Racial Healing Work with Asian American Clients (and beyond) in Therapy.
A Companion Guide for Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans (2019) by David Eng and Shinhee Han
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Introduction & Disclosures
“Are you sure you want to deep dive into your racial identity with a White lady?” I asked my client - a second generation Cambodian-Vietnamese American man. He said something like, “Who else is going to talk with me about this in Vietnam during a pandemic?" I sighed and said, “Fair point." And so after more than a year of therapy sessions together, down the rabbit hole we went with Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans by David Eng and Shinhee Han (hereafter referred to as RMRD) as our map.
When I stumbled across a reference to RMRD in a Code Switch podcast episode, I was thrilled and immediately purchased a copy and recommended it to the client I referenced above. He purchased it and in our next session, with a big stupid smile on my face. I asked, “So?! Isn’t it incredible?!" To which my client responded something like, “Uhhh…well…it took me three hours to get through the first few pages, I had to look up a lot of words, and I don’t think I really get it." I’ll admit, RMRD took me a few months to read and I, too, had to look up several words, but I wasn’t ready to give up on this resource for my client. So, my client and I had a conversation about how weird/uncomfortable/unfortunate it was that I, a white woman, was the link between Asian American authors discussing racial identity and an Asian American man who wanted to learn more about his racial identity. I spent some time providing some psychoeducation and light readings around psychoanalytic and object relations theories and I “translated” passages and concepts that felt significant to me from academic/theoretical gobbledygook to something my client could understand and process. Together we trudged through dense passages, diagrams of my own making, racial identity development charts, and spent time slowly unraveling my client’s history with his own racial identity and how it has impacted him throughout his life. This article has been written with his permission and review. I could not/would not have done it without him.
During our work together, my client told me a few times how sad he was that his friends’ never talked about their own racial journey in therapy, which made me think about how much vocabulary is unavailable to those who don’t have the privilege to access academic and/or racially empowered spaces. My own grueling trek up the beautiful mountain that is RMRD reminded me that there would also be many wonderful therapists out there, who are too anxious (or worse unaware) around issues of race and who wouldn’t share my comfort level with psychodynamic theory which allowed me to be able to dissect and benefit from this text. And so, this companion article was born - and let me tell you, it was a long labor. I welcome comments and additions as I am just one woman who left academia long ago.
I have cited the authors when I have quoted them directly, but I also want to acknowledge the vast majority of this article is simply my understanding and paraphrasing of the ideas stated within this text. I, myself, am not a scholar on the subject. I come from the academic world but I now live in the world of clinical work - which provides a different type of knowledge and thus, I tend to focus on application. My largest original contributions below are my applications and paralleling of other theories (narrative, existential, internal family systems, and larger meta-theories of social justice and decolonization). I do not believe this (not so) short article is any substitute for the original book, but I hope it can be a helpful addition. This article is limited to basic concepts presented in the book and the clinical application of those concepts and will not begin to approach the depth of the material in the book. In addition to the ideas I highlight here, Eng and Han (2019) provide an incredible analysis of race in the United States through history and across generations. They discuss in great detail incredible ideas such as: politics of mothering and racial reparation in transnational adoption; racial dissociation or “psychic nowhere”; displacement of parachute children; and panic attacks and the politics of coming out for gay Asian parachute children. I cannot recommend this text enough. I hope I can do this text justice and expand the reach of the authors’ incredible work.
Full Disclosure:
I’ve always considered myself a generalist, with a knack for treating trauma. As one of the few well-qualified, English speaking therapists in Vietnam, I had to do double time on my continuing education to try and keep up with the wide variety of needs of my clients. I have always been grateful for my rigorous social justice training, however, none of my reflection papers, difficult dialogues, advanced degrees/license, personal therapy sessions, or activism could totally prepare me for the intricacies and complexities of a true intersectional and decolonized therapy practice. In my identity work with clients, I always have a frank conversation with my clients acknowledging and discussing what it means 1. To be discussing/exploring their race/identity with a White (or other relevant identities) woman and 2. What it means for them if I am the middle person between resource materials written by (almost always) people who share their race/identity and themselves. These conversations are not usually comfortable but I do believe they help us work through the multiple layers within the client work as well as the therapeutic relationship. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
All of my training and reading RMRD wouldn’t help my clients if I hadn’t also 1. done a lot of personal work to explore my personal vulnerabilities, explore my biases and their roots, and how I am showing up in the world as a White, femme presenting queer, cisgender, able bodied, neurotypical, average sized, woman from the Deep South, and 2. committed continuously to knowing I will get it wrong and the best thing I can do is make sure I make space for others to let me know that and to listen to them and return to step one.
So I would love for you to benefit from this guide, dear therapist (and any human who finds it helpful). However, if you are not doing “the work” in your practice and in your communities, this guide will only give you academic knowledge, which cannot provide healing to our clients. Our clients need a safe and decolonized space as well as a healer who is, as Resmaa Menakem (2017), would say, “settled” within themselves. As Thea Monyee (2022) reminded us “the U.S. mental health system is designed from a Eurocentric value system of separateness rather than an Afrocentric system of integration, which views everything as interconnected [or an Eastern model of collectivism, which values harmony];... and the current U.S. mental health model is designed to teach Black [and other marginalized] bodies to cope with systemic oppression, violence and inequity, while continuing to educate and train practitioners to believe they are incapable of harboring bias or being a tool of a white supremacist system.” [brackets mine]. It is up to you to do these pieces of work on your own - continuously - so you can hold the impossibly difficult conversations that will come up with all of your clients, but especially those who are different from you.
