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What is CORE? 

CORE is the Committee on Race and Ethnicity, formerly known as the Multicultural Committee. CORE co-sponsors colloquia hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, bringing in speakers to address topics around race, class, ethnicity and the intersection with psychoanalysis. In the past, CORE led reading groups on race and culture, as well as a supervision group focused on transference and countertransference with race in mind. CORE has collaborated with MIP administration in the creation of a class on race and ethnicity, which is now required in the five-year program. During the last year, CORE has been actively advocating for change in all levels of analytic training, such as diversifying faculty and curriculum, as well as collaborating with administration to gear the institute toward an anti-racist lens in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. CORE Dialogues organically formed in response to racial violence.  

What is CORE Dialogues? 

CORE Dialogues started as a way for the Manhattan Institute community to talk openly about race. The group evolved from exploring “how to talk about race” into a process group on racialized dynamics in the mixed race space. We meet every two weeks to identify and speak to our own inner truths, while also respecting each other’s positionality, which considers racial, class, gender and sexual identities in the context of the sociopolitical world. We also are reminded of and take into context each other’s social locations, which are more specific to our social identities in society.  

How does the group function?

A rotation of two different co-facilitators lead each group. This models a sense of community and our collective effort within the group process, and allows new themes to emerge each time, depending on who is leading the group. We typically begin with a question that threads back to our last meeting, and the conversation flows from there. Our aim is to help people speak freely with each other about race. As painful as it can be, people report feeling transformed by these conversations—they are learning to be braver, acknowledging their felt experience with racism, and they are becoming more self-aware.

We acknowledge that our group is not outside of history and we fully expect that we will enact racialized traumas. As we aim to work through and understand, we continue to deepen our awareness of our own racial biases and racism, including BIPOC members of the group. Since its inception, we have come together and agreed to continue, including white people, to keep coming no matter hard it gets. Our aim is to speak our truth, bear witness and be authentic without collapsing the space. Every once in a while, the space collapses and implodes, yet we continue to circle back to each other to speak our truths.

When and how did Dialogues originate? 

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, CORE called a Town Hall meeting on June 12, 2020, to offer the MIP community members an open forum to talk about whatever came up for people. Some folks wanted advice on how to work with and bring up the topic of race with people of color in the consulting room, and others wanted help talking about race and privilege among people of the same race. We addressed how the institute could respond to the racial violence and began drafting a statement. People talked about their practices, about themselves, and about not wanting to say or do the wrong things. What emerged from this meeting was a strong desire to continue our conversations, even though many feared bringing up race with their patients, and even with their BIPOC colleagues and friends. 

Both of us have been working through identifying and emerging our own racialized selves as we navigate institutional white spaces. We raised challenging questions with the group, such as: “What would acknowledging institutional racism look like?” and: “Can you be a good person and a racist?” It was clear from their reactions and participation that people wanted to learn how to better talk about race. Thus, CORE Dialogues organically evolved, and we have been meeting every two weeks since then.

Who may attend?  

Dialogues is open to members of Manhattan Institute community—graduates, candidates, supervisors, faculty, board members, and administration. As the group continues to evolve, we hold the tension of deepening our process with members who attend regularly, and welcoming newcomers who may have an experience-near, “finger on the pulse” encounter. 

Is the group open or closed? 

Anyone who is interested is welcome to attend CORE Dialogues, whether it be once to see what it’s like, or as often as desired. We hope that many more people within our community and outside of it will benefit from this unique, transformative experience as we discuss the impact of race and the interplay of racialized roles with one another. When new members drop in, they can easily follow along and catch up, and decide whether or not they would like to participate. Even if newcomers choose not to speak, their bearing witness to the forum is powerful on its own and/or can elicit responses from other group members. 

What is the vision for Dialogues moving forward?

We hope that CORE Dialogues participants take what they are learning about themselves and apply it to every aspect of their lives, both inside and outside of the consulting room, and in the community at large. 

Rossanna Echegoyén, LCSW, is a Latina/bilingual psychoanalyst whose life trajectory is marked by her experience as a first generation American to immigrant parents from Central America, and a pursuit for social justice, which led her to the helping profession. She is Founder and Co-Chair of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is active on the Psychoanalytic Coalition for Social Justice, the Board of Division 39, Section 9—Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, and is faculty and supervisor at various institutes in New York City, where she is in private practice.

Chanda D. Griffin, LCSW, is a teaching, training, and supervising analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity at MIP.  Additionally, she is a faculty member of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and an Adjunct Professor at the Silberman Graduate School of Social Work at Hunter College. Chanda is a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak, and she is in private practice in New York City.

