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Rot at the Core: Black Theology and Psychotherapy
An Integrative Approach towards Liberation
from Psychological Slavery

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Trina A. Armstrong, MDiv.
Claremont School of Theology

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do…
Romans 12:2 New Living Translation

Introduction

Though physical slavery ended 143 years ago, the memory of it continues to haunt the African-American psyche; long after we’ve been physically “set free”. This generation of African-Americans is held captive to mental slavery, which is distinguished by a negative belief system influenced by years of physical, social, political, economical and psychological abuse. These core beliefs are part of a perceptual filter that dictates our existential reality, often resulting in maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. Using the psychotherapeutic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, I will argue that the increasing problems of violence, HIV/AIDS, cancer, incarceration, and suicide plaguing our communities are rooted in our collective psychological consciousness as descendants of Africans who were forced into a dysfunctional American identity by ravaging our psyches. I will also propose an integration of the psychotherapeutic principles of the cognitive behavioral therapy with black theology towards an individual and communal emancipation from psychological slavery, placing us on a path towards spiritual, mental, and physical healing.

The State of Black America and the Black Church

In its most recent annual report, The State of Black America1, the National Urban league addressed the issues it deemed central concerns to Black America: education, home ownership, entrepreneurship, children, race, poverty, civil rights, and health. Absent from this report were the problems identified in a 2003 summit convened by over 300 African-American clergy and lay leaders within the United Methodist Church. The summit entitled, From Oppression to Liberation: Responding to God's Call for the Black Church addressed the "seriously fractured state of the black church on all levels, as well as our diminishing presence and effectiveness in fulfilling the needs of the black community.” Participants addressed the black church's role in responding to the myriad of problems in the black community: rampant violence, HIV/AIDS infection, suicide, incarceration, teen pregnancy, and high school dropout rates. Both organizations gave credence to the crisis in Black America, despite the reality that more than ever before, many African-Americans have achieved middle-class status and wealth. African-American Pastoral Theologian Edward Wimberly offers his assessment of the crisis in African American Pastoral Care and Counseling: The Politics of Oppression and Empowerment:

Unemployment of African Americans remains twice as high as that of whites. Many blacks seem to have withdrawn from fruitful involvement in politics. Homicide and AIDS, STD’s cancer, infant mortality, hypertension, and other illness are disproportionately represented among African Americans…other problems include nihilism or the loss of hope that threatens the emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of African Americans. Internalized oppression is at the heart of the black-on-black crime and homicide rates, and the lace of a collective vision for the future among African Americans is leaving us very vulnerable. The most significant threat to our survival as a people is our loss of sense of community, our fragmentation as a people. Yes, we have become disconnected and disassociates from each other. We have lost a sense of peoplehood. We can no longer depend on our extended family ties and support systems to sustain us as the once did.2

The Trauma of Slavery

For the post-modern generation of African-Americans, there is some hesitancy in conceiving that the trauma of slavery continues to haunt the African-American mind. Because some of us are better off economically and intellectually, in comparison to our mothers and fathers, it suggests that we have “arrived”. We have more, so why dwell on the past?  Perhaps the key to understanding the crisis in Black America is to revisit the damaging effects of slavery. Dr. Na’im Akbar, in his book Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery, notes:

There is a certain hesitation about dwelling on the events of the past. On the one hand, it creates an atmosphere of determinism which removes the volitional possibilities of people to alter their condition. It tends to excuse the perpetuation of past events which could be alters simply by initiative. It preoccupies people unnecessarily and purposelessly with old hurts, tending old wounds. It is an emotional tirade that ultimately provides no constructive solutions for the present. But those who deny the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. Those who fail to recognize that the past is a shaper of the present, and the hand of yesterday continues to write the slate of today, leave themselves vulnerable by not realizing the impact of influences which do serve to shape their lives.3

Sociologist Ron Eyerman in his book, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of the African American Identity, calls the collective remembrance that African Americans share of slavery “cultural trauma”. Cultural trauma has “enduring effects” which are related to events that cannot be easily dismissed, played over and over again in the individual consciousness, eventually becoming engrained in collective memory. This memory is accepted and publicly given credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event or situation which is laden with negative affect, represented as indelible, and regarded as threatening a society’s existence or violating one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions.4 The psychoanalytic theory of trauma says that it is not the experience itself that produces traumatic effect, but rather the remembrance of it.

Psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint defines the African-American collective memory of slavery as a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)5 known as Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome (PTSS). It is a theory that African Americans sustained psychological and emotional injury as a direct result of slavery and continue to be injured by trauma caused by the larger society’s policies of inequality, racism and oppression:

PTSS theory proposes that while the remarkable resilience of the African allowed for the perpetuation of a modified and improvised version of African Culture, varying levels of both clinically induced and socially acquired residual stress related illness was passed through the generations at the family level, community level and the societal level.6

The foundational aspect of PTSS was the destruction of belief systems, customs, and values of the African culture. Africans were forced to integrate the ethnic ideology of their captors into their own psyche, which led to a “cultural dissonance”, a feeling of disharmony and psychological conflict resulting in a loss of identity and self esteem. Thus multitudes of Africans were forced to function within a system of identification with the dominant culture, which was in conflict with their own traditional, values, and needs.7

African-American Identity Formation

Identity is defined as one’s sense of self as individuals and in community as a member within a group (or groups). A person’s sense of self influences their actions, thoughts and interactions with others. Identification is defined by some behavioral theorist as a psychological phenomenon that serves to increase feelings of worth and importance by identifying with, or taking on the characteristics, values, or cultural attributes of some person or group that is well received by others.8 The persistency of our ancestors to maintain some connection to African culture, passed on through the first generation of slaves, as an attempt to create a separate identity apart from the dominate culture, was challenged by the psychological damage of slavery. During slavery, every effort was made by the oppressor to obliterate, diminish or disregard the African’s individual self-concept and collective identity as a people.9 

At the onset of emancipation, newly freed slaves were defined by their shared slavery experience thus constituting their primary identity as “former slave”.  Our attempts at forging an identity that aptly represents a coherent and consistent cultural identity absent of the dominant culture’s influences has been fluid over time from African, Colored, Negro, Afro-American, Black and now African-American. The racial identification changes have been influenced by corresponding changes in the political, economic, social and cultural outlooks and conditions of Black people which in turn, have altered their psychological inclinations and ideological perspectives.10 This is significant for the argument presented because of what W.E.B. Dubois called double-consciousness or an individual divided into two separate identities:

This sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity, and of a “twoness”, of being "an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unrecognized strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body…”11

The dualistic nature of the African American identity suggested that was a conscious attempt to maintain a sense of attachment to the African ideals and values while living within the boundaries of our psychological conditioning as Americans. This conditioning forces many of us to believe that we are ontologically inferior to European standards of beauty and intelligence. We became ashamed of our reality and coveted their ideal. According to Black feminist bell hooks, the denigration of the black body existed prior to the inception of slavery in America. She notes in her book, Rock My Soul Black People and Self Esteem:

A system of shaming was then already in place within the European mindset before white folks actually encountered black folks on an everyday basis. Mocking, ridiculing, and labeling black bodies as animalistic were all the ways a system of psychological  terrorism was put in place before actual interracial contact. White colonizers encountering Africans during the slave trade were ready to enact shaming as a strategy of colonization.12

Hooks asserts that the “most obvious internalization of shame that impacted the self-esteem of black folks historically and continues to the present day is about appearance, skin, color, body shape, and hair texture.” This tension between our reality and society’s ideal is prevalent among African-American women. Other internalized messages present us as hypersexual, immoral, lazy, dumb, hostile, and ignorant. The psychological tension of the African American identity creates an internal pull towards the ideals of the dominate society as a place of validation and acceptance while suffering from the ignominy of the negative perceptions about our blackness. This interferes with healthy personality development and functioning. The essence of one’s personality emanates from the depths of the inner-self, transcending mere observable traits. It is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine one’s characteristics behavior and thought.13

I will turn to black psychology, psychotherapy and black theology to illuminate the pathology of ignominy on the African American psyche, suggesting that the past continues to influence our present-day thoughts and behaviors. I will also briefly talk about the libratory tenants of Black theology and propose an integration of the two disciplines to educate and liberate our minds.