Okay, let’s dive in.
Old Theories in a Modern World?
The authors of RMRD have an incredible command of Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic and Object Relations (OR) theories. Complex theories that, in my experience, can “level up” a therapist’s ability to conceptualize and treat individuals. However, unfortunately, relatively few therapists have the privilege of learning about these theories from true experts. Thus, students of psychology are often told there is not much use in these theories, that they are outdated, and/or are confused by them and thus move away from them. If this was your experience, I want to encourage you to go back and do some reading in these areas now that you have seen clients. You may find you now have more space and experience that will help you understand how these theories uncover more aspects of your client’s experience.
Psychoanalytic and Object Relations (OR) theories believe early development is vital. Later theories in psychology moved away from centering the importance of very early development, as outcomes could seem a little bleak for those who did not receive “good enough” parenting. More modern theories (Existential, Person Centered, Feminist, Post-Modern, etc.) tend to focus on an individual’s autonomy, self-healing abilities and the power of the corrective experience. Whether or not therapists are discussing very early attachment and its implications with our clients, it is still a critical theory as OR gives us a framework to understand HOW an infant’s world is being built. Our present day relationships are built on the foundations we began to cement in our earliest days. I do not agree with the common notion that early theories are entirely fatalistic. Even very damaged foundations can be repaired, if one has the knowledge and skills to do so.
Racism in Relation to the Asian American Community
Before we dive further into Object Relations and its relation to race, I’d like to offer a few sentences about the large diversity of Asian Americans to provide additional context for the application of the materials. Often when Americans (and many other nations) think of Asian people they are thinking of people from countries such as China, Japan, and Korea. I would like to remind you that the term Asian American also includes people from India, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Iraq, Turkmenistan, and many more nations/territories. Although it is important to note that “Asian” itself is an arbitrary line without clear distinction. Russia is surrounded by Asian countries but is not considered to be an Asian country. Here is a great page for more information. Some of these individuals come to America as immigrants, others as students, others as refugees, others have been given Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for their aid and service to the United States in war and at our diplomatic outposts all over the world, and others still have been in America for generations. Some of these individuals have economic privilege and others do not. Some of Asian Americans only speak English, some only speak their native language, and others speak half a dozen or more languages. Genetically speaking, there are more differences within groups or “races'' of people than between them (Witherspoon et. al, 2007). I think the same is true about cultural differences within/between groups, so a curiosity about culture and context is a vital tool here.
Here is a quick reference list of some of the struggles related to race that Asian Americans face in the United States most of which are referenced in RMRD. This is not a complete list, but it may help therapists keep an ear out for struggles related to race. Some of these concerns transcend borders and others are specific to the US. I think there is always room for this reminder: NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS. BE CURIOUS. LEARN ABOUT YOUR CLIENT’S INDIVIDUAL SITUATION.
Summary of Object Relations - In Simple Terms
To start, let’s break down the term Object Relations. Objects can be people, parts of a person (i.e. the breast for the infant), or our mental ideas/abstraction of a person, place, thing, or idea. Relations are the relationships between self and their “objects" In infancy, due to limited cognitive abilities, a child tends to see the “objects” they are in relation with as all good when available or all bad when unavailable (the birth of our dialectical thought process). In fact, we often continue to see people as objects as we get older, but that idea is out of the scope of this piece of writing.
Learning to see the black, white, and gray of a situation or person is an important life skill that has roots in early infancy. Every time the primary caregiver is able to mirror the correct emotion or meet the needs of the infant, there are positive feelings created - trust, love. If this happens often enough, the infant can start to make space (think, a reservoir or buffer zone that eventually turns into “benefit of the doubt” in our adult brains) for the “bad” parts or the times when a need was not met. This eventually leads to the integration of both good and bad parts of the caregiver - the creation of a more complex (and accurate) view of humans/relationships. Something like “Caregiver makes me feel more good than bad. The bad is temporary and the good is stable. So Caregiver must be overall good (despite flaws)" This creates a template for later accepting the good and bad parts of the self.
When caregiving is not “good enough” the infant does not have enough mental space/safety to create more complex ideas. Their building blocks are reduced to something more simple, and usually defensive, as they are trying to find ways to protect themselves. These feelings might translate into ideas like, “Caregiver is bad. I am bad. I am unlovable. The world is unsafe" Since the child has to stay with the caregiver to survive, the child may repress these “bad” parts of the caregiver, which creates an unrealistic and later problematic template for understanding self and others. Complex interactions/ideas may be reduced down to simpler things, which may lead to inappropriate conclusions or reactions.
Essentially, Object Relations (OR) is focused on understanding the patterns of interactions going all the way back to our infancy and how they have translated into our current interactions. For example, if you grew up with parents who had trouble regulating their own emotions and learned to suppress your own needs for safety and eventually found that you could be cute or funny to diffuse the situation, you may be the life of the party (awesome) because you don’t know how to approach or are fearful to approach strong emotions or conflict (bummer). The healing process centers around gaining awareness of these patterns and healing them within ourselves. This often involves bringing our adult/mature understanding of the complexity of systems/people and reevaluating/changing our interactions/relationships using these ideas rather than relying on our old simplistic ideas (which we often do subconsciously). This is often called reparenting as we as adults go back and provide the guidance we needed but didn’t get to our child selves and childlike ways.
