PSYCHOLOGY, RACE AND PSYCHIC SUFFERING: A CONTRIBUTION TO OVERCOMING PSYCHOLOGICAL RACISM

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to take the relationship between psychology and racism intrinsically and not as an external phenomenon, outlining how the fight against racism within psychology should promote a transformation of psychology itself. At first, I briefly narrate the historical interweaving between the emergence and consolidation of scientific psychology and the project of scientific racism. In a second moment, I problematize the way in which American social psychology presented itself as a science of democracy, producing an advance in relation to the previous alliance of psychology with racism, but maintaining the point of view of whiteness. In a third moment, from the perspective inaugurated by Fanon, for the first time the black has agency, he can then talk about racism from the point of view of his experience, positing racism as a form of psychic suffering.