Stay tuned for our next blog post in our Spotlight on CORE series, featuring Voices from Dialogues…

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The post Spotlight on CORE: Part I appeared first on Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Panic stricken and on autopilot, I pretended as if nothing weird was going on outside and sat for my first licensing exam the Friday before NYC shut down—March 20th. Licensing was all I could tangibly clutch after and hope toward in my abject terror, and I had scheduled the exam back when the virus was thought to be limited to Wuhan and Italy. 

Feeling antsy, perched atop an office chair swiveled up a little too high even for me, and dangerously exposed weeks before prophylactic masks and gloves were procurable, I tried to recall what my case argued theoretically. Though my mind went blank, my fingers began nimbly dashing off—with increasing speed and typos flying—something resembling my 12,000-word case narrative in three short hours. 

After the exam I slouched in a socially distant line at City Point Trader Joe’s, poised to snag any leftover dregs of the purported apocalyptic scavenging and hoarding. As my empty IKEA tote flapped wildly in the wind, a creeping, sickening certainty of failure swept over me. All I could remember of the blur, now, was how the X key had begun to stick an hour into furiously pounding away at the keyboard—on a case that featured prominently a discussion of sexxxxxuality.

Six weeks later the testing center reopened, and the same sweet proctor suggested over the phone that I schedule my second test now, before they booked up with essential workers requiring priority. I took the next slot, and prepared in four days—plus the two years I had been culling my case together with supervisors—but I had more confidence now that I knew the drill. I knew which exit to take out of the subway, and I remembered the numerical code for the bathroom. I was going to crush that second test! 

On May 8th, that dear, patient proctor allowed me to take my time hammering at each station to select the room’s most premier, buttery, springiest keyboard. I found my goldilocks chair and rolled it underneath the clock, my mask and latex gloves the only things sticking this time, with all 7 x 10 feet to myself. In the last half hour, a man with buzzed hair sat at the opposite end. I tried not to breathe too deeply and typed faster.

My class—half CPP and half LQP—graduated from the Manhattan Institute on June 7, 2020, after a proud half decade of psychoanalytic training. This was before Zoom had officially swept the world’s remote work and social communities. We opted against a party over video—unable to bear putting colleagues and family through a lame virtual graduation if we couldn’t even pop champagne for them—and instead we quietly rang in our accomplishments privately as the world crashed down around us, on fire with protests, plague and literal wildfires.

I purchased my first jigsaw puzzle, streamed shows I won’t name here and continued to see clinic patients over video, who wanted to talk about the general fear of dying in a nation at war with itself. They needed to know that I wasn’t dying (yet) and asked every session how I was doing. In the new normal, I felt it my responsibility to join them, and I didn’t do the therapist thing of withholding, but answered openly, which I still do for its grounding effect in isolation.

Through trial and error imposed by faulty internet, pre router update, I discovered that I communicated better with certain people over the phone, which in remote work functions rather like the couch does in person. It was freeing on those inevitable days that video denied us and we found ourselves somehow more connected.

Agonizing summer weeks ticked endlessly by, and my unanswered polite inquiries to the state went unacknowledged until August 6th—fiveish months after my first exam. Great news: you passed your first exam! 

August 8th, two days later—bad news: you failed your second exam! A total bomb of a low score—too low to admit here. What had happened? I had thought the complete opposite. My anxiety shot through the roof.

I put my head down and crammed for three solid months—a case I already knew, inside and out. I tried to study during the debates. I recorded myself reading my case aloud. I went to sleep with my own voice reading my case, and when I reached that point of deliriously belting out in song for myself I always laughed, no matter how half asleep I was. I filled notebooks with felt-tip markers repeating my case narrative in loud colors: defenses, resistance, history, transference, countertransference, interventions. I made flashcards. I stood to integrate new neural pathways with old muscle memory, reciting each card before peeking. I reversed the order. I kept forgetting to refer back to the presenting problem. I watched with bated breath the returns, and the election—my own personal arbitrary deadline—came and went.

I retook my second exam on December 7th—this time in a huge room with better social distancing and the sun shining through a sheer shade directly into my eyeballs. My case pulled up on the screen and I had to squint from the piercing sun and also to believe my eyes: I had dissociated so entirely during my second exam that I had clearly improvised a case I now barely recognized! In an unprecedented cavalier self state with some serious swagger I had made almost everything up on the spot. 

This time around my fingers knew what to do. Ten months into the plague, on January 12th, I finally passed. 

Tricia Brock, MFA, LP, graduate of MIP’s licensure qualifying program, is editor of the Analysis Now blog. She is also in private practice in NYC. 

For LP exam jitters, see: Preparing for the New York State Case Narrative Examination for the License in Psychoanalysis: An Unofficial Guide by Vanessa Bright, L.Ac., L.P.

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The post A Tale of Two Licensing Exams appeared first on Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.