Neil Altman, PhD

February 18-20, 2022

Dr. Altman is a member of the faculty at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City, at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, Honorary Member of the William Alanson White Society, and Visiting faculty at Ambedkar University of Delhi, India.  He is Editor Emeritus and Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and on the editorial staff of The Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, The Journal of Child Psychotherapy, and The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.  He is author of  Psychoanalysis in Times of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization (2015), The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens, (2010), and White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (2020). :He is co-author of Relational Child Psychotherapy (2002). Dr.Altman has published more than sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Seminar Title: Race, Social Class, and Culture in Psychoanalytic Therapy.

Seminar description: In this seminar we will study how the social phenomena of race, social class, and culture can be understood from a psychological, psychodynamic, perspective. Further, we will explore how the social identifications and affiliations of patient and therapist interact in the therapeutic relationship and the implications for technique and for the progress of the therapy.

Selected Readings

1.Altman, N. (2021) White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge.  

2.Altman, N. (2015) Psychoanalysis in Times of Accelerating Cultural Change: From Spirit Possession to Globalization. London and New York: Routledge. 

3.Altman,N (2010). The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens Volume 2. New York and London: Routledge.

4. Baldwin J. (1993) The Fire Next Time. New York: Vintage International

5..Morrison, T. (1993) Playing in the Dark; Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage International.

6. Leary, K. (2000) Racial enactments in dynamic treatment.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues 10:639-654. Also discussion by Adrienne Harris (“haunted talk and healing action: commentary on paper by Kimberlyn Leary”) and response by Leary, immediately following              

7. Suchet, M. (2007) Unraveling Whiteness.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues 17:6 876-886

8. White, C., (2015) Strangers in Paradise: Trevor, Marley and Me: Reggae Music and the Foreigner Other.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues 25 (2) 176-193

9.Esprey, Y. (2017) The problem of thinking in black and white.race in the South African clinical dyad. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 27(1) 20-35, with commentary by Altman and Espry’s response.

10. White, K.P. Surviving hating and being hated: some personal thoughts  about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective.  Contemporary Psychoanalysis 38:401-422.

10. Williams, P. (1998)  The Ethnic Scarring of American Whiteness, in Lubiano, W. (Ed.) The House that Race Built.  New York: Vintage Books pp. 253-263               

11. Sennett,  R. & Cobb J. (1972) The Hidden Injuries of Class  NY: Norton. Introduction.

12. Smith, Laura (2005), Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor: Conspicuous in their absence. Am. Psychol. 7: 687-696.

13. Martin-Baro, I (1994) Writings for a Liberation Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

14. Fanon, F. (1962) Black Skin, White Masks.  New York: Grove Press.

15. Wilkerson, I. (2020) Caste: the Origin of our Discontents.  New York: Random House.