Racial Difference, Rupture, and Repair: A View from the Couch and Back

Abstract

Three Black patients training to be psychotherapists explore experiences of racial difference, rupture and repair with their White psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Therapists often fail to identify moments of rupture, particularly in relation to racial difference. Patient perspectives offer not simply a different voice but a different invitation to dialogue with transformative potential. Patients powerfully describe avoidance, silence, shame, hate and racial identifications and disidentifications, but also a process of coming to recognition and repair. The dual tensions of being a patient and trainee are explored. The underexplored viewpoint of patient/trainee holds implications for therapists and for working with racial difference.

This article is referred to by:

Racial Trauma and Dissociated Worlds within Psychotherapy: A Discussion of “Racial Difference, Rupture, and Repair: A View from the Couch and Back”

Covering and Uncovering Race: A Discussion of “Racial Difference, Rupture, and Repair: A View from the Couch and Back”

Racial Alienation, the (Im)possibilities of Resolution, and the Absent/Present Other: Vexing Vantage Points from the Patient/Trainee: A Discussion of “Racial Difference, Rupture, and Repair: A View from the Couch and Back”

Notes

¹ The training in this paper refers to a Masters degree leading to registration as a clinical psychologist with a strong emphasis on psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy.

² Pronouns are difficult to define in this paper. In this instance, we refer to the three young Black women who contributed to this paper, excluding the fourth who is a White trainer and in a different position of voice and identity. In some other instances, pronouns refer to one of the authors or to the collective. This is a consequence of collaboration but also perhaps a consequence of the multiple perspectives expressed in this paper, and we ask for the reader’s tolerance of this multiplicity.

³ Each account offers a summarized version of the original reflective essay.

⁴ There is considerable awareness in South Africa of White guilt – and shame – connected to the consequences of White oppression and privilege during (and post) Apartheid (see e.g., refs).

⁵ This narrative began with the paragraph cited at the beginning of this paper.

⁶ In the situation described here, therapists were uninvolved in training and had no say in trainees’ progession. Nontheless, complex power relations were at play.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number 103480).

Notes on contributors

Carol Long

Carol Long, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a practicing clinical psychologist. Her research interests focus on issues of diversity, difference and marginality from a psychoanalytic perspective. She is particularly interested in the intersection of identities, and through this lens has explored the intersections between such identities as race and gender, motherhood and HIV, masculinity and fatherhood. Her current research projects focus on the intersection of identities within the context of psychotherapy.

Hopolang Matee

Hopolang Matee, M.A., is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a practicing clinical psychologist. At postgraduate level, she teaches on the M.A. Clinical Psychology and Honors programs. She is currently completing her Ph.D. through the psychoanalytic psychotherapy by publication program at Wits. Her Ph.D. explores Black absent fathers’ reconnection with their children. Her research interests focus on fatherhood and masculinity, and on the intersection of traditional practices and psychology through a psychoanalytic lens.

Olwethu Jwili

Olwethu Jwili, M.A., completed her training as a Clinical Psychologist at the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently in private practice. Her research interests focus on areas of race, gender, and identity relations as well as on social discourses shaping these issues. She has previously been involved in research on health care barriers affecting rural populations and on youth sexuality.

Zinhle Vilakazi

Zinhle Vilakazi, M.A., is a qualified Clinical Psychologist who is currently doing her community service in the Department of Correctional Services in South Africa. Her current research focus is on gender, identity and violence.