This paper explores under-appreciated contextual and historical aspects of various racialized processes that scaffold the “Fantasy of Whiteness” – in society and also in psychoanalytic theories and the practices. Attention is paid to the underlying, often cynical, deployment of rage in the “triangulation” of non-whites, including Asian Americans (model minorities) and Jewish Americans (who uneasily “pass for white”), and other marginalized individuals and groups to maintain the Black-White divide, a caste system, within the US mostly for the benefit of privileged “whites”. Ultimately, such a strategy leaves us all impoverished, less than human. This is especially significant for us as psychoanalytic clinicians who truly wish to heal the “suffering other” in a process that can heal us as well, making possible “true conversations” that leave both partners transformed. How universally applicable are our theories and the therapeutic techniques arising from the experience worlds of white, western, Euro-American men? Colonizers? Significant contributions by women, non-whites, and others previously erased from our theories, have helped broaden our “horizons of understanding”. Unfortunately, our zeal to “diversify” too often, even unconsciously, continue to center whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity. Clinical material is used to highlight important theoretical concepts central to the central themes of this paper.
Cherian Verghese
Cherian Verghese, Ph.D., is a private practice Psychologist in Washington, DC where he conducts individual and couple therapy and clinical supervision. A graduate of the Psychotherapy Training Program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, Cherian later directed that program and has been on their faculty for over 20years. He is Founding and Steering Committee member of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture at the Washington School of Psychiatry where he also taught in the Supervision Training program. Most recently, he has written and presented on a variety of topics, including Color of Rage: Contextualizing Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Race, Melancholia, and the Fantasy of Whiteness; Color of Rage: Contextualizing Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; and Historical and Cultural Embeddedness of Psychoanalytic Theory/Founders. In 2001, Cherian founded SAMHA-South Asian Mental Health Association, an informal networking and discussion group in the Washington DC region.
Peter Zimmermann
Peter Zimmermann, PhD, LP, Founding Member and Member of the Board of Directors of TRISP; Senior Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst at TRISP since 1987. Co-editor and contributing author of Intersubjective Self Psychology, A Primer (Routledge 2019). Former President of the Training Institute of NPAP (2016-2021) and Member of the Board of Directors of NPAP since 2012; Senior Member, Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member at NPAP since1984. Member, Editorial Board The Psychoanalytic Review. In private practice in New York City since 1982. In addition to working with individuals and couples he provides private supervision and runs study groups in ISP.
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