The black slum child and the problem of aggression

The exposure to violence and life-threatening aggression from many sources caused black children from socioeconomically deprived areas to respond in certain adaptive ways. These usually are appropriate for the culture in which the child is raised. Although one response is a paranoidlike reaction, aggression is also displayed directly in an attempt at mastery of the overwhelming frustration and life-threatening aspects of the ghetto. The significance of aggression in the psychotherapeutic relationship, particularly between the white therapist and black child, is discussed, and there is a brief review of the psychoanalytic concept of aggression as it applies to the ghetto child. A case is presented exemplifying these points clinically in a typical black slum child.