33rd ANNUAL EVENT AND LECTURE
RACIAL MELANCHOLIA, RACIAL DISSOCIATION:
A Day with David Eng, Ph.D.
Please join us for our 2020 Annual Lecture, rescheduled from last spring. We are delighted to host David Eng, who has spent his academic career investigating law, psychoanalysis, and the formation of subjectivity in contemporary capitalist society. His 2019 book, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans, co-authored with Shinhee Han, LCSW, focuses on the complex racial experience of Asian Americans. Drawing on extensive research and supple grasp of history, law, and critical theory, Eng will elucidate the particular vicissitudes of loss, immigration, and assimilation that contour Asian American racialization, including racial melancholia and racial dissociation. He will challenge us to expand our understanding of race beyond the binary of black and white, victim and perpetrator.
Integrating critical race theory and psychoanalysis could not be more timely nor urgent. We at NCSPP are aware of the long history of white supremacy within our field; as we endeavor to instigate change, we are honored to learn from Dr. Eng.
Professor Eng’s lecture will be followed by a panel discussion by local Asian American clinicians including Meiyang Kadaba, Psy.D., Loong Kwok, Psy.D., and Jyoti Rao, MFT.
NCSPP is aware that historically psychoanalysis has either excluded or pathologized groups outside of the dominant population in terms of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, and size. As an organization, we are committed to bringing awareness to matters of anti-oppression, inequity, inequality, diversity, and inclusion as they pertain to our educational offerings, our theoretical orientation, our community, and the broader world we all inhabit.
Presenters Response:
The need to bring together critical race theory with psychoanalysis--and, more specifically, the need to study and understand better our understudied if not outright ignored Asian American students and patients--drives the entire organization of this course. As a gay Asian professor in the humanities who has devoted his scholarly career to investigating law, psychoanalysis, and racial and sexual formation under long histories of racial capitalism, I plan to examine at length how the space of the class and clinic both inflect and reflect the larger social issues and problems of the world around us.
At the conclusion of this course participants will be able to:
- Describe a number of critical approaches to psychoanalysis and race.
- Describe the history of the (racial) subject in relation to the subject of (racial) history. That is, to understand how law and psychoanalysis frame race relations--indeed, race as relation.
- Detail the specific histories of loss, immigration, assimilation, and racialization that underpin the formation of Asian American subjectivity.
- Describe the social and psychic histories and dynamics of model minorities, transnational adoptees, parachute kids, suicide, and coming out in a colorblind age.
- Explain how different psychic paradigms--including racial melancholia and racial dissociation--construct Asian American subjectivity.
- Discuss race relations outside polarities of white and black, victim and perpetrator; explore "good enough" theories of race; and understand Asian Americans as triangulating the polarities of race.
- Racist Experiences, Openness to Discussing Racism, and Attitudes Toward Ethnic Heritage Activities: Adoptee–Parent Discrepancies by Kimberly J. Langrehr, Sydney K. Morgan, Jessica Ross, Monica Oh, and Wen Wen Chong, June 2019
- Model Minority of a Different Kind? Academic Competence and Behavioral Health of Chinese Children Adopted Into White American Families by Tony Xing Tan, September 2018
- Microaggressions and Self-Esteem in Emerging Asian American Adults: The Moderating Role of Racial Socialization by Christina J. Thai, Heather Z. Lyons, Matthew R. Lee, and Michiko Iwasaki, June 2017
- "You're Asian; You're Supposed to be Smart": Adolescents' Experiences With the Model Minority Stereotype and Longitudinal Links With Identity by Taylor L. Thompson, Lisa Kiang, and Melissa R. Witkow, June 2016
- Measurement Invariance of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) Across Asian American Ethnic, Nativity, and Gender Groups by Yun Lu, Alvin N. Alvarez,and Matthew J. Miller, March 2019
- Dozen original case histories of Asian American patients and students composed by Shinhee Han (Ph.D.) and David L. Eng (Ph.D).
- Byun, Boonsoon. “South Korean High School Parachute Kids in Southern Cali- fornia: Academic, Psychological Adjustment and Identity Formation.” PhD diss., University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, 2010.
- Cheng, Anne Anlin. “American Racial Grief, a Reprisal.” Huffington Post, March 16, 2016. Accessed June 3, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-a -cheng/american-racial-grief-a-r_b_9467348.html.
David L. Eng, Ph.D., is a Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an author of three books, most recently Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans (co-authored with Shinhee Han, LCSW, Ph.D.), as well as co-editor of numerous collections. Dr. Eng is an honorary member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR).
Meiyang Kadaba is a clinical psychologist in private practice in San Francisco. As a "third-culture kid," she pays particular attention to the profound way that our sociocultural contexts shape our sense of self and our experiences in the world. Her practice is at the intersection of psychoanalytic and liberation psychologies.
Loong Kwok, Psy.D., is the Director of Child Services at Access Institute, where he teaches and supervises school-based therapy. He works with adults, children, and couples at Baywell Psychiatry Group. He also serves on the Editorial Committee of fort da, NCSPP’s journal, and the Neuropsychoanalysis Committee of PINC.
This intermediate level event is intended for graduate students and faculty in the humanities, social science, and in ethnic studies; all mental health professionals (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic trainees, psychotherapists, psychologists; social workers); community activists; and racial justice activists.
LCSW/MFTs: Course meets the requirements for 6 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and/or LEPS, as required by the CA Board of Behavioral Sciences. NCSPP is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider Number 57020), to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCS, and/or LEPs. NCSPP maintains responsibility for this program /course and its content.
Psychologists: Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for these programs and their content.
Enrollees who cancel at least SEVEN DAYS prior to the event date will receive a refund minus a $35 administrative charge. No refunds will be allowed after this time. Transfer of registrations are not allowed.
For program related questions contact Danni Biondini at danni.biondanni@gmail.com or 415-810-8654.
For questions related to enrollment, locations, CE credit, special needs, course availability and other administrative issues contact Michele McGuinness by email or 415-496-9949.
Program Committee
The Program Committee is responsible for the Annual Lecture and for the presentation of various Scientific Meetings. The Annual Lecture is given by an internationally known analyst, while the Scientific Meetings generally feature the work of local psychoanalysts and others who are developing new ways of thinking about psychoanalysis.
We are currently looking for a chair and committee members. If interested contact Willow Banks, Psy.D. at wbanks@ncspp.org.