My patient and I, both presently in the US, are originally from neighboring villages in south Lebanon. She, Shia from a predominately Shia village; I, Orthodox Christian from a mixed village. I can see her village from the veranda of my three-hundred-year-old ancestral home. It’s a view that I know and love well.
While I could not imagine coexisting within the intimate space of the psychotherapy session with a white patient, I could imagine numerous other things.
The complexity of the patient-analyst dyad increases when the two have different cultural backgrounds. I am an analyst-in-training who has worked and lived in many contexts, in Japan and the UK. In Japan, I have lived as a third-generation Zainichi Korean. Zainichi refers to Korean immigrants or their descendants (in Japanese, 在zai means “present” and 日nichi means “Japan”). Japan adopts jus sanguinis: Nationality and citizenship are determined by one’s parental heritage, not the country of birth (jus soli). In addition, one cannot hold dual citizenship. After Japan colonised Korea in 1910, Koreans were forced to become Japanese.
The obsessions I look into the least in session are those centered around true crime. Call it countertransference; call it a lack of professional curiosity. Label it what you will, but what remains is an utter absence of interest in the very stories that keep many of my clients perched on the edge of their seats, breathless as they recount a tale that has captured their full attention that week.