CANCELLED Child Study Center 12th Annual Samuel & Lucille Ritvo Lecture

Increasingly as analysts and psychotherapists we engage in racial encounters that challenge concepts of empathy, neutrality and anonymity. The challenge for the therapist is how to engage with this material that requires work within the intersectional milieu that is contemporary psychodynamic practice. This presentation attempts to enter this dynamic space to uncover the utility of working within racial tensions for its inherent therapeutic value. Part of this challenge for the clinician, who often identifies and is identified as liberal, is to acknowledge the ubiquity of race as unconsciously structuralizing along with our defenses against this recognition. The intransigence of racism as formed intrapsychically and discovered in our working functions as analysts and psychotherapists when not actively challenged and reflected on will be explored. Attempts to explicate the indelible effects of race in the American clinician will be provided that goes beyond countertransference or enactments. Clinical examples and connections to modern cinema are utilized to provide a framework to advance our knowledge in working with racial material.