Chapter 9: Final Recommendations: What to Do Now?

In this chapter, The Holmes Commission on Racial Equality presents our recommendations for moving American psychoanalysis into a racially equitable future. These recommendations emanate directly from the in-depth study of race and systemic racism in psychoanalysis that we have just reported. These recommendations are based on the findings of our large-scale survey, our extensive small group interviews, our aggregation of field data,8 and the Commission's own, process-oriented, self-study. First and foremost, our recommendations represent a collection of the calls for change we have heard in response to our asking a diverse array of psychoanalysts and other psychoanalytically interested students, candidates, and practitioners, to tell us what is going on regarding race and racism in psychoanalytic sessions, supervisions, classes, administrative meetings, training settings, and in professional membership organizations, including in their leadership meetings, on the pages of their journals, and on their list servers.

To make these recommendations useful, they are presented as a set of general guidelines, ideas, and strategies, rather than as a specific list of directives. In offering these, we note that all recommendations for fighting against the destructive and oppressive forces of racism, and promoting equality and inclusion in all spheres of the psychoanalytic enterprise will only be of value if they are implemented with awareness of and sensitivity to the particular contexts where change is being sought. This means that, at least to a certain extent, previously existing structures and