Asian American Experience

Asian American Experience

Kris Yi
About the Instructor

Kris Yi, Ph.D., Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist and a supervising and training psychoanalyst al the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She has a psychoanalytic private practice in Pasadena, CA where the majority of her patients are Asian American. She has presented widely and published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic of race and transference, cultural dissociation, and ethnic identity.

Asian American Experience: Ethnic Identity, Racial Trauma, and White Adjacency

About this Course

This course explores challenges in working with Asian American (AA) patients with traumas from (1) racism and/or (2) Asian cultural practices. It is often assumed that Asian Americans are successful in America: We will look at how this Model Minority/ White Adjacency stereotype obscures othering of Asian Americans and explore an unconscious defensive idealization of Whites and denial of anti- Asian discriminations and microaggressions.

We will also address problems some AA patients present in integrating a viable ethnic identity because of traumas they suffered in their culture of origin (i.e., sexism, demand for academic success, etc.). Finally, we will address clinical issues connected with discerning what constitutes traumatic vs. normative Asian cultural practices.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • understand the psychological impact of Model Minority/White Adjacency stereotype on AA individuals
  • discern what constitutes traumatic vs. normative Asian cultural practices
  • promote a viable ethnic AA identity for some AA individuals who have defensively dissociated from Asian culture due to trauma
  •  June 26, 2021
     10:00 am - 1:15 pm
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