This program is based on the presenter’s most recent paper (2023- in print, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Self) which examines how the “halls of power” within the psychoanalytic enterprise, and our own institutions, mobilize our hatred and ‘white rage’, often subtly and imperceptibly, towards non-whites.

Are the marginalized and all the non-white worlds represented in our theories and clinical practices, and training programs? It also utilizes the author’s ‘lived experiences’ within the “halls of power” of psychoanalytic institutions highlighting the ubiquitous nature of racism and othering that is only relatively being recognized and valiant attempts made to redress the inequities in our theories and practices. Concepts such as ‘aversive racism’, ‘implicit bias’, ‘colonial mimicry’, ‘racial melancholia’, and others will be used to help us understand the challenges faced by all of us in our journey to greater equality and openness.

Brief clinical vignettes and his own personal and clinical experiences as a psychoanalytic clinician, teacher, supervisor, including various racialized enactments within the various international and national “halls of power”, psychoanalytic institutions, training programs. Attention is also paid to the racialized in-between spaces occupied by the author, a member of the cynically labelled “model minority” in the US. Participants are encouraged to engage in a “true conversation” around the information provided by looking into their own experiences, clinical, theoretical, and organizational.

Participants will be encouraged to consider how a critical pedagogical approach, i.e. information gained ‘from the mouth of the oppressed’, in addition to that from the oppressor/group which currently informs most of our current theoretical/clinical knowledge, can aid us in broadening our theories and clinical practices to ensure a more equitable, inclusive psychology, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

This requires us as individuals and institutions to self-examine and interrogate our collective “implicated subjectivities” in the inhuman treatment of our patients, supervisees and colleagues – especially non-whites but also whites – our unexamined, even implicit, racism dehumanizes us all.

Let us have dialogue. Participate as you are able.

Cherian Verghese, Ph.D. – Licensed psychologist
Washington, DC

Dr. Cherian Verghese is a Licensed Psychologist in Washington, DC where he has had a Private Practice since 1990, providing individual and couple therapy, individual and group supervision, and consultations.
He is on the Faculty of the New Washington School of Psychiatry where he taught for ten years in the Supervision Training Program, and is also a Founding and Steering Committee Member of the School’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Culture. A faculty member of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP&P), Cherian previously Coordinated their Psychotherapy Training Program. Dr. Verghese has also, in the past, been on the faculty of several institutions of higher education including the George Washington University, Rutgers University, and Temple University.

In 2002, Dr. Verghese Founded SAMHA (South Asian Mental Health Association), an informal networking and clinical discussion group for mental health professionals in the Washing DC Metropolitan region. He has presented and written on the topic of “Race, Melancholia, and the Fantasy of Whiteness”, including at the Annual Conference of the International Association for the Psychology of the Self in psychotherapy. His current focus includes the centrality of rage in the maintenance of racial disparities and othering in the US.

Learning Objectives:

1)Identify a specific racial or other privilege/disadvantage they hold and its potential impact on their clinical work with someone racially/culturally similar, as well as someone different from them.

2)Articulate understanding of how at least two of the cultural/racialized processes, such as fantasy of whiteness, aversive racism, implicit bias, racial melancholia, etc., can impact their own and their patients’ situatedness within the larger society and present therapeutic challenges.

3)Demonstrate an understanding of the role or white rage in perpetuating ongoing oppression of marginalized groups and how they as psychoanalytic clinicians are also located within this context.

4)Identify a specific strategy that is available for them to have an impact within the racialized contexts of their clinical work.