Abstract
African American fathers often must function in an overly bounded inter- and intrapsychic spaces. Their paternal agency is often limited due to the need to protect the triad from the predations of a racist culture. At the same time, they are often marginalized from the mother-child dyad. With support and self-reflection, such fathers will strive to be good-enough paternal figures.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See C. Jama Adams, “Poor African-American Fathers: Healthy Moves.” In: Kirkland C. Vaughans & Warren Spielberg (Eds.), The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents II (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014), 469–486; and Adams, “Black fatherhood in a time of fluidity,” Psychoanalytic Perspectives 16 (2019): 326–339.
- 2.
Chris Blazina and Anne Bartone, Anne, “Moving Beyond Essentialism in the Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychology of Men: Implications for Theory and Research.” In: Y. Joel Wong and Stephen R. Wester (Eds.), APA Handbook of Men and Masculinities (Washington: American Psychological Association, 2016), 105–122.
- 3.
See Blazina and Bartone, “Moving Beyond Essentialism.”
- 4.
Jessica Benjamin, “The Omnipotent Mother: A Psychoanalytic Study of Fantasy and Reality.” In: Donna Bassin, Margaret Honey, and Meryle Mahrer Kaplan (Eds.), Representations of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 128–146.
- 5.
Blazina and Bartone, “Moving Beyond Essentialism.”
- 6.
Adrienne Harris, “Melancholic Fathers; Dangerous Fathers.” Paper presented at the American Psychological Association: Division of Psychoanalysis Conference. New Orleans, April 2018.
- 7.
Michael Diamond, “Recovering the Father in Mind and Flesh: History, Triadic Functioning and Developmental Implications,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 86 (2017): 297–334.
- 8.
Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine, and Annie Bergman, (1975) The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
- 9.
Diamond, “Recovering the Father in Mind and Flesh,” 307.
- 10.
Cited in Diamond, “Recovering the Father in Mind and Flesh,” 309.
- 11.
See Blazina and Bartone, “Moving Beyond Essentialism.”
- 12.
Robert Grossmark, “The Anguish of Fatherhood and the Crisis of Subjectivity.” Paper presented at the American Psychological Association: Division of Psychoanalysis conference. New Orleans, April 2018.
- 13.
Karen Gilmore, “Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory: A Contemporary Reconsideration,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 53 (2008): 885–907.
- 14.
See Benjamin, “The Omnipotent Mother.”
- 15.
Adams, “Respect and Reputation: The Construction of Masculinity in Poor African American Men,” Journal of African American Studies 11 (2007):157–172.
- 16.
Marianne Cooper, “The False Promise of Meritocracy,” The Atlantic (2015); https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/meritocracy/418074/ (access March 2021).
- 17.
Neil Altman, The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class and Culture Through a Psychoanalytic Lens, Hillsdale: The Analytic Press, 1995.
- 18.
Todd McGowan, Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
- 19.
John Creamer, Inequalities persist despite decline in poverty for all major race and Hispanic origin groups. United States Census Bureau, 2020 https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html (access March 2021).
- 20.
Tabitha Freeman, “Psychoanalytic Concepts of Fatherhood: Patriarchal Paradoxes and the Presence of an Absent Authority,” Gender and Sexuality 9 (2008): 113–139, here 115.
- 21.
Harris, “Melancholic Fathers; Dangerous Fathers,” 1.
- 22.
Adams, “Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Use of Physical Punishment among Low-Income African Americans,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 73 (2020): 73–90.
- 23.
Donald Moss, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man: Psychoanalysis and Masculinity. New York: Routledge, 2012.
- 24.
Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Black Families in Therapy. New York: The Guilford Press, 1989.
- 25.
Adams, “Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.”
- 26.
Gilmore, “Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory,” 898.
- 27.
Daphne Merkin, “Mike Tyson moves to the suburbs,” New York Times (2011); https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/magazine/mag-20Tyson-t.html (access March 2021).
- 28.
Harold Blum, “The Dawn of the Oedipus Complex: A Tale of Two Letters,” Published in this volume.
- 29.
See Benjamin, “The Omnipotent Mother”; and Gilmore, “Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory.”
- 30.
See Gilmore, “Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory.”
- 31.
Phia S. Salter and Glenn Adams, “Provisional Strategies for Decolonizing Consciousness.” In: Felice Blake, Paula Ioanide, Alison Reed (Eds.), Anti-Racism, Inc.: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters (New York: punctum books, 2019), 299–325.
- 32.
Tommy Curry, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2017.
- 33.
Adams, “Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.”
- 34.
Azille Coetzee, “Antigone, Empire, and the Legacy of Oedipus: Thinking African Decolonization Through the Articulation of Kinship Rules,” Hypatia 14 (2019): 464–484.
- 35.
Boyd-Franklin, Black Families in Therapy.
- 36.
Jay Wade, “African American Fathers and Sons: Social, Historical, and Psychological Considerations,” The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 75 (1994): 561–570.
- 37.
Ogunnaike Oludamini, “From Heathen to Sub-Human: A Genealogy of the Influence of the Decline of Religion on the Rise of Modern Racism,” Open Theology (2016): 785–803.
- 38.
Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967; and Stephen Frosh, “Psychoanalysis, Colonialism, Racism,” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 33 (2013): 141–154.
- 39.
Judith Butler, referred to in Coetzee, “Antigone, Empire, and the Legacy of Oedipus,” 468.
- 40.
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery. Durham. NC. Duke University Press, 1994.
- 41.
Butler, cited in Coetzee, “Antigone, Empire, and the Legacy of Oedipus,” 468.
- 42.
Coetzee, “Antigone, Empire, and the Legacy of Oedipus.”
- 43.
Dirk Philipsen, “Economics for the People” (2020); https://aeon.co/essays/the-challenge-of-reclaiming-the-commons-from-capitalism (access March 2021).
- 44.
Williams, Capitalism and Slavery.
- 45.
Valerie Wilson and Jhacova Williams, “Racial and Ethnic Income Gaps Persist Amid Uneven Growth in Household Incomes.” Economic Policy Institute (2019); https://www.epi.org/blog/racial-and-ethnic-income-gaps-persist-amid-uneven-growth-in-household-incomes/ (access March 2021).
- 46.
Radley Balko, “There’s Overwhelming Evidence that the Criminal Justice System is Racist. Here’s the Proof,” The Washington Post (2020); https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/ (access March 2021); and Christine Benz, “75 Must-Know Statistics About Race, Income, and Wealth.” Morning Star (2020); https://www.morningstar.com/articles/987356/75-must-know-statistics-about-race-income-and-wealth (access March 2021).
- 47.
See Adams, “Poor African-American Fathers.”
- 48.
Adams, “Poor African-American Fathers.”
- 49.
Adams, “Respect and Reputation.”
- 50.
Diamond, “Recovering the Father in Mind and Flesh”; and Harris, Melancholic Fathers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Adams, C.J. (2022). Black Fathers, Oedipal Issues, and Modernity. In: Weissberg, L. (eds) Psychoanalysis, Fatherhood, and the Modern Family. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82124-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82124-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82123-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82124-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)