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THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 137

is obvious what a variety of questions it would be interesting to
raise. There are, for instance, men who go to “houses” in order
to be beaten by Negroes; passive homosexuals who insist on
black partners.
Another solution might be this: There is fi rst of all a sadistic
aggression toward the black man, followed by a guilt complex
because of the sanction against such behavior by the democratic
culture of the country in question. This aggression is then tolerated
by the Negro: whence masochism. But, I shall be told, your schema
is invalid: It does not contain the elements of classic masochism.
Perhaps, indeed, this situation is not classic. In any event, it is
the only way in which to explain the masochistic behavior of the
white man.
From a heuristic point of view, without attributing any reality
to it, I should like to propose an explanation of the fantasy: A
Negro is raping me. From the work of Helene Deutsch and
39
Marie Bonaparte, both of whom took up and in a way carried
40
to their ultimate conclusions Freud’s ideas on female sexuality, we
have learned that, alternatively clitoral and clitoral-vaginal and
fi nally purely vaginal, a woman—having retained, more or less
commingled, her libido in a passive conception and her aggression,
having surmounted her double Oedipus complex—proceeds
through her biological and psychological growth and arrives at
the assumption of her role, which is achieved by neuropsychic
integration. We cannot, however, ignore certain failures or certain
fi xations.
Corresponding to the clitoral stage there is an active Oedipus
complex, although, according to Marie Bonaparte, it is not a
sequence but a coexistence of the active and the passive. The
desexualization of aggression in a girl is less complete than in
41
a boy. The clitoris is perceived as a diminished penis, but,
going beyond the concrete, the girl clings only to the quality. She
apprehends reality in qualitative terms. In her as in the little boy

39. The Psychology of Women (New York, Grune and Stratton, 1944–1945).
40. Female Sexuality (New York, International Universities Press, 1953).
41. Marie Bonaparte, “De la sexualité de la femme,” in Revue Française de Psychanalyse,
April–June, 1949.

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