The power to name: South African intersubjective psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the negotiation of racialized histories

Abstract

This paper offers an outline of the challenges particular to intersubjective approaches to psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa. Past experiences of deeply entrenched and racialized divisions between communities continue to shape the negotiation of power in therapeutic spaces, and affect participants’ capacity to engage freely with the exploration of unconscious communication. Examples are given of the ways in which race, class and gender difference may complicate, hinder or enrich intersubjective psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Some suggestions are made about the kinds of reflective work that need to be undertaken by psychotherapists in order to assume fully the burdens of history and to appreciate fully the opportunities offered by a society in transformation.