Childhood Innocence: Racial Prejudice and the Shaping of Psychological Complexes

Abstract

This article examines C. G. Jung’s theory of complexes in consideration of ethnicity, racism, and African American culture with a focus on the development of the racial complex within Africanist children. The intention of the exploration of a particular complex identified as a racial complex is to bring into a broader Jungian psychology a discussion of the possibility of increased conscious awareness that supports identification of, and engagement with, the influences of such a complex operative on the individual and group cultural levels. A section of this article reviews American slavery and shadow as archetypes capable of causing constellations that impact on human behaviors, that have promoted racism within American societal structures for centuries. The trauma of the racial complex is reviewed within an Africanist cultural context. Trauma, emotions, and archetypal energy, as shown through racial interactions, are discussed as parts of a racial complex and explored as features of intergenerational cultural trauma. The discussion of the article centers on exploring how ethnicity can create childhood trauma that leads to the psychological development of an Africanist racial complex.