Joy Angela DeGruy (born October 16, 1957) is an American author, academic, and researcher, who previously served as assistant professor at the Portland State University School of Social Work. She is currently president and CEO of DeGruy Publications, Inc and Executive Director of the non-profit Be The Healing, Inc. She is mostly known for her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, originally published by UpTone Press in 2005 and revised and republished in 2017 by Joy DeGruy Publications, Inc. DeGruy and her research projects have featured in news and activist coverage of contemporary African-American social issues, in addition to public lectures and workshops on U.S. college campuses that include: Morehouse School of Medicine, Fisk University, Spelman College, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Smith College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. DeGruy has spoken at the United Nations, UNESCO, C-SPAN, Oxford University, Association of Black Psychologists, National Association of Social Workers, the World Bank, The Essence Festival, and featured in Essence Magazine, and films that include "Cracking the Codes," a film by Shakti Butler (World Trust Organization), "InVisible Portraits" by Oge Egbuonu on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), among others. Dr. Degruy has also received a 2021 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to further her healing work.
DeGruy was born October 16, 1957, in Los Angeles, California. She was the youngest of four children born to working class parents, Oscar DeGruy, a truck driver and Nellie Parker DeGruy, a stay-at-home mom. Her parents grew up in Louisiana. Joy's maternal great-grandparents were from Belize.[1]
Joy attended elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school in Los Angeles Unified School District. She participated in a dual enrollment program that allowed her to complete junior college coursework while a student at Crenshaw High School. DeGruy has stated that her high school guidance counselor told her that she was not college material.[2]
DeGruy holds a bachelor's of science in Speech Communication from Portland State University, two master's degrees (in Social Work from Portland State and Clinical Psychology from Pacific University), and a Ph.D. in Social Work and Social Research from Portland State University's Graduate School of Social Work.[3] Her doctoral dissertation studied predictive variables for African American Male Youth Violence using Sociocultural Theory, Social Learning Theory and Trauma Theory frameworks.[4][5] She also employed the "new" theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which would later become the subject of her 2005 book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Professor Eileen M. Brennan served as DeGruy's dissertation advisor.[6]
From 2001 to 2014, DeGruy was an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University, where she taught core classes in Human Behavior in the Social Environment, Generalist Practice, Field Instruction, African American Community (Seminar), African American Multigenerational Trauma & Issues of Violence, and Diversity and Social Justice.[7]
Starting in 2019, DeGruy began teaching 10-week online courses for Joy DeGruy Publications, Inc. The courses include: Introduction to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Advanced M-4 Model Implementation: The Relationship Approach: Multi-Disciplinary, Multi-Systemic, Multi-Cultural Model and African American Multigenerational Trauma & Implementing Models of Change.[7]
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) is a concept introduced by DeGruy in her book "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing."[8] PTSS suggests that the enslavement of African Americans and the subsequent systemic racism and discrimination they have faced throughout history have had long-lasting psychological and emotional effects on individuals and the collective community.
According to DeGruy, PTSS encompasses the intergenerational trauma experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery. The trauma includes the physical, emotional, and psychological abuse endured by enslaved individuals and the ongoing oppression and racism that have persisted in American society. This ongoing trauma has been passed down through generations, affecting the mental health, identity, and well-being of African Americans today.[8]
PTSS suggests that African Americans may exhibit various symptoms and behaviors resulting from this trauma, such as low self-esteem, internalized racism, violence, substance abuse, and fragmented family structures. These effects are seen as a response to the historical trauma and the ongoing racial inequality experienced by African Americans.
DeGruy argues that healing from PTSS requires acknowledging and understanding the historical context of slavery, addressing and challenging systemic racism, and promoting individual and community resilience. Healing also involves providing access to resources, promoting education, fostering positive cultural identity, and creating safe spaces for dialogue and support.
