long before the Negro child perceives this difference [white superiority], and even longer before he understands it, he has begun to react to it, he has begun to be controlled by it. (p.26) Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes. (William Gibson2)

Freud (1917), considering the psychological differences and similarities between mourning and melancholia, wrote: “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia, it is the ego itself. The patient represents his ego to us as worthless…he reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished” (p.246). The source of this psychological malady, for Freud, is the early developmental loss of love from a significant object (p.245). Decades later, Donald Capps (2002) takes up and emends Freud’s views, arguing that the early developmental separation and loss of a mother’s loving attention is the source of men’s religiousness. “This religiousness,” Capps adds, “is directly related…to [men’s] melancholy self” (xvi). In an earlier book, Capps (1997) examines the texts of four prominent figures (William James, Rudolph Otto, Erik Erikson, and Carl Jung) in psychology and religion, arguing that their struggle with melancholia and their interest in religion stemmed from “the loss of his original mother and the loss of his original self” (p.4). The juxtaposition of men’s religiousness and melancholia is interesting, in some ways compelling, and also troubling. It is intriguing because it is a different way to think about men’s religiousness and its source, and compelling because it resonates, in part, personally and in my

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http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1128205-before-you-diagnose-yourself-with-depression-or-low-selfesteem-first accessed 20 January 2017.

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work as a pastoral psychotherapist. Yet, Capps’ (and by implication Freud’s) argument is problematic for several interrelated reasons. First, Capps’ relies on psychoanalytic, early childhood developmental theory to account for both religiousness and melancholia, which contains the premise that the adult self (or selves) and his/her sufferings can be explained and accounted for by exploring childhood relationships (in this case, mother-child interactions). Instead of positing “a historical construction of self…seen as always embedded in the sociopolitical process” (Suchet, 2004, p.454), Capps’ and Freud’s perspectives ignore or underemphasize the impact of significant social, cultural, and political factors on the formation of the self and suffering—in particular, the emergence of a melancholic self.3 A second related problem is that the near exclusive focus on the mother-child interactions not only overlooks political, economic, and cultural variables, but can also end up colluding with political, economic, and cultural narratives and institutions that are implicated in oppression, trauma, or the emergence of a melancholic self. Similarly, this approach can deflect therapists and patients from becoming conscious of the real sources of their suffering, thus impeding the patient’s agency (see Fanon, 2008/1952, p. 80). Lastly, Capps, while acknowledging differences in degree of and response to melancholic self, makes universal claims regarding men’s religiousness and the origins of the melancholic self, which are questionable when one notes the myriad of cultural, political, and social conditions. Given these objections, in this article I shift the focus from early developmental motherchild interactions to political, economic, and cultural realities of racism,4 as the primary source 3

Capps (1997, 2002) raises the issue of patriarchy and so one could say that he acknowledges cultural factors, but

this is only a casual nod because the bulk of his argument rests on the mother-child relationship. 4

I will say more about the attributes and consequences of racism. At this point, I offer a brief definition, recognizing

the political and cultural complexities of this term. Dalal (2002) provides a general overview, arguing that “racism is

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of the rise of a melancholic self and faith in African American men5. Like Capps, I consider the texts of four public figures, though in this case they are African American men, namely Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.6 While Capps comes from a anything—thought, feeling or action—that uses the notion of race as an activating or organizing principle. Or to put it another way, racism is the manufacture and use of the notion of race” (p.27). He takes this further and notes that “racism is a form of organizing peoples, commodities and relationships between them by making reference to the notion of race” (p.28). And finally racism is “a form of hatred of one group for another” (p.28). Kovel (1970) identifies three types of racism, namely dominative, aversive, and metaracism. The dominative type involves direct mastery, such as slavery and forced labor, which requires daily forms of humiliations. Aversive is separation and avoidance, while metaracism involves a group’s commitment to racial superiority, reflected in and enforced by political, economic, and social means. In this essay, racism falls under the latter two categories with special emphasis on ideologies of superiority and inferiority. Systemic racism refers to how the organizing principle of the notion of race is manifested in political, economic, and social structures and attending narratives, policies, etc., impacting daily life. The authors’ texts I use in this article all testify to the profound and systemic oppression and humiliations associated with racism. 5

The focus in this article is on males and not the melancholic self in African American females, which I would

suggest is true as well, though with differences. I also realize that I am using a binary view of gender identity, neglecting to explore the gender variations that might offer differences vis-à-vis sources and attributes of a melancholic self. For instance, African American trans persons likely develop a melancholic self not simply related to racism, but also to negative projections regarding gender identity differences. Finally, I am not claiming that all African American males develop a melancholic self. I am arguing that the texts of the four men discussed in this article reveal a melancholic self (as well as other selves). 6

I wish to make clear that I am not arguing against the view that mother-child relationships can be sources of

psychological suffering or, more particularly, a melancholic self in African American men. Indeed, one could examine Malcolm X’s early life and take note of his conflicted relationship with his mother, arguing that this is a source of his melancholic self. Yet, even here one would have to take into account the significant sufferings inflicted on her, her husband, and her children stemming from racism and patriarchy, which Malcolm X rightly recognizes

