The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and Envious Attacks on the Black Other

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, the baby’s annihilation anxiety and dependence on the m/other are metaphorically paralleled to the colonial White-self’s annihilation anxiety and dependence on the Black-slave-other. In so doing, I demonstrate how White defenses developed and are perpetually acted-out in the White-Black dichotomy. This parallel requires an historical exploration of the creation of the concept of “Whiteness” and the corresponding constructs of White superiority and Black inferiority. Colonial White males were societally and legally sanctioned to utilize enslaved Blacks for their dependency and survival needs; this resulted in quelling annihilation anxieties. These psychological dynamics persist today through transgenerational transmission. As a result, the Black person has been psychically mutated into a servile part-object “black body.” Thus, when the black body does not gratify the various dependency needs of the entitled White other, envious attacks on the Black other ensue, to inferiorize the Black other, which restores White psychic equilibrium. I elucidate these dynamics with clinical material using Klein’s theory of the paranoid-schizoid position; specifically, how annihilation anxiety, dependency, loss, and paranoia in the infant parallel similar psychic experiences in the colonial White male and his White female counterpart, and show how such dynamics persist in present day White relations to Blacks.