RACE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: ENCOUNTERS WITH OTHERNESS
The 2026-2027 Colloquium Series
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
The Space Between: Race, Racism, and Implication
presented by Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay and David Mark
with Host & Moderator Stephen Friedman, PhD, LCSW
FRIDAY, APRIL 9th, 2027 from 7:30-9:30pm/Eastern
Held in person at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street, New York City and via live stream online
1.5 CEs are available for attending. In order to receive your credit after attending, follow the instructions that are sent prior to the event.
ABOUT THIS EVENT
The most fertile space in psychoanalysis is also the most fraught: the space between the two people in the room. Elaborating and affectively inhabiting what each person is bringing to the encounter asks more of us, and offers more possibility for deep engagement and change. This of course includes the identifications and lived social experience of each person, with race a particularly charged element.
Engaging with Rothberg’s concept of “the implicated subject”, a position that occupies the space between the polarities of perpetrator and victim without denying the realities of these categories, Drs. Kabasakalin-McKay and Mark suggest the concept of implication offers a way forward that may dovetail with something at the core of a Relational analytic ethos. Central to the ways implication is felt, disavowed, named, expressed and defended against are the affects and emotions that are stirred when we are called to reckon with this subject position in both the social and clinical realms.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay, PhD, EdM, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and is co-editor with David Mark, of Inhabiting Implication in Racial Oppression and in Relational Psychoanalysis (2023, Routledge). She is on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Mitchell Relational Studies Center, and she is a founding board member, Co-Director emerita, and faculty, of the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. Additionally, Dr. Kabasakalian-McKay teaches and supervises at NIP and ICP-NY. She has written on the subjects of implication; on empathy and recognition; and on the expansion of maternal subjectivity, and thus, enriched potential space made possible by Jessica Benjamin’s theory. With David Mark, she has explored the importance of the “intersubjective real”. She is in practice in Philadelphia and New York, and serves as an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
David Mark, PhD, is faculty and director emeritus of The Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia (IRPP). He is also on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Among other works, in 1997 he co-authored with Jeffrey Faude, PhD, The Psychotherapy of Cocaine Addiction: Entering the Interpersonal World of the Cocaine Addict, published by Jason Aronson. In 2023, with Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay, PhD, he was co-editor of Inhabiting Implication in Racial oppression and in Relational Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in Philadelphia and Narberth, PA.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
The ability to live with differences, let alone to enjoy such living and to benefit from it, does not come easily and certainly not under its own impetus. This ability is an art which like all arts, requires study and exercise…
Zygmunt Bauman (2000)
Psychoanalysis at its best lingers in liminal spaces and gleans wisdom from encounters on the margin (bell hooks, 2000), with things unseen and experienced as ‘Other.’ The spirit of this colloquium series on Race and Psychoanalysis is to foster a dialogue about otherness in far flung places and deep within ourselves. The hope is to sustain the conversation and build authentic human connection without a collapse into a realm where defensiveness reigns, thoughts cannot be thought and feelings become rife with experiences of anxiety and shame.
Although the repair of centuries of racial oppression is impossible, the speakers in this colloquium series will address in an interdisciplinary fashion, the myriad ways in which psychoanalysis may help inform pathways towards some semblance of healing in the consulting room and beyond.
All the speakers will present their talks in person. We encourage everyone to attend in person and continue the tradition of meeting at the Institute. At the same time, the series will be offered on a live stream, allowing us to reach a broader audience beyond New York, and connect with those who are unable to join in person.
This series is presented at no charge to its audience. Please consider making a donation to The Psychoanalytic Society when registering.