Course Description:
We are all imbedded in the sociocultural context in which we exist. The personal subjectivities of both therapist and patient are deeply affected by the experiences within their particular sociocultural context. Race and culture make their way into the clinical dyad in myriad ways both big and small with big consequences. The necessary exploration of these experiences, both consciously and unconsciously, exposes the therapist to vulnerable feelings which often require a willingness to acknowledge the limits of empathic understanding.
6 CE Credits available.
Course Objectives:
- Identify and work with the therapeutic implications of my and my patients’ social locations.
- Identify prior blind spots in my understanding of my social location.
- Address the therapist’s racialized shame and guilt dynamics as they might occur in sessions, use them therapeutically.
- Describe how the Model Minority stereotype obscures othering of Asian Americans.
- Identify at least one trauma related to Asian cultural practices.
- Describe the difference between anti-Asian and anti-Black racism and its impact on Black and Asian American subjectivity.
- Capture relational moments and associations at the beginning of treatment that inform how to set the tone and stage to step into and manage racialized enactments.
- Explain the transference-countertransference process, involving racial identity differences of therapist and analyst as a roadway to uncovering historical trauma, its familial and cultural complexities, and its avenue for transformative growth.
- Describe ways seeds of racial and “othering” hate are planted, cultivated, and passed on intergenerationally.
About the presenters:
Kris Yi
Kris Yi is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Pasadena, California. She is currently a member of the teaching and supervising faculty at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) of Los Angeles. She is an Associate Editor on Race and Psychoanalysis for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA). She is a long-time co-chairperson for the International Relations Committee for the Division 39 of the American Psychological Association and serves on the board of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiaN). She has presented widely and published work on culture and race in psychoanalysis. Her most recent work on Asian American and Model Minority Stereotype, and Collective Trauma and Splitting were published in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is currently editing a special issue on the Asian American Experience for the JAPA. She is a 1.5 generation Korean American and works predominantly with Asian and Asian American individuals.
Paula Christian-Kliger:
Paula Christian-Kliger, PhD, ABPP is a Board-Certified clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst. As Associate Head of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) of American Psychoanalytic Association (APSA), she is a Founder/member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak, received the Public Leadership Credential (PLC) from Harvard University, John F Kennedy School and is member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and American Psychological Association, DIV 39. Dr. Kliger is North America Region Representative of IPA, The Community and the World Committee: Prejudice, Discrimination & Racism (PDR). Dr. Kliger founded Psychological Assets, PC and Kliger Consulting Group 30+ years ago. Her professional practice includes work with children, adults, and families; writing, teaching, community psychoanalytic outreach initiatives, and organizational consultations to C-Suite leadership in multi-national contexts, family businesses, institutions, and other nonprofit organizations/communities.
As music performance, writer and visual artist, she specializes in creating innovative Self-Study-Group Reflective experiences for Transformational Change, and in Crisis, Disaster, and Trauma Recovery. Dr. Kliger is recognized for her psycho-dynamically informed assessments, research and award-winning book of illustrations and poetry, and as producer of the docu-educational film: “We Are Human First.” She earned the 2020 Hermes International Creative Gold Award for the podcast of the same name. She is Clinical Assistant Professor and Supervisor, Wayne State University (WSU) School of Medicine, Psychiatry Residency Program and teaches Advanced Ethics at Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.
Holly Han:
Holly Han is the Vice President of the Newport Psychoanalytic Institute, as well as a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst. She is a psychoanalyst and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Garden Grove. She is also a co-founder and clinical director of The Malama Collective, a psychoanalytically informed community mental health clinic. and has held clinical director positions in several addiction treatment centers. She facilitates several psychoanalytically informed consultation groups.
Lynne Jacobs:
Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., lives in two psychotherapy worlds. She is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute and also a Training and Supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. She is co-author (with Rich Hycner), of The Healing Relationship in Gestalt Therapy: A Dialogic / Self Psychology Approach (1995). She and Hycner co-edited Relational Perspectives in Gestalt Therapy (2010). She has also written numerous articles for gestalt and for psychoanalytic publications. She has abiding interests in furthering our understanding of relational factors in the therapy process, and in understanding the centrality of Euro-ethnicity and its implications for clinical work.
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April 26, 2025
9:00 am - 4:30 pm