Join us for A Night with Dr. Huey Hawkins Jr., PhD, LCSW
St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute is inviting Faculty, Candidates, and APP students to hear our 2019 Research Fellow Huey Hawkins Jr., Ph.D., LCSW present his research on Tuesday, February 16 via zoom from 7-8:30 P.M. This research topic will employ a qualitative case study to understand the meaning of Black male endangerment for mothers of Black sons and explore how that maternal meaning is experienced by Black men.
More Information on the Research Fellowship HERE.
Abstract: This project explores the lived experiences of five Black men living in U.S. urban centers impacted by maternal messages of endangerment through a hermeneutic case study methodology using an interpretive psychoanalytic theoretical framework. The present endangerment of Black men, especially within the current climate of police killings of unarmed men of color, as well as the paucity of previous research motivated the undertaking of this study.
This research interviewed mother-Black son dyads separately to fully understand the maternal influence in the son’s life. Each mother received two unstructured interviews and each son received two semi-structured interviews. Using each mother’s narrative data as a backdrop to their son’s life, the son’s experiences of Black male endangerment were explored and analyzed using psychoanalytic and other social science theories, producing within-case analyses into individual case reports and master themes across cases.
The findings suggest that in addition to being responsive to a threatening environment, maternal messages of endangerment serve unconscious roles in the lives of Black men, illustrating three major themes. First, these messages act as a defense against the unknowns of a threatening environment allowing the Black male subject to feel prepared against imagined and perceived attacks. Second, they allow for communications between the intrapsychic worlds of mother and son. Third, maternal messages of endangerment create repetitions from the past allowing for the preservation of a unique mother-Black son bond.
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