Psychodynamic intersectionality and the positionality of the group analyst
The tension between analytical neutrality and inter-subjectivity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14775361 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stuart Stevenson (0000-0002-8494-0686, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 498-514 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Group Analysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0533-3164 • E-ISSN: 1461-717X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0533316420953660 |
| OpenAlex | W3085626658 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 17 |
This article proposes the concepts of psychodynamic intersectionality and intersectional group analysis by addressing the complex issues of the positionality, or self-location, of the group analyst when working with diverse and intersectional patient groups who have been traumatized by structural oppression, institutional and inter-generational othering. I critique the positionality of the group analyst and the essential intersectional and inter-subjective nature of the role and interventions they may or may not make in the group. The article engages with the need not to deny how an understanding of the positionality of the group analyst is central to the clinical frame. Such understanding can assist the clinician to engage with group members who have experienced structural oppression when othering dynamics are inevitably generated in the group matrix. Such dynamics are often being paralleled in the social unconscious and occurrences in society at any given time. I argue that a failure on behalf of the group analyst to reflexively position themselves in relation to powerful phenomena, such as, racism, sexism and homophobia and occurrences in the social unconscious risks a re-traumatizing dynamic being paralleled in the group matrix to the determent of group members from marginalized communities
Epistemology · Intersectionality · Neutrality · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Racism · Sociology · Subjectivity · Unconscious mind · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology
Dreaming revolutions — group analysis beyond words. The Elaborative Matrix
Group analysis in the decline of democracy
Homophobic and racist gang violence and the rise of fascism
Decolonizing the Curriculum of Group Analysis
How (non)discriminatory are the Institute of Group Analysis and group analysis? An institutional ethnography study
Scapegoating and the ‘angry black woman’
The white mirror
Working with the trauma of racism in groups in a time of white supremacy — erasure, psychic ghettoization or bearing witness
We’ve all got skin in the game
The impact of homophobic trauma on gay men
The dialectics of Chat
The psychodynamics of lynch mobs
The white mirror
Between Fanon and Lacan
Psychic Retreats
Racist States of Mind
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Black Sexual Politics
The World within the Group
Difference, whiteness and the group analytic matrix
The Emergence of Racism in Group Analysis
Authority and Revolt
Counselling and Psychotherapy with Refugees
Our Adult World and its Roots in Infancy
| Citations per year | 2.8 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |