Expanding on a hypothesis of "post-traumatic slavery syndrome" (PTSS) by psychiatrist
Alvin Francis Poussaint and journalist
Amy L. Alexander, DeGruy wrote in her 2001 doctoral thesis that
African Americans "sustained a traumatic injury as a direct result of slavery and continue to be injured by traumas caused by the larger society's policies of inequality, racism, and oppression". This is summed up in
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome as: In the book, DeGruy argues that PTSS is a result of unresolved
post-traumatic stress disorder arising from the experience of slavery,
transmitted across generations down to the present day, along with the stress of contemporary racial prejudice (e.g. via racial
microaggressions). It manifests as a psychological, spiritual, emotional, and behavioral
syndrome that results in a lack of
self-esteem, persistent feelings of
anger, and
internalized racist beliefs. DeGruy states that PTSS is not a disorder that can be treated and remedied clinically but instead requires profound social change in individuals, as well as in institutions, that continue to reify inequality and injustice toward the descendants of enslaved Africans. The theory has been generative of subsequent academic work in
clinical psychology and
black studies. ==Reception==