ABSTRACT
Spanning the expanse of 50 years, the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and the 2017 film Get Out serve as an intimate window into race relations and the colonization and ongoing attempts at psychic emancipation of Black minds in white spaces. As well, these films represent persistent tensions between liberal whites and Blacks which, as sources of resistance to knowing the other, can hinder a therapeutic encounter. By exploring this 50-year evolution, beginning with the Loving Supreme Court decision, and relating these films to the clinical situation, this chapter hopes to further the movement toward psychic emancipation from a complicated racial history that has been difficult to reconcile. Part of the challenge of reconciliation is that white liberalism and privilege remain too closely aligned with themes of possession/appropriation and dependency/envy at the psychic freedom of the racial other. Clinical examples will highlight these challenges.
