The Transgenerational Transmission of the Colonized Mind:
Puerto Rico

Tuesday, December 1, 2020, 6:30 – 8:30pm CST

Location: Zoom: https://icsw.zoom.us/j/6410482572

Presenter: Ida Roldán, PhD, LCSW

Click here to view the recording of this program.

After the presentation we will have time for a discussion, during which you can send in questions or comments for the speakers to answer.

Using Puerto Rico as an example, Dr. Roldán will explain how colonialism causes psychological damage to colonized peoples as well as to the colonizer.  In doing so, she will elaborate on the ideas of Denis, Fanon, and Silverman. She will describe how the assumptions and racist attitudes of the colonizer become internalized by the colonized and transmitted from one generation to the next.  Through memoir and historical and political examples, she will explore the central role that colonial racism plays in the creation of the colonial subject’s identity and sense of self.

Ida Roldán, PhD, LCSW, is former Academic Dean at the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago.  She is a graduate of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago and the National Training Program for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in New York.  She has a private practice in Chicago where she provides psychoanalytic treatment and consultation.  Dr. Roldán is Chair of the Board of the Kedzie Center, a community mental health agency in Chicago. She is active in professional and community organizations serving disenfranchised populations.  Her area of interest is how societal and institutional racism, oppression, and discrimination intrapsychically affect marginalized populations. Some of her publications include: The Experience of the Puerto Rican HIV/AIDS Infected Person.” Families in Society.  April, 2003; (with Shelby, R.D.) “The Role of the Mentoring Relationship in Qualitative Research” in Deborah K. Padgett, (Ed.), The Qualitative Research Experience. CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004; (with Kennemore, T.), “Staying Straight: Lessons from Ex-Offenders.” Clinical Social Work Journal. Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring, 2006.

Educational Objectives:

After attending this session, participants should be able to:

1) describe the importance of contextualizing their clients’ social, political, and cultural histories;
2) appreciate the psychological damage that impacts the identity created for colonized people and gets transmitted from one generation to the next.

References:

• Denis, A.N. (2015).  War Against All Puerto Ricans:  Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony.  New York: Nation Books.

• Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks.  Grove Press, 2007

• Silverman, S. (2015).  The Colonized Mind:  Gender, Trauma and Mentalization.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25, 51-66.