“There is always pain to be dealt with in therapy… that has been passed on through history or in their recent circumstances.” 

A Dialogue on Historical Violence and Healing 

Rotimi Akinsete,
Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor 
Rotimiakinsete.com 

 

Abstract: Rotimi Akinsete is a psychotherapist and the founder of the Black Men on the Couch, a project the connects the personal experiences of African and Caribbean men and boys with the possibilities of psychotherapy with the goal of enabling increased self-awareness and agency. In creating this project, Akinsete drew upon his decades of experience advancing mental health and social equity, with a specific focus on the intersections of race, male mental health, and identity politics. His work has also been driven by a belief to ensure the possibilities of psychotherapy are available to those too often on the wrong side of such privileges. Many of these practices and commitments are encapsulated in his recent book, This Book Could Help: The Men’s Head Space Manual (2019). He has held positions at such prestigious institutions as the University of Oxford and the National Health Service as well as having been involved in African Leadership Development Programs, sponsored by the British and UK Treasury, supporting G8 capacity building strategies for African Development. (To learn more, visit www.rotimiakinsete.com.) 

In our conversation, Akinsete shares his vision of psychotherapy as both a tool to gain critical self-awareness and a metaphor to frame the historical forces that have impacted the mental health of Black men. He consistently shuttles between the historical impact of colonialism on African nations, the United States Civil Rights Movement, and the recent public murder of George Floyd. In doing so, he offers a vision of mental health that demands not only work of an individual, but of a society still grappling with the legacies of racism, colonialism, and economic exploitation. He argues that psychotherapy is not the only tool for social and political equality, but it is a tool that can enable the first steps towards such a future. 

Key Words: Psychotherapy, Trauma, Self-Care, Black Men, Colonization, Violence, Decolonization, Africa, Racism, Economic Exploitation. 

 

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We enter their conversation mid-stream, where the conversation had become focused on the ability of formerly colonized nations to be respected as independent agents in their own future: 

Parks: I’m not sure how the coverage went in the United Kingdom, but when the Arab Spring happened, I noticed on Fox News (and even some of the “mainstream” channels, like CBS), there was an argument that the Middle East/North African region wasn’t “perhaps” ready yet for democracy. But I think that there’s a sense that Israel is framed as a democracy. There was a sense that, “of course,” many of these nations returned to authoritarian rule. Similarly, when there is coverage of an African nation that suffers electoral fraud or a return to dictatorship, there is also a sense of inevitability in the mainstream news. It almost doesn’t even rank “as news.” 

Akinsete: I’d like to ask you why you think this is the case. For instance, an African country suddenly states it is going to take control of this or that specific mineral, a mineral which we know the rest of the West relies on for further development of its technology, whether it’s production of mobile phones, or televisions, whatever it might be. The unnamed African country knows the West relies upon it. If that country were to claim control of that mineral, I believe it would become news. The lens would then be focused on Africa because there would be an impact on the West’s way of living and being. It would impact what it is that the West controls. 

Parks: You are probably right. My sense is that there is still a colonial sensibility about what countries should control what natural resources. There’s a perceived danger when a formerly colonized country tries to seize control of its natural resources. I have been working with some African-based democratic advocates. They were focused on how China is aligning with South Africa as a means to access its natural resources. How there’s now a fight over minerals between major powers on the African continent. They claimed that the U.S. would be content with a dictatorship state in Africa if it ensures U.S. control and access to important natural resources. I’m sure that sounds a bit conspiratorial. I think however, that it is also “realpolitik,” if I am using the term correctly. To my thinking, the mainstream media just provides a layer of legitimizing narratives to make such control appear natural, the way things should be. 

Akinsete: In some ways, I’m trying to think about this psycho-therapeutically. I work with my clients on self-empowerment. I work with those that come to therapy who are disenfranchised, who feel that they’re not getting a say in life and in the world. Some of our work would be about what do you do about that? How would you get the power? And then if you get the power, would that feel like “wow – I can really do this!”? If you then take that onto a macro level. You think that these countries are currently disempowered. The moment that they gain power, and can control their own territory, they stand on the international stage the same way an individual who felt disempowered takes power in their own lives. They begin to see their self-determined lives taking shape on a public stage and being able to impact the world in which they live. 

