Beverly Stoute, MD: “Black Rage: The Psychic Adaptation to the Trauma of Oppression”

JANUARY 12, 2024, 4PM (London time)

The JC’s fourth meeting, featuring Beverly J. Stoute, MD, will be on Friday, January 12th, 2024, at 4PM London time.

Registration, which is free of charge, is open to IPA members and candidates, other interested mental health professionals, scholars and academics. A copy of the paper will be made available to registrants, also free of charge and with the copyright owner’s permission, in advance of the meeting. Ideally, all registrants will have read the paper beforehand and have an opportunity to ask questions or make comments to the guest author.

Paper - click on link to read
Stoute, B. J. (2021). Black Rage: The psychic adaptation to the trauma of oppression. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69(2):259-290.

Abstract
Integrating the story of a young Freud’s racial trauma with a novel application of the concept of moral injury has led to a realization and conceptual formulation during the pandemic uprisings of the mental construct of Black Rage as an adaptation to oppression trauma. As formulated here, Black Rage exists in a specific dynamic equilibrium as a compromise formation that is a functional adaptation for oppressed people of color who suffer racial trauma and racial degradation, an adaptation that can be mobilized for the purpose of defense or psychic growth. Black Rage operates as a mental construct in a way analogous to the structural model, in which mental agencies carry psychic functions. The concept of Black Rage is crucial to constructing a theoretical framework for a psychology of oppression and transgenerational transmission of trauma. Additionally, in the psychoanalytic theory on oppression suggested here, a developmental line is formulated for the adaptive function of Black Rage in promoting resilience in the face of oppression trauma for marginalized people.

This paper received the 2021 JAPA Prize for Best Papers.

We would like to thank the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) and its publisher, SAGE Publications, for giving us permission to share this paper with the Journal Club attendees. The Stoute paper can be downloaded at this link:


Bio
Beverly J. Stoute, M.D., FABP, DFAPA, DFAACAP, a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, executive coach, and organization consultant, is a leader in the field of psychoanalysis and is Co-Chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis. She serves as Training and Supervising Analyst, Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute; Child and Adolescent Supervising Analyst, The New York Psychoanalytic Institute; Adjunct Professor, Emory University School of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine; and Advisory Council of the Harlem Family Institute. She has served in local and national positions of leadership including Director-at-large of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA). She is an internationally recognized speaker, author, scholar, educator, clinician, and organizational consultant who has received prestigious awards and honors in many areas for her work which is featured in the Freud Museum archives in London. She was one of six psychoanalysts in the world interviewed for the 2021 documentary Freud and the Pandemic. Dr. Stoute has done significant work on issues of diversity in psychoanalytic education and organization, implicit bias in healthcare, the development of race awareness, integrative psychoanalytic treatment approaches including community advocacy work for children and adolescents with complex psychiatric illness, learning differences and complex trauma. Her innovative scholarship on the developmental aspects of implicit bias and diversity awareness is on the cutting edge of expanding psychoanalytic theory. She maintains a full-time private practice in Atlanta, GA. Her 2023 book, co-edited with Michael Slevin entitled The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter, was released with Routledge. 



The regular moderator of the Journal Club is Jack Drescher, MD

Jack Drescher, MD, a member of IPA’s Communications Committee, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in New York City. A recipient of the 2022 Mary S. Sigourney Award for his international work on gender and sexuality, Dr. Drescher is on the faculties of the William Alanson White Institute, the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the Florida Psychoanalytic Center. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia as well. He is an elected Director-at-Large of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His publications have been translated into numerous languages. He is author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (Routledge) and Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.