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psychology of religion perspective, I use a psychology of faith7 perspective because it is broader and it does not make the assumption that all men are religious, which is evident in my choice of Baldwin and Coates, both of whom eschew religion. My premise, like Niebuhr’s (1989), is that to be human means one has faith, but one need not have religious faith. Moreover, in using this approach I do not claim or argue that men’s religiousness is connected to a melancholic self, though I am claiming that a melancholic self arises from and represents particular kinds of faith relations and dynamics. That is, I contend that the melancholic self emerges from racially inflected dynamics of faith of the public world and that its resolution—not cure—arises from a faith that is not captive to racial logic.8 My argument, in brief, is that these texts portray the development of a melancholic self that arises as a result of internalizing the ubiquitous negative projections that come from social, political, economic, and cultural institutions or disciplinary regimes and the attending narratives that support, foster, and enforce racist beliefs (e.g., white superiority, black inferiority). The internalization of negative projections also means that the black child struggles to discover a positive sense of self in the public realm and it is this ongoing encounter that gives rise to a melancholic faith, wherein the child can expect not fidelity, trust, and hope, but rather betrayal, distrust, and futility vis-à-vis the world ever presenting to him a positive self. These texts also indicate that each man identifies a moment in his early life when he became conscious of racist (Haley, 1964, pp.1-23). This said, to posit that the mother’s (or father’s) interactions with her child are the source of melancholic self would be akin to saying that an effect is the cause. I am relying on Niebuhr’s (1989) notion of the dynamics of faith (belief-disbelief, trust-distrust, loyalty-disloyalty) and I add the dimension of hope and hopelessness. When I address the dynamics of faith, I am addressing it primarily in terms of its social dimension, though this social dimension may be connected to persons’ faith in God. I also note that this relational and dynamic understanding of faith is distinct from the more cognitive, developmental view that James Fowler (1980, 1981) used in his discussion of Malcolm X. 8 The relation between racism and mental suffering has been recognized and discussed by a variety of scholars (e.g., Goldberg, 2009; Grier & Cobbs, 1992; Head, 2004). In this article, I am focusing on melancholia in four African American writers and not on depression. 7

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projections, the accompanying humiliations, and experiences of social-political betrayal and distrust. In that moment or series of moments, he is aware of the presence and power of his melancholic self. At the same time, this awareness initiates a search9 for a transformational “object”—an object/process and corresponding faith that will liberate them from being in bondage to the melancholic self and its accompanying racial logic and faith, which, in turn, results in a transformed agency. This liberation, however, does not mean the disappearance of the melancholic self. Rather, it means a broadening and deepening of self-other acceptance, greater self-differentiation vis-à-vis the melancholic self and racial logic, and clear-eyed agency. I begin with a brief overview of Freud’s and Capp’s view of melancholia, as well as offer a few clarifications and alterations. This sets the stage for proffering a different perspective regarding the sources and attributes of melancholic self in African American males. In the third section, I discuss how each writer’s awareness of social, economic, and political humiliations and betrayals initiates a search for a transformational object/process and this search includes different ways of handling the melancholic self.

Melancholia and its attributes Freud (1917) recognized that the definition of melancholia “fluctuates even in descriptive psychiatry” (p.243), yet he endeavored to identify its mental features namely, “a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of a capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterances in

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Capps (2002) argues that the emotional separation from the mother initiates a religious quest or search. While

I am focusing on racism as a source of the melancholic self, I agree that its presence accompanies a search or quest, which, in my view, is not necessarily religious.

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self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment” (p.244). A melancholic patient, Freud proposed, “represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement” (p.246). These patients are “perpetually taking offense and behaving as if they had been treated with great injustice. All this is possible only because the reactions expressed in their behavior still proceed from an attitude of revolt” (p.248; emphasis mine). Freud believed that the patient “must be right in some way” and “he also seems justified in certain other self-accusations; it is merely that he has a keener eye for the truth than other people who are not melancholic” (p.246). Freud believed that “the self-reproaches against the loved object which has shifted away from it on to the patient’s own ego” (p.248) have their roots in a “real slight or disappointment coming from the loved person” (p.248). It is not clear who the loved person is in Freud’s article or the age that this disappointment took place, but Capps is confident he knows the source and age. “Male melancholia,” Capps (2002) argued, “has roots in the emotional separation between mothers and their three or four-year-old sons” (p.5). This separation or loss, according to Capps, is inherently traumatic” (p.19).10 The loss is not like a death of a mother, because the “lost object is still ‘in the neighborhood,’ causing the person who has suffered the loss to feel abandoned” (p.9). Capps follows Freud in stating that the “lost object is not relinquished and released, as in

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There are a few problems with the view that separation is inherently traumatic. First, Capps makes this claim

without providing evidence. Instead, the reader is expected to believe that emotional separation is in itself traumatic the evidence of which is noted in men’s adult struggles. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Capps’ perspective is heuristic. Second, While Capps (2002) claims there are degrees of trauma (pp. 21-22), it is not entirely clear what he means by trauma. Third, as Fassin and Rechtman (2009) convincingly argue, the notion of trauma in the West has come to mean any kind of suffering. I agree with their view that not all psychological suffering can or should be understood as traumatic.

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grief, but is internalized, becoming an aspect of the ego, so that the ego itself becomes the focus of reproach and delusions of future punishment” (p.7; emphasis mine). There is, of course, more to be said about Freud’s and Capps’ argument, but this sketches out the main ideas. Also, it is important to pause here and highlight a few points and ideas that will become important in the discussion below. First, a number of writers note that Freud shifted his theory of trauma in the late 19th century from an event based source to fantasy (Davies & Frawley, 1994, p.15; See also Sulloway, 1992), though he never entirely let go of his first theory. One observes a curious mix of both theories in Freud’s and Capps’ (because he relies on Freud) understanding of the source and psychological experience of melancholia. First of all, for both authors, there is an actual relational event—a real slight or emotional separation. In addition, Capps also agrees with Freud’s view that the person’s self-reproach “cannot be doubted” and that s/he has “a keener eye for truth” (Capps, 2002, p.13; Freud, 1917, p. 246). And yet, both use language that suggests the adult and child are imagining things (e.g., delusions of future punishment; delusion of inferiority; false conscience; behaving as if they had been treated with great injustice; an experience of perceived abandonment). To be sure, a child or adult can experience an actual event and construct his/her experience such that there is a mix of what actually happened and what is imagined. But there are two problems with their view. First, we note that it is the analyst who decides what is true or real and what is an illusion, raising the question of power and authority in defining reality. Imagine Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X talking to their respective therapists, saying they expected to be harmed or assassinated and the therapist interpreting this as a delusion of future punishment. Their expectations of future “punishment” were clearly not delusions. Also, even if we know for certain that a person’s expectation of future punishment is a paranoid illusion or delusion, how do we know that this is

