Online Education Zoom Event
The IAPSP Education Committee presents:
Discussion of Jonathan Blazon Yee’s paper: Masked Resonance: Asian/American Enactment in a Time of Global Uncertainty
Presentation via Zoom
June 9th at 9 am PST, 11 am CST, 12 pm EST, and 6 pm CET, for two hours.
PAPER ABSTRACT
An Asian-American analyst offers a chronicling of his work with an Asian patient that culminates in its sudden, and clinically important, interruption by the Covid-19 pandemic. A dramatic and spontaneous act of creativity unmasks an essential misalignment and shakes the therapist and patient into a long-absent connection. The author organizes his formulation around the tensions that arise from intersections of race and family, improvisation and enactment, intimacy and alienation—each being constituent parts of a relational whole—and which leads him toward the internal resolution of a treatment truncated by global catastrophe. As the author works to align his experience as a mixed-race American within the experiential framework of his mono-cultured analytic partner, distinctions become the pathway to synthesis as they each contend with intra-psychic, interpersonal, and intercultural estrangements, culminating in a moment of meeting that is more than simply an ending.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of workshop, attendees will be able to:
- Understand the complex interplay of race and identity through the lens of intersubjective Self Psychology.
- Identify certain psychosocial issues pertinent to Asian, Asian American, and mixed-raced patients.
- Interrogate the construction of their own sociocultural subjectivity and how it influences counter/transference reactions in a therapeutic dyad.
- Recognize and examine clinical issues that can arise from under- or over-identification with patients.
- Examine the role of creativity and improvisation in analytic treatment, especially in dyads mired by paralysis or unseen enactments.
Presenter:
Jonathan Blazon Yee, MFA, LCSW, is a graduate, faculty and Board member of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP). Jonathan is also on the teaching faculty of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). Jonathan received his MSW from New York University following a career in fine arts, teaching, and education management. He operates a private practice in New York City that engages in experiences of immigration and cultural integration, particularly within the Asian American community.
Discussants:
Janna Sandmeyer, Ph.D, is Chair of the Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy program at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy + Psychoanalysis (ICP+P), where she is also the founding Chair of the Task Force for Sexual Diversity and Inclusion. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. She is faculty and supervisor at ICP+P and at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Dr. Sandmeyer was the 2018 recipient of the Ralph Roughton award from the American Psychoanalytic Association. She maintains a private practice in Washington, DC.
Kris Yi, PhD, PsyD, 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. 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 on culture and race in psychoanalysis and her most recent work on Asian American and Model Minority Stereotype was published in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is a 1.5 generation Korean American and works predominantly with Asian and Asian American individuals.
Moderator:
Lisa L. Ruesch, JD, LCSW, is a 2023 IAPSP Early Career Professional Scholarship Recipient and a 2021graduate of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP)’s Adult Training Program in Psychoanalysis and Comprehensive Psychotherapy. Her paper, Tiny Little Asian Thing: Appearances in a Therapeutic Dyad, which was published in Psychoanalytic Perspectives, received NIP’s Educators’ Award. She teaches and supervises at NIP, is a Co-Director of NIP’s Curriculum Committee, and in September she will join NIP’s Board of Directors. She is the Books Editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Lisa works with adults, children, and families in her private practice in New York City. Before entering the field, she practiced complex commercial litigation and family law.
References
Stern, S. (2017a). Needed relationships and psychoanalytic healing: A holistic relational perspective on the therapeutic process. Routledge.
Alvarez, A. (2021) The Therapist’s Voice: Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 31:664-667
Maroda, K. J. (2021). The analyst’s vulnerability: Impact on theory and practice. Routledge. Shah, D. (2022) When Racialized Ghosts Refuse to Become Ancestors: Tasting Loewald’s “Blood of Recognition” in Racial Melancholia and Mixed-Race Identities. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 32:584-597
This event is free for members, but REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.
All members are welcome–new and long-standing, novice and seasoned, fluent in English or not; it doesn’t matter – all are welcome to share your thoughts, questions, and reactions to the paper.
Looking forward to meeting you on zoom,
Carla Leone, Darren Haber, Diana Lidofsky, Sarah Mendelson, Simona Caprilli, Valeria Pulcini and Orly Shoshani (Chair)
