Chapter 8: The Consultation-Liaison Network

What I know is that an inchoate desire for a future other than the one that seems to be forming our days brings me to a seat around any table to lean forward, to hear, to respond, to await response from any other.

The aims and vision of the Commission extend beyond performing a study with the singular purpose of describing the current picture of systemic racism in psychoanalysis. As important as this is, the Commission also aims to catalyze productive change. Changing the picture of what psychoanalysis looks like now to one of greater equity, diversity, and inclusion will take time, organization, and labor—and that work will need to be done by all of us in psychoanalysis. The Commission seeks to help galvanize that change in a way consistent with the principles and methods of psychoanalysis, even as we acknowledge that some of these principles and methods may themselves be imbued with structural aspects of racism.

The idea for what we have come to call the Consultation-Liaison Network (C-LN) arose organically from our primary task of studying the presence of issues of race and structural racism in American psychoanalysis. In order to disseminate the initial study instrument as widely as possible, the Commission developed a list of who we then called Ambassadors. These Ambassadors were charged with raising awareness about the study, aiding with distribution, and encouraging participation. When we entered the second stage of the study, the qualitative small group interviews, we recruited a second group: Advanced Candidates who would be trained to conduct groups with candidates; some of them had also already been Ambassadors. These two groups comprised a network of individuals who obviously resonated with aims and ideals of the Commission.

An idea began to blossom in our discussions about how important it is to support the many individuals who are already doing work on antiracism in organizational psychoanalysis, and how