Reflections on Three Decades of Being a South-Asian American Analyst

Abstract

In this paper, the author, a South Asian American female analyst, discusses her technical approach to working with patients across ethnic, racial, religious, and sociopolitical boundaries. She also describes the trajectory of her analytic career over three decades: both the challenges and the high points. Certain problems in organized psychoanalysis, especially about minorities, are briefly discussed.

Keywords

cross-cultural psychoanalysis the social prejudice Jewish-Muslim analytic dyad organized psychoanalysis envy in psychoanalytic organizations

Introduction

In this paper, I will discuss aspects of my more than 30 years of experience in America as an analyst of South Asian origin. Although these experiences could fill a few books, I will confine myself to discussing one important aspect of my clinical work, some of my professional and personal experiences, and a few thoughts about psychoanalytic organizations.

“The Social”

Over the past few years, I’ve been extremely surprised about some analysts calling for a “new” emphasis on acknowledging the effect of the social in psychoanalytic treatment and others denouncing it. In between, a few analysts keep pointing out that there is nothing new about acknowledging the effect of social factors on and in analytic treatment and that, in fact, many analysts have been writing and presenting about this matter since the 1950s. I would encourage the reader to review the bibliography at the end of this paper (Abbasi, 1997, 2008, 2012a, 2012b, 2014a, 2014b, 2018, 2019, 2022a, 2022b, 2025; Akhtar, 1995, 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2006, 2021; Basch-Kahre, 1984; Bernard, 1953; Evans Holmes, 2016a, 2016b, 2022; Fischer, 1971; Garza-Guerrero, 1974; Goldberg, Myers, & Zeifman, 1974; Holmes, 1992, 1999, 2016, 2021; Holmes et al., 2024; Joseph, 1974; Leary, 1995, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 2000, 2006; Oberndorf, 1954; Powell, 2018, 2020; Schachter, 1968; Shah, 2020, 2022; Stoute, 2021; Ticho, 1971; Yi, 1998, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2023) to get a sense of the papers written about this topic over the past seven decades. And even earlier, of course, were Freud’s contributions. Although Freud did not systematically theorize cultural and social factors like several contemporary psychoanalysts have done, he acknowledged their influence on intrapsychic processes in several key writings (Freud, 1913/1955b, 1921/1955a, 1927/1961b, 1930/1961a, 1939/1964). The bibliography at the end of this paper does not include all analytic papers written about this topic and, for the most part, does not include books written by analysts about this topic. It would be invaluable if a complete list of all analytic papers, book chapters, and books devoted to this topic were to be put together by a special committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association and posted on its website under a special section: a small step toward addressing certain problems in organizational psychoanalysis that I will refer to, later in this paper.

There seems to be thus either a not wanting to know or a true lack of knowledge about how long many analysts have been powerfully aware that racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and political factors affect the psyche of an individual and, hence, will naturally and organically come into a treatment to be usefully worked with, unless the analyst cannot hear it, or the patient feels/recognizes that her analyst cannot tolerate such material, and therefore never brings it up. This reminds me of an elderly Jewish lady who came to see me in the past few years of her life because she was feeling deeply depressed. She was a Holocaust survivor and had had a long prior treatment as a young adult. As we talked and I learned that she had been imprisoned in a concentration camp, I gradually asked her about all that had happened in the concentration camp. She wept as she talked with immense sadness, shame, and anxiety about the terrible things she had gone through. I felt that these were memories that were still very alive for her because of the extreme suffering she had experienced. I usually try, however, not to assume anything about a patient but rather to ask. So, I asked her, “Tell me . . . did you feel helped when you discussed what happened to you in the camp with your first analyst years ago?” My patient looked at me with her eyes wide and full of tears. “I never discussed this with him,” she said. Inwardly, I thought, Dear god! I asked her gently, “Why do you think not?” I will never forget her answer: “He didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.” We can all learn an important lesson from this: If we don’t ask (or are not emotionally ready to hear something), our patients will likely not bring it up.

