Replications of Racialized, Gender and Class-Based Trauma: Intersectional Enactments Within Black Women Client–Therapist–Consultee- Consultant Relationships

This article explores the nuanced transference and countertransference dynamics that can arise in therapy and clinical consultation between Black women therapists and their Black women clinical consultants. Many Black women’s lives have often been shaped by intersecting histories of racial, gender, and class-based oppression, which may emerge within psychotherapy and clinical consultation as relational enactments. If used purposefully, these clinical enactments can become opportunities for growth for Black women clients, therapists, and clinical consultants. Unfortunately, gender, class, and race-based clinical enactments between Black women are underrepresented within the existing supervisory and clinical consultative literature. While these relationships hold immense potential for parallel growth and liberation, they also require careful attention to the complexities of shared experiences of marginalization and the inevitability of re-enactments occurring along the way. Through two composite vignettes, the authors introduce the concept of intersectional enactments and offer considerations for future therapy and clinical consultation with Black women that explicitly address these dynamics.