To go back to our life of the party example, once this person learns about how they have been using this pattern, they may more consciously work on emotional regulation and be more comfortable with difficult scenarios playing out around them and also not feel so responsible for “fixing” the “problem" This person can keep their humor and fun while increasing their distress tolerance, sense of safety, and ability to deepen their relationships (all the wins!). For a more in depth, easy to digest guide, please see Allan Frankland’s (2010) book, “The Little Psychotherapy Book: Object Relations in Practice"
For you visual folks, let me bring in my internal metaphor - which is how I understand and “see” OR. This metaphor isn’t in RMRD, but maybe they will include it in the second edition. It may be helpful to think about object relations as a planetary system (that doesn’t actually abide by laws of science). When we are born, we are one with our mother/primary caregiver (the sun) (See image A.). Each time we come across evidence that the caregiver is, in fact, not us (not attuned with our needs/incorrect mirroring), we start to pull away (Image B.) and sometime between 6-24 months, we become a separate body from our mother, but the orbit is very close (Image C.).
Ideally, as we get older we orbit out further from our caregivers and start to gain our own mass at a sustainable rate (Image D). In OR terms, individuation happens if the caregiving is “good enough". In adolescence we are likely to be orbiting closer to our peers than our parents, but parents remain large objects in our system (Image D). As we continue to age, we continue to grow and expand our own gravitational field. We start to develop our own systems - ideally, we become our own sun, caring for ourselves in sustainable ways before caring for others (Image E.). Our early orbiting patterns still impact how we prefer new objects to orbit around us or how we choose to orbit around new important bodies in our systems (close friends or partners).
If the original object/sun/caregiver is, say, too hot or too cold (too enmeshed or not safe emotionally/physically), this can impact the process and rate at which we expand our orbit. We are likely to take these patterns of interacting into future relationships. For example, if our primary object is too “cold” or distant, the self might venture out further faster in search for new warmth. Due to a lack of experience or practice with warmth the Self might get too close too fast or be wary of warmth, once one is pulled into the orbit of another warm object. This can be the start of unhealthy relationships, we become enmeshed with others for safety or start building high defensive walls so we don’t get hurt again. Again these patterns/actions might be more extreme than warranted because they are coming more from the child ego state than the adult ego state, but without conscious effort to change these patterns they can persist or even worsen in adult years.
Mourning and Melancholia
This is an oversimplification of Freud’s (1957) work, but Mourning is the process of moving past something, gradually spending less time/energy on a person/idea. The object is dead and is replaced by other foci and interests. Melancholy (and the negative symptoms thereof) occur when someone is unable to completely mourn something/someone. Eng & Han (2019) look at these terms with a new, more flexible lens. They state these constructs are on a continuum. “mourning and melancholia coexist at once in processes of assimilation and the negotiation of social and psychic borders. This continuum between mourning and melancholia allows us to approach racial melancholia as conflict rather than damage. “ (p. 60). This adjustment is a reframe on the usually pessimistic psychoanalytic perspective that allows for healing and resolution of the internal conflict inherent in racial melancholia without pathologizing the struggle as the struggle is no longer a “fault” of the person but heavily influenced by society, political structures, and even the family.
In Melancholia the individual is unable to complete the tasks of mourning. Perhaps they are unable to move through their anger fully or unable to accept some idea/reality fully. This is particularly understandable when it comes to race (think about racial identity models). It is impossible to mourn one’s race because race is not going to die - even if you try to kill it or assimilate. So one might be stuck in a racial melancholic state until the ego/self is strong enough to think critically and reject the “dominant” culture, they are THEN able to reject narratives that conflict with their inherent/original (racial) selves, reducing the “ambivalence” and “conflicts” that Eng and Han (2019) mention. Therefore the goal of racial melancholia is NOT to find a way to mourn the pain around one’s racial identity, it is to recover the value and power of one’s race and to stop attempting to “kill”/suppress it.
My favorite aspect of RMRD is the political roots. In describing how they came to write about racial melancholia, Author’s cite José Esteban Muñoz’s work, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), where Muñoz “proposed a different understanding of melancholia that does not see it as a pathology or as a self-absorbed mood that inhibits activism. Rather, it is a mechanism that helps us (re)construct identity and take our dead with us to the various battles we must wage in their names—and in our names.” (p.74, as cited in Eng & Han, 2019, emphasis mine). This is a powerful statement that not only depathologizes racial melancholy but also says that only by participating in (racial) melancholy can we rewrite unhelpful narratives and identify injustices that will move us to action for our communities and ourselves. In pulling some language from existential theorists, this can help clients (and therapists) make meaning of the suffering being experienced in and out of the therapy room.
Race in the Context of Object Relations
Remember how objects can be people or parts of people or our ideas of them? Okay, so objects can also be abstract ideas, like race or gender. This is because we interact with these ideas and our understanding and interaction with them is unique to us. Going back to the solar system metaphor - Over time, you become a massive star (definitely main character energy - see image below). As you (the center of your universe) gain “mass” or become cognizant of your identities, your “solar system of orbiting planets” becomes more complex. Each person’s system is unique. Let's discuss an example.
