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Does your institute have an anti-racism commitment? Interrogating anti-racism commitments in psychoanalytic institutes

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Abstract

In this paper, I consider some ways that the psychoanalytic community is waking up to the racism and classism inherent in our field—in our theory, technique, training and practice structures, and institutions—and the ways that we need to begin to grapple with and engage in meaningful, symbolic, systemic and concrete changes in alignment with racial justice and anti-oppression principles. The questions that I ask include: What is anti-racism in the context of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training structures? What does the typical training milieu look like, and what changes need to be made in order for programming to reflect anti-racism and anti-oppression operating principles? What are some ideas about how best to proceed? I argue that anti-racism is a problematic and deceptive goal in institutions that are historically majority White and that center around race-blind work, and I offer some suggestions about how to bridge the gap between the racial awareness currently unfolding in our communities and anti-racism as a fundamental organizing principle.

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Notes

  1. Psychoanalysis took first a capitalist and then a neoliberal turn as it traveled from Freud’s free clinics in Vienna and Austria to the US. In order to be approved by the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), institutes were required to train and employ only medical doctors for institute positions, ensuring that the psychoanalytic community in the US remained, for the most part, White, middle and upper class, cisgender male and heteronormative (the field became increasingly female when APsaA began admitting other mental health professions, especially social workers). See Elizabeth Danto’s (2005) work for more information about the revolutionary origins of psychoanalysis.

  2. On the website of an APsaA-approved institute, the title of a course in the psychoanalytic training program is “On the edge of analyzability: Exploring unrepresented and primitive mental states.” While there is some degree of shared understanding in the community about what this course might involve based on the title, if we are to take seriously Celia Brickman’s (2017) work, among others, showing that early analysts used the word “primitive” to directly reference indigeneity and that this indigeneity was considered in-and-of-itself “unanalyzable,” then this shared understanding needs to be made explicit and the word “primitive” either challenged and changed or accepted with all the racist implications that follow. Otherwise, there is a gap between what we know and what we are acting as though we do not know. Using a title such as this one, at this point in our history, especially on a website that happens to be strewn through with references to race, gender, and other important identity categories, without context and meta-analysis is oddly unintegrated into the apparent larger vision being communicated by the website. It is either an implicit refusal or a failure to make changes that would communicate a genuine recognition of the seriousness of the charge of racism as a fundamental feature and cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory and praxis. Furthermore, in contemplating this title, I wondered what would have been lost and/or gained by simply omitting the word “primitive” and naming the course instead “On the edge of analyzability: Exploring unrepresented mental states.”

  3. White supremacy culture, as described by Jones and Okun (2001) in their community organizing work, refers to a system of values and norms operating in and driving institutions and communities that are White-centered and/or White-dominated. The values that they name include perfectionism, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, progress defined as “bigger” or “more of,” objectivity, and a right to comfort.

  4. See Brown (2018), Blackwell (2018), DiAngelo (2018), Brickman (2017), Griffin et al. (2020), Jones and Okun (2001), Layton (2006), Kendi (2019), Malamed (2021), Merson (2021), Sheehi (2020), Stovall (2019), and Woods (2020), the podcast Nice White Parents (Joffe-Walt, 2020), and Basia Winograd’s 2014 documentary Black Psychoanalysts Speak (Winograd, 2020).

  5. I am visibly queer and often feel like I do not belong when I attend analytic meetings. This is particularly true at the more conservative institutes. What is interesting is that in these situations, community seniors will be very welcoming, which I appreciate, but I still do not feel like I belong. So, what is to be done? I am being welcomed but I do not feel like I belong. Is the problem in me? Is it in the culture? Is it in the fact that no one looks like me, in the meetings, on the website, in the brochures? Is it a problem that is even possible to fix? What is needed in order for me to feel like an institute is my “home?”

  6. By genuinely, I refer to conditions where anti-racism and anti-oppression work is being both institutionalized and also taken to heart, through active and direct change in procedures and policy, shifting in the shared spaces and community culture, and corrections being made “behind closed doors,” in therapy and supervisory encounters, and manifesting itself in intrapsychic struggle.

  7. By impactful, I am referring to concrete actions that address lack of accessibility on every level, including cultural accessibility.

  8. Institutional Review Boards (IRB) are administrative bodies established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which a given IRB is affiliated.

  9. Importantly, MIP’s financial aid does not cover the major costs associated with analytic training, including analysis, supervision, reduced control case fees, and the dedication of a work day to classes/class work. These costs are a major barrier to access. Thus, until these costs are accounted for, I would not expect any dramatic population shift.

  10. See Kye (2018), Lichter et al. (2015), Pais et al. (2009), and Semuels (2015).

  11. Racial affinity groups are groups that allow folks who identify as White to gather together and folks who identify as BIPoC to gather together separately from White people. Affinity groups, for BIPoC, are intended to create safe space away from the pressures inherent to spaces dominated by White people. An accountability group is an affinity group comprised of White people engaged in anti-racism work whose intention it is to practice holding each other accountable to anti-racist values.

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Correspondence to Charla Ruby Malamed.

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Addendum

Addendum

  1. 1.

    Does your institute have a published statement on Racial Justice?

    1. 1.

      If so, please send to me.

    2. 2.

      If not, why not?

  2. 2.

    Do you offer tuition scholarships/financial aid?

    1. 1.

      Do you offer aid specifically dedicated to BIPoC/under-represented populations?

    2. 2.

      What are the eligibility requirements?

  3. 3.

    Do you have more than four BIPoC faculty/supervisors who are currently active at your institute?

  4. 4.

    Does your institute have an active racial/social justice task force/committee?

If a question does not apply, you can type in NA. Feel free to answer with links to relevant pages on your website if, for instance, the answer to my question is published online. I am hoping to compare institutional commitments.

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Malamed, C.R. Does your institute have an anti-racism commitment? Interrogating anti-racism commitments in psychoanalytic institutes. Psychoanal Cult Soc 27, 375–385 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-022-00285-1

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