Parks: I suppose the question becomes, in that case, how is that power gained, deployed, and enacted on not just the global stage, but their own citizens. In this same conversation, my advocate friends were arguing that their country had experienced a series of non-democratic authoritarian leaders throughout colonization. When the new independence leaders took power after independence, authoritarian leadership was the model of power. That tradition, they argue, was started by colonial powers. That’s a material legacy of colonialism. They are now trying to determine how to enable the population to understand power and agency as a collectively distributed structure. I’m wondering when you are working with someone on how to gain personal agency in the structure that’s clearly not going to enable that, do you ask them to consider how to gain political power to change that structure? What is the model of power in which your theory of personal agency operates? Is it a faith in charismatic leaders or coalitions? Is it nonviolent tactical struggle or is it like another type of struggle? 

Akinsete: I suppose it’s all those things and none depending on the situation in which you find yourself. But if I look any African country that was under the yoke of colonialism for a considerable amount of time (and if you take a neocolonial perspective, some still are), I might think about them in terms of an individual who has an adopted parent who has ‘allowed’ the child to fly the nest, but then who parents remotely with rules and regulations that you, as an adopted child, feel compelled to follow. Eventually, you get to a certain level of maturity where you say, I want to extricate myself from this relationship with you. I want to separate myself from you as a burdensome parent. I want to become independent from you as a parent. What you have to keep in mind as an individual, or as a nation in this case, is that your formative years as a colony were based on the thoughts, the ideas, the culture of that adoptive parent. And beyond that, it is also a colonial relationship which is an unfair relationship, which is really, at the end of the day, an exploitative relationship which has benefited one over the other.  

Whether you call it a democracy, an autocracy or a dictatorship or a military junta, whatever remains in place immediately after the colonizers have gone, will have some remnants of what was. How can we not be some of what we were before? This is the nature of transition, that is, during the process of change we’re going to have to use some of what we know to try and gather things at the moment. We are operating out of, if you like, a formulation, a way of being, a growth, a formative set of circumstances that were given to us from our adoptive parents, our colonial powers.  

Parks:  What you are saying makes me think of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Particularly his argument that you must unlearn, then relearn, what it is to be an independent agent and, by proxy, an independent nation. The colonialist culture has imposed a framework which is mentally damaging and economically exploitative. How do you unlearn that culture? It’s not just independence from parents or colonialist power. It’s independence on all these other levels. 

Akinsete: It blows my mind when I think about it. But yes, I mean Black Skin, White Masks because it can be argued that many African countries continue to replicate or mimic their ex-colonial masters, operating in a way that is not just replicating Europe but that works against the interest of the ex-colony. You have a Black skin, but you are acting white. You are a coconut. You are an Oreo. You are operating against the actual interests of who you are, operating against the true self. I believe that that is essentially what Fanon means. Individuals and nations continue to repeat mistakes until such time that they come to a position of some self-awareness and self-realization. And even if there is self-awareness, it’s going to be the most difficult thing to come to terms with and to begin to unravel the level of the arrested development caused by this history of exploitation. You have a new form of development which you are trying to undertake that will break away from that colonial influence. How difficult is that going to be 

Parks: A term I have heard used to describe this experience is generational trauma. When you undertake therapeutic work with Black men living in England, do you find these are the issues surfacing in how they view models of masculinity which aren’t helpful to them, models of agency which work to deny their full agency?  Do you see any connection between the immediacy of their daily struggles and this larger historical framework?  

Akinsete: It’s a good question. A very, very good question. And my response is that I’m now considering starting off new Black men’s groups. I don’t want to force the issue, but I’m hoping that such historical connections will come up. But for me, as a potential facilitator or convenor, I’ve always thought, in a sense, that you can’t escape that context. Our issues and our concerns cannot be separate from the fact of the place in which we find ourselves in and how we may be connected or disconnected from our ancestral home. I have no doubt if African countries were superpowers or in control of their own destiny in the way that it may possibly have been the case if not for history the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism, people would not be taking the approach they do with people of African descent or indeed with the African continent. It’s my guess that an African man could stand proud and be much more responsive to his circumstances if he was to have a strong and proud nation behind him. His ancestral history and his current circumstances would be a different one. The fact that there isn’t that background, that safety of knowing that in the same way that I’m sure there is for someone say, from China today, makes a difference. If it were the case, though, I think things would be quite different.  

