One of These is Not Like the Others: Leading Edge Meets Leading Edge*

Mia, an Asian-American adoptee, began treatment unaware of the themes of her identity. When race, identity, and anti-Asian violence moved into the national foreground during the pandemic, Mia’s identity became a focus in therapy. A twinship transference allowed Mia to develop an awareness of being Asian in a white world, as well as reckon with the prejudice she has known. How did Mia come to appreciate being Asian in twinship with her white therapist? How did her white therapist offer twinship responsiveness? Intersubjective Self Psychology, with its focus on diverging and overlapping trailing and leading edges of patient and therapist, illuminates the answer. Mia’s trailing edge insistence on mirroring and defensively maintained assumption of sameness needed to give way to a leading edge yearning to belong, complete with the fullness and specificity of her own experience. The therapist’s trailing edge reluctance to experience twinship needed to give way to a leading edge yearning to revel in shared humanity, different as patient and therapist might be. Responding to Mia’s twinship yearnings with reference to difference allowed Mia to claim her identity, and provided new ways to understand twinship yearnings for shared experience that also celebrates the specificity of difference.