A Country of Two

Race and Social Class in an Immigrant Therapeutic Dyad

Bibliographic Data

ID21630680
AuthorsSantiago Delboy (Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume30
Issue1
Pages90-101
Publication date2020-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychoanalytic Dialogues (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1048-1885 • E-ISSN: 1940-9222
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10481885.2019.1702380
OpenAlexW3005309381
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited23

This paper explores some of the ways in which social structures and fantasies organized around race and social class emerge in the intersubjective space created by a patient and a therapist who emigrated from the same country. Incorporating some of his own experiences of identity and otherness, the author discusses, through the lens of his countertransference, how communicating with the patient in their native language allowed for access to early internal object-relations, unconscious threats to his sense of belonging, racialized self-states, and feelings of shame associated to some of these dissociated self-states rooted in historical oppression and trauma. The author suggests that the “country of two” populated by patient and therapist is a dynamic co-created space, that emerges from the dialectic interplay of sameness and difference along the lines of race, social class, and culture

Aesthetics · Dialectic · Dyad · Epistemology · Oppression · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Shame · Sociology · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Gender Studies · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology · Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

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