Fear and Love of the Black Body

Abstract

ABSTRACT With this discussion, the author expands Dennis’s reading of her work with Mrs. A based on a Kleinian lens for projective identification with which Dennis identifies the patient’s hate in the transference. This expansion includes the sociogenic context emphasized by Fanon. This wider lens helps the reader to recognize emotions of both love and hate for the Black body as represented transferentially towards Dennis. It focuses on how a fear of the Black body constructed through the socially normative beliefs and rituals of White Supremacy underlies the kind of conflict with which this clinical dyad struggles.