The earliest years of Maya Angelou was dark and silent. She was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother Vivian Johnson was a nurse and realtor while her father Bailey Johnson was a naval dietician. Her birth name was Marguerite Annie Johnson and it was in her early twenties that she adopted her famous stage name Maya Angelou. Her early childhood was spent being raised by her paternal grandmother Annie Henderson after her parent’s divorce. She lived behind a grocery store that sold to both blacks and whites with her bother Bailey Johnson Jr. and her crippled uncle Willie. Her grandmother rooted Maya’s livelihood based on Christian principals, love, and respect while demonstrating independence and courage. During a period of
…show more content…
The trauma of the rape hinders Maya’s development with personal interaction. Her latency period is filled with silence and withdrawal. Her regression comes in the forms of her muteness to hide the traumatic outcome of her attacker. It is not until the reemergence of her grandmother that she is able to find her voice again through family and a friend support. The posttraumatic stress of her ordeal caused Angelou’s self-imposed silence and it was then that she developed her abilities of observation, very detailed memory, and a love for literature. Her love for literature gave Maya the eloquence that she is famously and award-winningly known for. She wrote “I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings” in detailing of her childhood experiences. Freudian theory would suggest that her early sexual experience was a result of her blatant sexual desires. The seduction theory of Freud’s suggested that repressed memory of the early childhood abuse or molestation was the result of hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the inclusions of active sexual experience up to eight years or later. Freud believed that the sexual abuse memories were the results of imaginary fantasies. Other psychologist believed that Freud’s sexist orientation was the reason for his denial of sexual abuse. One can hypothesize, that her attacker’s unresolved sexual navigations through his psychosexual development was a cause of his attacks and he must have gone through some sexual problems or feelings of inferiority. The manifested content for Maya was her forced inability to
The trauma of the rape hinders Maya’s development with personal interaction. Her latency period is filled with silence and withdrawal. Her regression comes in the forms of her muteness to hide the traumatic outcome of her attacker. It is not until the reemergence of her grandmother that she is able to find her voice again through family and a friend support. The posttraumatic stress of her ordeal caused Angelou’s self-imposed silence and it was then that she developed her abilities of observation, very detailed memory, and a love for literature. Her love for literature gave Maya the eloquence that she is famously and award-winningly known for. She wrote “I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings” in detailing of her childhood experiences. Freudian theory would suggest that her early sexual experience was a result of her blatant sexual desires. The seduction theory of Freud’s suggested that repressed memory of the early childhood abuse or molestation was the result of hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the inclusions of active sexual experience up to eight years or later. Freud believed that the sexual abuse memories were the results of imaginary fantasies. Other psychologist believed that Freud’s sexist orientation was the reason for his denial of sexual abuse. One can hypothesize, that her attacker’s unresolved sexual navigations through his psychosexual development was a cause of his attacks and he must have gone through some sexual problems or feelings of inferiority. The manifested content for Maya was her forced inability to