When Racialized Ghosts Refuse to Become Ancestors

Experiences of feeling haunted and of being in the presence of ghosts are prominent in narratives of patients/people of color in the United States.  A creative reading of Hans Loewald’s evocative statement on therapeutic action, the process of transforming “ghosts into ancestors,” is used to explore a way of being with and healing patients with mixed-race identities who are imprisoned in melancholic states. 

An extended case vignette of an Indian American psychoanalyst working with a patient with a mixed racial identity highlights racialized components of melancholia and illuminates specific countertransference states and enactments that can both impede and allow for the gradual and partial witnessing of racialized ghosts and their transformation into ancestors. 

In this interactive presentation, we will explore:

• the therapist's personal reactions to race and identity and impact on the therapeutic process
• our collective fantasies of racial purity and assumptions of white privilege of mixed race individuals
• the racial mourning process
• re/association of split off racialized selves.