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not connected to real experiences in the present or past? The texts of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates express, at times, anxiety and fears of danger in the present and the future, which are clearly linked to real experiences in the present and past. I add here that their laments about past and present injustices were not illusory. They were not behaving as if there had been some great injustice in the past. Another point regards Freud’s and Capps’ use of the language of betrayal and abandonment, which in my view corresponds nicely with Niebuhr’s dynamics of faith (beliefdisbelief, trust-distrust, loyalty-disloyalty, and I add hope-hopelessness). To reframe Capps’ view, the event of the mother-child separation is constructed in terms of being abandoned; it is experienced as a betrayal, disrupting trust, heightening disbelief, and evoking hopelessness. From this angle, one could posit that this real event is a relational disruption of existential faith wherein one cannot find a positive self to be confirmed and affirmed by the Other and is linked to the rise of the melancholic self and correspondingly melancholic faith. The point I wish to stress here, and one I will elaborate later, is that melancholia in African American males can be understood to stem from a relational disruption of faith vis-à-vis the public realm. A third point relates to this relational disruption of faith and, in particular, hopelessness. Both Capps and Freud overlook what I believe is a significant feature of melancholia, namely helplessness/powerlessness. Remaining with Capps’ belief that the melancholic self has roots in the emotional separation of the mother from the male child at age 3 or 4, we know that the child’s agency is still developing and he is in relationship with a powerful parent. One would rightly expect that in the face of this separation the child experiences a profound sense of powerlessness/helplessness. He is helpless to stop the emotional separation or to repair the relationship. Evidence for this is his rage and vengeful feelings, feelings that cannot be expressed

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at the more powerful object without the danger of further negative repercussions. Both the fear and checked vengeful feelings (e.g., self-reproach) have their source in a sense of abandonment (betrayal) and the accompanying issue of distrust. If a child feels rage and this is connected to feelings of powerlessness, then s/he is close to the edge of feeling hopeless. Indeed, rage, which is connected to agency, reflects both a protest (misdirected as self-reproach) and a refusal to experience the full extent of his/her powerlessness and hopelessness. Adults also experience powerlessness, tinged with hopelessness, in the face of a death of a beloved other and other losses, yet most have developed agentic ways to respond. So, we might expect a child, who has less agency in relation to a powerful parent—who emotionally separates, yet stays in the neighborhood—to struggle with powerlessness. This perspective might alter how we understand the melancholic self. For instance, self-reproach reflects agency, albeit skewed, that screens powerlessness, futility, and distrust. “I am helpless in the face of mother’s emotional separation and I cannot attack her for abandoning me, but I can attack myself.” In terms of faith, the melancholic self is on the edge of hopelessness that is connected to feelings of helplessness in the face of an abandoning object. Self-reproach, then, is an act of agency that steers away from being engulfed by hopelessness, while preserving what remains of the relational trust with the beloved object. A final point, Capps has a postmodern view of the self, which is different from Freud’s perspective of a unitary self. By this I mean, Capps (2002) considers human beings to be comprised of multiple selves (p.24), which enables him to claim that men who have a melancholic self also have other selves that may ameliorate melancholia. Moreover, Capps’ postmodern view enables him to claim that this melancholic self is not always in ascendancy, appearing when some event triggers it. Relatedly, he argues that not all forms of melancholia are

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pathological; there is a continuum of degree. These two premises are very useful in my depiction of the melancholic self in African American males.

Racism, melancholic selves, and faith Except for the autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., the realities of racism leap from the very first paragraphs of Baldwin’s, Coates’, and Malcolm X’s texts. In Notes to a Native Son, Baldwin (1984) writes of the “Negro problem” and in The Fire Next Time, writing about his father, Baldwin writes “he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him” (1990, p.4). In the first line of Malcolm X’s (Haley, 1964) work, the Ku Klux Klan appear, menacingly surrounding the house where his mother bravely stood on the porch so that they could see she was pregnant. Coates (2015) expresses his sadness when a TV host wanted to “know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence” (pp.5-6). While racism is not necessarily the central or only focus of these texts, it is nevertheless the reality that cannot be ignored because it is pervasive. Indeed, Baldwin (1990) writes that “Long before the Negro child perceives this difference [white superiority], and even longer before he understands it, he has begun to react to it, he has begun to be controlled by it” (p.26). This quote reveals not simply the ineluctable realities of racism in the lives of these four men, but that they were being shaped by and reacted to racism before they became conscious of it. One way to understand this is through the psychoanalytic concept of internalization. Roy Schafer (1990/1959) realized that the concept of internalization is useful in understanding not only psychosocial development, but also for explicating the process of accepting an ideology

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(p.xi), such as the ideologies associated with racism. Indeed, Schafer believed the concept used in social theory can account for how the “oppressed and exploited [come] to accept and even idealize the socioeconomic and ideological system in which they and their oppressors are serving as participant-victims” (pp. xi-xii). Internalization, for Schafer, refers to “all those processes by which the subject transforms real or imagined regulatory interactions with his environment, and real or imagined characteristics of his environment, into inner regulations and characteristics” (p.15). These processes of taking in the world as one constructs experience begin in infancy, long before a child is conscious, and continue throughout life. In terms of racism, we can understand this to mean that young children are already internalizing the negative projections of a racist ethos. The thousands of overt and covert messages that black people are worthless, less than human, are unconsciously internalized. Even in the families of these men, we see parents advertently and inadvertently reacting to racism, carrying negative messages, while at the same time trying to counter these messages with positive ones. For example, as a child of 4 or 5, Martin Luther King listened as his mother struggled to explain discrimination and segregation. King (1998) wrote, She taught me that I should feel a sense of “somebodiness” but that on the other hand I had to go out and face a system that stared me in the face every day saying you are “less than,” you are “not equal to.” She told me about slavery and how it ended with the Civil War. She tried to explain the divided system of the South—the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored sign on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories—as a social condition rather than a natural order. She made it clear that she opposed this system and that I must never allow it to make me feel inferior. (pp.3-4)