Black Psychology and Psychotherapy

Psychology has long been suspect in the African-American community because of its inability to understand the nuances of our culture. Even though there is a growing field specifically focusing on the behavioral patterns and mental process of African Americans known as Black Psychology, most won’t reveal the depths of their inner pain to a stranger. We fear that if we reveal our mental anguish, it might be interpreted as psychopathology. Hooks notes:

Science and pseudoscience were used as part of the arguments for both colonization of black people via slavery and the continued subordination of black folks from manumission on to the present day. Consequently, it is not surprising that masses of black people view science of the mind as suspect. Psychology has been especially feared because many black folks worry that speaking of our traumas using the language of mental illness will lead to biased interpretation and to the pathologizing of black experience in ways that might support and sustain our continued subordination.14

Black Psychology acknowledges:

that human beings of African origin, as a group, have experiences and still are experiencing a common core of stimuli that differ qualitatively and quantitatively from those of other peoples of the world. The shared experiences result in a commonality of experience and mediation results in an ethnically distinct behavior, as organism constantly adjusts to the perceived world. The cumulative effect of the resultant overt and covert behavior produces values, standards, customs, and traditions that eventually become racially singular. This uniqueness becomes manifest in learning, perception, motivation, personality development, and an overall worldview that serves to differentiate between the psychological characteristics of the displace African and those of the larger culture.15

In the midst of oppression, many African-Americans have relied on spirituality as a coping mechanism. With this in mind, a psychotherapy that integrates the theories of black psychology, the psychotherapeutic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, and the coping mechanisms of black spirituality, can help peel away the layers of psychological subjugation to reveal the “rot” at the core of the African-American psyche; thus, influencing much of the psychopathology that exists in the African-American community.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral therapy (CBT) identifies and treats difficulties arising from an individual's irrational thinking, misperceptions, dysfunctional thoughts, and faulty learning. CBT address problems such as anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, low self esteem, and post-traumatic stress. It is based on the cognitive model, which hypothesizes that people’s emotions and behaviors are influenced by their perception of events.16 This model, characterizes our identity by our thought patterns and mental habits, suggesting that our thoughts determine our behavior. We are seen as active receivers of information, who choose how we will interpret the information we receive.  By extension, we create our own reality through our perceptions of this information. Distortions in our thought processes create dysfunctional behaviors and nonproductive emotions. The behavior that manifests out of our distortions is a result of our core beliefs. Core beliefs are one’s central ideas about self stored within cognitive schemas. A schema is a broad theme in a person’s life, comprised of memories, behaviors, and cognitions. Schemas are deeply held, unquestioned dysfunctional beliefs about the self, others, and the world.

Black Theology

Religion has always been an important part of the African American experience and religious institutions have occupied an integral position in black communities. Primarily because of racism and discrimination in America, black churches and denominations were established separately from their white counterparts. Black religion developed in response to oppression. The black church provided more than just a separate place for blacks to worship. It became the medium for all of civil society. Black theology was born out of this context.

Black theology is the interplay between the pain of oppression and the promise of liberation found in the bible, on the one hand, and a similar existence experienced by African American and poor people today. 17 One of the foundational aspects of black theology is the need for a God in our people's own image. This is especially important in the context of racism in the United States where Christian doctrines were once used as justification for racial oppression and visual representations of Christ are almost always white. The radical idea that God shares the race of the oppressed is the primary source of strength for liberation. Black theology placed actions directed toward black socio-economic and political empowerment in a theological context.