One person’s race identity/planet might be more important to them than say their ability identity/planet, especially if they identify as able bodied and thus experience privilege within that identity. Hell, if someone experiences enough privilege in an area and is not exposed to that privilege that “planet” is likely to go the way of Pluto - way out there (and arguably still important) but not visible and rarely considered. The more important/salient identity planets will be closer to the sun/you thus taking up more room in the sky. The bigger these “planets” are the more space they take up in our heads and lives and we spend a lot of time thinking about them and/or engaging in related activities (activism, being with groups of people who share that identity planet). These planets do not abide by our scientific laws (mostly because I don’t know enough about them to work them into this metaphor) and so they grow and shrink and align/orbit with other planets in different ways as we go through our days and our life (that’s intersectionality). For example, in the graphic below the gender planet will move in conjunction with the sexuality planet as they are linked (for this person).
Just a refresher (I hope), skin color is a biological trait, while the labeling of race is sociological - made up by people - with arbitrary distinctions. Eng and Han (2019) argue that alongside these ideas, race also involves the psychic experience (interactions with others/systems) so that one’s racial identity and experience is intertwined with their individual and cultural experience of the world. Race is not always just an idea nor is it something that one is always in relationship with. It is both - intertwined with the social/political system, causing reactions from within oneself and outside of the self. The idea of race within each individual interacts with some broad overarching ideas (i.e. stereotypes) but also evolves uniquely based on one’s experience in the world.
Our race planet is not only built by our genes and impacted by society meteors, but they are also influenced by our perception of other people and systems around us. How we perceive the people around the ‘leftover oppressive political policies’ are labeled as ‘friends' but our view of our race planet would change if they thought they were ‘entitled troublemakers’ instead. In fact, our ideas about our race plant would change even more if we were unable to label those rocks at all. They would just be obstacles, without attribution to their source (policy) or linked to our struggle (oppression). This might in turn make us feel like maybe it’s our fault that they are there in the first place or we might feel helpless to change them - assuming they have always been and will always be there. Luckily our identity planets can also have protective factors like equitable policies, helpful organizations/programs, and healthy teachings from family and community members. This “asteroid belt” can help mediate the damage of the constant onslaught of racist acts a person of color experiences.
Our ideas about race change over time as we are exposed and learn new things, as we develop our adult personalities, and as the political/social climate changes. This will be a very different journey for each person depending on their intersection of identities/privilege and socialization. For each person, all of these ‘planets’ or identities impact how we see and interact with every other object/person in our system. Whew, I know that’s complex, and that my metaphors can sometimes get away from me, but I hope it’s also enlightening.
Warning Signs of Racial Melancholia
Eng and Han (2019) clearly state and make a moving case that Racial Melancholy is not a pathology but a valiant reaction to preserve the racial part of the psyche amidst an onslaught of structural, explicit, and implicit racism. Below is a list of behaviors that may be associated with racial melancholy. It is not a complete list and clinicians should keep in mind the intersectionality and individuality of their clients in order to build a fuller picture of the human in front of them. This is not meant to be taken as a symptom list to help one give a diagnosis, but as a way to recognize and understand explosive/repressive/depressive behaviors in a more culturally and psychically sensitive way.
Rants about racial topics
Dissociation
Substance use
Suicide attempts These can be literal or metaphorical detachments/distance from cultural elements
Feeling “dead” or like “something is missing”
Anger at mother/culture
Overcompliance/chameleon behavior, able to change to fit the needs of the situation
Anxiety/panic without a root
Themes of the Healing Process
In case you skipped over my totally concise and not at all verbose introduction, let me remind you - unless the therapist has done intense personal work to uncover, understand, and manage their own biases, identities, privilege, and marginalization as well as professional education/supervised experience in working with diverse clients and concerns around race, a therapist has the potential to do more harm than good. Do not go lightly into this dark night, my colleagues. There is a list of educational resources for therapists at the end of this article and another here. I encourage every healing professional to engage with continuing education on social justice and decolonizing issues and seek consultation/supervision with individuals who can help check your biases and challenge you.
With that being said, the authors do not outline what healing “looks like” for clients struggling with their racial identity exactly, as it will likely be quite individual. Below is a collection of themes largely pulled from the case examples within the text related to therapeutic turning points/milestones.
Understanding the Treatment of the Racial Object in Child Development
The most important thing to remember about attachment and object relations is that they begin to form in the child mind - a simpler place, for better or worse. Imagine that race is an object you are holding and it happens to be the same color as you. As a child, you begin to develop ideas and feelings about this object based on how those around you (including media) act/talk about the object. This is what we call socialization. When you are a child, ideas are much more simple. We are unable to hold the complexities inherent to something like race. Things are good/bad, right/wrong, beautiful/ugly. Unfortunately, oftentimes the dominant culture wins in labeling that subject - so if your race is labeled something other than White in the US, your race object can be easily labeled bad, wrong, or ugly.
Try thinking of psychological objects as real objects. When a child experiences shame, they may try to hide the object that is bad. If they wet their pants and they have learned this will result in anger/shame from a source of power (parent), they may try to throw them away or cover them up with other things or shove them under their bed or in a dark corner of the closet. If a child is ridiculed for sucking on a pacifier, they might try to lie about it, break it, or even shame other people who have a similar object. This also happens for abstract objects. If an Asian child is explicitly or implicitly given messages that their race is bad and the White race is good, the natural response is to hide/destroy their race and their attachment to it.
Children are asked to do an impossible thing when it comes to race. They simply do not have the language or cognitive abilities to tolerate, comprehend, or make sense of the social and political consequences of race. This is why it is important for families and cultural groups to provide scaffolded information and positive racial/cultural experiences so that children have this information/experience to build off of as they develop their (racial) identity. For example, it would be helpful for families to have developmentally appropriate conversations about race and to explicitly talk about why their cultural rituals are important. However, this support doesn’t change the immense amount of pressure in the social/political environment to assimilate and children will very likely experience racism that may lead to shame. Eng and Han (2019) describe how this process translates in a child’s psyche.
