The Michigan Psychoanalytic Society Collective

Lifting the Veil of Silence on Systemic, Institutional Internalized Racism

The MPS Psychoanalytic Collective affirms its support of Black Lives Matter and commits to dismantling racism and becoming an antiracist organization. We stand in solidarity with those who pursue antiracism as we embark on this journey towards a more just society.

The MPS Psychoanalytic Collective Project was initiated in June 2020 to create spaces for challenging conscious and unconscious processes that perpetuate racism. The mission of the MPS Collective is to cast a psychoanalytic eye toward social issues, particularly racial bias and social injustice, and engage in courageous and thorough auditing of the organizational barriers to becoming a welcoming and accessible site for all members of the wider community.

The MPS Psychoanalytic Collective has committed to creating educational programs throughout the year and beyond that will address the plague of racism. These endeavors reflect our commitment to exploring and dismantling racism in our institution, theories and practices, curricula, and relations with our community. Programming includes, but is not limited to town hall meeting s, panel discussions, open-ended discussion, seminars, colloquia, book groups and discussions, and symposia. As psychoanalysts and mental health practitioners, we are called to reach out to our professional community and the community at large to become ‘agents of change’.

These endeavors will all provide spaces for didactic and experiential learning about conscious and unconscious dynamics of racism and social/cultural trauma aiming toward healing and making a change in our organization and contributing to change in our communities. We will employ a psychosocial lens as we explore the inextricable links between the psychoanalytic and sociopolitical. By engaging multiple perspectives, including group dynamics, contemporary psychoanalytic and social science literature, and emerging social/cultural interventions, we hope to break through cycles of silence and avoidance to deepen our understanding of systemic racism and its pernicious impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of all. We aim toward becoming collaborators and agents of change in our psychoanalytic practice and our communities at large.