Mental Pain of Minorities

Presented by: Salman Akhtar, M.D.

March 12th at 7:00 pm

VIA ZOOM

2 CEUs for NYS Social Workers

Program Description

TIMH is honored to host renowned psychoanalyst and poet Salman Akhtar, M.D.

Dr. Akhtar highlights opportunities for clinicians to listen for and respond to the effects of discrimination, marginalization, and misinterpretation that create psychic pain for those belonging to minority groups, with the hope of aiding healing and increasing mutual understanding. He will discuss how collaborative efforts between individuals belonging to the minority and majority groups play an integral role in fostering greater positive change for all members of society.

Dr. Akhtar posits that the discord between the subjectivity of minorities and their cultural environment causes chronic mental pain or, in Freud’s (1926) terms, seelenschmerz. The unease felt by minorities arises from being stereotyped by a majority’s projections, as well as from the figure-ground discord in their own subjectivity. Seeking to anesthetize their distress might involve intrapsychic and interpersonal withdrawal, and other problematic defensive strategies.

Shifts and chasms in the larger culture will be further illustrated by clinical examples of how such phenomena reverberate in the individual psyche. Attention to the nuances of race, immigration status, and family structure will be introduced in the clinical material. Dr. Akhtar will offer spaces where clinicians might offer a therapeutic response to psychic pain associated with the experience of being a minority, both inside and outside of the clinical encounter.

Course Objectives:

  1. Participants will be able to enumerate the problems experienced by minorities.

  2. Participants will be able to delineate variables from both the external reality and interpsychic experience of minorities.

  3. Participants will be able to distinguish the ways in which majority plays a role in the creation of these problems.

  4. Participants will be able to identify ameliorative measures for resolving the pain of minorities in treatment.

Inquiries: Please email Heather deCastro at hdecastro@me.com

Ahktar.jpg

Salman Akhtar, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. His 67 books include 15 solo-authored, as well as 40 edited books in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He received Best Paper of the Year Award from the Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association (1995), Edith Sabshin Award (2000) from the American Psychoanalytic Association, Sigmund Freud Award from the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians (2000), Kun Po Soo Award (2004), Irma Bland Award (2005) from the American Psychiatric Association, and, most recently, the prestigious Sigourney Award (2012) for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar has delivered lectures around the world and his books have been translated into many languages. He has also published eight volumes of poetry and is Scholar-in-Residence at Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

Registration has closed.