“Notes of a Native Son”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This autoethnographic manuscript uses Jungian principles to analyze three cultural complexes of Black American masculine consciousness: the orphan, exile, and invisibility complexes. The author applies the archetypal image of the orphan to better explain the collective psychic response of the Black American male to his traumatic reception in the United States. The author notes the original cultural trauma for Black Americans was their abduction from Africa for the institution of slavery, begetting the internal trauma responses that deemed exile/departure from “Black culture,” invisibility, and the internalization of oppression to be necessary complexes for their continued survival. Within this article, the author uses much of his personal narrative to capture a Black American male’s heroic journey for his true self while battling a society in which he historically felt a foreigner.