Of Madness and Murder: A Gothic Black Feminist Autoethnography of Mental Illness in Academia

Abstract

In this piece, I use Gothic autoethnography and Black feminist thought as a qualitative framework (i.e., Gothic Black feminism) to explore the impact of intersecting systems of oppression on Black womxn’s mental health. Using my experience as a nonbinary Black womxn counseling psychology PhD student, I disrupt the stigma of Black womxn’s mental health and the mental health challenges of graduate students in applied psychology (e.g., counseling, clinical) to consider its implications for the ongoing development of a Gothic Black feminist approach to clinical intervention. I position my use of the Gothic tradition as a form of affective activism, bearing somber witness to the haunting realities of mad Black womxn’s slow murder due to interlocking systems of oppressions. I begin with my positionality, followed by discussing four grim truths of my Gothic experience: (a) The Haunting and “Academic Shining”—navigating academia as a [nonbinary] Black womxn PhD student, (b) Self-Sufficient Suffocation—the slow death of Black womxn’s self-reliance, (c) Resting in Peace Before the Coffin—Black womxn’s need for rest before death, and (d) Speaking to the Raven, Making Peace with Pathology—accepting my madness. Through its use of personal, theoretical, and clinical domains, this work seeks to advance Gothic Black feminist theory to ultimately deepen clinical awareness and pedagogical training as it concerns the conceptualization and treatment of mad Black womxn. I conclude with implications, encouraging the potential use of the Gothic for addressing Black womxn’s gendered-racial oppression in the United States.