INTRODUCTION

Positioning myself

This chapter is about race, about the space it takes up and the role it plays in the South African post-apartheid psychotherapy room. My thoughts about this have shimmered somewhere just beneath the surface of my consciousness for many years, prompted to the surface intermittently when an issue in my practice or my teaching forced it to do so, to be hastily banished by avoidant discomfort. For the most part, I have been content to adopt the oft-quoted stance that as a psychodynamically oriented clinical psychologist I maintain a neutral position in my work, and if issues of race, racism or racial identity emerge in the transference, I work with them as I would with any other dynamic. I have been loath to interrogate my own racialised self and how that impacts on the consulting environment I offer, and I have been equally reluctant to acknowledge any traces of my own prejudiced and racist positions or thoughts in my countertransference.

My submerged thoughts were shaken to consciousness when I was afforded the opportunity to participate in a post-graduate clinical social work programme at Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. Smith College has a policy of non-racism which is taken very seriously. As such, discussions about race and racism permeate every classroom interaction. At the outset, I adopted a curious but detached observer's position, wondering what I could learn from Americans about racism; what they referred to as ‘the raw nerve of America’. Over the weeks that followed I was struck by the transparency and rawness with which students and faculty of all races engaged around racism, and around its potentially insidious impact on our work as clinicians. I was taken aback by the forcefulness with which students and lecturers invited participation around highly sensitive and emotive issues, and I began to allow myself to engage with an honesty and self-reflectiveness that I had not experienced before. I was aware that as much as the discussions I engaged in were uncomfortable for me, they were still far more comfortable than they would be if I were having them with clinicians and students at home, and therefore far easier to have. I made a decision then that, on returning to South Africa, I would intentionally begin to engage myself and others in these discussions.