For Institutes

I propose several elements for psychoanalytic training institutes to engage around the ways our institutional whiteness perpetuates larger social structures that impede mental health in communities of color as well as white communities. The longer we refuse to look at ourselves and think about or take up whiteness collectively, the more potential psychoanalysis has of harming communities we aim to help, and of collapsing into a limited and self-referential field. What follows are my suggestions on how to begin this thinking process.

  1. Institutes and individual constituents should commit to anti-racist actions, policies, and education/pedagogy. See Ibram Kendi’s book “How to Be Antiracist” and Rachel Cargle’s suggestions at The Great Unlearn for more illustration.
  2. Course material can integrate a critical theory lens by including writings by people who may or may not be certified psychoanalysts, but who have made use of psychoanalytic theories in their work. For example, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, Kim TallBear, Nick Estes, Frantz Fanon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Achille Mbembe, Sara Ahmed, and Judith Halberstam to name a few. These critical theorists can help us think more complexly about contemporary and historical sociocultural phenomena and how we may make use of psychoanalytic theories in contemporary clinical work.
  3. Courses can examine psychoanalysis in historical and sociopolitical context, and utilize psychoanalysis to understand the social. This can support a reversal of some of the impacts of whiteness, including some assumptions of the universality of the theory, to encourage ongoing growth in the profession. Possible dialectic pairings include Eng & Han’s (2019) book Racial Melancholia paired with Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia ; Omina El Shakry’s book The Arabic Freud as a companion or foundational text to any course on Freud; M. Fakhry Davids’ (2011) book Internal Racism as a techniques text; Emily Green’s (2018) paper “Melanie Klein and the Black Mammy: A Exploration of the Influence of the Mammy Stereotype on Klein’s Maternal and Its Contribution to the “Whiteness” of Psychoanalysis” as integral to Kleinian theory; and Glen Sean Coulthard’s (2014) book Red Skin White Masks, which critiques the difficulties of mutual recognition in a settler-colonial environment, as a dialogic companion to any Intersubjectivities course.
  4. Writings by analysts and clinicians of color, as well as other comparative research and theory, can be centered in the course material. These theorists can be taught for their contributions to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, rather than solely the “BIPOC perspective”.
  5. A collaborative bibliography accessible by all institutes, faculty, and candidates can be made available online in order to provide reading options for faculty who may not have been exposed to the diversity of the literature.
  6. Instructors, administrators, board members, and volunteers in the institutes who wish to work on their own collusions with whiteness, and institutional whiteness, in a personal and structural way can form a study group incorporating personal interrogation and systemic interrogation of whiteness within, and in regard to, the theories and techniques in the field of psychoanalysis. This group can also be in contact with other non-local groups via email and other internet technology.
  7. A consultation group made up of candidates, analysts, and community members (as well as consultants or other constituents) can be available to help instructors who have questions about their syllabus and their sociocultural approach to the material, so that they are supported in their process of interrogating whiteness in the instruction material and locating themselves socially and culturally.
  8. Given the barriers to entry to the white-centered spaces of psychoanalytic training institutes, BIPOC instructors must be invited to teach courses regardless of their qualifications as “certified psychoanalysts”.
  1. Listen to Black and Indigenous people and people of color who speak of whiteness and injustice. Trust the lived experience of racism when told by BIPOC. Learn by reading, research, collaboration, Google, and podcast. Media Indigena and Seeing White are good places to start. The website White Accomplices has resources as well. Remember that as we learn we will make mistakes, and that the work is in the repair and doing better next time.