Freud Upside Down: African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture (review)

With Freud Upside Down: African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture, Badia Sahar Ahad enters into a debate about applying psychoanalysis to black literature. The book is strategic, level-headed, and insistently convincing. Ahad’s study moves from early Harlem Renaissance to contemporary literature proving that black literature and psychoanalysis remain firmly intertwined. Ahad answers the question of applicability by establishing that black authors have sought out and applied principles of psychoanalysis for their thinking and the production of their work.

Overall, Freud Upside Down takes a neutral position to this debate surrounding the application of psychoanalysis to black literature. The perspective from many African Americanists is that black literature is misread or mishandled in pursuit of the goal of expanding the application of psychoanalysis to “other” racial texts. Among other concerns is the cultural ignorance and stereotypes that frequently guide psychoanalytical estimations of black literature. To address these concerns, Ahad successfully argues that psychoanalysis was vetted and strategically employed by black authors and philosophers from its early introduction by Freud et. al. in the United States. In the process, Ahad illustrates that these authors’ varied investment in psychoanalysis undermines racial stigmas (3). Ahad argues that psychoanalysis provided these authors a subversive strategy by which to understand racial belonging. Ahad’s investigation adheres to no specific psychoanalytical approach or school of thought because she is interested in showing that “black subjects persistently engaged with psychoanalytic thought that has been integral to the working out and working though matters of race, gender, and sexuality” (156).

The question is no longer about black literature’s fit or measure with the complexity of psychoanalysis, but rather about how early black authors used psychoanalysis for their own ends and how black authors continue to use psychoanalysis in their writings. According to Ahad, various authors maintained the goal of revealing the interiority and complexity of blackness (or racial belonging) beyond the static measure of “the race” or serving as racial icons. To this end, the study takes up an astounding amount of content: editors of political/fashion magazines of the early Harlem Renaissance; a couple of authors of the Harlem Renaissance; a few writers spanning the realism/naturalism period; one playwright/writer from the Black Arts Movement; and one novelist from the present day. Ahad’s work is clear, approachable, and accessible. It will prove an invaluable resource for studies of psychoanalysis and race.

Despite the study’s merits, there remains an uneven quality with respect to the study’s approach. Chapter 1 establishes the project’s aims early: the editors of the Messenger were interested in psychoanalysis as a way 1) to combat “race men” like W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, and 2) to promote interior expression by way of biracial subjects. Chapter 4 on Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright aptly shows their conscious interest in psychoanalysis as a way of deepening the interiority of black subjects. However, the study seems to shift considerably with the chapters on Nella Larsen and Jean Toomer.

The second chapter on Larsen briefly establishes Larsen’s reading of Freud and Otto Rank before launching into a Rankian reading of Quicksand’s thematic use of birth trauma. The chapter shifts from a study of how black artists sought out and applied psychoanalysis, documenting their intentional use of psychoanalysis, to what seems like a standard psychoanalytic reading of a novel. Ahad’s argument here is that Rank’s birth trauma theory explains Larsen’s text better than other psychoanalytic concepts. The difference between investigating magazine editors (and their choices) and a novelist is going to explain some of this unevenness. To be sure, the evidence that Larsen consciously sought out psychoanalysis is present, but the chapter feels starkly different than the first. This chapter isn’t about Larsen’s use of Rank—it is about how Rank’s concept explains Larsen’s novel.

The third chapter on Jean Toomer exhibits a similar problem. This time the problem arises on two levels. One...