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King’s parents attempted to facilitate their son’s somebodiness, which was directly connected to the culture’s attempt to deny this. In a similar way, Coates (2015) depicts how unconscious or unstated fear, which stemmed from the underlying and often overt violence of racism, shaped their lives even in a loving family. “And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped money in pocket to care for you,” Coates remarks. “My father,” he continues, “was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger” (p.15). Later in his book, Coates writes that “It was a loving house, even as it was besieged by its country, but it was hard” (p.126). Baldwin (1990) makes a similar point. “I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad that day, too, yes we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived” (p.7). For Coates (and Baldwin), his father’s discipline and love cannot be fully grasped without also understanding that they were reactions to the realities of racism where “destruction is merely the superlative form of dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations” (2015, p.9). It is not simply negative projections of black worthlessness that are being internalized. To internalize the ethos of racism means internalizing the beliefs regarding white superiority, which are connected to political, economic, judicial, and social institutions that enforce, through humiliations, punishments, and terror, the “reality” of white superiority. 11 White superiority is 11

The beliefs in white superiority and black inferiority are existential and theological delusions. By this I mean

that there is no evidence in nature or scripture that affirms these are true. Yet, the social, political, judicial, and economic institutions, programs, policies, and practices, all of which are social constructions, enforce these beliefs, making these delusions real in the sense they are lived out and experienced. One can then understand the psychological struggle wherein a child, in his/her home, learns and experiences that s/he is somebody encounters daily a public reality that says s/he is not. The disjunction between the private-family world and the public-world is

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also internalized by associating positive valences to what is deemed to be white customs or culture. This is perhaps most starkly evident in Malcolm X’s (Haley, 1964) text where, as a young child, he identified with his white classmates, trying to be like them (pp.26-32). Even after he was conscious of racism, even after he deliberately rejected white people, Malcolm unwittingly identified with white values by straightening his hair (pp.54-55) and dating white women. Remembering this period of his life, Malcolm X writes that he “had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’—and white people ‘superior—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look ‘pretty’ by white standards” (pp.56-57). This process of internalizing negative representations associated with being black and positive representations linked to being white is further understood in terms of conflicting identifications12 and associated emotions. Children need to identify with positive or idealized representations (Lee & Martin, 1991), so it is understandable that Malcolm X would initially identify with the white students, copying their styles and adopting their expectations (e.g., wanting to be a lawyer), while at the same time internalizing negative representations. This suggests, a disidentification with negative representations associated with being black. Malcolm X (Haley, 1964) observed this in his parents and in their treatment of him. He wrote “I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man’s brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor light ones, and I was his lightest child.

significant and overwhelming. Children, naturally, expect that the world of the home is equivalent to the world outside the home. King trusted his parents that he was somebody and extended this trust to the outside world. Yet very early in life King realizes the public world is a white world that is not trustworthy, owes no loyalty to him, has no place for him except as a subjugated subject and therefore hold no hope for him. 12

For Schafer (1990) the processes associated with internalization include introjection and identification.

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Most Negro parents in those days would almost instinctively treat any lighter children better than darker ones” (p.4). Malcolm X was pointing to the conscious and unconscious intertwining of negative and positive identifications associated with racist beliefs in white superiority and black inferiority. Identifications accompany emotions. Baldwin (1984) wrote that, as “a kind of bastard of the West,” I “would have to appropriate these white centuries, I would have to make them mine…otherwise I would have no place in any scheme” (p.7). This realization accompanied a painful epiphany: “What was the most difficult was the fact that I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of public progress; that I hated and feared white people. This did not mean I loved black people; on the contrary, I despised them, possibly because they failed to produce a Rembrandt. In effect, I hated and feared the world” (p.7). In this psychic cauldron of identifications and disidentifications, one can see hatred and fear of whites, as well as self-loathing at being black or at other blacks—a self-loathing that, in part, arises with the realization that one cannot find a positive or ideal sense of oneself in the public realm. This description of the process of internalizing negative and positive representations associated with racism provides the foundation for addressing the rise of the melancholic self and, correspondingly, a melancholic form of faith. After a period of moving through stranger anxiety, a child, growing up in a relatively loving home, will tend to expect the world to be a safe place where he can find himself reflected and supported and affirmed positively. In this world he will find a positive, public self. It is, ideally, a world of richness and possibilities. From a dynamics of faith perspective, this positive public self parallels the trust, loyalty, and hope the child experiences in relation to his good enough parents. The child will come to expect, given

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his trust in the loyalty of his parents, that the world is trustworthy and loyal as well. He, then, trusts and hopes that he will find a positive self reflected or mirrored back. I add that this hope includes a sense of agency. He can impact his world. He has a future in this world. Sadly, in the case of an African American child, the public world is filled with daily humiliations and dangers, though a child’s awareness of this is, at first, limited. Let me return to Freud. He (1917) wrote that “in mourning it is the world, which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself” (p.246). We need to emend this view, given African American males’ experiences. The African American male encounters a world that is hostile, inhospitable. It is the world that is poor and empty in that he cannot find a positive self mirrored back. The world is also poor because a black child’s agency confronts numerous limitations and obstacles. In melancholia it is both the ego and the world that are poor and empty. Baldwin, writing to his nephew, says “You were born where you were born and faced a future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being” (1990, p.7). It is this encounter with the world that begins the construction of melancholic self and faith. It is a world that cannot be trusted to reflect back a positive sense of self, but can be expected to enforce negative projections and erect nearly insurmountable obstacles. This world owes no loyalty to these boys, these men, but nevertheless demands loyalty and submission to the illusions of white supremacy and black inferiority. This hegemonic world where, as Coates notes, people believe they are white, black agency crashes into white walls of indifference, humiliation, and violence, evoking powerlessness. The pervasive distrust, betrayals of the world can only give rise to a specious hope of a melancholic self.

