Discussion of Green's "Melanie Klein and the Black Mammy: An Exploration of the Influence of the Mammy Stereotype on Klein's Maternal and its Contribution to the 'Whiteness' of Psychoanalysis"
This article is a response, in cinematic, historical and autobiographical terms, to Emily Green’s ‘Melanie Klein and the Black Mammy: An Exploration of the Influence of the Mammy Stereotype on Klein’s Maternal and Its Contribution to the “Whiteness” of Psychoanalysis’. The author attempts to open up Green’s analysis to a wide range of aesthetic, emotional and political implications, moving between a consideration of the ‘passing’ motif in Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life (1959); thoughts on racialization and trauma in psychoanalytic history more generally; and reflections on the author’s own experiences of racialization and collective disavowal in psychotherapeutic training
