Can the Center Hold?

Abstract

This paper describes and explores a racial conflict that occurred in a mixed race, sexual abuse survivors’ group. Curiosity and productive dialogue surrounding race faces inherent difficulties and evokes powerful feelings that are often defended against through unconscious dissociative processes. This does not only lead to the denial of the traumatic impact of racism and racist acts, the denial in and of itself is traumatizing. I emphasize both the challenges and benefits that occurred in the processing of a group enactment around a racial conflict. The analysis of the group process is supported by psychoanalytic ideas surrounding the impact of racism and prejudice, contemporary relational theories of dissociation, the significance of witnessing and repair, and intersectional theory as it relates to race and gender. A discussion of the parallel processes between the group process and systemic racism in our society is interwoven as an important theme in the paper. This discussion demonstrates how the psychoanalytic process, whether group or individual, can be applied to our understanding of unconscious dynamics underlying the current divisiveness in our socio-political environment.

Keywords:

• dissociation
• group process
• racism
• repair
• sexual abuse
• witnessing

This article refers to:

Enlisting Hope: Discussion of Papers by Linda Jacobs and Rhona Kaplan

Notes

¹ Names and certain details of the group members have been changed to protect privacy and anonymity.

² Multiple psychoanalysts and writers including Dorothy Holmes (1999, 2006) and Kimberly Leary (2007) among others (Akhtar, 2012; Fanon, 1963; Layton, 2006) call our attention to neglected aspects of psychoanalytic work in considering racial, ethnic, immigrant, and class identity and the impact of racism, oppression and othering on interpersonal experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhona Kaplan

Rhona Kaplan, LCSW-R is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst/psychotherapist in private practice in Manhattan. She maintains a diverse practice, working with adults, young adults, adolescents, couples, and supervisees in the mental health field. She is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute Division 1 program in psychoanalysis. Kaplan is a field instructor with Fordham University Graduate School of Social Work. She also teaches and supervises through the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy as well as the William Alanson White Institute. Her publications include: “The Language of Dreams: Dissociative Processes and Symbolic Functioning in Dreams” in Making Our Ideas Clear-Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis as well as a recent essay entitled “Not All Trauma is Shared: The Impact of COVID and Anti-Black Violence” in issue eleven of Psychoanalysis.today.