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Baldwin’s statement reflects not only the emptiness of the world and limited agency, but also Freud’s (1917) observation that the melancholic’s loss is “of a more ideal kind” (p.245). We can understand that an African American child is not going to find his ideal self in the public world, yet, in agreeing with Freud, initially “one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost” (p.245). How can a child be conscious of the existential loss of not having his ideal self mirrored in the public realm? It is only later, as discussed below, where there is a moment or series of moments when the child awakens to the loss—the loss of world that is hospitable to his self and, as Coates (2015) notes, his body (pp.12-16). This painful awakening also ushers in a more conscious awareness of the melancholic self. Baldwin (1990) writes that “Negroes in this country—and Negroes do not, strictly or legally speaking exist in any other—are really taught to despise themselves from the moment their eyes open on the world. This world is white and they are black. White people hold power, which means they are superior to blacks…and the world has innumerable ways of making this difference known and felt and feared” (pp.25-26). This world betrays the child’s expectation and hope of finding and claiming a positive sense of himself; it is a world that is filled with obstacles to the realization of one’s agency—a world empty of trust. When faced with a public world that consistently and constantly communicates one is worthless, we can expect a child to begin to believe this, even as his parents, like King’s, attempt to communicate that he is somebody, he is worthwhile—a child of God. In this case, the emergence of self reproaches and expectation of punishment, linked to a melancholic self, do not emerge in relation to the emotional separation of the mother. Rather, they emerge from an encounter with the public world that communicates to the black child that he his worthlessness, as well as the disciplinary regimes that enforce this. This world does not withdraw affection, it is devoid of it. The imperceptible loss, then, is that of not being able to find one’s ideal self in the

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public world. This suggests that the melancholic self emerges and is later evoked in the encounters with not simply racist people, but a public world infected with racism. The loss may be initially hard to identify, but it is very real and it is the reproaches of the melancholic self that is the manifestation of this loss. I add, returning to Freud and Capps, that self reproaches are true to the extent that they reflect the reality of racism and accompanying publicly held illusions of superiority and inferiority. Also, expectations of punishment are real given the long history of public humiliations and terror (e.g., beatings, lynchings, rapes; see Cone, 2011; McGuire, 2011; Marable, 2011). For a child, who has vengeful feelings at being betrayed by mother, the expression of rage is channeled into self reproaches. It is too dangerous to attack the beloved and needed object. The self reproach associated with an internalized sense of worthlessness that emerges in a racist culture comes not from fear of the loved object, but fear that anger, rage, and protest will be met by severe, violent punishment. The world is not only empty it is damned dangerous. Malcolm X’s (Haley, 1964) autobiography illustrates this well. The narrative begins with a KKK threat of death, because his father was a man who spoke out, who protested and rebelled against racism, and who was later murdered. Similarly, Coates (2015) repeatedly writes about the fear of blacks and the terror of disembodiment (p.114). Leaving a movie with his five year-old son, Coates saw a white woman push his son, because his son was apparently moving too slow for her (p.93). “Many things happened at once,” Coates writes. “There was the reaction of any parent when a stranger lays a hand on the body of his or her child. And there was my own insecurity in my ability to protect your black body” (p.94). Coates was sure that this white woman would not have pushed her son if they were in Flatbush. Understandably, Coates reacted angrily and was immediately confronted by angry white males, one of whom threatened to have him arrested.

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Stand up, protest and the white world will seek to police you, punish you, kill you. The white world is not for you and the consequences of “error [are] higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that American might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined” (p.96). Agency in the forms of resisting, protesting, asserting one’s positive desires and motivations will be met by a hostile world. One way to understand the rise of the melancholic self is this encounter with an empty and dangerous world. Fear and rage are responses, but ones that occur in relation to numerous obstacles and limitations of one’s agency. This is further understood in terms of what I addressed above about melancholia and powerlessness/helplessness. This empty “world’ is a vast, ineluctable hegemon, demanding submission. It is a world of betrayal and injustice that seemingly cannot be changed, which suggests that this sense of powerlessness edges toward despair. Baldwin writes about the shades of fear he experienced as a child. At times he would feel his father’s fear “when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs” (pp.26-27). This fear was different from the fear when “the child, in challenging the white world’s assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction” (p.27). The father is afraid because he knows the white world is not trustworthy when it comes to black persons freely expressing their views, desires, etc. and the father is unable to change it. The white world can be expected to punish, discipline, shame, rape, or kill those who challenge, resist, or undermine the illusions of white superiority. The fear also reflects a sense of hopelessness/helplessness in that it is futile to defy the white world and therefore he must protect his son. The father knows futility, which is evidence of the presence of the melancholic self. Coates’ text parallels this when he talks about the fear of parents for their children living in a white world. And, of course, the futility of the

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melancholic self can move into despair as Baldwin notes regarding his father dying because he believed what white people said about him. The slow process of internalizing negative projections, the inability to find a positive sense of self (and trust) in the world, and the attending powerlessness, distrust, and futility about being able to act in relation to this white hegemon eventually comes crashing into consciousness, at different times and in different ways or forms. Reflecting on his early life, James Baldwin (1984) writes that while in New Jersey, “I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels” (p.94). The awareness of this fever took place when he was 14. He (1990) writes “I became, during my fourteenth year, for the first time in my life, afraid—afraid of the evil within me and afraid of the evil without” (p.16). For King, consciousness of racism occurred earlier. When he was six years-old, after learning that his white playmate was no longer allowed to play with him because King was a black person, King turned to his parents, confused and angry. Malcolm X recalls the shock and rage he felt when his teacher, Mr. Ostrowski, told him that Malcom had to be “realistic about being a nigger” (Haley, 1964, p.38). Malcolm, Ostrowski advised, should not aspire to being a lawyer or doctor and instead consider work suited to people of his color. For Coates there does not seem to be a singular moment, but rather a series of awakenings where he discovers that “racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth” (p.10). These are moments where they are more aware of the presence of the melancholic self—this self that had been slowly internalizing the negative projections of the white world, while not being able to find a positive sense of self in this world.