Parks: When you’re working with a group or with individuals, do you think part of the work is to process this history? Does there need to be an initial coming to terms with the immediate situation but asking them to consider how to change the histories and institutions shaping their lives? It would be hard to be mentally healthy if the structures that were oppressing you were just pressing down upon you. Do you see connections between when you do this group and notions of putting them in a place where they might want to begin to take leadership in certain ways? 

Akinsete: I interpret your question as you asking whether my therapy is a form of liberation psychotherapy, in the same way that you might have and could talk about liberation theology in the South Americas or other parts of the world. And in a way, I would hope so. I haven’t formulated the idea fully, but in some ways, I would think that’s what I am doing. It doesn’t matter whether you are Black or white in this situation. There is something about the power of psychotherapy – without wanting to oversell it – which I would hope would be liberating and empowering, that allows my clients to eventually become active citizens in the way that they may not have been before. That’s the kind of thing that I’m thinking about really. If it means that it sparks an interest in leadership-in being able to do something about not just your own personal and familial situation, but also in the social context in which you find yourself – that’s all well and good, mate. That is what I would say in response to your question.  

Parks: This is just an opinion on my part, but in working with global advocates, there seems to be a moment when they come to see themselves as being agents in their own life. That moment then allows them to think about having a greater sense of agency that until that moment seemed impossible. What I hear you saying is the therapeutic process can become a foundational moment that allows you to take on this public work within a healthy framework. I think when organizing emerges from unexamined mental pain, it impacts how the work is undertaken. It doesn’t produce good results, I think. 

Akinsete: There is often pain to be dealt with in therapy. I mean, in some ways, what people come to therapy for is to deal with the pain, to deal with the emotional pain, to deal with the physical psychosomatic pain, to deal with the traumatic pain that has been passed on through history or in their recent or current circumstances. So, sometimes it is about that. It’s about loss or the pain of loss that has to be overcome. That can best be overcome with a little bit of self-awareness. You have to be prepared to become more aware of who you are and how you respond to situations, particularly with trauma that you or your loved ones have experienced. If you can become a bit more self-aware about how you respond to and deal with that pain, then yes, maybe you might therefore be in a position to become more socially active, politically active, an active citizen. Every so often it can happen in therapy where you can have this “aha” moment where you learn more about yourself and, therefore, know more about circumstances and, therefore, know more about how I’m going to be able to do something about what’s going on. Sometimes therapy can be very, very good at doing that. Therapy’s not the only thing that can spark that motivation, but sometimes a timely and effective therapeutic interaction can help bring about significant change. That is the hope, and I have seen it happen. 

Parks: One of the first things that led you to this work, I believe, is that you noticed there weren’t a lot of Black men in therapy. What was your initial understanding of why that was the case? Now that you’ve worked in this area a bit, have you changed your sense of why that’s the case? 

Akinsete: I asked myself that question, not just about counseling and psychotherapy, but everywhere I go. Being UK born and bred, invariably, I’ll find myself in the minority. I do like very much now that people are beginning to use the term “global majority” when they’re thinking about the minorities in this country. But point being that I’ve worked in higher education institutions, I’ve worked in a national health service, I’ve worked in the social services and other places where the more senior I get, the more I find I’m on my own in terms of my background, history, experience, education and race. 

Parks: From the position of a white male U.S.-citizen, I have had the counter experience which confirms what you just said. The further I have gone in my education, in my career as a professor, with each promotion, I find the room is more and more “like me.” Even at the University of Virginia, which is actively trying to make reparations for its horrific history of enslaved laborers building the university, my sense is that the majority of faculty are still overwhelmingly white men. I read a report years ago that claimed something close to 90% of tenured professors were white men. It’s a bit better, I think, in university administration because positions have been created focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Though those very positions are being attacked by conservative politicians and advocates. 