In this context (which has to do with good practices in psychoanalysis), I want to share an important fact Akhtar (2023) writes about:

The reader might benefit by knowing that in 1997, the American Psychoanalytic Association, under the far-sighted stewardship of Marvin Margolis, asked the eminent African American psychoanalyst, Enrico Jones (1948–2003) and myself to prepare a model bibliography for a course on culture in American psychoanalytic institutes. This “officially” approved document . . . languished in the Association’s archives, even though it constituted a suitable blueprint for introducing cultural awareness in psychoanalytic candidates.

To be sure, this 1997 Jones–Akhtar bibliography needs updating. Perhaps another “official committee”—with a stronger voice—can undertake the task of such a revision. Or, perhaps, it is better that each psychoanalytic institute take this bibliography as a starting point and then evolve its own version for a course on psychoanalysis and culture. (p. 352)

Why The Denial?

So why do many contemporary psychoanalysts find it difficult to acknowledge the importance of social and cultural factors in psychoanalytic treatment? Is it because traditional psychoanalysis emphasized internal and unconscious processes while overlooking how external societal influences shape a person’s identity and experiences? While this may be one factor, I don’t believe this is the full story. Rather, I find Yi’s (2014b) description of the problem more compelling when she writes:

For complex conscious and unconscious reasons, ranging from pursuit of scientific respectability to internalized racism and denial of vulnerability, Freud felt a deep need to obscure his Jewish identity. Had Freud critically examined his identity as a Jew and the influence of anti-Semitism on his psyche, it is doubtful that he could have conceived his theories of mind and human experience so radically decontextualized from cultural surround.

I contend that Freud’s cultural dissociation has led to the creation of a dynamic unconscious (Stolorow, Atwood, & Brandchaft, 1992) within psychoanalysis with respect to cultural experience: Generations of psychoanalysts could not speak about experiences related to racial/cultural trauma, identity, and immigration, as to do so would have damaged their tie to psychoanalysis. With the advent of Nazis, most early psychoanalysts, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, were dislocated, became refugees in England and America; yet these analysts by and large were silent on the importance of these experiences and continued to adhere to the primacy of universal childhood sexual experiences in their theoretical and clinical work. This takes on a tragic dimension when even those analysts who faced real possibility of physical harm/death (as was the case with Kohut; see Strozier, 2001) or who nearly died in labor/concentration camps (Krystal, 1996), marginalized these experiences in their personal analyses and/or theoretical and clinical work. In confronting the legacy of the Holocaust on psychoanalysis, Prince (2009) called psychoanalysis a survivor/victim of Holocaust, and Kuriloff (2013) examined the legacy of the Holocaust on the psychoanalytic movement and generations of psychoanalysts. (pp. 53–54)

Ten years later, Holmes et al. (2024) elucidate the same problem:

The current tension about race in American psychoanalysis has important historical precedents. Freud “othered” and then extruded early psychoanalytic pioneers who differed from him. They were considered deviant. American psychoanalysis was built on exclusion by limiting training to physicians until the force of a lawsuit required unencumbered disciplinary inclusion. There was decades-long silence among psychoanalysts about the Holocaust. The persistent silence delayed for much too long exploration and understanding of the fact that the Nazis used systemic racism toward Jewish people to support and defend the Holocaust. LGBTQIA+ people were unwelcome and considered unfit for psychoanalytic treatment or training as analysts. These sad facts of psychoanalytic history harmed many people and diminished the discipline of psychoanalysis. (p. 411)

Clinical Experiences

I started working with my very first analytic patient in 1993. During my 4-year psychoanalytic candidacy, I started six analytic treatments, many of which spanned several years. A few years after graduating, I saw 9 or 10 patients a day for psychoanalysis. I can say with certainty that there has not been a single patient I have treated in analysis or therapy in whose treatment sociocultural, ethnic, religious, and political issues did not come up in full force and were worked with, to the relief of the patient, resulting in greater understanding and integration in the patient’s mind. To illustrate what I mean, I will present material from my first analytic patient and then material from a patient I’m currently seeing to demonstrate how powerfully these issues come up in treatment and how I work with them.

Clinical Vignette #1 (From a Treatment Started in Early 1993)

Alan, a Jewish man in his 30s, entered treatment with me because he was struggling with frequent outbursts of anger, especially toward his wife. His father had once been successful in business but failed repeatedly after selling the company. Alan often felt his sister received more love from their parents, while his mother confided in him about his father’s failures, placing emotional burdens on him early on.