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This awareness is connected to melancholic faith, which I have depicted above. These texts reveal an awareness of the perfidy of the white world. The white world cannot be trusted and while some whites can be trusted, it is never total, only occasional and particular. Hope, then, becomes more difficult given a world that is disloyal and untrustworthy. In whom and in what should I hope, the melancholic self asks. Because the white world was associated with Christianity, in Malcolm X’s view, he turned first to atheism and then found hope in Islam. King did not reject Christianity but found trust and hope in his community of faith and later in theological renderings of non-violence. Baldwin and Coates found hope in more humanistic beliefs. Yet, their eventual sense of hope came as a result of their search for a transformational object, which began at the moment(s) of consciousness of racism.

Racism, melancholic selves, and the search for a transformational object In Capps’ (2002) discussion of male melancholia, he argues that the loss of the object initiates a quest wherein men “may seek in religion a substitute or compensation for the ‘lost object,’ their mother” (p.45). I agree with the idea that the initial painful stirrings of recognition of the loss initiate a quest or search, but I frame this differently. The moments of waking up to the painful reality of not being able to find a positive sense of self in the public world, which is accompanied by distrust and betrayal and feelings of powerlessness, rage, and fear, begin a search for a transformational object13. This object represents the possibility of realizing agency and positive self image in the public sphere, as well as the possibility of the restoration of trust, loyalty, and hope—relatively free from being in bondage to the racial logic of superiority and inferiority. By

13

Bollas (1987, p.14) clearly argues that the transformational object is less a discrete object than it is a process,

representing the mother-child interactions.

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being free of racial logic and illusions, the individual’s agency is no longer skewed by self reproach. Instead, he sees clearly the sources of his suffering and acts (e.g., reproaches) in relation to these sources. This does not mean, however, that the melancholic self no longer exists in the psychic economy. It remains, but because of the individual’s greater self-other (“other” here meaning white others and white world) differentiation, it no longer threatens to overwhelm or dominate the person. Before turning to the texts of these African American writers, it is necessary to indicate more clearly what is meant by Bollas’ notion of a transformational object and my emendations of it. Briefly, Bollas (1987) argues that “the mother is experienced as a process of transformation” vis-à-vis the child’s self-experiences (p.14). In adult life, Bollas posits, individuals search for this transformational object, “not to possess the object; rather the object is pursued in order to surrender to it as a medium that alters the self” such that s/he is the “recipient of enviro-somatic caring” (p.14). For some individuals this search “constitutes recognition in the subject of a deficiency in ego experience…and signifies the person’s search for a particular object relation that is associated with ego transformation and repair of the ‘basic fault’” (p. 18). Bollas, like Capps and Freud, is interested in early child-parent relations. While I have tended to avoid this, I do consider that the search for the transformational object, for African American males, involves, in part, early verbal and preverbal experiences of positive self experiences rooted in relationships of trust and loyalty vis-à-vis caregivers—experiences relatively free of racial logic of humiliation and worthlessness. However, this is not to be understood as a return or a regression, but rather a transformed recollection in the present adult. Put another way, the search for transformational object points to the present complex, symbolic organization of experience that integrates and transforms these earlier experiences of care that were not

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determined by racial logic. I add here that I am arguing that the search for a transformational object arises, not in or as a result of early childhood, but in the moments one is awakened painfully to the presence of the melancholic self vis-à-vis the public sphere. This awakening is painful, in part, because the young man has unconscious, preverbal and verbal experiences of finding a positive self and agency in relation to his parents. The “deficiency” in ego experience, then, is not stemming from early childhood deprivations, but rather experiences of worthlessness and the inability to find a positive self in the public world. In other words, the “basic fault” is racism and its perfidy. Of course, the search for a transformational object often involves the use of pseudo transformational objects. By this I mean objects that do not result in transformation in agency and in the sense of being relatively free of the melancholic self and, in this case, racial logic. Finally, the question arises as to the relation between the transformational object and faith. The short answer is it transforms the melancholic self’s distrust, sense of betrayal, and hopelessness, which arises from encounters with public racism and inability to discover a positive sense of self, to a realistic trust, fidelity, and hope that are not contingent on racism’s logic of black worthlessness. This suggests, then, that a transformational object is a process of differentiating from a racially inscribed faith relation and dynamics, which results in the transformation of agency. With this brief formulation, let’s turn to our writers. Malcom X’s (Haley, 1964) painful encounter with his 8th grade teacher initiated his search to discover a positive self in the public sphere, taking him to Boston. He rejected Ella’s middle class black culture, because he believed it was too dependent on imitating whites (pp.41-43). On one of his explorations he found a poor black section of the city where “he felt more relaxed among Negroes who were being their natural selves” (p.45). Malcolm X increasingly felt at home here, identifying with this particular

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black culture. In time, he became involved in the underground economy, which included crime. Eventually, he was caught, convicted, and sent to prison where Malcolm X, through his brother, began a relationship with Elijah Muhammed—the leader the Nation of Islam. I suggest that Malcolm X’s turn to black culture of the ghetto and his initial conversion to the Nation of Islam represented his search for a transformational object. Unfortunately, these searches were infused by and captive to racial logic, which Malcolm X eventually recognized. For instance, while in prison Malcolm X learned of “Yacub’s history” that tells of the created superiority of blacks and the inferiority of whites (pp.167-170). To be sure, this was an attempt to find a positive self in the public realm, but in so doing it simply reversed the superiority-inferiority framework, leaving intact distrust and betrayal. At this point, Malcolm X’s search was not quite transformational. It is only his later conversions, initiated by the painful betrayals of his mentor Elijah Muhammed, that Malcolm X finds a secure positive self in the religious belief that all Muslims and all human beings are God’s children (p.345). As a result, his faith was more expansive and diverse, not contingent on racially inflected faith of the Nation of Islam. In other words, toward the end of his short life, Malcolm X possessed a self that was mostly differentiated from racial logic that dominated and gave rise to the melancholic self, which freed him to act along with whites who wished to undermine racism. I stress here that this did not mean the melancholic self was gone, just that it had less of a decisive presence in his psychic life. Martin Luther King Jr., like Malcolm X, had a similar painful awakening that initiated his search for a transformational object. One of the differences was that King’s parents presented to him the transformational object—God. This God secured his somebodiness even if the white world tried to take it away, they said. This sense of God given somebodiness also came with an obligation. “My parents,” King (1998) writes, “would always tell me that I should not hate the

