Black woman as a double other

psychic and clinical implications of racialization

Abstract

This article examines how Black women’s subjectivity is shaped by racial and gendered structures from childhood, highlighting the limitations of a psychoanalytic tradition grounded in a universalized white subject. Drawing on authors such as Gonzalez, Kilomba, hooks, and Ribeiro, this theoretical literature review shows how colonial discourses shape identification, desire, and possibilities for recognition. The findings indicate that racism operates as a repetitive structure affecting ego formation, producing silencing, idealizations, and barriers to care. The study concludes that psychoanalytic practice must acknowledge raciality as a structural operator in order to sustain an ethical listening that supports elaboration, subjective repositioning, and the construction of new narratives for Black women.