A new psychoanalytic approach addresses African diaspora trauma

Edlamar França presented a proposal for an "Amefrican" clinical practice at the I International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The author argues for a psychological framework that accounts for the historical trauma of the Atlantic slave trade and the specific cultural identities of the African diaspora. This approach moves away from universal Western categories to focus on an unconscious shaped by African, Indigenous, and European matrices.

França draws parallels between the Freudian figure of Moses and the Nego Fugido, a cultural manifestation in the Recôncavo Baiano region of Bahia, Brazil. The Nego Fugido reenacts the experience of slavery, pursuit, and escape, serving as a myth of foundation and resistance. The author suggests that the forced crossing of the Atlantic created a "sea-abyss" of memory that continues to shape the subjectivity of descendants today, manifesting as both a historical rupture and a contemporary psychological symptom.

The proposed clinical model emphasizes an ethics of listening that embraces "opacity," a concept from Édouard Glissant. This means the therapist does not demand that the patient be completely transparent or understandable. Instead, the relationship is likened to a "pororoca," where the meeting of river and sea waters creates a transformative disturbance. The goal is to allow patients to maintain their contradictions and mysteries while acknowledging how racism and coloniality intersect with their personal histories and ancestral memories.