WHITE LIES:
Four Voices Working Across the Impossibility (and Possibilities) to Speak of Race and Immigration within Psychoanalysis
Furthering the discourse begun in Sue Saperstein’s 2016 NCSPP Course “Difference Matters!,” four individual clinicians commit to speak to the inclusion and clash of radical differences. This dialogue, facilitated by four racially and culturally dissimilar voices, will bring forward the theoretical, historical, and philosophical disparities in our current climate. Our practice of speech is intended to open a necessary, ethical discourse so as to keep learning from the Other and our Otherness.
The framework for this workgroup will include discussion of culturally relevant readings from psychoanalysis, journalism, and literature as a way to speak of the underrepresented/unseen, and the challenges of psychic citizenship in its relation to power. We will work and move together to find an analytic position that addresses the painful gaps between psychoanalysis and lived experience, as they surface in the clinic and the classroom.
Participants will be able to:
- Describe the value that psychoanalysis brings into the racial discourse.
- Identify the psychic impact of race and migration in the clinic and classroom.
- Describe the construction of identity in its relation to power.
- Identify the concept of racial melancholia as an outgrowth of sociocultural influences (oppression, exclusion and alienation), rather than individual pathology.
- Demonstrate the possibility to speak, listen and translate across cultural and racial differences.
- Identify how the impossibilities of speaking about race mirrors the unspeakability and unthinkability of trauma.
- Describe how the impossibilities of speaking about race and trauma impacts transference and countertransference enactments in the therapeutic dyad.
Divino, C. L. & Moore, M. S. (2010). Integrating neurobiological findings into psychodynamic therapy training and practice. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 20, 337-355.
Stephanie Z. Chen, Ph.D., is a 1.5 generation Chinese American, immigrant and cisgender-female licensed clinical psychologist and professor who practices, teaches, presents, and writes from a depth-oriented and liberatory lens. Stephanie has 20+ years of clinical experience, and her professional focus includes cultural identity development, immigration and roots of trauma and growth.
Jimena Martí-Haik, M.A., is a psychoanalyst from Mexico City. She majored in Latin American Literature and Literary Criticism and has a Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Theory. A trained analyst, she has a private practice and has worked in psychiatric institutions. Her interest is the intersection of cultural productions, social discourses, and subjectivity.
Sue Saperstein, MFT, Psy.D., has been a psychoanalyst, educator, and community activist for 45 years in San Francisco. She is faculty and supervisor at SFCP, NCSPP, CPMC, and CAPA and has focused on the evolving psychoanalytic treatment of trauma, sexualities, culture, immigration, and now elder development. In 2006, she published “Psychoanalytic Justice: An Ethical Inquiry“ in The Psychoanalytic Review.
Nikkia Young, Ph.D., is a psychologist and former classroom teacher and instructor at CSPP. Her areas of clinical focus include trauma, parenting, adolescence, and early childhood. In addition to running the Counseling Department at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, Dr. Young provides trainings and consultation on equity, literacy, classroom management, and mental health.