“In the course of moving from the outside world into the domain of the psyche, this [racial] hate is brought into the shelter of the ego, identified with the self, and subsequently transformed into self-hate.” (p.52)
Developmentally, one can understand how a child would be unable to differentiate between themselves/their race and the complex socio/political system of racism. “If my skin color is bad, I must be bad" Not only is this an impossible and devastating idea for a child to handle, but the negative consequences of self-hate and shame limit their ability to feel safe, to be creative and to play. Eng and Han (2019) state, “All too often, racism forces one to grow up prematurely and too quickly, the fixing of the racial object and racial meaning foreclosing the benefits of creative play, transitional space, and the developmental growth of the subject.” (p. 90). Creative and safe play is vital for developing critical thinking, feeling free to move through the world and to try new things. Racism teaches children that the world is unsafe and it can only be marginally safer if they become more white (abandon those who are similar to them and perhaps those they love). In an unsafe world, individuals will stick to old ways of being/coping even if they don’t work very well because there is not enough “room” to try new things and possibly fail. An isolated world is a very dark and difficult world to move through and will certainly be reflected in their patterns and relationships moving forward.
Object Relations theory often focuses on an infant’s relationship or attachment with their primary caregiver as the map for future attachments. In this book, the authors state individuals start out with only Love for their parents. Eng and Han (2019) artfully discuss how one’s relationship with race (as an object) also begins as being only loved - just as their relationship with their caregiver. In childhood, one’s race/culture is split into black/white good/bad. Bad often wins due to pressure from dominant culture, but unconsciously it is preserved as a loved/lost object. One needs to internalize (“introject” in OR terms) their culture to distance it from attacks from the external world.
When children start to experience racism, they internalize the struggle as their own fault, and translates this to self-hate and hate of all objects/subjects associated with their race. This includes their parents. Parents might be moved into a psychic space where they are “bad" . That idea becomes less flexible as it is reinforced by White culture. It is possible for individuals to have a positive attachment with their parents and simultaneously have a negative attachment or no attachment to their race. If adolescents/adults build a better relationship with race outside the family home or later in life, often parents may be caught in the crossfire and potentially blamed for not helping the individual connect better with culture as a child. Even as an individual struggles to return to self-love they may experience frustration with their parents’ self-hate and how that was modeled in the home.
There are many powerful clinical examples in the book. I think the story of Nelson, a first generation Japanese American child who came to the US at age five, is the clearest illustration of these concepts (begins on p. 53). Nelson’s mother stopped speaking Japanese to him after she was scolded by his teacher who implied the mother was hindering her son’s development (and assimilation) for encouraging her son to speak Japanese at home. Nelson was further publicly ridiculed by a teacher for his pronunciation of a word he had learned from his mother. These experiences not only stunted his Japanese language development but also paired feelings of shame with his first language and mother culture, making his mother/culture a “bad” object. Language should have been a place where he could have found mirroring/connection with his mother. However, these repeated incidents damaged his connection to his “mother/land" The authors state that the mother’s trauma of not being a “good enough” mother is passed down to her son, who attempts to redeem them both by perfecting his English and attempting to reach unattainable Whiteness. This struggle toward redemption is a sign that he has preserved a “good” version of his mother somewhere in his psyche. A mother/culture worth fighting for. With this split from his culture, Nelson enters a melancholic state as his racial object is pushed away, but ever-present.
The case study does not detail the later stages of Nelson’s treatment, but it is possible Nelson began to process his racial identity, mourn the loss of the idea of being able to fully assimilate into Whiteness (as it was never possible for him to be White), connect to his Japanese identity, and/or examine the problematic racial instances in his past. During or after these revelations, he may have become angry at his mother for “giving in” to the pressure to assimilate, although hopefully he would eventually be able to empathize with her struggles in the same racist system. As Nelson releases the racist shame and guilt shoved onto his family, he has an opportunity to add “good” aspects back into his mother/culture object and work towards a more complex/integrated view of these ideas in his specific context.
Beware of the False Self.
All of us create false selves as we move through the world. “The false self, that is, can serve the critical function of shielding the ego in potentially hazardous environments and threatening social conditions.” (Eng & Han, 2019, p. 123). False self can be protective if an individual is in a dangerous environment emotionally or physically, both of which can be common for racial minorities in the United States. Sometimes the False Self will persist even if the individual is no longer in danger. It may become an overprotective force that hides/protects the True Self because it learned to not trust the outside world and hasn’t reevaluated the world even if location/circumstance/ability has changed. As therapists we are likely to come across the false self at the start of therapy and whenever our client feels unsafe.
The Eng and Han (2019) state that when working with the false self “[t]he analyst cannot necessarily take the information, responses, and answers being offered at face value, rendering the work of interpretation especially vexed and difficult.” (p. 121). The progress/work in therapy can be limited when the False Self is strong because the client and therapist will only be able to access the False Self, which as said above, cannot self soothe/heal because it is not the true self and cannot see/feel true needs. Interpretations made about false self can be misleading. It may be more helpful to attempt to uncover the true self by providing psychoeducation on false/unhelpful narratives of family/society, narrative exercises focused on finding client’s journey/self, naming pains and rewriting unhelpful narratives/experiences, getting closer to inner child, recognizing/naming emotions so that client and therapist can begin to see the true self and do work there when possible.
