Na'im Akbar (born Luther Benjamin Weems Jr.; born April 26, 1944) is an American scholar, public speaker, and author known for his Afrocentric approach to psychology. Akbar entered the world of Black psychology in the 1960s, as the Black Power Movement was gaining momentum. In the 1970s, Akbar published his first critiques of the Eurocentric psychological tradition, asserting that this model maintained the intellectual oppression of African Americans. Akbar criticized the pathology perspectives that had taken over as the dominant literature on African Americans.Black psychology Many of his major works cover mental health among African Americans. His workplaces have included the University of Michigan, Morehouse College, the Nation of Islam, Norfolk State University, and Florida State University.
Biography Na’im Akbar, originally named Luther Benjamin Weems Jr., was born on April 26, 1944, in Tallahassee, Florida. He attended the Florida A & M University Laboratory School, an all-Black school, from kindergarten through high school, and graduated from high school in 1961. As a child of Black middle class parents, Akbar was in an unusual situation at the time as both of his parents were college educated, a rare circumstance for a Black child growing up at the time. His childhood was spent in a segregated southern community in Tallahassee, but he lived in a unique community where “academic excellence was the unquestioned standard”. At a time when Black people lived in both socially and economically oppressed segregated communities, this emphasis on academic excellence was fairly uncommon.
Upon graduating high school, Akbar moved on to the University of Michigan, where he completed his B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Clinical Psychology, and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Heavily influenced by the Black student movement at the University of Michigan, and freshly aware of racial tensions (his freshman year at Michigan marked his first personal contact with Whites), Akbar became active with the Black Action Movement (BAM) strike which shut down classes at the University of Michigan for three weeks in the late 1960s. His experiences at Michigan helped to set the stage for Akbar to start questioning the normative status quo approach to psychology, which was dominant at the time. Akbar relates that the environment at Michigan lead to “the early conversations that we began to have about a ‘Black Psychology’, and to deconstruct the psychology that we had been taught”.
Working towards his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, Akbar wrote a dissertation called "Power Themes among Negro and White Paranoid and non-Paranoid Schizophrenics". In his dissertation, Akbar sought to define and explore the distinctive literature discussing definitions of psychology and mental health for Black people. Through this work, Akbar began to seriously question many of the accepted definitions of mental health for Black people, which had their genesis in European American psychology. Akbar credits this time in his career as the defining point about which his future work would be forged.
After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Akbar moved to Atlanta to work for the psychology department at Morehouse College, a historically Black college. At Morehouse, Akbar designed and taught the first Black psychology course in the history of the college, and eventually developed the first Black psychology program at the college. After two years of working at Morehouse, Akbar was named chair of the Psychology Department there. Three years later, Akbar left Morehouse to work at the Nation of Islam's headquarters in Chicago. Around this time, Akbar changed his name to Luther X, after joining the Nation of Islam and then later to Na’im Akbar after joining the Muslim American Community of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed then named "The World Community of Al-Islam in The West" where he rose to be Special Aide to Warith Deen Mohammed and oversaw the production of Warith Deen's Teachings of W. D. Muhammad and delivered his personal full page endorsement of the teachings.Bilalian News, September 3, 1976, p. 30. Akbar created the Office of Human Development, where he remained for two years until he returned to teaching and accepted a position at Norfolk State University, a historically Black university in Norfolk, Virginia. As an associate professor at Norfolk, Akbar crafted and taught courses in Black psychology.
Akbar then moved on to accept a faculty position at Florida State University back in his hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, where he continued to teach courses in Black psychology. In 1971, Akbar joined the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), which is the largest professional organization with focuses on Black mental health in the world. Since becoming active in the organization, Akbar has served on the board numerous times, and served as the President of the ABPsi from 1987 to 1988. Additionally, Akbar has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Black Studies and was the associate editor of the Journal of Black Psychology for eight years.
