Decolonizing psychology: notes for a Black Psychology

Abstract

This article investigates the effects of colonization on the production of subjectivity and on the production of knowledge, especially its development in the training of psychology professionals. In order to demonstrate the fragility of the training in psychology in Brazil for the treatment of the impacts of racism on black subjectivities, the article presents mental health epistemologies historically erased in the curricula of the graduations. We have retaken the work of Wade Nobles, Naim Akbar, Neusa Santos Sousa, among other black intellectuals and articulated it with our clinical experience to address black subjectivities and how they can be taken care of considering all their singularity. We have concluded that we cannot take care of Brazilian black population’s mental health without an epistemological retake of black intellectual work on the subject and that the quilombola dimension instated in the clinical environment when black psychologists take care of black patients is essential in the mental health promotion of black population. We finalized stablishing clinical and political directions to an expansion of a Black Psychology in Brazil.