Therapy conceptualization, techniques, and focus will need to adjust as client and therapist uncover what is true self and what is false self. The early work is still important as it will likely help build trust and coping skills needed to process painful (racial) past experiences. As always it is vital that therapists check in with clients to be sure our conceptualization and understanding of a client matches their own. Revisiting and revision of therapy goals may need to occur more often with clients who have a stronger false self/defenses.
Shifting the Perception of the Racial Object & Melancholic Symptoms
In an ideal world, children would learn their race/culture(s) are “good” through repeated positive experiences connected to their race/culture(s). However, in a world where children experience racism early and often, the repression of the racial object becomes a real risk. Again, repression and denial come from a need to protect oneself. Each of these is a simplistic/incomplete (although understandable) read on a very complex situation.
RMRD does a brilliant job of explaining the helpful role of racial melancholy and how it can be used in healing. In discussing how the melancholy steps in to preserve/hide the race object from “an institutionalized system of whiteness as property bent on the exclusion and obliteration of the racial object”, Eng and Han (2019) state, “If the loved object is not going to live out there, the melancholic emphatically avers, then it is going to live here inside of me.” (p.63) It is melancholy that gives individuals the strength and the thread to trace back to and to connect their present experiences back to their early experiences to create a more full/healthy/connected (racial) identity.
Let me spend a few paragraphs bringing some of my favorite theories into the treatment discussion. In the description of Melancholy above, we can see its strength and duty. In using techniques from Narrative and Internal Family Systems theories, one can imagine Melancholy personified as the sad protector saying “It’s terrible that others cannot see this beautiful object (race) for what it is, but I see it and I will keep it safe inside" This protection allows for the later (re)discovery of race as valuable, good, beautiful. Once one has acknowledged and honored the task Melancholy has carried out, they can begin to step in and honor/protect/celebrate their race(s)/culture(s).
Continuing in Narrative and/or Internal Family Systems theories, a helpful conversation might include the following: Acknowledge the dutiful Melancholic part and how they were forced to carry out their job to protect this vital thing due to societal/political pressures. After acknowledging this part’s existence and role, we can express empathy towards it and that this job was never right/fair, but it was necessary and we are grateful Melancholy did such a good job at preserving the racial object. Now we see it was society that was flawed, not us, and we no longer need to hide our beautiful race. We will wear it proudly outside with others who also see its beauty. Melancholy, your job is done. Thank you for your service. You can rest now. Once Melancholy can trust the individual to protect/honor/celebrate the racial object, its energy will be reintegrated into the system.
Ideally, we don’t want the racial object to ever go INTO the repression closet, but at least it is safe there. There is then the opportunity for the individual to learn it was never actually bad in the first place and it’s okay to claim and display one’s race proudly. Unfortunately for some, they will need to gain ego strength (often found more in adulthood) to be able to challenge society, hold the conflict, change their ideas about race and interact with it differently.
In adulthood, redemption of culture as a good object helps individuals "find" what was lost/hidden in childhood and feel more positive / whole. To add to our solar system metaphor. It’s as if some galactic council released pamphlets your whole life saying your race planet was bad, but eventually you send your own exploration team and find out it’s a really nice place full of regular people (some great, some good, some bad). After that personal exploration you can ignore the propaganda, although it may still sting, because you KNOW it’s a good planet and you have a better relationship with it now.
The Corrective Experience
Often in therapy, healing comes when a client is able to understand a problem from a new perspective or when they are able to show up for themselves in new ways. It is our job to create and hold a safe space where they can do that - to help them hold the complexities of the world, to shift through the truths and the lies, to build more helpful ways of being, and most importantly, to recognize and honor their unique beauty. As mentioned earlier, when we are not afforded a “good enough” experience, we become defensive and reductionistic to preserve ourselves. Thus, a corrective experience is one where we are given another opportunity to take both “good” and “bad” parts of a person/experience/object in order to create a more integrated/complex whole perception.
An interesting aspect Eng and Han (2019) bring up is the client’s ability to move into the eternal task of accepting a shifting reality and to come “into a state of being, able to play, such that racial meaning can be adjusted, and race can ultimately be dispersed over the whole cultural field not as dreaded object but as an intersubjective and shifting relation.” (p. 91) Healing means challenging racial narratives and falsehoods and creating a more complex picture so that rigid/limiting/absolute perspectives can be widened, softened, and altered to more accurately reflect “reality” and give the client space to accept what they want, reject what feels false/unhelpful, and to find room to be themselves or to, as Bowlby says, “stand in the gaps” when needed.
Our task as therapists is to empower the client to be in the world as they want to be, not as they were told to be. Ideally this allows clients to more fully engage in a world/place/activity that will be fulfilling to them. We have different roles we play and masks we wear in different settings and with different people. Some of the shifts our clients may make will keep them more hidden and safer in certain environments. Other times, our clients will find peace in proudly stepping into their racial selves while rejecting racism they may encounter. There will always be tension between how one perceives themselves and how they relate (or not) to their surroundings. This is partially due to the fact that race and its categorization is a social construct and is not absolute or “real” therefore it cannot be and perhaps should not be “accepted” - at least not in any singular or absolute way.