Akinsete: It shouldn’t be a surprise to me, but it still does take my breath away when I hear this. My personal story is that I started working in higher education in 1992. Here I am 32 years later, and it still astounds me that I can go into an elite institution, a middling university, or a lower level  college of higher education and it’s still the same:  You see the faculty and in administration at senior levels, where the real decisions are being made, there is still a very low number of non-white people and particularly black men. So, in a way it’s no surprise to me that I would want to reflect upon that issue. And, if at all possible, to try to do something to help people to reflect on it and address it.  

I had left school with very few formal qualifications. I ended up working in a higher education institution as a part-time advisor following my experience of working in children’s homes, where I had been offering advice and support to children who were wards of the state who had been abandoned by their parents for one reason or another. I used that experience to be able to get a job in a local University, at first working part-time advising students, and then working my way up into eventually becoming a director in the student administration. 

In my first University post I was fortunate enough to enroll on a master’s degree in counseling programme which gave me a formal qualification. As part of my degree research, I conducted a piece of qualitative research seeking to understand why Black male students weren’t accessing university counseling services.  

Since then, I’ve been designing and producing community projects and activities that in some way impact on that issue – encouraging minority groups to seek support or to set up their own support systems. But as I say, this concern is not peculiar or unique to higher education. You’ll find the same in a national health service. It’s the same in large conglomerates, international conglomerates, and multinational companies that exist here in the UK. It’s just there. So, in some ways, I’m wanting to kick-start or reignite the debate. Specifically, I wanted to encourage Black men to think differently about their positions. It’s like the United States of America. Why is it that you would have more Black men who are late teens ending up in prison rather than going to university? Doesn’t that suggest that something is badly wrong? And here, even if they get into university, they end up dropping out at a higher proportion than their white counterparts. Or if they get through university, they don’t get the same grades. Or if they get the same grades, they don’t get the same graduate level jobs?  Anyone with a conscience would ask ‘what the hell is going on?’, right? And what more is it that can you do about it as a Black man?  

That’s where I am. I’m doing that work by encouraging Black men to be thinking about taking up the professions where they’re little represented.  In my profession I hope to continue to encourage more Black men to come into psychotherapy, reflect on their problems, and hopefully do something about it. Train in it, teach about it or whatever it might be. I suppose in a nutshell is how and why I got into this kind of work. 

Parks: You are correct about schooling in the United States. In the Philadelphia school district, over 70 languages are spoken. It is a minority-majority district, with a strong African American presence. The average comprehensive school, which is where these majority-minority attend school, might have a graduation rate of something like 20%. This means a school might have a thousand students in their freshman class, but only 200 students graduate from the school. And of those 200, I’m not sure how many go on to college. Many of these schools are often in communities marked by gun violence, which naturally produces trauma in children. Yet, a key part of the school’s response is the use of discipline to slowly expel students out of the system. There are some programmes, discussed in this issue of Transformations, which try to use tools developed to address post-traumatic stress syndrome, to help students navigate the institution. But these efforts are pretty unique.   

I am sure that people you work with are experiencing similar systemic exclusions across the institutions with which they interact. Exclusions based on punishments, codes of behavior which don’t mesh with their own cultures, a silent pressure to just quit. So, I am wondering: Do you find that there’s a common narrative that you hear in the sessions on how they understand the world? How do they understand a world where they do not see themselves represented within many careers or public roles? Is this fact an obstacle that cannot be overcome? Or how do they understand it as systemic exclusion that can be combated? I guess I am wondering, how do they understand why they’re not coming to therapy? Do they not see therapy as an answer to these sets of issues?  

Akinsete: Yours is a necessary question. It’s one of the questions I asked of the male participants in my research. You’ll get the responses that, well, for one, “There are no black therapists in this institution.” “How are they going to understand my background experience if they don’t have the lived experience?”. Or “It’s a white man thing. It’s like it originated from Europe and Freud. What are they going to know about my background, culture and history?” And “Isn’t counseling all about individualism? I talk to my friends. I talk to my family. With people from my background, my history. We consult and share our problems and concerns. Why would I want to do it in an individualistic way?” You must take those responses into account when you’re thinking about how you might encourage non-traditional communities to take up therapy. But here’s the thing for me: The vast majority of my clients have not been Black men. And the Black clients that I do have are mainly Black women. I have a growing number of Black men now and, extraordinarily, I would say that the Black Lives Matter movement and particularly the death of George Floyd, play a part in that. 

