White Therapists’ Enactments And Mitigations Of Cultural Countertransference Responses In The Cross-Racial Dyad: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

As cities across North America become increasingly racially diverse, the need for mental health professionals to purvey culturally sensitive and effective treatment is critical. White therapists, in particular, working in cross-racial dyads may encounter unique challenges to meet this need. Indeed, among other things, psychological vulnerabilities and racial biases of self and other underlying cultural countertransference enactments may interfere with White therapists’ abilities to provide effective treatment to racialized individuals. This study focuses on exploring White therapists’ lived experiences enacting and/or mitigating the infusion of cultural countertransference responses within the cross-racial dyad. In addition, this study seeks to understand how participants make sense of and contextualize the emergence of these countertransference processes including the manner by which race intersects and interacts with gender – and other sociocultural identities – to influence therapists’ deportment in the cross-racial dyad. Participants were 10 self-identified White therapists living and working in Canada with significant experience helping racialized individuals. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was the methodological approach deemed most suitable to investigate this subject. The findings suggest that cultural countertransference enactments were common among White therapists while working in cross-racial dyads, many of which were identified by the presence of anxiety and/or avoidance strategies. Many participants also reported instances in which they were ostensibly able to counter the tendency to enact cultural countertransference responses. Instead, at times, they reported approaching the treatment process more deliberately and with enhanced awareness such that unintended infusions of potentially harmful dynamics were mitigated. Participants pointed to intersections of gender with race as well as various familial, social, and educational factors that they believed contextualized the emergence/mitigation of these enactments. Unique contributions of this work as well as study limitations, implications, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Applied Psychology and Human Development

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Kleiman, Sela

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Moodley, Roy

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/91947

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/91947