Race, self-disclosure, and "forbidden talk": race and ethnicity in contemporary clinical practice

In this paper I attempt to extend the psychoanalytic conversation about race and ethnicity by discussing the intersubjectivity of race and racial difference. I present clinical material from an interracial treatment in which disclosures about race played an important role in deepening the clinical process. The resulting interactions permitted the patient to admit more of herself into the treatment space. I suggest that contemporary psychoanalytic formulations and multicultural perspectives from outside of psychoanalysis can together create more meaningful conceptualizations which take into account the lived realities of race and the ways in which these may be shaped by individual psychology.