Understanding Black Power: Processes and Proposals
CHARLES A. PINDERHUGHES M.D.1
1 Director of psychiatry research, Veterans Administration Hospital, 150 S. Huntington Ave., Boston, Mass. 02130, associate clinical professor, department of psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, and lecturer in psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Primitive thinking patterns reinforced by group membership underlie the false beliefs which are central in the psychodynamics of racial conflicts in the United States. The destructive alteration of Negroes to fit false beliefs about them has tended to maintain the psychological forces that originated the false beliefs. In this context the author analyzes the Black Power movement as an attempt to institute a massive therapeutic process.
