Black and White Voices from South Africa:  Unpacking Difference on Race, Culture, and Power Through the lens of Contemporary Self Psychology

About the Program:

This conference will focus on the sIgnificance of context – especially racial context – in our consulting rooms and professional settings.   Using Self Psychology as their framework two South African clinical psychologists will courageously illuminate the heart-wrenching ways in which context quietly and painfully perpetuates individual and social injustices related to power, race, and culture. They will illustrate the generative psychological value of examining context,  looking outside the room and naming and incorporating context into therapeutic thinking.

Thato Letsatsi, a Black clinical psychologist, works in a Government Psychiatric Hospital and  her own private practice.  Drawing from clinical material and her experience in both sectors, she will depict four deeply personal experiences of the painful and rage-making kaleidoscopic complexity of being Black in South Africa. In some contexts, she feels she is “too Black.” In others, “not Black enough.”  In some she feels like “the IT-ified object,” that is not seen as a person, and in these situations, she feels like the “What-Do-We-Do-with-What-We-Do-Not-Know Black.” Especially in professional settings there is the experience of being the “The-Invisible-Elephant-in-the-Room Black,” which comes, as she illustrates, with an unbearably traumatizing silence.

Megan Barber, a White clinical psychologist, previously worked in a Government Psychiatric Hospital and now has her own private practice.  She will focus on a therapeutic process with a “Coloured” male patient, a process that straddles both of these settings and is located in an ‘IT-ifying’ context that impacted silently but pervasively on the therapeutic dyad. She describes how her ‘white privilege’ enabled her to use ‘white theory’ to avoid her own discomfort, whilst skillfully leaving her “Coloured” patient holding what was hidden and so hard to name. She will demonstrate how a complicated twinship experience provided sufficient connection for them both to come out of hiding, show up, and slowly make sense of the ways in which their contexts were influencing the therapeutic process.

Discussions will be presented by Cherian Verghese and Amanda Kottler.

The program will be moderated by Kim de la Harpe.

About the Speakers:

Thato Letsatsi, MA is a clinical psychologist in South Africa with a keen interest in context, race, and culture in mental healthcare. Her work at a state psychiatric hospital and in her private practice allows her to grapple with contextual factors that inform critical thinking in the practice of mental healthcare. After completing her master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of Cape Town (2017), Thato commenced her clinical internship training (2018) at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital, focusing on acute and forensic psychiatry, and at Groote Schuur General Hospital where she focused on co-morbid medical conditions. Her period of community service was completed in the Department of Correctional Services at George Correctional Centre (2019) where she obtained invaluable experience working with the offending population.  Thato’s past research outputs have included an exploration of the complexity of psychological trauma with a focus on the role of dissociation in complex trauma (2013) and the efficacy of trauma-focused models of intervention (2022). Her current research outputs are on intersectionality and diversity in mental healthcare, focusing on race discourse, and culture consciousness within the South African context.

Megan Barber, MA is a Clinical Psychologist in Private Practice in Worcester, a small town in South Africa. Megan holds an MA in Clinical Psychology from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and an MSC in Forensic Psychology and Criminal Investigation from the University of Liverpool (UoL). Megan spent approximately 11 years, working in three public State Departments (Education, Health, and Correctional Services) which piqued her interest in understanding how the broader historical and current systems impact individuals and service providers which often affects the treatment in subtle, yet profound, ways. This has influenced her work, and how she teaches medical students and colleagues about Psychology services. Megan was awarded the Early Career Scholarship from International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP) in 2023.

Cherian Verghese, Ph.D., is a private practice Psychologist in Washington, DC where he conducts individual and couple therapy and clinical supervision.  A graduate of the Psychotherapy Training Program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, Cherian later directed that program and has been on their faculty for over 20years.  He is Founding and Steering Committee member of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture at the Washington School of Psychiatry where he also taught in the Supervision Training program.  Most recently, he has written and presented on a variety of topics, including Color of Rage: Contextualizing Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Race, Melancholia, and the Fantasy of Whiteness; Color of Rage: Contextualizing Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; and Historical and Cultural Embeddedness of Psychoanalytic Theory/Founders. In 2001, Cherian founded SAMHA-South Asian Mental Health Association, an informal networking and discussion group in the Washington DC region.

Amanda Kottler, M.A. (Clin. Psych.) is a clinical psychologist who has practiced as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Cape Town, South Africa since 1991.  She is a founding and faculty member of the Cape Town Psychoanalytic Self Psychology Group and an Emeritus Council Member of the International Association of Self Psychology.  She has previously held the position of a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town but now works full time in private practice.  Her clinical interests focus on ideas about about “hidden selves” and experiences of  “difference”, whilst her academic interests focus on her longstanding elaboration of Kohut’s ideas about the twinship / alter-ego selfobject experience.  She has published and presented on these issues in South Africa, the UK and USA.  She has  co-edited two previous books: New Developments in Self Psychology Practice by Peter Buirski and Amanda Kottler. Jason Aronson 2007, and Culture, Power and Difference: Discourse Analysis in South Africa by Ann Levett, Amanda Kottler, Erica Burman and Ian Parker. Zed Books 1997 and is a co-author of Kohut’s Twinship across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human, Routledge 2015. In her spare time she plays golf, paints and writes creatively.

Learning objectives and Related References:

At the conclusion of the program, attendees will be able to:

1. Identify two ways that ignoring racial context can contribute to perpetuating individual and social injustice in the consulting room and in professional contexts.
2. Demonstrate two ways in which the South African context “IT-ifies” both Black and White South Africans.
3. Describe at least one way in which an experience of twinship can help a clinical dyad to grapple with the racial context in South Africa.
4. Describe one of the presenter’s experiences of the painful and rage-making kaleidoscopic complexity of being a Black person in South Africa.

References:

1. Kottler, A. (forthcoming) “On Becoming a Thou:  Discussion of Steven Stern’s “Breathing Together: Needed Relationships and Complex Selfobjects” and Daniel Goldin’s “Empathy on a Continuum”, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.
2. Togashi, K. (2014) A Sense of “Being Human” and Twinship Experience, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 9:4, 265-281.
3. Long, C., Matee, H., Jwili, O., & Vilakazi, Z. (2020). Racial difference, rupture, and repair: A view from the couch and back. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30(6), 698–715.

This presentation will take place on Zoom.

Program will run from 11am – 2pm Eastern time

5pm – 8pm South Africa time

Registration Fees:

IAPSP Members:

Professional: $60.00

Student, Candidate, Early Career Professional: $35.00

Non Members:

Professional: $80.00

Student, Candidate, Early Career Professional: $45.00

Any participant from South Africa, Turkey, Iran: $25.00

Sponsored ticket: $25.00

Sponsoring a ticket provides the opportunity for a member or guest from an economically challenged country to attend.