The San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute was the beneficiary of a Visiting Professorship in Racial and Ethnic Diversity funded by the American Psychoanalytic Foundation. During April 30–May 1, 1999, this generous financial support allowed Dorothy Homes to visit San Diego to spend a whirlwind weekend of large-group lectures and small-group meetings with both the membership of the SDPSI and various groups of practitioners in the community who specialize in training and/or treating diverse populations. By the time Holmes departed, all of those concerned or even resistant agreed that the San Diego mental health community had been enriched and challenged to reconsider how racial and cultural issues affect our clinical thinking and technique with regard to countertransference enactments and clinical conditions such as success neuroses.
That weekend originated in the puzzled realization by SDPSI leadership that we had rarely considered ethnic and racial issues, despite practicing in a city that lies on the border of Mexico, one in which Hispanic, Asian, and African-American cultures flourish. Realizing the need to consider such issues and the potential groups of patients that we had not emphasized created a sense of intellectual excitement and opportunity within our organization. Consequently we were delighted when our application for a visiting professorship was granted and Holmes accepted our invitation to visit. The opportunity to have a dialogue with an analyst of Homes' qualifications, which include expertise on racial and ethnic issues, created a stir of activity and excitement in the broader San Diego mental health community as well as within the SDPSI.
Joanne Callan and Claudia Law-Greenberg took responsibility for organizing Holmes's visit. They developed a packed weekend that showcased her talent for education and outreach — both to the mental health community and to other agencies in the greater San Diego area.
On Friday afternoon, Holmes was whisked off to San Diego State University to speak about the applicability of psychoanalytic ideas to different ethnic and racial groups to MFCC students in a local training program directed by Carmen Guanipa. This rewarding visit provided valuable contact with a group of professionals-in-training who treat primarily minority patients. These students had previously had little exposure to psychoanalytic thinking and what it can offer in such clinical contexts.
In the evening Holmes had a collegial dinner meeting with a small group of candidates from the SDPSI. Later, she met with the membership and presented a paper, “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Race and Social Class issues in Success Neurosis.” Attesting to the interest generated by her subject matter, our turnout was one of the largest in recent history. The discussion afterward was lively, as the membership struggled to integrate the realization that both race and social class affected the dynamics of success neurosis and that both factors could interface with resolving it. One aspect emphasized was the need to address such issues directly in treatment, including the willingness to address their defensive uses.
Outreach took priority again next morning when Holmes presented to a community-wide meeting hosted by the California School of Professional Psychology–San Diego Campus (CSPP), the largest mental health training program in the city. Her presentation, “Race, Culture, and the Psycho-Therapeutic Process: Transference and Countertransference,” received rave reviews. She creatively used film clips from Gentleman's Agreement to illustrate her points that race affected one's countertransference and that the therapist-to-be's own treatment offers the best means to master the ubiquitous and pernicious effects of race.
Attendees found many aspects of her presentation helpful to their clinical work, but Holmes's role as an ambassador of psychoanalysis to the greater mental health community in San Diego was, arguably, her most important function in giving this presentation. She fulfilled it beautifully, leading many attendees to appreciate that psychoanalytic thinking could be relevant to patient populations other than middle-class whites. In particular, she demonstrated that psychoanalysis promotes a deeper understanding of the intrapsychic impact of racial issues than do other approaches; at the same time, she showed that analyzing one's own countertransference reactions involving race can promote ego growth in both therapist and patient. Holmes also did an admirable job of illustrating the utility of a modern structural perspective.
Saturday afternoon was spent at lunch with CSPP students who are part of that program's psychoanalytic focus group. These student's were surprised and appreciative that the American Psychoanalytic Foundation and the SDPSI would make an analyst of Holmes's stature available to them. Her combination of charm and intellect deepened these students' interest in psychoanalysis by demonstrating both the intellectual vitality of analysis and its continuing relevance to diverse problems and patient populations.
Holmes spent Saturday evening meeting with a small group of SDPSI faculty over dinner to discuss current issues confronting psychoanalysis, particularly training issues. Her experiences in a different psychoanalytic institute, with its own culture, offered a new perspective on our own training programs.
When Holmes left San Diego on Sunday morning, she left behind good will and appreciation in everyone who came in contact with her on her visit She had successfully fulfilled the two tasks set for this visiting professorship: (1) educating the local analytic community on the importance of attention to racial and ethnic issues and (2) promoting outreach efforts to practitioners in the community who treat minority patients. We had been graced with the input of a sensitive and skilled clinician and teacher. We thank Holmes as well as the American Psychoanalytic Foundation that made her visit possible.
Alan Sugarman, Ph.D, co-chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on New Psychoanalytic Centers. He is the director of education of the SDPSI and one of the institutes training and supervising child, adolescent and adult analysts. Claudia Law-Greenberg, Ph.D., is an advanced clinical associate with the SDPSI and chair of its Extension Division.