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white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him” (p.7). As King notes, this obligation did not sit well with him. Understandably, he continued to experience hatred and hostility toward white people for the injustices they committed. God (and the attending beliefs in love for all creation) did not become a transformational object until young adulthood, as King read and studied theologians, as well as the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. King made a commitment to non-violent protests and to respect and love white people, whether they were racists or not (pp.19-29). Of course, King would have numerous opportunities in his ministry to reaffirm and deepen this commitment (p.134). In my view, King’s intellectual and spiritual/faith struggle to live out his belief in God’s love or care for all humanity represented the search and discovery of a transformational object that accompanies a self that is relatively free of the racial animus associated with the melancholic self. King’s sense of agency and hope were not contingent on whether the hegemon of racism changed, which indicates a transformed agency. He was, in other words, determined to care for all people, while seeking justice for the oppressed. Naturally, given the constant death threats and vitriol, King’s melancholic self made appearances in his life, at different times. It has been suggested that King struggled with depression (Smiley & Ritz, 2014), but perhaps it was the melancholic self, which attends experiences of helplessness and hopelessness. For instance, in the midst of the civil rights struggle King (1998) had what he might have called a spiritual crisis. He remembered laying his head on the table and confessing to God his weakness, lack of courage, and fear. There is a sense of him sitting on the edge of despair, questioning whether anything he was doing was meaningful or making a difference, which was expectable given the hatred and viciousness directed at him and others. In response to his pleas, King heard a quiet, assuring voice: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for

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truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world” (pp.77-78). King recalled, “At that moment I experienced the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything” (p.78). Note the renewed sense of agency that is infused with power, trust, fidelity, and hope. The melancholic self receded into the background, for a time, as King was able to take hold of and make use of the transformational object to continue his non-violent protests. Not all transformational objects need be religious, which means that the search is not necessarily religious, though, as argued above, it is inextricably connected to existential faith. James Baldwin’s and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s searches were not, in my view religious, but rather existential or humanistic. Baldwin (1984) writes “The American image of the Negro lives also in the Negro’s heart; and when he has surrendered to this image life has no other possible reality” (p.38). In my view, Baldwin is saying that surrendering to the melancholic self means accepting hopelessness and powerlessness that result from encountering a hostile, racist public space. He continues saying “That’s he, like the white enemy with whom he will be locked one day in mortal struggle, has no means save this asserting his identity” (p.38). Baldwin recognizes that most African Americans, in response to “unanswerable hatred,” have “wanted to smash any white face he may encounter in a day, to violate, out of motives of the cruelest vengeance, their women, to break the bodies of all white people and bring them low” (p.38). And yet Baldwin knows that this path is a dead end. A different response is required. In his remarkable letter to his nephew. Baldwin (1990) writes, “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear” (p.8). Baldwin is encouraging his nephew to

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differentiate himself from the racial logic of worthlessness and superiority. But he takes it farther by commanding his nephew to accept them with love—a love tethered to the tragic reality of racism. “The really terrible thing, old buddy, he writes, “is that you must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope” (p.8). Baldwin recognizes that his freedom, his agency is tied to his white brothers and sisters. “And if the word integration means anything,” Baldwin tells his nephew, “this is what it means; that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change….We cannot be free until they are free” (pp.9-10). What is interesting about Baldwin’s perspective, which I believe parallels King and Malcolm X (toward the end of his life), was his recognition that (1) true freedom could only be realized when whites let go of their beliefs in white superiority and black inferiority and (2) love was the path that provided the possibility of freedom in the midst of unfreedom. This is not a sentimental love, but rather a hard realistic love-agency that knows the horrors and humiliations of racism. This humanistic love, which is not necessarily grounded in religious beliefs, is agentic and while connected to the realities of racism, is not bound by the racial logic of worthlessness and superiority. It is not dependent on waiting for whites to provide a public space where a black man or woman can find his/her public self. In this letter and elsewhere there is openness to the possibility trust and loyalty to white people, as well as an agentic hope that one day whites will also be free from the illusions of racial logic. Of course, Baldwin is ruthlessly realistic. Love may be the hope, but black men will have to deal with the melancholic self. That year in New Jersey…I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels. Once this disease is contracted, one can never be really carefree again, for the fever,

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without an instant’s warning, can recur at any moment…There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood—one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die. (1984, p.94) This passage, to my mind, reveals the complicated interaction of the melancholic self with the self that is relatively free of racial logic. Baldwin chooses to be conscious of the melancholic self and not surrender to it. The transformational object/process suggests a self that is agentic, opting for love instead of hatred, rage, and retaliation. While Malcolm X and King’s transformational object are easy to identify, Baldwin’s is more difficult. Like Malcolm X and King, Baldwin (1990) sought out the church, which initially “was very exciting” (p.33). Within a couple of years, however, Baldwin became disillusioned, realizing “that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing” (p.37). The “blood of the Lamb,” he continues, “had not cleansed me in any way whatever. I was just as black as I had been the day I was born” (pp.38-39). So, we see here the recognition that he joined the church with the hope to escape the realities of racism, only to discover he could not. At the same time, he also had a sense that there was little loving kindness in this community of faith. “I really mean,” he continues, “that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair” (p.39). I argue that for Baldwin a humanistic education and writing were the transformational processes that brought solace and a measure of freedom. His autobiographical notes contain his creed: I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I

