Tiny Little Asian Thing: Appearances in a Therapeutic Dyad

Abstract

Physical appearances are undertheorized in psychoanalysis. This paper discusses the multifaceted significance of appearances and the use of normative unconscious processes to think about appearances. The paper examines, moreover, how these dynamics intersect and interact with, inter alia, race, class, gender, and sexuality, and implicate politics, personal and otherwise. As psychoanalysis takes a Second Relational Turn, clinicians should consider the effects of appearances and acknowledge their impact, just as they acknowledge and explore the effects of factors such as race, class, sex, and gender; if clinicians do not explore patients’ appearances, they risk not recognizing them fully. The paper further discusses the connection between the psychic and the social in a clinical case, considering how a patient’s appearance informs her internal and external relational patterns, including how her “beauty” contributes to failures of recognition; affects her position within and among social hierarchies; and influences the transference and countertransference matrix of the therapeutic dyad.