On that point – It’s extraordinary when you think about it. I speak to my Black peers, therapeutic peers. We will acknowledge that for a lot of Black men witnessing what we consider to be a murder of a Black man on television was a traumatic experience. We had to consider probably for the first time in a long time, how we’re going to manage our response? And by our response, I mean by how it’s responded to us in our heads and our minds and in our bodies and in our relationships. And a number of Black men thought, “Well, let’s try this psycho-therapeutically rather than raging against the machine.” So, we got more calls from Black men saying, “Can you help me? This is bad news.” So, more and more therapists got more and more calls from Black men than at that time ever done in all of their professional careers. 

It’s a very responsible and mature approach because what tends to happen after tumultuous and perhaps seminal moments like Floyd’s murder, and you see this clearly in the United States, would be firebombs, marches, riots, protests and all of that. And you did see that happening, worldwide, after George Floyd was murdered. In fact, it was the strangest thing to see Black Lives Matter marches in predominantly white spaces with white people marching with Black Lives Matter placards in hand. It was astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, which was an extraordinary spot. But there was just this other extraordinary response where there were more Black men asking for help and support. So yeah, as with the de-stigmatizing of mental health, with the help of their Black sisters, mothers, wives, and girlfriends and boyfriends, with the help of the mental health services, Black men are recognizing that therapy can and will make a difference to you when responding to the trauma. 

Parks: I would not have connected these two moments – Floyd’s murder and Black men opening up to therapy. The response that you see in the U.S. media is people taking knees and mass protests. There’s been no discussion of the increased use of therapy by Black men. 

Akinsete: It’s there. In lots of ways, though, counseling and psychotherapy are private. Part of the issue is if we were to let that be known, people will know that this is an important part of the recovery. And, unfortunately, some interested parties would prefer that wasn’t the case. I know that sounds like yet another bloody conspiracy theory, but as psychologists, we have seen it happen.  

Parks: It’s probably too early to tell, but do you think this is the beginning of a broader acceptance of counseling and psychotherapy? There have been historical moments that transform how we understand the world. Do you think this response, more Black men going to therapy, is going to change the sense of therapy and make it more allowable? 

Akinsete: It’s too early to say. But that would be my hope. I believe in the power of psychotherapy. I believe in the power of it and what it’s done for me and for people that I know – Black men who have gone into start counseling and psychotherapy. So yes, I think that there could be a sea change. Hopefully there is some self-awareness and politicization occurring. That there is something about your place in society that you can do something about it. Hopefully, that is happening. I don’t know how radical that’s going to be, what real significant difference it will make. But yeah, I believe there’s a lot of promise. 

Parks: My experience in the university has soured me a bit on the term radical, since too often, it’s more a posture than a set of actions to change systems. Whereas I think when you’re using radical differently. My sense is you mean a structural change in how communities relate to institutions. I think you’re talking about a cultural shift that is more than just a posture. It’s about systemic change in how individuals relate to the world; how the world’s institution relates to them. That’s why I’m interested in the question of whether as people gain this self-awareness, they gain critical awareness, do they begin to have a sense of public agency? Do they use this new agency as a tool to change some of the structures which had oppressed them?  

Akinsete: I hear what you are saying about taking a radical posture. But I would argue that taking such a posture for some is, in itself, radical. It’s standing up to what might be a perceived or accepted way of thinking about a particular situation. You see what I’m saying? That’s what I mean by radical. By being radical, you almost stand opposed to a particular way of doing or saying or thinking about a particular thing or circumstance. 

Let’s think about HBCUs for a moment. I’m fascinated by the concept of historically black colleges and universities in the United States. I wonder if there’s something about such that allows for public agency, allows for something to be instilled, grown or developed that wouldn’t necessarily be so for a downpressed, minority group in all white institutions or predominantly white universities. I’d love to know what steps that they are taking in terms of the African history courses or in terms of whether they’re doing exactly the same thing as the historically white universities. Here in the UK, there is no such thing as Historically Black Colleges and Universities.  