Humans experience relief from this stress when they can indulge in things “bigger than themselves” or things/activities that might mirror their world but are different from their world. Things we can interpret but maybe “know” we cannot understand (religion, art). These activities are adult play. When we lose ourselves in a task, we forget our human plight, if only for a few minutes or hours. This gives our un/conscious system a rest and helps us feel whole. We have figured out something and nothing or we are in a state where nothing needs to be figured out. We just are.
If you ascribe to existentialist theories (especially Frankl), this perspective may resonate. For one’s understanding of race to be at the minimal level where healing/understanding can happen, the racial system has to have more categories and gray area than “good guys” and “bad guys” and it must understand individuals can maintain agency and responsibility even in the face of racism and in the context of larger historical and political systems. To paraphrase Kathleen Pogue White (2002), if one can’t find even a small amount of agency when they are being victimized, despair is an appropriate response. Because without agency there is no power and without power, one cannot move forward. The system doesn’t need to give you power. It impacts the power available to you, but it can never take all of it away.
Therapy Room Tasks
Although I have given into my White urgency to list out some skills I have identified within RMRD and beyond – I am aware, as should you be, that practicing these individual skills with clients won’t solve their problems. These bullet points are meant to help you see another side of the complex multifaceted picture. This list is not a substitute or shortcut for “doing the work” of decolonizing your therapy practice, reflecting on your biases, and deeply learning about and responding to your clients.
These are steps and guidance to help you along your own unique path toward social justice and decolonization. This list is aspirational. We can’t do all of these things all of the time, perfectly. You may need to bring this to your consultation/supervision group. You will need help and people to check if you are actually doing what you are trying to do. This work isn’t easy. We need to struggle with these actions in ourselves and in the therapeutic relationship. The heart of our good work is the struggle.
Take these tools and hold onto them and maybe one day you’ll come across the perfect chance to use them or you’ll be struggling with a client and you will remember to come back to this.
For those of you reading this who are feeling inept, who feel you can never do all of these things, who are still struggling with imposter syndrome – take some time to get settled in your body to reflect on that reaction and come back to the work. If this list is still blowing your mind after that, I highly recommend reading and working through the following texts: Social Justice Counseling: The Next Steps Beyond Multiculturalism in Application, Theory and Practice by Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Frederic P. Bemak and The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systems of Racism and Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese Singh.
Name Race/Culture as important components in life and therapy
Normalize talking about race (and other identities) in therapy & give clients permission to speak freely, correct you, assure them they won’t offend you (or if they do, that you will talk about it together).
Ask specifically about the client’s culture(s)/racial identity and their relationship to these parts of themselves. Do not assume it is important or not important. Remember we are always there to assist clients in their journey.
Begin vocabulary building if needed (racial identity terms may be helpful to the client and the therapist will likely need to learn more about the client's specific culture(s) and/or their experience of their culture(s) as well!)
Some of my clients have found Racial Identity Development Models helpful. You can find a few of my favorites listed in the resource section below.
Increase flexibility of thought
Most of our clients struggle with dialectics and/or reductionistic core beliefs at some point in time. Therapists can be helpful by naming the complexities and gray zones in (racial) identity issues.
Increased thought flexibility and fluidity can create what the authors call, “transitional space" “The concept of transitional space allows us to approach race not as a fixed object, not as a fixed thing with an essential nature, or as an intractable and frozen binary of white-black, of good and bad. Rather, transitional space configures race as an ever-evolving, contingent relation of inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, good and bad—in short, as varied and multiple rather than unchanging and static. (p. 88).”
I think most racial identity models would agree that race is dynamic and changing as an individual’s view/position in the world changes. Race means something different when you are the poorest racial group in your neighborhood than when you have had educational opportunities and means that have afforded you a spot in a private university classroom. Race feels different when you visit your ancestral home but don’t speak the language than when you are in your hometown and people ask you ‘No, but where are you really from?’.
Help increase psychological safety/empower clients
Help clients build boundaries that take micro/macro aggressions into account. Normalize they may be able to show more or less of their true selves depending on the space.
“In Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), José Esteban Muñoz observes that, for queers as well as for people of color, melancholia is not a pathology but an integral part of daily existence and survival” (Eng & Han, 2019, p. 61).” Marginalized people will rarely have an opportunity to exist in a space free from the Cisgender Heterosexual White Male Gaze. The beauty of community is that the community tells us and reaffirms us that we do not need to fear or be ashamed of their gaze. We are enough. We are proud of our whole selves even if our whole selves are not like their whole selves.
Challenge unhelpful narratives around race (and other identities)
Be sure you are pointing out systemic oppression and marginalization rather than teaching your client to “cope” with the stressors of it.
As clients express pain points, get really curious about what they are telling themselves about that situation and where those narratives came from. “Where did you learn that message? Is that yours or someone else's? Do you really believe that?”
Call out -isms “That sounds like unhelpful messaging from society around masculinity/race/heteronormativity/etc.”
Look out for unhelpful narratives such as “I need to get over it/It’s not a big deal/I’m too sensitive" These phrases are often repetitions of things they have been told by others when they spoke up about instances of marginalization or oppression. These narratives minimize their true experience and keep them from their true experience.
Empower and encourage client to experience and embody their full True Self
All of us have an intersectional experience and most people possess multiple marginalized identities. It may become necessary to help clients see their intersections and connections between identities and experiences.
As these identities are found and unhelpful/racist/societal/white narratives are examined and rejected, more of the client’s true self will be available to them.
It may be helpful to use examples of exploring/challenging/rewriting from previous work to help the client map out their process for work around the current work in the current identity component of focus.
