Racism in the Countertransference

Abstract

This paper examines racialized countertransferences and how these countertransferences impact treatment dyads. I explicate the ways in which clinicians may unconsciously avoid racialized dynamics within themselves and within treatments. Case examples are used to portray how race manifests within countertransference and how we might understand these types of countertransference reactions. Finally, I encourage further reflectiveness and openness related to race within ourselves and within our treatments.

Keywords:

• Racism
• countertransference
• Black
• White
• race

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mead Goedert

Mead Goedert is an advanced candidate at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and has a private practice in West Bloomfield, MI. He is also a faculty member at The Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago, IL. Based on his dissertation research, he published, The African American Urban Male’s Journey to Success: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Race, Gender and Social Class (Lexington Books 2016), where he utilizes psychoanalytic theory to explore the subjective experiences of upwardly mobile African American men.