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 Discussion Guide


CREATION OF A SELF:
COLOR AND TRAUMA IN THE LIFE OF A CHILD

 

A PUBLIC FORUM presented at the 1997 FALL MEETING of The American Psychoanalytic Association and co-sponsored by The American Psychoanalytic Foundation

 

DISCUSSION GUIDE for a video presentation of the Forum by
Leon Hoffman, M.D., Chair
Sandra C. Walker, M.D., Co-Chair
Committee on Public Information
American Psychoanalytic Association

Violence and racism continually traumatize our nation's children. The perpetual cycle of poverty, family violence, and an expanding socioeconomic and cultural gap between groups of people threaten the very survival of our society. These influences shape the identity, development, behavior, and well being of all children.

 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

 

 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TAPE:

DR. CARL BELL: 

Violence is a public health problem in the African-American community.

However, when one controls for socio-economic status, the difference between African-Americans and Caucasians decreases.

Violence can have a lasting traumatic impact on children.

Acute stress leads to post traumatic stress disorder; chronic stress to behavior problems and school problems.

Adult female cocaine addicts frequently have experienced sexual abuse as children.

Dr. Bell presents two case histories:

•An 11 year old boy who vomited when he witnessed his father's violent death developed nausea when he tried to study. Dr. Bell, following Breuer and Freud's early work, interpreted the connection of the hysterical symptoms.

•A 13 year old girl who experiences in adolescence a reawakening of memories of sexual assault from age 6. These memories were reawakened after a dormant period during her elementary school years. This can be a common pattern. The pattern can be repeated again when she has a child later in life.

Dr. Bell stressed that brains get "hard wired" with traumas (with a hyperarousal state). Medications may make these children more amenable to talking therapy. It is important to initiate treatment within 48 hours of the trauma to prevent the effect of the trauma from being "hard wired."

DR. STEVEN MARANS:

Dr. Marans continues the discussion of PTSD. His focus is the FOLLOWING sequence:

A WITNESS CAN BECOME

A VICTIM WHO CAN BECOME

A PERPETRATOR OF VIOLENCE.

 In other words,

 CHILDREN WHO EXPERIENCE VIOLENCE LATER ON COMMIT VIOLENCE.

 •Dr. Marans discussed 9 year old Mike whose friend got killed on the basketball court. (He was the only witness.) Mike drew pictures: the shooter and the gun got bigger and bigger.

The focus is often on nightmares. In these children who experience violence there is a powerful convergence of past and present experiences. When the traumas are not contained in fantasies, their safety and security is severely undermined. In the traumatic experience, there is a convergence of internal and external sources of dangers. The child needs to have mastery and put the past into its proper place.

STEPHEN KURTZ, M.S.W.:

Mr. Kurtz discusses the convergence of past and present. He begins his discussion with an anecdote about a televised interview with Harry Belafonte. The interviewer asks Belafonte how he responded to a traumatic, racially motivated threat. "I went into analysis," Belafonte responded.

Although Belafonte did many socially responsible things to counteract racism--benefits, marches, close association with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--there was more to Belafonte than the public persona. Kurtz stresses the issue of IDENTITY:

PUBLIC (as a civil rights activist as an adult) vs. 

PRIVATE (as a patient).

What was terrifying as a child was not just racism. Belafonte did suffer in-the-face racism in his childhood neighborhood in Harlem. But at home there was racism, too. His father preferred a lighter skinned son. The color consciousness came from white colonialism but a child is not a social historian. He just feels his father's contempt. Belafonte felt rejected by father, mother, as well as by neighbors because of his color. The convergence between external rejection and an internal sense of rejection sent him into analysis.

Mr. Kurtz discusses his work in Harlem clinics. He stresses the important difference between the wealthy who have many chances to be helped by therapy and the poor who don't.

 

DR. GLORIA JOHNSON-POWELL:

As a child she was a bookish kid. Her mother, who had left school to support her own siblings, wanted Dr. Johnson-Powell to have an education. Because of her good behavior, Dr. Johnson-Powell's great aunt singled her out and called her:

"MY LITTLE WHITE GIRL."

Dr. Johnson-Powell spoke about the anguish it caused her. To be good was to be white-like. To be black was to be bad. This was devastating. She described an episode where her siblings whitened her with flour and presented her to her aunt. Later, her mother helped her aunt to see the pain she caused.

Dr. Johnson-Powell stressed how these issues reflected the core of conflicts about upward mobility and assimilation. Children of color receive many messages at home, church, school, and in the neighborhood. So how does one find oneself as a child? There was a blond classmate who asked her:

"HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE COLORED?"

"I was the object of stares (one of only a few blacks in school) but yet invisible as a thinking feeling person."

Dr. Johnson-Powell described the pain of exclusion from parties of classmates. Fortunately through the guidance of her family she learned to live in 2 worlds.

I AM A HYBRID PERSON.

A psychodynamic understanding of the effects of racism on developing identity can help children find solace and healing and optimal growth and development in a culture where

WHITE IS RIGHT, BROWN--HANG AROUND, BLACK--STEP BACK.

