The Intersubjective Origins of Experience of Sameness and Difference: Precursors to Bias or Tolerance?

ABSTRACT

Black Lives Matter and the recent protests have focused attention on questions of racism, racial bias and implicit bias. After a brief discussion of these terms, this paper looks to infant research to see what experiences might dispose of development toward an openness toward diversity or to a bias against it. Positive and negative responses are built into the infant. But research shows that a diverse environment of positive and negative experiences is optimal for development. A variety of evidence from the worlds of infant research and attachment theory is cited. The idea that racism or racial bias is based on a longing for an earlier state of oneness or symbiosis is contradicted by research. Longings for a non-diverse world are seen as an adult fantasy, one that is encouraged and exploited by structures of subjugation. A case vignette is offered of a mixed-race couple in which long-simmering issues of racism and sexism surface in the treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• infant research
• racism
• bias
• diversity
• tolerance
• psychoanalytic development theories

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Beatrice Beebe and Erik Hesse for help preparing this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Shaddock

David Shaddock, Ph.D., MFT, is Clinical Supervisor at the Wright Institute and author, most recently, of Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field. He is the leader of the IAPSP Couples Therapy Interest Group and sits on that organizations International Council. He maintains a private practice in Berkeley.