Helpless and Defended: An Encounter with Class Counter-Transference

ABSTRACT A core standard of clinical social work is cultural competence and much has been written about its practice and application across difference, particularly in the arena of transference and countertransference. One of the least explored differences for cultural competence practice is class difference. Due to American erasure of the acknowledgment of the culture of class, this human experience often remains hidden to the practitioner, leading to enactments from hidden biases resulting from the intersection of many identities of both the clinical and client. Through the example of a real-life experience, this paper examines how one clinician became more aware of this unconscious material and its impacts on clinical work.