Skin memories: On race, love and loss

Abstract

During African-American slavery, the rape of slave women by their masters was ubiquitous. This unrecognized atrocity shaped the US economy and has informed race relations. This history is written into the skin of US analysts, but it has not penetrated psychoanalytic theory, practice, or consciousness. My article traces the historical abuse of slave women’s bodies and the transgenerational effects of the exploitation. This tracing proceeds through an intimate look at the author’s personal analysis, in which she, a Russian-Jewish patient, is treated by a light-skinned African-American analyst. In the transference, the history of slavery emerges: the analyst’s apparent whiteness echoes with rape on the plantation. Racial guilt and conflict is worked through motifs of loss, forced separation, and internalized racism.