In the United States there is increasing awareness around the unresolved, unmetabolized phenomena of colonialism, slavery and its aftermath, and racism within a democratic society. Compromising this recognition, working through and reconciliation is the transgenerational transmission of racial anxiety, racial hatred and racial trauma that has not found sufficient redress. Within the consulting room there are opportunities that unconsciously and consciously present themselves that the analyst resists, regardless of the racial pairing. Unlike aggression and sexuality where the analyst is trained to pursue, despite inherent complexities and anxieties, racial anxiety, racial trauma, and racial blind-spots are held in silence, inhibiting this aspect of mind from further exploration.

This lecture is an attempt to explore the imperative of race as crucial and necessary, using clinical examples and vignettes to demonstrate how race is embodied and symbolized in mind and can be explored to benefit patient, clinician, and perhaps society.

Dr Dionne R. Powell, M.D. is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the (NYU affiliated) and at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPA Society). Dr Powell studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania and completed her psychiatry training at the New York Hospital- Cornell Medical Center, where she is presently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. She is in full time psychoanalytic practice in NYC.

Dr Powell has taught, spoken and written extensively about race, racism, psychoanalytic training and gender issues. Recent awards for Dr Powell include: the 2022 recipient of the American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award, the 2022 inaugural recipient of the Margaret Morgan Lawrence Lecture, sponsored by the Association of Psychoanalytic Medicine, (APM), at Columbia University, and was the 2021 recipient of the Candidate’s Council of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Master Teacher of the Year Award.

Dr Powell is the current vice president of the American Association for Psychoanalytic Education, serves as Co-Chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in the American Psychoanalytic Association, and is a founding member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak.

Book your tickets here

Header Photo: Sadie Culberson/Stocksy United