UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation draws on black critical theory to critique and augment developmental psychoanalysis. I turn to clinical and experimental research to illustrate how twentieth century developmentalists logically conflate blackness with developmental pathology. Rather than challenge this conflation by appealing to liberal humanism, I argue blackness is best understood as an aporia that confounds humanistic theories of development. Aporetic blackness is explored by way of numerous concepts that together form a sociogenic study of object relations.

In Chapter One, I introduce object relations theory before broaching the concept of blackness in D. W. Winnicott and Frances Tustin. Chapter Two examines Harry Bakwin’s studies of failure to thrive, a devitalized condition that Bakwin indirectly links to African children with kwashiorkor. Chapter Three ponders René Spitz’s psychoanalytic social critiques, as well as his landmark studies of hospitalism and anaclitic depression. One of Spitz’s studies features a black infant (“Jane”) whose hospitalism he arguably analogizes to transcontinental slavery. Chapters Four and Five pivot toward misopedia and antiblackness in the context of migration. Chapter Four grapples with the concept of borders by turning to Thomas Kiefer’s photographs of transitional objects. Chapter Five offers an analysis of resignation syndrome, an apparently culture-bound condition that Swedish researchers originally termed depressive devitalization. The Conclusion restates my thesis and revisits clinical material from the Introduction.