"We, They, and Them: The Other and the Psychoanalytic Subject" with Michelle Stephens, L.P., Ph.D. 

Part of BGSP's Spring 2026 Speaker Series: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Race, Racism, and Culture
Virtual event via Zoom

In her discussion of “scenarios of discovery,” Diana Taylor argues that European encounters with the “wild men and women” in strange, new lands involved a kind of transference of “the not-ours to the ours,” a translation of “the Other’s systems of communication” into ones Europeans could “claim to understand.” Unconsciously, our dominant modes of thinking are colored by the anxieties and neuroses of this historically embedded colonialist viewer. As the “viewing subject” constructs a world of “wild objects,” they also produce a “we” as they are producing a “them.” This talk will focus on the reversible dynamics of this unconscious process—how what is “ours” becomes the “not ours." Following such interpersonalists as Harry Stack Sullivan, Don Stern and Phillip Bromberg, this presentation will explore how dissociative “not-me” processes shape our group identities, our experience and understanding of the “us” and the “them,” profoundly inflecting our psychoanalytic theorizations of the human. The presenter will argue that meaningful engagement with Black studies, first and foremost a discourse of black aliveness in the face of non-being, would develop our ability to navigate encounters with the “o/Other” alongside our history of viewing the psychoanalytic subject through the lens of sexual difference, desire, and relationality. 

Presenter

Michelle Stephens, L.P., Ph.D. is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology and a practicing psychoanalyst. She is Professor of English and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, and the Founding and Executive Director of Rutgers’ Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ). She is the author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914 to 1962 (Duke University Press, 2005) and Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and The Black Male Performer (Duke University Press, 2014). Her recent writings on the intersections of race and psychoanalysis can be found in such journals as JAPA, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. 

Discussant

Mahrou Zhaf, Psy.D.

OBJECTIVES

The participant will be able to:  

1. Demonstrate a deeper understanding of the historical roots and manifestations of large group identities, within the context of a traditional psychoanalytic focus on the singular individual psyche. 
2. Utilize this knowledge to identify the relationship between targets of externalization and large group identification processes, the “We—They” dynamics shaping emergent processes of bias and discrimination in subject formation. 
3. Discuss and apply this knowledge to adaptations of clinical technique, broadening lines of inquiry and perception of intrapsychic and interpersonal racialized clinical dynamics.

2 CE Units / Clock Hours

BGSP is authorized to provide CEs for: Psychologists (all levels), Social Workers, Counselors

Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. BGSP maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 

Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5676. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. 

Application for social work continuing education credits is being submitted. Please contact us at continuinged@bgsp.edu for the status of social work CE accreditation. 

For information on continuing education credits for nurses, social workers, or marriage and family counseling, call (617) 277-3915. 

Direct inquiries may be made regarding the accreditation status by NECHE to the administrative staff of the institution. Individuals may also contact: New England Commission on Higher Education, 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Ste 100, Burlington, MA 01803-4514, at (781) 425-7785 or email: info@neche.org

The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is accredited by the New England Commission on Higher Education.  

Direct inquiries may be made regarding the accreditation status by NECHE to the administrative staff of the institution. Individuals may also contact: New England Commission on Higher Education, 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Ste 100, Burlington, MA 01803-4514, at (781) 425-7785 or email: info@neche.org