“My Sister Tried to Kill Me”: Enactment and Foreclosure in a Mixed-Race Dyad

Posted in Articles, Social Work, United States on 2018-05-15 14:57Z by Steven

“My Sister Tried to Kill Me”: Enactment and Foreclosure in a Mixed-Race Dyad

Psychodynamic Psychiatry
Volume 43, Number 2 (June 2015)
pages 229-241
DOI: 10.1521/pdps.2015.43.2.229

Teresa Méndez, MSW, Clinical Social Worker
The Retreat at Sheppard Pratt; Private Practice
Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland

How is treatment complicated when both patient and therapist bring into the room multiracial identities that stand in contrast to their visible race or ethnicity? Using relational psychoanalysis’s concepts of dissociation, enactment, and relational trauma, this article examines the way multiple racial realities, beyond the more familiar black/white binary, can coexist in the consulting room. The implications and potential pitfalls of a cross-cultural dyad, in which each participant carries a mixed-race identity, are considered through a clinical vignette.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: ,