After immigrating to the United States as a teenager, Alan earned a college degree and married a Jewish woman with emotional challenges, which reinforced his sense of superiority. He refused the recommended 5-day couch analysis due to “time and financial constraints,” opting for four seated sessions instead. Early on, he controlled the sessions, occasionally offering condescending praise like “good work,” and questioned whether I felt insecure as a trainee. With mock sympathy, he acknowledged my supervisory pressures.

As I explored these dynamics with him, I became aware of my own growing frustration and paralysis. I eventually said he seemed to believe I had more to lose if the treatment failed and asked what that might mean to him. This prompted a memory of being restrained at age 6 by his mother while her friend gave him an injection. He said, “I can’t use the couch because you want me to.” He disclosed disturbing incidents: trying to assault his mother, pointing a rifle at his sister, and kicking his wife in the butt: the same body part he had been forcibly injected in by two women working together.

These disclosures led me to suggest he feared humiliation and control from me if he used the couch. He soon began attending five sessions a week, still seated upright and started confronting his discomfort around his attraction to me. He likened me to his dark-haired sister and feared the couch would expose his vulnerability and arouse sexual feelings, leaving him “at your mercy.”

A key shift came with the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Alan brought up the news and suddenly went quiet, admitting he had known I was from Pakistan but hadn’t “allowed himself to ‘know’” I was Muslim. Emotionally overwhelmed, he confessed to organizing “anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rallies” in his youth. His rabbi had called Muslims “dogs,” and he believed we “could not possibly work together.”

Though I wasn’t emotionally disturbed, I recognized my own initial protective detachment. I responded by naming his distrust of me as a Muslim and a possible anti-Semite, his terror of his own hatred and rage, and his fear of mine. I asked why that meant we couldn’t keep exploring these issues. He replied that I had always treated him decently and questioned whether continuing treatment made him foolish or if leaving would be the real mistake. We continued our work—two supposed “enemies” navigating one man’s psyche.

My personal life then intersected with the analysis: I traded my modest car for a German Audi. Alan, who had likened me to his failed father when I had a stripped-down Nissan, now called my Audi “a Nazi car.” I interpreted his discomfort as reflecting anxieties about what could emerge in a deepening relationship between a Jewish man and a Muslim woman.

Alan then revealed he felt he had been misleading his wife. She believed he was undergoing real analysis, but he said, “I’m sort of in and sort of not.” I asked whether he might be hurting himself, which he cautiously accepted. Nine months into treatment (a symbolic full-term pregnancy and a wish for a nurturing mother who would tolerate and love him, I wondered?), he decided to use the couch.

In the third year of work together, I stopped working Saturdays. Alan reacted strongly, recalling a childhood maid who didn’t work weekends and favored his siblings. I asked whether he saw me as “paid help” abandoning him, and he agreed. He gradually adjusted to a weekday session.

He later recounted a disturbing incident: his indoor-outdoor cat had brought in a still-alive rabbit in its mouth. His wife begged him to put the rabbit out of its misery quickly, but Alan dallied. I was thinking of the best way to kill the rabbit quickly,” he said. He ultimately killed it with a shovel. As he talked about this, his tone revealed both fear and excitement. I could hear and feel his sadistic pleasure in making both the rabbit and his wife suffer. He then recalled a Muslim woman he once dated and imagined heroically rescuing me from a rape attack after first placing me (in his fantasy) in harm’s way, himself. He remembered exposing his father’s affair to his mother, only to feel betrayed when she stayed with his father. I suggested to Alan that maybe he wished my husband would abandon me because of my relationship with him.

He described an affair with a married woman who had supported him early on. One night, after sex, he began strangling her. “I loved her and hated her. . . . She was never fully mine,” he said. When I asked, “Like your mother?” he burst out, “Damn you, yes, and like you. And like my sister.”

We began discussing his sister, whom he idolized. “I felt like a little puppy shadowing her,” he said. I reminded him his rabbi had called Muslims “dogs.” He replied, “So that makes you just like me . . . a puppy, a worthless dog who follows people around.” I added, “And perhaps also a bitch?” He laughed and said, “Thank you—yes, I do feel that way sometimes.”

This opened a deeper exploration of his longing to be cared for by a woman, entwined with rage when those needs weren’t met. The aggressive cat symbolized this tension. A few weeks later, he gave it away.