It is important not to skip over skillsets related to mindfulness, emotional identification/regulation, and connection to the senses/intuition (getting back into one’s body).
Encourage connection to their community
If it makes sense for them- they might think about (re)connecting with family members about their culture/experiences.
If they are lucky enough to be near a community center that centers their culture, they may want to check it out.
Books, movies, podcasts centering or created by someone in their cultural community may help them feel a sense of connection/community.
Online networks/social media may be helpful in adding their culture to their daily media exposure (Facebook groups, Instagram accounts, professional groups).
Final Notes
I hope this text has been helpful to you. If you are a therapist, I hope you spend some significant time reflecting on these ideas, the next steps in your personal work and how the information here can help you help others. If you are not a therapist, I hope I made the ideas within more accessible to you. If you still have questions, please feel free to reach out to me, trusted elders/friends or bring these ideas to your therapist. If your therapist doesn’t respond well or doesn’t “get it”, get a new therapist. You deserve someone who is able to understand and help you.
In closing, I will share these powerful words of strength from the Eng and Han (2019), “There is a militant refusal on the part of the ego—better yet, a series of egos—to let go, and this militant refusal is at the heart of melancholia’s productive political potentials.” (p.64). There are parts within us that refuse to give up on us. The parts of us we are ashamed of, those that we hide away, are protected by our truest core self. Melancholy is a sign that there is a part of us we need to fight for - a part that needs to be pulled from the bottom of the closet and right up onto our laps for a good cuddle. It is our love and respect for this beloved melancholic part, this bone-weary but unyielding protector, which eventually draws many of us to the political fray. We cannot give up this fight. We enter this battlefield so that our ancestors and the ancestors of those around us may begin to lay this melancholic part to rest - so that each person can feel safe and beautiful in their unique body. We sign petitions, protest, serve on political/community committees, donate our time and money, and do good work with our clients so that we may all feel full and accepted just as we are.
Stay militant in naming and addressing marginalization and discrimination, within yourself, your clients, and in your communities. Take care, be sad, get mad, and then get to work.
Reflection Questions
For everyone:
How do you feel in your body after reading this?
What parts of this text made you the most uncomfortable? How are you planning on managing, processing, growing from and with these feelings?
Consider your own “Object Solar System" What does it look like? Which identities are closer/larger or smaller/further away. How has that changed with time?
How do you feel towards your racial object/identity? Are there questions you have or themes you feel inspired to explore? Note them and take them to a trusted helping professional or elder. For guidance on finding a therapist, please see the resources below.
For therapists:
How has this text influenced you?
What areas are you interested in gaining more knowledge/skill around after reading this article?
Has this text changed how you might start/continue conversations about race with your clients? Journal about or practice what you might say by yourself or with a colleague.
Think about a client for whom these ideas might be helpful. Journal about how you might bring this material into the therapy room (make sure it starts with an explicit conversation with your client).
References:
The stylistic choices around narrative and citation have been chosen with accessibility in mind as well as a polite tip of the hat to my APA citation background. If you want to explore the ideas mentioned with more academic nuance, I highly recommend you begin with RMRD as it is rich with primary source citations.
Frankland, A. (2010). The little psychotherapy book: Object relations in practice. Oxford University Press.
Freud, S. (1957). Mourning and melancholia (Strachey, J., Trans.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 14.
Eng, D. L., & Han, S. (2019). Racial melancholia, racial dissociation. In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation. Duke University Press.
hooks, b. (1981). Ain't I a woman: Black women and feminism. New York :Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Monyeé, T. (2022) “Why I, a psychotherapist, am saying goodbye to the US mental health system” Blavity. Accessed online at https://blavity.com/united-states-mental-health-system-black-bodies-liberation?category1=opinion
Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics (Vol. 2). U of Minnesota Press.
Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother's hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Central Recovery Press.
Salesses, M. (2020) “'Good-looking for an Asian': How I shed white ideals of masculinity" The Guardian. Accessed online at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/23/asian-american-masculinity-white-male-insecurity
Schug, J., Alt, N. P., Lu, P. S., Gosin, M., & Fay, J. L. (2017). Gendered race in mass media: Invisibility of Asian men and Black women in popular magazines. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 6(3), 222–236. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000096
Takinami, Emy P. (2016). "Feminized Asians and Masculinized Blacks: The Construction of Gendered Races in the United States" (2016). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 120. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/120
White, K. P. (2002). Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38(3), 401-422.
Witherspoon, D. J., Wooding, S., Rogers, A. R., Marchani, E. E., Watkins, W. S., Batzer, M. A., & Jorde, L. B. (2007). Genetic similarities within and between human populations. Genetics, 176(1), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.106.067355
Resources:
For additional resources for therapists and individuals, please check out my resource list on my website.
Here are a few different links to a variety of racial identity development models.
Therapy resources for people with marginalized identities
A great resource for therapists and all humans from SocialWork.Career - scroll down to the Healing Racial Wounding and Therapy/Funds Dedicated to People of Color sections for links to self-help and professional help.
Subtle Asian Mental Health | Facebook -An open, safe, inclusive, and non-judgmental space to share your thoughts and feelings about anything, especially mental health.
Dr. Fae
has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. She lives abroad and offers online therapy & clinical supervision. In her individual therapy practice, she specializes in value alignment, existential questions, decision making, and general coping to increase overall life satisfaction. Her online self-study course Deepening & Developing Connections is always available.
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