Controversies in Psychoanalytic Education: The Issue of Race and its Relevance in Psychoanalytic Treatment

Psychoanalysis is a highly charged, intensely personal and interpersonal form of psychotherapy that is influenced by a number of variables. Although the influences of racial differences between therapist and patient have been extensively examined under the broader rubric of “psychotherapy,” including a number of outcome studies, surprisingly little has been written with regard to psychoanalysis per se. This is especially noteworthy on a number of fronts.

Freud was, of course, an astute and interested observer of sociocultural and political phenomena. In some of his earlier writings he suggested a direct pathogenic link between a sexually repressive Victorian culture and the development of certain neuroses. The scientific, intellectual, and therapeutic revolution that was psychoanalysis exerted tremendous influence on other disciplines, from pediatric medicine to anthropology and sociology.

Freud's theories regarding the fundamental significance of the unconscious in our mental life are radical because they attacked humanity's defensive belief in the omnipotence of conscious thought, conscious choice, and rational volition as governing our experience. In similar fashion, Galileo and Copernicus had deprived humankind of the illusion that our planet was the center of the universe, and Darwin challenged the illusion of divine creation, linking humankind to the animal kingdom.