Despite moments when his “claws” returned—like refusing to increase the fee he paid me, while donating generously to a Jewish charity—he began to see these sadistic defenses as ways to avoid vulnerability. His rage toward me, originally colored by political and cultural realities and projections, ultimately transformed into a reckoning with his earliest, most painful relational wounds.

Clinical Vignette #2 (From Ongoing Treatment, 2025)

Sarah was born in the United States to a White American mother and a Turkish father. She came to therapy seeking help with difficulties forming lasting romantic relationships and to feel better about herself. Though she had been in several relationships with men, none had endured or provided the emotional connection she longed for. In addition, Sarah carried unresolved pain regarding her relationship with her mother—an area she felt compelled to explore more deeply.

In one session, Sarah spoke about a persistent fear that expressing her true thoughts and feelings would cause others to dislike her or even abandon her. This fear, she explained, stemmed mainly from experiences with her mother, who would often stop speaking to her if she voiced disagreement. I gently wondered whether this early experience of emotional withdrawal might have led her to remain in relationships with men who were emotionally unavailable or unwilling to commit—holding on despite knowing, deep down, that the connection was not mutual.

When she returned the following week after the weekend break, Sarah said she had continued to reflect on our conversation. She remarked that her people-pleasing tendencies felt particularly pronounced in relationships with women—whether friends or bosses. She was often gripped by anxiety that any misstep could destroy the relationship. I said, “So you feel that this is connected to the uncertainty and anxiety that you felt and still feel in your relationship with your mother?” She responded, “Yes, very much so.” Sarah went on, thoughtfully, to consider that her dynamic with men had a slightly different character. Despite clear signs that some of her past boyfriends were not interested in a long-term future with her, she had continued to believe they would eventually commit. “It was almost as though I was deluding myself into thinking that sooner or later, they would get married to me,” she said. When I asked about her use of the word delusion, she explained that it felt stronger than an illusion—it was a belief she held firmly, though it was not entirely beyond being questioned.

I offered, “Sometimes we can understand why we do what we do by looking at the outcome of such thinking.” She considered this and said, “Maybe this has to do with wanting to believe that I wasn’t going to lose them.” I asked, “To protect yourself from loss and pain?” She nodded and shared a recent incident involving her brother. After a disagreement at a family gathering, he had stopped speaking to her entirely and hadn’t even told her about his recent engagement. Things had deteriorated to the point that she wasn’t sure if she would be invited to the wedding.

There was a moment of silence before Sarah made another connection. She said her desperation to be accepted—and the deep doubts she held about herself—also had roots in how different she felt as a child growing up. Though born in Boston, Sarah’s family had moved to a small town in Florida when she was still in preschool. Her skin was darker than her classmates’ and even darker than her brother’s, who could pass as white. From the beginning, she felt like an outsider, often teased and excluded by the other children. She connected her early yearnings to be accepted, included, and loved, to staying on too long in relationships (both friendships and romantic relationships) that were clearly not working.

Then Sarah shared a recent experience that was obviously still troubling her. A few days earlier, she had been walking her dogs in a Tampa park on a chilly, rainy evening. She pulled her hoodie over her head and wrapped her jacket tightly around her. As she walked, she passed an older white man who stopped and asked, “Are you Muslim?” Sarah, taken aback, replied that she wasn’t. The man responded, “Oh, I thought you were wearing a hijab,” and added, “Well, even if you’re Muslim or wearing a hijab, it’s okay. People can do whatever they believe they need to do.” Irritated and anxious, Sarah told him she was aware of that and continued walking. Later, she reencountered the same man—he had changed his path to cross hers once more—and he asked whether she went to church. He said he was just curious when she asked why he was questioning her. Sarah began feeling threatened and started walking away, but something shifted. She stopped, turned to him, and said, “I don’t appreciate you harassing me this way. I’m simply walking my dogs and minding my own business.” The man responded in an awkward, apologetic tone, “I didn’t—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to harass you—I was just being curious.”

