ABSTRACT
The past few years have seen a necessary reckoning within psychoanalysis. As our field has grappled with our own involvement in the perpetuation of systemic inequity, especially structural racism, there is a need for theoretical developments that more deeply incorporate awareness of and responses to these realities. Michael Rothberg’s formulation of the implicated subject offers a conceptual tool to expand the space for such necessary development of our theories. Relational psychoanalysis offers a complementary way into this same space, with an emphasis on moving into a deeply felt experience of what it means to be implicated, including to be implicated in complex ways. This introduction to the book Inhabiting Implication: Race, Relational Psychoanalysis, and the Move from Fact to Feeling weaves personal and interpersonal accounts with theoretical advances from Rothberg and psychoanalyst Michelle Stephens, and summarizes each of the chapters in the volume.