After teaching at Florida State University for 28 years, Akbar retired in 2008 so that he could put more time and effort into his role as the president of his private consulting and publishing company. Akbar created the private consulting company, Na’im Akbar Consultants, and the publishing company, Mind Productions, in the late 1980s in efforts to broaden his teaching audience. Throughout his career, Akbar has become a distinguished author, writing numerous books and speaking publicly to share his expertise at conferences and interviews. His major contributions to the field of psychology have been centered on the topics of developing an African-centered approach in modern psychology – which for Akbar involves the deconstruction of Eurocentric psychological thought and the subsequent reconstruction/construction of an African psychology that includes the specific historical and cultural experiences of African Americans. Other key topics in Akbar's life work involving the African American family and relationships, cultural diversity, and the Afro-centric perspective.
Mental Disorder Among African Americans (1991) In his 1991 paper “Mental Disorder Among African Americans,” Akbar maintains his Afro-centric view of psychology, and criticizes the Euro-centric normative definitions of mental illness that were historically used to classify and label numbers of African Americans as mentally ill. Akbar called this abuse “intellectual oppression,” and argued that African Americans should create their own definitions of “normal” and “abnormal” that made meaningful use of an African worldview and was culturally relevant to African Americans. Akbar attributed the failure of society to question these white normative traditions to a phenomenon he called “democratic sanity,” which he paralleled to a majority-rules system. Historically, normality was understood as a function of the behaviors of the majority of the people; thus, when judging African Americans with reference to the behaviors of the dominant class, any deviations in behavior may be considered insane. Akbar subsequently raises questions about the standards used to judge the sanity of African Americans and maintained that cultural considerations were necessary to adequately assess the mental health of African Americans.
In this paper, Akbar identifies four categories of mental illness among African Americans:
The Alien-Self Disorder The Anti-Self Disorder The Self Destructive Disorders Organic Disorders
According to Akbar, the “alien-self” disorder is characterized by an individual who rejects their own natural dispositions, and thereby acts in detriment to their survival. This individual is materialistic and denies the social realities of their social and political oppression. He/She attempts to “live in a dream world,” without acknowledging racism, and thus lives in conflict with their true identity. Such an afflicted individual often tries to live as though he/she were a member of the dominant class; he/she seeks to join exclusive clubs and live in exclusive neighborhoods. As a result, this individual ultimately belongs to neither the dominant (European American), nor oppressed (African American) groups, and thus commits himself to a life of identity confusion and ultimately loneliness.
The "anti-self" disorder is similar to the alien-self disorder, but goes a step further and actively holds negative impressions and views of his group. Individuals with this disorder "represent the true 'colonized mentality,'" meaning that they so desire to be part of the dominant group that they take on their very views and dispositions to the detriment of the individual’s group of origin. According to Akbar, the danger in this disorder is that individuals feel comfortable with their alien identification, and are thus unlikely to seek help. Akbar relates that the anti-self disorder is worse than the alien-self disorder, because the individual with the anti-self disorder is more out of contact with reality and is thus more disturbed.
According to Akbar, "victims of self-destructive disorders are the most direct victims of oppression" because oppression is unnatural and inhuman and thus drives the oppressed away from reality. Those with self-destructive disorders try to survive in the hostile environment that oppression creates, but ultimately fail and become self-defeating. These individuals have failed to survive and grow within the society, which systematically oppresses them, and resorts to self-deprecating tactics like doing drugs or becoming a prostitute. Akbar believes that black-on-black crime is a result of self-destructive disorders, and posits that alcoholics and drug addicts resort to a world of chemical fantasies instead of dealing with their own realities.
Organic disorders derive from physiological, neurological, or biochemical failures. Individuals belonging to this group of disorders are severely mentally defective, and overlap greatly with disorders traditionally recognized as schizophrenia. Although traditionally viewed as a physical condition, Akbar posits that organic disorders may stem in part from a disordered and defective environment. According to Akbar, "the oppressive system remains the essential cause of mental disorder within the African American community." Akbar relates that the trend towards charging all types of mental illnesses as organic in nature is merely an effort to downplay the influence of society on mental stability. The African American practitioner must therefore consider such societal influences on mental conditions and look at the social, political, and historical contexts of the patient in considering diagnosis and treatment. Akbar concludes that the creation of an African American definition of normalcy is necessary, and until such a definition is formed, African Americans remain subjects to the power and authority of the dominant community.
Nigrescence and Identity: Some Limitations