Ramya B. Iyer, AM, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chicago.  She is a faculty member of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, where she teaches a course on Race & Immigration in Psychoanalysis.  She writes on issues of race and difference in clinical practice, with an interest in thinking about how race is constructed in the intrapsychic and intersubjective dimensions of experience.

Description: 

This talk explores how racial dynamics emerge through clinical and professional enactments and contribute to the social construction of race in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic settings. The author presents the concept of societal racial introjects.  While psychoanalysis emphasizes early childhood experience as the chief source of introjects, societal racial introjects stem from societal myths and stereotypes that become part of the individual.  Such introjects have an impact on the racial identities of both therapist and patient and subsequently impact the transference/countertransference dynamic.  The author illustrates these dynamics by examining a therapy she conducted.  She, the therapist, is a woman of color who lived her early life in south India before immigrating with her family to the United States.  The patient is a white man and a professed liberal.  He spent his early life in the American south in a family with white nationalist parents, against whom he rebelled.  The author looks at how societal racial introjects impinge on intrapsychic processes and shape racial expression in the self, for both patient and therapist.

The full paper which the presentation is based on is attached for your reference. The paper is in press with the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context.

OPEN PAPER HERE

Learning Objectives

After attending this session, participants should be able to:

1. describe the concept of societal racial introjects.
2. recognize how these introjects are expressed in both transference and countertransference.

Admission is free. Continuing Education Credits are offered exclusively to Society members in all membership categories and those intending to join.

The presenter, Ramya Iyer, AM, LCSW, and the organizer, James W. Anderson, have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to report.

Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program.

ACCME Accreditation Statement: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement: The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Disclosure Statement: The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.

Accreditation Information for Professionals Other Than Physicians.  The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content, in relation to accreditation for CE credits for non-physicians.  CPI is licensed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to sponsor continuing education credits for (license numbers in parentheses): Social Workers (159.000122), Professional Counselors (197.000202), Marriage and Family Therapy Therapists (168.00204), and Clinical Psychologists (268.000091).