The universities here, particularly the elite, long-standing ones, have been around for almost a thousand years doing things in very much the same way. The universities remain very elitist and about supporting the ruling classes. And the ruling classes don’t necessarily include any members of the global majority unless they are members of the ruling elite in other countries. The point that I’m trying to make is that America is in a quite a different and distinct and unique situation in as much as they have this category called “Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” which you would think would have a radicalism that could effectively respond to George Floyd’s death. 

Parks: I will be sure to connect you with HBCU faculty who can probably answer your questions better than myself. But, for the moment, using HBCUs as a metaphor for a politically self-aware agency, where in the UK do you see such institutions? Is there a generative institutional network out of which Black leadership has historically grown? Or is that something that needs to be created? 

Akinsete: Not in education. Certainly not as far as I see. I said this to you before, but our history of civil rights is distinctly different from that in the U.S. Clearly different. The bulk of non-white people that arrived in this country came post-WWII, when colonies were invited to send subjects to the UK to help rebuild the UK. And as soon as we arrived, it was a real challenge. Of course, there was a reaction from the locals. There were struggles, riots, discrimination with housing, jobs, everything. Some of it still exists today, such as in education and health. There are all sorts of inequalities relating to non-white communities in this country. But there’s never been a kind of fight back, or kickback, in the way that there was in the U.S. many hundreds of years after the first African slaves arrived in the United States of America. 

We haven’t had that moment. We’ve had instances where you have a racist killing of a young 18-year-old Black boy in Southeast London, which sparked a reaction, firstly from his parents, then the community, then the country. Eventually some of British law around inequalities was rewritten or revised to include consideration about protected characteristics, race. But in my mind, and I might be wrong, in the U.S., there was a kind of sea change from the Rosa Parks to the Martin Luther Kings, to the Malcolm X, from the growth of the African American Church to the historically black colleges and universities, I don’t know. It’s just different. Do you know what I’m saying? It feels different. And I don’t know how it started. Maybe it started from the Civil War and the breaking down of slavery and beginnings of freedom. Maybe that just makes it all the more different. I don’t know. But it’s different. 

However, what does happen is that you will have grass root organizations develop, like the Black, African and Asian Therapists Network (BAATN), which I am an organizing member of, which was born as a direct result of disenfranchisement within the British psychotherapeutic tradition. 

Parks: As you were talking, I was thinking, and I should not keep you much longer, but great, we should chat more because in the U.S. the modern civil right, the first civil rights movement was for freedom, ending enslavement. The second one was for political power, voting. And third, perhaps, was for economic equity or opportunity. This is where the Civil Rights movement, with Martin Luther King, Jr. at least, hit a brick wall. The vote, everyone could say, “Well, we’re the U.S., we have to let everybody vote.” But when King moved into economic segregation and economic opportunity, my sense is there was less success. In the U.K., when immigrants came post World War II, the question of seeming political quality, voting, never held at the same stakes where in the U.S., you literally couldn’t vote in the South. I’m wondering if that lack of a seeming fundamental political right, voting, explains the lack of a concerted movement. Folks don’t rally over economic inequality. They’re quite happy to have their neighborhoods segregated. I mean, the people who have the nice houses are quite happy. 

Akinsete: If I understand your question correctly, my only response to that could be that this depends on what you mean by politics and what people understand as politics. I’m saying, we can have the vote, but we can still remain politically bereft or politically with no power. Do you know what I’m saying? That could be the case. I would say if we had political protests, we might be granted some economic power in response. And as to what you were saying earlier, in America, there is no surprise with the idea of the Black dollar, which is worth billions. The growth of black institutions, stores, restaurants, schools in the U.S. is therefore no surprise because I imagine that there is a sense of power derived from that way of thinking and being., especially if perceived as a direct threat to the dollar per se. There is some talk of that here (The black £). Some talk, I don’t know how much of a threat it would be given the numbers we are talking about, but we are still talking about a considerable amount of money that could then create some kind of political discussion that might be necessary. But it still feels very, very different than the work still to be done to help people to realize or understand necessarily what political power is and can be. 

Parks: In some ways we have returned to the beginning. How do individuals, communities, nation’s gain agency over their own resources? How do these same individuals resist attempts to colonize (or recolonize) that mental or community space, stop a history of exploitation? I agree with you that psychotherapy is a vital part of this process. And I am grateful for the work that you have done and will continue to do. Thank you for talking with me today.