Toward an Intersectional Psychoanalysis of Race, Gender, and Sexuality

Abstract

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing attention to racial, gender, and sexual diversity. However, the existing psychoanalytic literature tends to treat patients’ race, gender, and sexuality separately. In contrast, an intersectional perspective, rooted in Black feminism and relational psychoanalysis, focuses on the interplay among patients’ race, gender, and sexuality. This intersectional approach aims to expand on the cultural sensitivity of psychoanalysis. In particular, by drawing on critical race theory, feminism, and queer studies, an intersectional psychoanalysis locates individual similarities and differences in the context of racism, sexism, and homophobia and examines the interpersonal relations that maintain gender, racial, and sexual stereotypes and inequities. The clinical vignette of a queer Latino man illustrates the intersections among the patient’s race, gender, and sexual identity.

Keywords:

• intersectionality
• race
• gender
• sexuality
• ethnicity
• psychoanalysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Max Belkin

Max Belkin, Ph.D., is a Fellow and Supervisor of Psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute; Adjunct Instructor at New York University; Associate Editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis; editor, with Cleonie White, Ph.D., of Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality. He is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City, specializing in treating individuals and couples.