Sarah told me she had walked away unsettled but also aware that her instincts had told her this was not mere curiosity. She could trust her instincts, unlike in her childhood, when she would often suppress what she thought was reality and go along with her mother’s version of reality. I noted that although she had initially felt afraid, at some point during the encounter, she was able to listen to her inner voice and set a firm boundary. She agreed and said she had surprised herself with her response, adding that she believed this shift was the result of the work we were doing together. She felt she would not have been able to speak up in the past.

I thought later that this was a useful example of how issues of cultural and ethnic identity—feeling like an outsider in a predominantly white community and experiencing taunting and exclusion—became interwoven in Sarah’s mind with early family dynamics (a mother who withdrew affection in response to disagreement). In our work, it was important to hold both social and familial realities side by side. As Sarah was beginning to do, the psychoanalytic process must travel between these two domains to help the patient understand herself more fully and reclaim a sense of agency in her relationships and the world.

My Professional Trajectory And Personal Experiences

I moved from Pakistan to America in early 1985. I initially lived in New Jersey while studying for Part 2 of my Foreign Medical Graduates’ Exam. I had already passed the first part while in Pakistan. In conversation with other foreign medical graduates during this time, I was told that residency programs in America often did not take letters of recommendation from senior physicians with whom one might have worked in other countries seriously. There was a concern that those documents might be fake. I had worked for over a year in a psychiatric hospital in Pakistan, dealing with chronically ill inpatients, running busy outpatient clinics, and working in therapy with more stable patients. After hearing that my work in Pakistan might not be considered valid and the letters from my consultant there might be doubted, I started looking for a way to work at a psychiatric facility in New Jersey while I was studying for my exam. It was easier said than done. As I was not licensed to work in America, it was very difficult for any hospital or program to allow me to interact with patients. I ultimately ended up walking into the psychiatry department of a Veterans Affairs hospital. I drove by daily and asked to talk to their program director, who I knew was also a foreign medical graduate from the Philippines. I am forever indebted to Dr. Nora del Busto, who took a chance on me. She came up with the innovative idea that I should register as a volunteer with the hospital and could then work under supervision (without pay, of course) in the department of psychiatry. Dr. del Busto’s letter of recommendation was trusted by the residency programs I applied to. The chairman of the psychiatry program where I became a resident shared with me later that he had called her to ask her about me. Her very high recommendation of me helped the department finalize the decision to offer me a position. The consultant with whom I had trained in Pakistan, a psychiatrist who was a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, was supposedly not as trustworthy. It was my first introduction to such ironies of life in America.

From 1988 to 1992, I was in residency training at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. During the third year of my residency, I realized what I loved most about my work was the intimate interaction with patients I saw for therapy. My then residency program director, Dr. Cathy Frank, helped me connect with analysts at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI). One of them (Dr. Don Spivak, who later became a cherished friend) mentored me informally, and another (Dr. Richard Ruzumna) supervised my psychotherapy work free of charge. This led to a clearer decision on my part to apply for psychoanalytic training while I was in the fourth year of my residency.

I started as a candidate in September 1992 and graduated from candidacy in May 1996. During these almost 4 years, I completed my didactic education, had four supervised control cases in analysis, two other analytic cases (unsupervised: this was something MPI allowed in those days after it was determined that candidates could function independently), wrote a paper based on my clinical work with my first analytic control case, received an award from MPI for that paper, presented the paper at an IPSO conference, taught in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at MPI, as well as at three psychiatry residency programs in town, and participated in some committees at the institute. I was denied graduation the first time I applied for it and was told it was “too early.” I was advised to take on another control case as I had patients who wanted to be in analysis. So, I did, thus starting my fourth supervised control case. Soon after, I applied for the “green light,” which allowed me to see more analytic cases without supervision. A short while later, I applied for graduation again and was approved.

A few years after graduating, I applied for and was certified by the American Psychoanalytic Association (in 1999). Over the next 5 years, I worked with an average of four to six analytic patients weekly. In 2001, I applied to become a training and supervising analyst, underwent an audit process over 6 to 8 months, and was appointed a training and supervising analyst at MPI in early 2002. As my children grew older, I was able to devote more time to my practice and immersed myself in analytic work, seeing 9 or 10 patients for analysis every day. The immersion and the diversity of issues my patients brought into the treatment taught me much about doing analysis.

