The Colonized Mind: Gender, Trauma, and Mentalization

Abstract

The question of how gender and trauma may impact one another is explored through detailed clinical material from the author’s work with a patient contemplating, and then beginning, a transition from female to male. The author explores what happens when a mind is colonized rather than mentalized. The term colonize is used to describe the unconscious use of a child’s mind to store unprocessed trauma from an earlier generation. The author describes destabilizing feelings of uncertainty, shame, and anxiety in both patient and analyst at various points in the treatment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Robin Alvarado, Michelle Fine, Adrienne Harris, and Deborah Sherman for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Notes on contributors

Sandra Silverman

Sandra Silverman, L.C.S.W., is a faculty member at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and the Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is in private practice in New York City.