Fragments of the analysis of a negro woman by a white therapist have been presented. The focus has been on the influence of racial difference on the analytic process, with emphasis on certain transference and countertransference phenomena. The thesis of this presentation is that the racial difference between analyst and analysand, involves issues of unconscious meaning at many levels, and there are serious hazards in either overestimating or in ignoring the interracial factor.

In the analysis reported on, interracial differences and sterotypes were often used to convey deeper transference and countertransference projections. To ignore the manifest black-white issues is to avoid a piece of the patient's and the therapist's everyday