Commentary on Lauren Levine’s “Interrogating Race, Shame and Mutual Vulnerability”

Abstract

ABSTRACT Vaughans affirms Levine’s call for analysts not to wait for patients to raise issues of race but rather to accept the therapeutic responsibility to initiate racial inquiry. Citing the long history of collective, racialized distrust and its deep economic and political roots. Vaughans warns White therapists against perceiving the feelings of a patient of Color as merely an issue of the individual patient and underscores the importance of Levine’s efforts to work more deeply and deliberately across the racial divides. Vaughans wonders about the scarcity of reflection on the impact of anti-Semitism on therapy which, he argues, also requires confrontation so that it does not undermine the therapeutic process.