By Chanda Griffin, LCSW

One of my top five movies of all time is The Matrix—a science fiction movie about a dystopian society in which a young white male, Neo, recognizes that he is living in a simulated reality and he is not completely conscious that a real world exists beyond his own felt experience. Illustrating Christopher Bollas’s “unthought known” (1987), Neo is curious and is driven to search desperately on the dark web to answer the question: “What is the Matrix?” Neo is introduced to Morpheus, the sage, enigmatic and wise black man who offers him options: “You take the blue pill…the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill…you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” 

Spoiler alert: Neo chooses the red pill and learns that he and millions of other human bodies are used as energy to fuel a massive computer. He joins the rebellion and is tasked with saving the world from this illusory reality, leading all to freedom.

The film is infused with religious and philosophical allusions, and I would be remiss not to point out the often racialized blockbuster storyline whereby a white man has a self-actualizing experience in response to consulting with BIPOC shamans and he is ultimately the one to save the world. But what resonates for me are what I find to be thought provoking similarities to what motivates me as a psychoanalyst—my curiosity and my desire to answer certain key questions:

What is the racial transference/countertransference matrix? What are the intersubjective experiences between myself and others that continue to perpetuate and sustain a racialized dynamic of master/slave, doer/done-to, oppressor/oppressed? How does this manifest in the analyst/patient dyad and into group dynamics?

Driven by my questions, I identify with both characters. Like Neo (new), I am invited to explore the unique experiences of my patients who vulnerably share their painful experiences as BIPOC within the larger social political context (racial categorization and racism), examine the meaning and significance given to both the white and the black gaze, and the experience of my blackness. The racial transference/countertransference matrix is complex, unique and multi-varied.

At other times, I identify as Morpheus: awoke, aware and knowledgeable. I have taken these experiences to inform my own work as a community member of the Manhattan Institute and a participating member of CORE (Committee on Race and Ethnicity) Dialogues—a group comprised of MIP members that meet to discuss race, more specifically, racism from a social political perspective, while also zooming in from a psychoanalytic perspective from the personal to the interpersonal. 

CORE Dialogues is unique in that we, like Neo, are driven by the question, or questions, and we participate and observe our interpersonal and group dynamics in respect to race in real time. This is not without struggle or discord. As I consider the various reactions of some of my white colleagues who are filled with anxiety, guilt and fear within the group, I ask myself: Can they swallow the red pill? Are they willing to know what they may not have wanted to know but somehow, somewhere might have even already questioned?

My experience at times is that we are all living in entirely different realities—one of protective delusion and another of stark harshness. While knowing that this binary or (no pun intended) black and white dichotomy does not encapsulate the very gray and nuanced experiences of connection between us, it is no wonder that (in the matrix) I or any one of us experience a disequilibrium that compels us to protect ourselves, to return to our various roles that are known, secure and familiar. Yet, we continue to brave the waters of race and racism, to know.

This is a pivotal time in our history to be curious about the “unthought known” as it relates to race and racialized dynamics within the transference/countertransference matrix, and to challenge ourselves to see just how far down the rabbit hole goes. 

 

Chanda D. Griffin, LCSW, is a teaching, training, and supervising analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP) and co-chair of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) at MIP. Additionally, she is a faculty member of the National Institute For the Psychotherapies (NIP),The Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) and Adjunct Professor at the Silberman Graduate School of Social Work at Hunter College. Chanda is a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak and is in private practice in New York City.

 

Reference:

Bollas, Christopher. (1987). The shadow of the object : psychoanalysis of the unthought known.  London :  Free Association Books

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:

Spotlight on CORE: Part I: Interview with CORE Co-Chairs Rossanna Echegoyén, LCSW, and Chanda Griffin, LCSW

Spotlight on CORE, Part II: Voices from Dialogues: The Eyes Have It by Wendy Greenspun, Ph.D, and Staying is Everything by Roberto Colangeli, Ph.D, L.P.

Spotlight on CORE, Part III: Contemporary Perspectives with Immigrants, Exiles and Refugees; Covid and the Silence of Others by Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph.D.

To our new incoming candidates, may we also suggest:

Letters to a Young Analyst featuring Irwin Hirsch, Ph.D., Debora Worth, LCSW, Chanda Griffin, LCSW, Blair Casdin, LCSW, Jim Traub, LCSW, Tony Bass, Ph.D.