Becoming Raced-Psychic Consequences of Transgenerational Racial Trauma - Dionne R. Powell, MD (Webinar live online) (Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture)

April 10, 2026

2025-26 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series - Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture

Racism, and otherness, continues to be contentious for psychoanalysts to consider as a psychic phenomenon. Unlike aggression and sexuality, racism is held in silence and resistance, inhibiting exploration of this aspect of mind. By closely examining how and where the analyst/psychotherapist locates themselves racially and working through our resistance and countertransference to this type of exploration, this paper invites us to include these aspects of mind for our analytic use. This paper expands on how we become raced by exploring the transgenerational transmission of racial trauma, and its intra-psychic, structuralizing components. Using examples from the creative arts and clinical vignettes to demonstrate how being raced, as a universal phenomenon, is embodied and symbolized in mind, opens a therapeutic aperture for clinicians who may benefit from a psychoanalytic, intrapsychic perspective on this aspect of our shared humanity.

References

  1. Powell, D. R., Holmes, D., Hart, A., Stoute, B.J. In Pursuit of Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis: Findings and Recommendations from the Holmes Commission. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), Vol 72, No. 3, June 2024.
  2. Powell, D.R. (2020). From the Sunken Place to the Shitty Place: The Film Get Out, Psychic Emancipation and Modern Race Relations from a Psychodynamic Clinical Perspective. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Volume 89, issue 3.
  3. Powell, D.R. (2018) Race, African Americans and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 66:6, 1021-1049.

 

Learning Objectives

  1. Greater awareness of transgenerational racial trauma and its formation in mind.
  2. Understand how this form of trauma affects the clinical situation, especially the clinicians’ approach.
  3. Learn to work clinically with transgenerational trauma. 
Course summary
Available credit: 
  • 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

    ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

  • 1.50 APA

    As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.50 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.

    Austen Riggs Center, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0115.

  • 1.50 ASWB-ACE

    As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organization, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Austen Riggs Center maintains responsibility for this. Social workers completing this Online live will receive 1.50 continuing education credit(s).

    Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.

  • 1.50 Contact Hours/ Participation
    A certificate of attendance for all Learners.
Course opens: 
06/10/2025
Course expires: 
04/10/2027
Event starts: 
04/10/2026 - 6:30pm EDT
Event ends: 
04/10/2026 - 8:00pm EDT
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Dionne R. Powell, MD, is a training and supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (NY), and the Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY-NYU affiliated). She is an adjunct assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University in New York, and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry, assistant attending psychiatrist at The New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Dr. Powell is chair of the Education Committee (EC) at the Psychoanalytic Center of New York (PANY). Dr. Powell is co-chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equity in American Psychoanalysis, vice-president of the American Association for Psychoanalytic Education, and North American representative to the IPA Board.

Dr. Powell has written and presented extensively with recent contributions including:

  • Race, African Americans and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Conversation (Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, JAPA, 2018, new author prize recipient)
  • Chapter contributor A Case Analysis of an Academic Scientist in Her Early Thirties: Authorship and Stolen Ambitions, 2019, in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership, Arnold & Brody, eds.
  • From the Sunken Place to the Shitty Place: The Film Get Out, Psychic Emancipation and Modern Race Relations from a Psychodynamic Clinical Perspective, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2020.

Dr Powell is the recipient of the following recent awards:

  • 2024: Payne Whitney Award. In recognition of individuals who have demonstrated exemplary leadership and commitment to advance the field of psychiatry for the betterment of the communities we serve. Presented New York-Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medicine, December 18, 2024. New York, NY.
  • 2023: The Schein Lecture, Plenary Address. The American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training. Beyond Cultural Competence: Contemporary Psychiatry in a Raced Society. March 3rd, 2023. San Diego, CA.

 

 

Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.

The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.

 

* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Available Credit

  • 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

    ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

  • 1.50 APA

    As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.50 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.

    Austen Riggs Center, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0115.

  • 1.50 ASWB-ACE

    As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organization, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Austen Riggs Center maintains responsibility for this. Social workers completing this Online live will receive 1.50 continuing education credit(s).

    Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.

  • 1.50 Contact Hours/ Participation
    A certificate of attendance for all Learners.
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