Exploration of Racial Enactments in an Interracial Therapeutic Dyad to Foster the Strengthening of Voice and Identity in African American Male Adolescents

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of systemic racism on an interracial therapeutic dyad between a white therapist and an African American adolescent male. Leary (2000) operationalized the term “racial enactments” and made the important point that its “most common” manifestation “has been our relative silence about racial issues” (p. 647). It is the premise of this paper that the youth of color’s subjective experience of racial microaggressions and assaults experienced on a daily basis must be validated and explored prior to a meaningful intersubjective exploration in the clinical encounter. The emphasis in this paper is on the racial enactment that precedes the clinical encounter. A treatment vignette is used to highlight the intersection of social and psychic spheres of human experience and how an awareness of unconscious bias in the therapist can facilitate a more meaningful dialogue in which priority is given to the emergence of a powerful client narrative voice.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial enactments
• microaggression
• racism
• adolescent therapy
• cross-cultural therapy
• transference/countertransference matrix
• relational psychoanalysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen J. Friedman

Stephen J. Friedman, MSW, LCSW is a current doctoral candidateat the Smith College School for Social Work. He is currently completing his first year of analytic training at the William AlansonWhite Institute. He is adjunct faculty in the MSW program atFordham University and Field Seminar Instructor at Smith. He has a private practice in New York City.