Search

Racial discrimination in the United States, particularly as it impacts the lives of African Americans, continues to be the subject of heated popular and scholarly discussion and debate. In this special issue we showcase the ways in which clinicians and scholars creatively employ diverse forms of psychoanalytic theory and practice to illuminate racial injustice and inequality, and to heal and go beyond the trauma of racial injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil rights lawyer and legal scholar Michelle Alexander is interviewed by Annie Stopford, a contributing editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Professor Alexander's first book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness was published by the New Press in 2010 and was on The New York Times Best Seller List for ten consecutive months. Philosopher Cornel West has called The New Jim Crow the 'secular bible for a new social movement in early twenty-first-century America.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This field note describes two trips made by the author to Cambodia, the first in 1980 not long after the Khmer Rouge was driven from Phnom Penh, and the second in late 2009. The author describes encounters and conversations with Cambodian men and women in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide, and her own subjective experience of the traumatic upheavals of the country. In this series of reflections on journeys to Cambodia, the author also discusses the process of truth and reconciliation and the limits of western therapeutic responses to collective violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through analysis of qualitative research interviews with African and nonAfrican Australian men and women who are, or have been, in intimate relationships, this article explores some fundamental differences between African and nonAfrican ways of living and understanding relatedness and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the psychological and emotional challenges involved when living with radical cultural differences, and the psychoanalytic implications of these challenges. It analyzes empirical data based from the experiences of individuals who were involved in intercultural marriages and relationships. It notes that the experiences of these people show the need for a process-oriented psychoanalysis, and evaluates the capability of people to live together despite the differences.

An online interview with Neil Altman and Nancy Hollander, discussing the papers by each of them which were offered to begin online discussion on the theme ‘Thinking critically in the midst of the maelstrom: can psychoanalysis help us stay sane in an insane world?’ Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of Neil Altman's ‘Psychoanalysis and war’, which was conducted online through PsyBC in the fall of 2006. Discussants were a group of psychoanalytically oriented thinkers chosen by the author and Nancy Hollander, the author of the other paper included in the discussion. The paper represents the full discussion with only minor edits to correct typographical errors and improve clarity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that African ethical and conceptual systems have an important contribution to make to theorization of complex African-western families which are forming in some locations around the globe as the result of migration and cross cultural marriages/relationships. Drawing on my research into transculturation in heterosexual African and (non African) Australian relationships, I argue that despite formidable obstacles both in terms of the hegemony of the monogamous nuclear family model, and patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality, "Africanization" of relationship and family structures can occur in western locations in ways which are not antithetical to women's rights, responsibilities and desires. The nuclearization of the family may be taking root in Africa, but this is not a one way migration. As Niara Sudarkasa says, when nuclear and extended family structures which evolved in Europe and Africa (respectively) are transported to other cultural contexts, "transformations in ... familial roles and relationships have occurred and will occur" (2004: 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through analysis of a local configuration of race and gender in the global migration picture, this essay picks up on one of the important themes discussed in Global Woman: the challenges, complexities, struggles, and dilemmas of the "micro" West/non--West contact zone. Using data from my research into relationships between (black) African migrants and non-African Australian women, I explore the way my interlocutors (and I) are often, as Susan Cheever writes in her chapter in Global Woman, "strung out between the old ways and the new, between the demands of money and the demands of love." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to the commentary of Eyal Rozmarin on the author's paper entitled, "Leaving Home: The Challenges of Living with Radical Cultural Difference." The author notes that although she and Rozmarin share the same interest in psychoanalysis, they have differences in terms of theoretical influences and lived experience. She argues from Rozmarin's perspective that psychoanalysis has neglected the register of ethical relationality, although it has recognized what life is.

The article reviews the book "Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties" edited by Warwick Anderson, Deborah Jenson and Richard Keller.