by Tanisha Stewart, Psy.D.

THE UNTHINKABLE STATE OF THE NATION

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all of the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won’t destroy you.” James Baldwin (1961, p. 205)

When proposing my dissertation, a study on the developmental awareness of racial microaggressions, I was told that my topic of study, while interesting, was not directly related to psychotherapy. I argue that the process in which a previously hidden and unknown aspect of daily experience comes into awareness is inherent to the task of psychoanalytic work. As my mind, body, and soul struggles to grasp the all-too-frequent murders at the hands of the state and the resulting civil unrest, I keep returning to James Baldwin’s words. 

One of the fundamental tasks of analytic work is to bring into awareness the unknowable truths and unbearable thoughts. What is more unbearable than the knowledge that the nation’s public institutions held dear by so many -- the judicial, legislative, and social welfare systems -- which were created to protect liberties and serve the community, were actually explicitly designed to further your oppression? What are the psychic costs of knowing that your friends, educators, law enforcement, mental health providers, and most of those you encounter hold implicit and unconscious beliefs that you are inferior, lascivious, and dangerous? How much psychic energy is expended actively repressing and denying these facts just to walk through the world believing you are immune from state-sanctioned violence and are safe and secure? 

A breakdown has been described as, “the unthinkable state of affairs that underlies the defense organization” (Winnicott, 1974, p. 103). Early in our training, we are taught that defenses act as protections and it is ill-advised to break them before the client builds the ego strength to contain the underlying anxiety. Each recorded murder of an unarmed person of color by law enforcement strips the collective public of its defenses. Instead, we are confronted, in graphic detail, of the unthinkable fact that racism, violence, and oppression are this nation’s founding principles and continue to be the modus operandi.

People of color are always relatively conscious of the current state of racial injustice and occurrences of state violence. However, the destruction and the breakdown of civil society happens when the defenses of intellectualization, rationalization, and denial are suddenly shattered and the unbearable pain and rage comes into consciousness en masse. Better to displace anger onto physical structures than to have your ego functioning consumed and destroyed by rage.

Millions of Americans have been anxiously sequestered in their homes, fearful that even a simple trip to the corner store may lead to death. As a result, feelings of paranoia, isolation, and existential dread are on the rise and the mental health of many is deteriorating. Some Americans have been living in these conditions for months, hopeful that a treatment or cure will provide relief from an invisible scourge robbing us of our sense of certainty and safety. Meanwhile, others of us have been experiencing this for centuries with little indication of an end in sight.