Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis

This event addresses: Racism

Beverly J. Stoute, MD, who is African American, and Michael Slevin, MA, MSW, who is white, will discuss the personal and historical moments that precipitated their decision as colleagues to tackle their five-year project co-editing The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter (Routledge, 2023). Slevin, who published about his community work in an urban hospital emergency room, and Stoute, who published about racial socialization and conceptualized Black Rage as an intrapsychic adaptation to racial trauma while editing the book, will tell the story with personal immediacy how their relationship and work deepened their racial awareness and clinical understanding and influenced the trajectory of the book. Such work can lead to splits and injuries navigating racism’s searing effects on personal, clinical, and community understandings. How did we come together and not fall apart? What did we learn that might speak to cross-cultural considerations that can be applied more widely as we tackle issues of diversity in our current polarizing social and political climates? There will be ample opportunity for questions and discussion.