Cultural Paranoia

Arthur L. Whaley

The concept of “cultural paranoia” was first introduced by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs in their 1968 book Black Rage . These two Black psychiatrists explained that this condition is not a form of psychopafhology, but instead is a healthy and adaptive response by African Americans to their historical and contemporary experiences of racial oppression and discrimination in the United States. Charles R. Ridley, an African American psychologist, reintroduced the concept of cultural paranoia more than a decade later to explain why Black clients do not disclose to White psychotherapists. Ridley stated that because the encounter in counseling and psychotherapy is a microcosm of the larger American society, Black clients may not disclose personal information to White therapists for fear that they may be vulnerable to racial discrimination. Thus Black mental health professionals make a distinction between cultural paranoia , a form of adaptive coping, and clinical paranoia ...

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