Mixed-Status Families and Immigration Interior Enforcement Policies: Effects on Clinical Practice and the Intraethnic Therapeutic Dyad

ABSTRACT

This article explores the sociopolitical and intersubjective enactments that unfolded when working with a mixed-status immigrant family facing parental deportation. Through the integration of a sociopolitical and intersubjective conceptualization, dynamics pertaining to inclusion, exclusion, domination, and subjugation are examined. The psychological exploration of the clinical treatment is guided by Altman’s (2010 Altman, N. (2010). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar]) three-person psychology and Stolorow’s (1991 Stolorow, R. D. (1991). The intersubjective context of intrapsychic experience: A decade of psychoanalytic inquiry. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 11, 171–184. doi:10.1080/07351699109533850Taylor & Francis Online], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar], 1993 Stolorow, R. D. (1993). Chapter 3 thoughts on the nature and therapeutic action of psychoanalytic interpretation. Progress in Self-Psychology, 9, 31–43. Google Scholar]) theory of intersubjectivity. The analysis also incorporates dynamics pertaining to the ethnocultural transference and countertranference (Comas-Díaz & Jacobsen, 1991 Comas-Díaz, L., & Jacobsen, F. M. (1991). Ethnocultural transference and countertransference in the therapeutic dyad. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(3), 392–402. doi:10.1037/h0079267Crossref], PubMed], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar], 1995 Comas-Díaz, L., & Jacobsen, F. M. (1995). The therapist of color and the white patient dyad: Contradictions and recognitions. Cultural Diversity and Mental Health, 1(2), 93–106. doi:10.1037/1099-9809.1.2.93Crossref], PubMed] , Google Scholar]) and to associative identification processes (Shonfeld-Ringer, 2000 Shonfeld-Ringer, S. (2000). Close encounters: Exclusion and marginalization as an intersubjective experience. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 71(1), 51–59.Taylor & Francis Online], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]). The case illustrates how dynamics of racialization, embedded within an increasingly White Nativist, ideological deportation immigration context, infiltrated the intraethnic, therapeutic relational encounter. The therapist took part in an intragroup, racialized reenactment that could have led to the therapist becoming part of the oppressive structure, but the therapist avoided doing so, explaining her internal process for rectifying the situation.