Dr. Johnson-Powell ended her presentation with an anecdote from Ethiopia. As a new medical school graduate she had seen babies dressed in a little cloth, with shaved heads so one couldn't tell the boys from the girls. She at first thought this was related to some cultural issue related to gender; however, she eventually understood that in a country where mortality is 50% before age 5, there was no investment in children until they reach age 6 or 7. The parents hope that their children's death occurs without suffering. In other words,

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF AN EVENT ONE NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT AND THE CULTURE.

 

DETAILED BIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTIONS:

Dr. Bell is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health at the University of Illinois and President and CEO, Community Mental Health Council, Chicago. In his more than 20 years of psychiatric practice, he has written more than 165 articles and given more than 1000 consultations and lectures to a variety of audiences. In particular, he has addressed himself to the impact and prevention of violence in the African-American community for which he was recently awarded the American Psychiatric Association's President's Commendation. Interviews with Dr. Bell have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, People Magazine, Ebony, Jet, and Essence. Dr. Bell has also addressed these issues on the television programs "Nightline" and "Today." He is co-author of SUICIDE AND HOMICIDE AMONG ADOLESCENTS, VIOLENCE EXPOSURE, PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS AND HIGH RISK AMONG INNER-CITY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, (in ANXIETY DISORDERS IN AFRICAN-AMERICANS), and IS PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY RELEVANT FOR PUBLIC MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAMS? (in CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN MENTAL HEALTH).

 

REFERENCES CITED BY DR. BELL IN THE TAPE:

1. Bell CC, Taylor-Crawford K, Jenkins EJ & Chalmers D. (1998). "Need for Victimization Screening in a Black Psychiatric Population", Journal of the National Medical Association, Vol. 80, No. 1: pp. 41-48.

2. Bell CC & Jenkins EJ. (1991). "Traumatic Stress and Children", Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 2, No. 1: pp. 175-188.

3. Shakoor B & Chalmers D. Co-victimization of African-American children who witness violence and the theoretical implications of its effects on their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development. Journal of the National Medical Association 83: 233 - 38, 1991."

4. Fullilove MT & Fullilove RE. Post-traumatic stress disorder in women recovering from substance abuse. In Friedman S (ed). Anxiety Disorders in African-Americans. New York: Springer, 1994, p. 89 - 101.

5.Sampson RJ, Raudenbush SW, & Earls F. Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science 277: 918 - 924, August 15, 1997

Dr. Marans is the Harris Assistant Professor of Child Psychoanalysis at the Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Program on Child Development-Community Policing, New Haven. The Child Development-Community Policing Program addresses the needs of victims of community violence, and also the needs of witnesses and perpetrators. The Program has recently published a manual entitled THE POLICE MENTAL HEALTH PARTNERSHIP: A COMMUNITY-BASED RESPONSE TO VIOLENCE. In clinical practice, Dr. Marans treats children, adolescents, and adults in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. His articles have appeared in the Bulletin of the Hampstead Clinic, the Journal of The American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.

Mr. Kurtz is Director of The Harlem Family Institute, New York and is a New York City psychoanalyst and author whose institute trains psychotherapists to work psychoanalytically free of charge with children in Harlem schools. He has himself worked in the schools, including the Children's Storefront School on East 129th Street, and shares with the school's founder, Ned O'Gorman, the view that Freud applies in Harlem as do Mozart, Schubert and Thomas Aquinas. Mr. Kurtz is author of THE ART OF UNKNOWING and has published articles on psychoanalysis in Free Associations, the Journal of The American Psychoanalytic Association, and Psychoanalytic Review.

Dr. Johnson-Powell is Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Senior Adviser on Community and Social Policy Research, Judge Baker Center for Children, Boston. She is co-author of THE PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF MINORITY GROUP CHILDREN, the first textbook in child psychiatry to address this issue. She is also the author of BLACK MONDAY'S CHILDREN: A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION ON THE SELF-CONCEPTS OF SOUTHERN CHILDREN and has continued this research with children in the North. Dr. Johnson-Powell has taught in universities in Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. She received the Rosa Parks Award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Foundation and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in recognition for her work on child abuse and sexual assault. She is the recipient of the American Psychiatric Association's Solomon Carter Fuller Award. With her daughter, she is co-author of THE HOUSE ON ELBERT STREET: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A WELFARE MOTHER, which is about her own mother.

 

 


This Public Forum Was Sponsored By
THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION
Marvin Margolis, MD, PhD, President

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC FOUNDATION
Harvey Rich, MD, President

 

COMMITTEES OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION:
Committee on Public Information
Leon Hoffman, MD, Chair
Committee on Social Issues
Raymond Raskin, MD, Co-chair
Mark D. Smaller, PhD, Co-chai

PUBLIC FORUM CO-CHAIRS:
Mark D. Smaller, PhD
Sandra Clement Walker, MD

VIDEOTAPE PRODUCTION:
Videography:
Projection Presentation Technology
Operations Manager, The Waldorf-Astoria:
Lallman Mike Madho
Videotape Editing:
Donald John Coney
Associate Producer:
Carol Lindemann, PhD
Producer:
Sandra Clement Walker, MD
Underwritten by:
MR. SEYMOUR PERSKY

For more information, visit the APF website at http://www.cyberpsych.org/forum.htm or call 212 752-0450
COPYRIGHT 1998, THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC FOUNDATION


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