ABSTRACT
Prior to the 2008 presidential election, the emotional mood of the country was one of marked foreboding. The economic recession, home foreclosures, increasing unemployment, loss of retirement assets, fear of terrorist threats, and the continuing involvement in the war in Iraq all contributed to the depressive mood that consumed virtually every segment of the American populace. As the election results came in, this national malaise was replaced by a euphoria that was virtually palpable as blacks and whites danced in the street, embraced, and cried unashamedly in public. A clinical interpretation of these scenes in response to the election of the country’s first African-American president may well have been that this was a reflection of the catharsis that came with the purging of the collective psychological burden of guilt, paranoia, denial, splitting, and cognitive dissonance required to maintain a system of structured racism in a country founded on democratic ideals.
