You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr. Leary highlighted variance within ethnic culture in her commentary, but I wished she had spoken instead about cultural trauma. My paper was about trauma-based dissociative process: Some immigrant women attempt to bury their ethnic cultural experiences deeply into their psychic shadows, as elements of their culture’s values and practices constitute aspects of the very nature of their trauma. Leary’s notion of race as an adaptive challenge brings to attention the importance of making explicit racial “loyalties, values, and habits” in clinical situations. I argue strongly that psychoanalysis has dissociated its cultural identity, making its encounters with ethnic minorities that much more problematic. I ask on the behalf of ethnic minority patients (and ethnic minority mental health practitioners and graduate students), What could be gained if psychoanalysis could reveal and own its cultural identity?