I was very fortunate that early in my analytic career, I became part of a study group, GSPP: the Group for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Process. This group, composed of about 16 analysts from North America and Canada, met twice a year for a 3-day weekend to discuss clinical material presented by one analyst. The group’s composition was diverse in terms of members’ orientations toward psychoanalytic theory and technique. Being part of GSPP helped me not get locked into a rigid way of doing analysis. Instead, it exposed me to different ways of thinking about patients and helping them. The fact that this happened early in my career shaped my analytic work over the coming decades in profoundly helpful ways.

I have loved, and continue to love, every moment of being a psychoanalyst, from the most sublime to the most painful. I am deeply grateful that I chose to become a psychoanalyst and am profoundly touched by the deep affection and respect I have received from many. Life, however, is not a fairytale and has its share of unpleasantness (fair and unfair). Here, I share a few such moments:

On a summer evening, I was standing on the porch of the home of a female senior analyst, waiting for the front door to open so I could join a meeting. I was a candidate then. A male senior analyst drove up and joined me on the porch. “Hello, Sarita!” he greeted me, referring mistakenly to me as another South Asian female candidate at our psychoanalytic institute. Sarita was originally from India, while I was originally from Pakistan. Most important, I was not Sarita. I responded, “Hello, Dr. Smith. And I’m Aisha.” Without blinking an eye, Dr. Smith said, “Oh . . . it’s dark out here,” to which I answered simply, “You just made it worse.”

Fast forward to 2016. In mid-2015, I became the president of the psychoanalytic institute where I had been a candidate. I told the educational committee members that my name was pronounced eye-sha, not aa-ee-sha at one of my early meetings. I acknowledged that it had taken me many years to feel that it was important to correct the mispronunciation of my name, and my newfound ability to do so resulted from new and significant internal work. Most people got it right away and thanked me for telling them. Some asked me for more help in pronouncing my name correctly. I pointed to one of my eyes and said, “As in Eye. Followed by Sha. Or think about me, myself, I! As in I am going there. And follow it up with Sha.” Colleagues said that was very simple. From that day onward, most people pronounced my name correctly, except for one senior male analyst, who clearly had a bone to pick with me about many issues. He consistently continued to refer to me as Aa-ee-sha. Finally, at an educational committee meeting, I interrupted him as he started addressing me, mispronouncing my name, and I corrected the pronunciation of my name. He responded, “It’s too difficult. I can’t pronounce it that way.” Other analysts around the table objected, saying it was very easy to say. He said it was not, and he would just call me Aa-ee-sha. At this point, I said, “Well, if it’s so difficult for you, I’d love to help. We should pause the meeting for a few minutes so you and I can practice saying my name correctly.” It took the gentleman under 2 minutes to start pronouncing my name correctly.

Many years into my professional career, I became aware of enormous envy and devaluation directed toward me. I heard from at least three patients who were in analysis with other analysts that their analysts had asked them questions like “Aren’t you envious of Aisha?” This was often linked to how quickly I had graduated (see above) and the upward curve of my professional accomplishments at a relatively young age (as in, young in the analytic world). When one person said to their analyst that no, he was not envious of me; he admired me and felt I was always supportive of his plans to advance in his own life, the analyst made a disbelieving sound and said, “Even I am envious of Aisha!”

Organized Psychoanalysis And Minorities (Including Asian American Analysts)

Most human beings need to belong to a group, and professional organizations serve this function for many. Of course, there are many useful aspects of belonging to psychoanalytic organizations: professional development, scholarship, camaraderie, and pleasure, to name a few. At the same time, candidates and analysts must be careful not to idealize analytic organizations. Analysts are as human as everyone else. In fact, most of us gravitate toward this profession because we’ve had difficult childhoods. Our personal analyses can help us to a certain degree with our childhood traumas but still leave us vulnerable, especially under strain. Problems arise when we imagine that our colleagues (and us) have some special immunity from the usual human frailties just because we are analyzed. Part of maturing as an analyst is truly realizing this.

One of the human frailties analysts (and, therefore, analytic organizations comprised of analysts) struggle with is prejudice. It’s been difficult for organized psychoanalysis to come to terms with the stark findings of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis (Holmes et al., 2024) because many analysts prefer to believe that they are immune to the problems all humankind suffers from, including prejudicial feelings. Much work remains to be done in this area.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Aisha Abbasi

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