SELF-WRITING AND PSYCHOSOCIAL PROBLEMS IN RICHARD WRIGHT’S BLACK BOY AND SAMUEL SELVON’S THE LONELY LONDONERS

This research explores the psychoanalytic dimensions of self-writing as a narrative tool for articulating psychosocial problems in Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners. Grounded in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the study examines how autobiographical and semi-autobiographical narratives function as psychological outlets through which the authors confront emotional repression, identity crisis, alienation, melancholia, and inner conflict. Freud’s concepts such as the id, ego, and superego; defense mechanisms; repression; and narcissistic injury provide the critical framework for analyzing the unconscious forces shaping the lived experiences of the protagonists. In Black Boy, Wright presents a harrowing account of racial trauma, psychological silencing, and emotional detachment resulting from systemic oppression in the American South. The narrative reveals how the protagonist internalizes fear, anger, and confusion, leading to a fragmented sense of self. Similarly, in The Lonely Londoners, Selvon portrays Caribbean immigrants whose displacement in post-war London manifests in identity instability, emotional withdrawal, and failed intimacy. The characters construct defensive selves in response to cultural rejection and existential liminality, reflecting deep psychological turmoil beneath their humorous façade. This study argues that self-writing, beyond recording personal history, becomes a therapeutic medium for reclaiming agency and articulating suppressed emotional realities. By engaging psychoanalytic tools to decode the interior lives of the protagonists, the research highlights how literary self-expression becomes a means of navigating trauma, reconstructing identity, and negotiating fractured subjectivity. Ultimately, the work reveals how both Wright and Selvon use narrative voice to expose the invisible psychological costs of racism, exile, and marginalization.