ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the racialized subjectivities of therapist and client, which it suggests have the potential to insidiously influence the psychotherapeutic encounter. It explores the neurobiological origins of race-based schemas within the context of early attachment relationships and emphasizes the importance of bringing into conscious awareness the workings of race in any clinical relationship. The article aims to underscore the imperative that clinicians face to actively interrogate and examine their own racial
Neurobiological findings indicate that the right brain houses implicit relational templates that contain the individual’s earliest experiences of the social world, transmitted through the unconscious communications of caregivers. These templates have the potential to influence the sense of self, other, and world throughout the life span, often in insidious and unidentifiable ways. This article explores the implications of this for the development of racial experience and identity and for the intergenerational transmission of racial trauma, looking at how earliest experiences of identity potentially affect the clinical space, and the intersubjectivity between client and therapist.