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consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater that this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer. (1984, p.9). My interpretation of his texts is that his transformational object/process involved a humanistic love and hope (1990, pp.72-73), realized and reinforced by his writing and in his relationships with blacks and whites. It is his writing where he places his agency and positive self in the public world, regardless of whether it is accepted by whites. Te-Nehisi Coates has been described as a modern James Baldwin and while similar, Coates did not grow up with religious parents. This said, it is intriguing that Coates’ transformational object was his education at Howard University, which he calls his Mecca. Coates distinguishes between Howard University and The Mecca. “The Mecca,” he writes, “is a machine, crafted to capture and concentrate dark energy of all African peoples and inject it directly into the student body. The Mecca derives its power from the heritage of Howard University….The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca—the crossroads of the black diaspora” (2015, p.40). The Mecca serves as “a port in the American storm” (p.39)—a place of solace and rest from the humiliations of racism. At the same time, this port became a place where Coates’ intellectual fervor blossomed, learning about African history and culture. The Mecca was also a place where Coates’ writing became part of the transformational process, giving him a voice and a place to be heard. I suggest that The Mecca was a place, a process, wherein he found, in the public realm, a positive sense of self. The Mecca was a public realm that was not empty, but rich with the promise and experiences of a flourishing self bound to others. Here trust and fidelity were linked to hope of finding and experiencing in public spaces a positive self.

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Lest this sound too pie in the sky, Coates is also very clear in writing to his son about the dangers of the world and “that no promise is unbreakable” (p.71). Sure, there has been triumphs and progress, but “the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be” (p.71). This is not a counsel of despair, Coates tells his son, but surely we can see the presence of the melancholic self in his text. Yet, this presence is overshadowed by a self that proclaims love for his son and the world. Coates admits he lacks any religious feeling, but it is love for his people, his son, wife, brother, and parents that sustains him (p.88). It is not simply study, writing, and the Mecca that have served as transformational objects, but the love he has received and given in his family. Even though he is wounded (p.125; melancholic self), it has been love, work, and the Mecca that has not only sustained him, but also helped him flourish. I suggest that the book itself is an illustration of transformational object/process in relation to his melancholic self. Moreover, as he sees his son struggle with the realities of racism, the book offers is a testament of his love for his son, as well as the hope that his son will find love, study, and a Mecca—his own transformational objects in the midst of struggle.

Conclusion If we grow up in good enough families, we experience sufficient trust, fidelity, and hope that we expect to find in the world a positive self. Black boys and men, however, discover that this public world does not mirror a positive self, but rather projects into them and enforces, through public disciplinary regimes, negative representations. The world, the white world, then is empty—empty of positive affirmations of black male identity. I have argued that this gives rise to a melancholic self and faith, evident in the texts of these four men. Like Capps, I posited that awareness of the melancholic self and its sufferings initiates a quest—a search for a

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transformational object wherein the man recovers a positive self and is freed from being bound, from being determined by the realities of racism and the melancholic self. Certainly, as in the cases of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the transformational objects were religious. Yet, not all objects/processes are or need to be seen as religious, as in the texts of James Baldwin and Te-Nehisi Coates. While not religious, I argued that transformational objects/processes represent alterations not only with regard to self, but also in existential faith—a faith that bears sufficient trust, fidelity, and hope to affirm the flourishing of a positive self.

References Baldwin, J. (1984). Notes of a native son. Boston, MA: Beacon. Baldwin, J. (1990). The fire next time. New York, NY: The Dial Press. Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Capps, D. (1997). Men, religion, and melancholia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Capps, D. (2002). Men and their religion: Honor, hope, and humor. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Coates, T. (2015). Between the world and me. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau. Cone, J. (2011). The cross and the lynching tree. New York, NY: Orbis Books. Dalal, F. (2002). Race, color and the process of racialization: New perspectives from group analysis, psychoanalysis, and sociology. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge. Davies, J. & Frawley, M. (1994). Treating the adult survivor of sexual abuse. New York, NY: Basic Books. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008/1952.

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Fassin, D. & Rectman, R. (2009). The empire of trauma: An inquiry into the condition of victimhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fowler, J. (1980). The pilgrimage of faith of Malcolm X. In J. Fowler and R. Lovin (Eds.) Trajectories in faith, 38-58. Nashville, TN: Abingdon. Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. Standard Edition, vol.14, 237-259. London: Hogarth Press. Goldberg, T. (2009). The threat of race: Reflections on racial neoliberalism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Grier, W. & Cobbs, P. (1992). Black rage. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Haley, A. (1964). The autobiography of Malcolm X. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Head, J. (2004). Standing in the shadows: Understanding and overcoming depression in black males. New York, NY: Broadway Books. King, M. L. (1998). The autobiography of Martin Luther King, C. Carson (Ed.). New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing. Kovel, J. (1970). White racism: A psychohistory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Lee, R. & Martin, J. (1991). Psychotherapy after Kohut. Hillsdale, HJ: Analytic Press. Marable, M. (2011). Malcolm X: A Life of reinvention. New York, NY: Viking Press. McGuire, D. (2011). At the dark end of the street: Black women, rape, and resistance. New York, NY: Random House. Niebuhr, H. R. (1989). Faith on Earth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Schafer, R. (1959/1990). Aspects of internalization. Madison, CT. International Universities Press. Smiley, T. & Ritz, D. (2014). Death of a King. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company.

Suchet, J. (2004). A relational encounter with race. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 14, 423-438. Sulloway, F. (1992). Freud: Biologist of the mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Title Page (with Author Information)

Singing the Blues1: Reflections on African American Men, the Emergence of Melancholic Selves, and the Search for Transformational Objects

Ryan LaMothe2

1

I selected “Singing the Blues” as a title in part because of its reference to African American culture and its

association with sadness or melancholia. That said, the article does not address the Blues. 2

Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, 200 Hill Dr., St. Meinrad, IN 47577