Black theology has traditionally focused on liberation from a justice perspective. The new generations of Black theologians are recognizing the need for Black theology to be more progressive, inclusive and holistic by addressing the internal human condition. When we remove race from the equation, what remains? Dwight Hopkins in his book Head and Heart Black Theology Past Present and Future, highlights the growth of Black Theology in its effort to address the psychological needs of the 21st century African-American:

The challenges of the twenty-first century demand an ongoing black theology. The spirit of freedom continues to persist among black people; consequently, black theology responds to this positive divine human relationship. On the negative side, the polarization among different races, continued anti-black racism, and the downward turn for poor folk, especially African American entangled in the web of poverty permeate the nation. In the midst of both these signs of liberation and signs of broken community, African American churches face a life-and-death struggle. On one hand, we find a growing number of black churches catering to conservative forces in the country. They emphasize the accumulation of wealth and a prosperity gospel: preserving the status quo of elite white power, privileging the individual self at the expense of the community, and squeezing out whatever advancements possible for upper-income black people. They are seduced by and embrace the larger sinister culture of immediate gratification, the fairy tale illusion of becoming an instant millionaire…They foster a spirituality that removes the individual from this world in order to feel good in the midst of material suffering and psychological wounds, while avoiding Jesus’ mandate to revolutionize systems on earth on behalf of those lacking the resources to impact the direction of the nation or their lives on a daily basis. I think feeling good is a definite goal in life. But how can one feel good as an individual when that me-focused spirituality does not make one accountable to the pain and suffering in American society?18

Integrating Black Theology with Psychotherapeutic Principles

The challenges for the African-American church in the 21st century lie in uncovering the root causes of the maladaptive behaviors running rampant in our communities. Cognitive behavioral therapeutic principals informed by the psycho-spiritual history of African-Americans, provide a language to help us identify, remove, and reframe underlying core beliefs about ourselves that have been internalized from generations of oppressive psychological conditioning. Black theology meets this challenge because it validates our amazing resilience through faith in our experiences of God using our human story presented in literature, music, and art. Womanist theology, borne out of Black theology, takes this to another level by giving voice to the black woman’s God-experience while critiquing the oppressive forces of race, class, gender, and sexism.  However, I believe that liberation includes our minds, and the 21st century black church must address the unmet needs of the wounded African-American psyche. We can no longer afford to linger in our ontological blackness. Psychological healing can only occur when we understand and correct our deep rooted yet conscious awareness of inferiority.

Strategies for Liberation from Psychological Slavery

The path towards liberating and healing the oppressed African-American mind begins with affirming that there is indeed a problem and eliminating racism is not a necessarily prerequisite for liberation of the African-American mind. The primary objective to freeing the African-American mind is to change the consciousness of African Americans. We must understand that the current consciousness of Black people is the consequence of over four centuries of direct intervention an even longer efforts to destroy the indigenous institutions of African people which developed and sustained their independent human consciousness.19 In order to change our consciousness we must change the negative information stored in our individual and cultural schemas. Dr. Akbar notes:

In order to change the African consciousness, we must change the information that is in the African mind. We cannot equate awareness with information though information is the road map to awareness and it is a critical part of the process. The “knowledge of self” still remains an essential ingredient of this process of mental liberation. A fundamental component of the claims which continue to handicap Black minds is the excessive and distorted information about white people and the absence of information ourselves.20

The next step towards mental liberation is replacing the negative information with positive life affirming attributes about ourselves. Cognitive Behavioral therapy posits that when we think positively about ourselves we can critically reflect and change our maladaptive behaviors. The final step calls for a reemergence of community. Over time, I believe community allowed us to resist the oppressive forces that sought to dismiss our humanity. Our sense of community is now fragmented. When we redeem the positive attributes of community while fully aware of the place that pain occupies in it, and we will no longer tolerate silence and normalization of dysfunctional behavior.

Notes