ABSTRACT
Episodes of racial prejudice emerging in the context of a psychoanalytic therapy suggest that racism can be thought of as a regressed state of transference, characterized by polarized representations of self and other, categorical thinking, and the predominance of splitting and projection as defenses. The author suggests that activation of racial hostility in the clinical situation occurs as a result of events and processes not atypical in an analytic process. Though such states occurring outside of the analytic context are more likely made conscious in certain situations and in certain persons, the author suggests that racism can be more generally described as an ever-potential state of mind for most people living in racialized contexts.
Subject(s)
Black or African American/psychology , Prejudice , Psychoanalytic Therapy , Transference, Psychology , White People/psychology , Adult , Affect , Cognition , Ego , Female , Humans , Male , Self Concept , Social PerceptionABSTRACT
Racial difference and similarity in the treatment relationship highlight the question of what is real and apparently psychological in the different racial experiences of patients and therapists. The relationship between racial material and resistance is discussed, as well as the constancy and fluidity of race as intrapsychic content and the distinction psychoanalysts draw between social and psychic reality. Race in the mind, it is argued, is determined by both internal and external factors, and both are important in the analysis of racial material in the transference.
