Hedda Bolgar Lecture Series
Richard Chefetz, MD
(Washington, DC)
The Social Not-me: Trauma, Shame, Racism, and Dissociation: The View Through the Lens of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Friday September 5, 2025
7-9pm (CST)
Zoom
About the Presentation: Honoring the path blazed by Toni Morrison in her provocative first novel The Bluest Eye, we will follow her exploration of the life of a young black girl who was raped by her father and shunned by her community; we will explore the psychodynamics of racism, it’s traumatic structure, the inherent preponderance of shame-spectrum emotion, and the reliance of racism upon dissociative processes as illustrated by the concept of the social not-me.
Richard A. Chefetz, M.D. (Washington, D.C; private practice, psychiatry) Past president, International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (2002-3), and Co-Founder and Chair of the Psychotherapy Training Program (2000-8), Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. Dr. Chefetz is the former listowner and head moderator (2004-2024) for the Dissociative Disorders Internet Forum, with over 2200 members worldwide He is faculty at the New Washington School of Psychiatry, the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, and the Washington-Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. He is also an instructor at the Westchester (N.Y.) Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. In 2015 he published Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes: The Fear of Feeling Real, with W.W. Norton, in their Interpersonal Neurobiology series.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:
1. Explain how shame and humiliation experience inform the experience of racism.
2. Describe how the normal not-me experience of dissociative identity disorder is utilized interpersonally to attribute unwanted person characteristics to an unwanted person, as consistent with racist othering.
This presentation is for all levels of professional experience.
Fees
CCP members: free with annual $195 membership, payable at registration.
Students:free with annual $175 membership, payable at registration.
New Fellows / Ongoing: free with annual $250/$300 membership, payable at registration.
Non-CCP members, single admission: $50
Continuing Education
This program is sponsored for Continuing Education Credits by the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. There is no commercial support for this program, nor are there any relationships between the continuing education sponsor, presenting organization, presenter, program content, research, grants or other funding that could be construed as conflicts of interest. Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program. If the program content becomes stressful, participants are encouraged to process these feelings during discussion periods. The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis maintains responsibility for this program and its content. CCP is licensed by the state of Illinois to sponsor continuing education credits for Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Social Workers, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors, Licensed Professional Counselors, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy Counselors and Licensed Clinical Psychologists (license no. 159.000941 and 268.000020 and 168.000238 Illinois Dept. of Financial and Professional Regulation).
Professionals holding the aforementioned credentials will receive 2.0 continuing education credits for attending the entire program. To receive these credits a completed evaluation form must be turned in at the end of the presentation and licensed psychologists must first complete a brief exam on the subject matter. No continuing education credit will be given for attending part of the presentation. Refunds for CE credit after the program begins will not be honored. If a participant has special needs or concerns about the program, s/he/they should contact Toula Kourliouros Kalven by September 4, 2025 at: tkalven@ccpsa.org
References/Suggested Readings
1. Hickling, F. W. (2020). Owning our madness: Contributions of Jamaican psychiatry to decolonizing Global Mental Health. Transcultural Psychiatry, 57(1), 19-31.
2. White, C. (2020). Sigmund Freud: German “Negro”; HS Sullivan: Northern American “White”: Psychoanalysis and “The Fierce Urgency of Now”. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 56(2-3), 226-244.
3. Chefetz, R. A. (2020). Shame and the developmental antecedents of enduring, self-critical mental states: A discussion and some speculations. Psychiatry, 83(1), 25-32.
4. Hall, H. (2022). Dissociation and misdiagnosis of schizophrenia in populations experiencing chronic discrimination and social defeat. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 1-15.
5. Hartling, L. M., Lindner, E., Spalthoff, U., & Britton, M. (2013). Humiliation: A nuclear bomb of emotions?. Psicología Política.
Presented by
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis/CCP Program Committee: Zak Mucha, LCSW, Alan Levy, PhD, Toula Kourliouros Kalven.
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis is an IRS 501(C)(3) charitable organization, and expenses may be tax deductible to the extent allowed by law and your personal tax situation.