Wrestling with Reductionism in Racial and Cultural Analytic Discourse

Developing a respectful inquiry with our patients will reveal that there is not a simple chain of causation between their race or culture and their personality problems or symptomatology. In addition to the patient’s lifelong experiences with racism and bigotry, factors such as parental milieu, education, economic security, and degree of religious adherence, are major determinative factors in psychic and personality development. Against the pressure of our current socio-political environment, which has awakened the influence of these often-overlooked variables, the analyst must strive to guard against any a priori assumptions based on the patient’s membership in any of these categories. Therapists who share a similar background or identity as their patient should be cautious about over-identifying or assuming they have an increased likelihood of understanding the patient. Such assumptions of similarity may be countertransference wishes that might interfere with analytic inquiry. The interpersonal technique of inquiry will be suggested as one path toward discovering the patient’s unique individuality as a counterpoint to the therapist’s tendency to generalize.