It's important to note that while the concept of PTSS has gained recognition and sparked discussions about the enduring impacts of slavery, it is also subject to ongoing debates among scholars and critics. Some argue that the concept oversimplifies the complex experiences and diversity within the African American community, while others appreciate its contribution to understanding the historical and social context of racial trauma.
Overall, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing sheds light on the long-lasting effects of slavery and racism in America and aims to promote healing and empowerment within the African American community.
DeGruy's most famous work is undoubtedly her theorization of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome ("PTSS"), which she describes as:
... a theory that explains the etiology of many of the adaptive survival behaviors in African American communities throughout the United States and the Diaspora. It is a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. A form of slavery which was predicated on the belief that African Americans were inherently/genetically inferior to whites. This was then followed by institutionalized racism which continues to perpetuate injury.... Under such circumstances these are some of the predictable patterns of behavior that tend to occur: Vacant Esteem...Marked Propensity for Anger and Violence...Racist Socialization and (internalized racism)...[9]
In an interview for Essence Magazine, DeGruy summarizes: "research has shown that severe trauma can affect multiple generations ... no one has ever measured the impact that slavery had on us, what it’s meant for us to live for centuries in a hostile environment. We have been hurt, not just by the obvious physical assaults, but in deep psychological ways..."[10]
DeGruy's theorization is based on qualitative and quantitative research conducted by the author in both America and Africa.[9]
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), which awarded DeGruy a 2023 Presidential Citation, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing has amassed over 1700 research citations in peer-reviewed journal articles and books.[11]
Critical reception
The New Republic described the theory as "original thinking" that "explains[s] the effects of unresolved trauma on the behaviors of blacks that is transmitted from generation to generation," and suggested that the theory can be historicized more broadly a said P.T.S.S. "lays the groundwork for understanding how the past has influenced the present, and opens up the discussion of how we can use the strengths we have gained to heal."[12]
DeGruy's theory is not without controversy. P.T.S.S. has been criticized by scholars such as Ibram X. Kendi, who included it in his history of racist ideas in America, Stamped from the Beginning.[13][14]
Others defend her work. Notably Guy Emerson Mount, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Auburn University, offers a counter assessment for Kendi's critique:[15]
This post was inspired by Professor Ibram X. Kendi's insightful AAIHS critique of Professor Joy DeGruy's equally insightful book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. In the spirit of full disclosure, Professor Kendi and I are both contributors to a forthcoming AAIHS anthology titled New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition, edited by Keisha N. Blain, Chris Cameron and Ashley D. Farmer. At the same time, Professor DeGruy is a family friend. I’ve hung out with her nephew and attended her daughter's wedding. My wife and her sisters grew up with her as a role model . . . Having said that, I am sympathetic to many of the critiques that Professor Kendi has put forward. Yet I also believe that post traumatic slave syndrome (PTSS) can still be reconciled to those critiques and, in the hands of skilled practitioners, advance an anti-racist agenda (even if it is, as Professor Kendi says, a “racist idea”).
In the end, Professor Kendi is right to worry that PTSS will, at the very least, fall into the wrong hands and be used by racist forces as further confirmation of black cultural/psychological/ontological inferiority . . . Prof. Kendi anticipates racist forces will misread and weaponize PTSS in the same way that they have done with almost every other previous black self-help idea including most recently the stop the violence movements of the 1990s aimed at reducing ‘black-on-black crime.’ But Professor DeGruy is, at the end of the day, simply a black psychologist trying to help black people survive psychically in a world that is trying daily to strip them of their humanity. Professor Kendi is right—the world has not succeeded in doing so. But Professor DeGruy is also right—we could all use a little healing.
DeGruy, Joy (2017). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America's legacy of enduring injury and healing (2nd ed.). Portland. OR: Joy DeGruy Publications. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-9852172-7-3. DeGruy, Joy (2017). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America's legacy of enduring injury and healing (2nd ed.). Portland, OR: Joy DeGruy Publications. ISBN 978-0-9852172-7-3.
