Racism in the consulting room: myth or reality?

This paper explores ways in which issues of race might impact on, and/or be ignored within, the practice of psychotherapy. Racial difference, that is being white as well as being black, taps into ingrained patterns of binary thinking that create hierarchies of "otherness." This generates anxiety which leads some therapists to avoid seeing race or naming its resonance in the therapeutic alliance. The origins of this splitting may lie in the unconscious, from whence it can be subtly nudged into more conscious awareness, as a seminal paper by Andrew Curry, published in this journal, suggested some forty-five years ago. Other modalities bring these dynamics more directly into the therapeutic space by exploring the patient's familial history or their daily lived experiences of racial (dis)advantage from an explicitly empowering standpoint. But whatever route is taken, racism is not an animal that can, or should, be left sleeping in the corner of the consulting room.