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When Racialized Ghosts Refuse to Become Ancestors: Tasting the “Blood of Recognition” in Racial Melancholia and Mixed-Race Identities - Dhwani Shah, MD (Recorded)
Experiences of feeling haunted and of being in the presence of ghosts are prominent in narratives of patients/people of color in the United States and of mixed-race identity. A creative reading of Hans Loewald’s evocative statement on therapeutic action, the process of transforming “ghosts into ancestors,” is used to explore a way of being with and healing patients with mixed-race identities who are imprisoned in melancholic states. An extended case vignette of an Indian American psychoanalyst working with a patient with a mixed racial identity highlights racialized components of melancholia and illuminates specific countertransference states and enactments that can both impede and allow for the gradual and partial witnessing of racialized ghosts and their transformation into ancestors.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss how our collective fantasies of racial purity and assumptions of white privilege impact mixed race individuals, and how our culture's disengagement with racial multiplicity leads to individuals of mixed race feeling a threat to their sense of racial existence.
- Describe how the therapist's personal reactions to race and identity in the clinical material can be a valuable guide in understanding what is happening in the here and now of the therapeutic process.
- Describe the patient’s ability to: (1) feel more alive and to love the varied aspects of their life experience in the present moment, (2) lessening the dissociative splits in their racial identity, and (3)being able to have more experiences in which they can “stand in the spaces” of their racial identities with caring and respect for her multiplicity.
- Identify the mourning processes of patients with mixed race and racial identity, which is conceptualized as an ongoing process of coming to terms with loss, psychic pain, and vulnerability with our internalized objects and relationships.
Dhwani Shah, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst currently practicing in Princeton, NJ. He is a clinical associate faculty member in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a faculty member and supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has authored articles on topics ranging from neuroscience, mood disorders, and psychoanalysis. Dr. Shah’s book entitled The Analyst’s Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference was recently published by Phoenix Publishing House and was featured in Brett Kahr’s “Top Ten Books of 2022.”
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
- 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
- 1.00 APA
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.00 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.
- 1.00 ASWB-ACE
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center 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 Enduring course will receive 1.00 continuing education credit(s).
- 1.00 Contact Hours/ ParticipationA certificate of attendance for all Learners.