A Discussion of the Findings of the Holmes Commission || BGSP Community

Virtual Event

A Discussion of the Findings of the Holmes Commission
For BGSP Students, Faculty, and Staff

The Holmes Commission Report on Racial Equity in American Psychoanalysis, released on June 19 (Juneteenth) 2023 and posted on the website of the American Psychoanalytic Association, found that the ghosts of a society historically structured by race are alive and haunting the training institutes and consulting rooms of psychoanalysis.  The commission also found that faculty and candidates at psychoanalytic institutes, irrespective of race, believe psychoanalytic curricula do not adequately address race and racism.

This workshop, in which faculty and students at psychoanalytic institutes and clinicians are encouraged to participate, will answer questions, and engage in discussion about the findings of the components of the Holmes Commission Report. Specifically, (a) understanding and addressing racism, (b) recruitment, and mentoring (c) curriculum and supervision in training (d) racial enactments and institutional responses and (e) “the experience of race on the couch.” This event is for the BGSP Community in Boston.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE #1:

Describe examples of systemic racism in psychoanalysis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE #2:

Discuss resistances to the understanding and remedying of systemic racism in psychoanalytic institutions.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE #3:

Explain/define psychoanalytic understanding of the inseparability of the psychic and the social.

Dorothy Evans Holmes, Ph. D is the Chair of the “Holmes Commission”. She is a Teaching, Training, and Supervising Analyst in the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas, Professor and PsyD Program Director Emerita at George Washington University, and Teaching, Training and Supervising Analyst Emerita at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis.  Dr. Holmes is widely published on the psychoanalytic understanding of race, class, and gender. She has written extensively on the intrapsychic influences of race, gender, and their impact on the psychoanalytic treatment process.  Her most recent publication is “Getting To Where We Need To Get: A Meaningful Step Towards Understanding and Remedying White Privilege” (Holmes, D. 2023).  Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 32(6):639-644. 

Dr. Holmes has served on the editorial boards of the IJP and JAPA and now serves on the editorial board of “Psychoanalytic Dialogues”. She has received numerous honors for her scholarship on multiple cultural factors and the effects of cultural trauma. In addition, she was the 2012 recipient of an APA Division 39 Career Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of women’s and racial issues in psychoanalysis. She was the 2014 Helen Meyers Traveling Psychoanalytic Scholar; the Plenary Speaker for the National Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association on January 15, 2016; and the invited Plenary speaker for the meetings of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, March 2017. Dr. Holmes is also the 2022 winner of a Sigourney Award for groundbreaking work on the psychoanalytic understanding of race.

2 CE Units / Clock Hours

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