Numinous Encounters in Frederick Douglass's Autobiographies

Abstract

Scholars of many disciplines have used the three autobiographies of escaped Maryland slave Frederick Douglass as valuable tools to help understand both slavery and the status of African Americans in post-emancipation United States. This essay employs the insights of analytic psychology to assess Douglass’s reflections in his autobiographies of pivotal movements on his path to freedom. In particular, “numinous” experiences recounted in these autobiographies will be shown to have had profound psychological influences that propelled Douglass forward on his journey to becoming a free man.