| Abstract: | Discusses the impact of race and ethnicity on the psychotherapeutic process of 3 patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with an African-American therapist. Race and ethnicity remain topics that engender anxiety in social and clinical discourse. Psychoanalytic literature on race has been hampered by incomplete conceptualizations and overgeneralizations that often limit its clinical utility. Clinical examples are used to explore the way in which attention directed at racial issues provides a framework for the treatment alliance and illuminates key transferences and resistances. Discussion of racial issues is most fruitful when racial themes are situated in bodily and social contexts and when the meaning that race has in the therapy dyad is negotiated by patient and therapist, apart from idealized or socially correct conceptualizations from outside of the treatment situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
