Review of Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalyis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender and Sexuality

This book offers an exceptional integration of theories of intersectionality with relational psychoanalytic practice organized into four themes: queer identities, exploitation of women, immigrant experience and clinical theory. However, each chapter is so distinct they deserve separate comment. Belkin’s opening paper immediately introduces us to the complexity of this area and the impossibility in the hurly burly of the clinic to immediately access all relevant dimensions of intersectionality. Belkin, a white gay man recounts his work with Ana, a straight woman of color. Despite Belkin’s gayness, Ana says that he reads like a privileged white male, inhabiting privilege as a right. She does not experience him as marginalized. In response, Belkin wonders how this straight woman dare pontificate to him. Thus, while Ana elides Belkin’s marginalized sexual identity, Belkin in response elides her marginalized racial identity. Throughout the chapter Belkin lays claim to his less privileged gay identity and not to his more privileged male and white identities, despite that these privileged identities are the ones that Ana challenged. He wishes his gay, underdog status to be recognized and to his credit he courageously owns this. In this wish for an underdog status to be acknowledged when challenged concerning dominance, Belkin reveals his humanness. It is a dynamic with which I am very familiar through my work with the Apartheid Archives and it is explored in papers by Eagle and Bowman (2010). Thus, this very important lead chapter reminds us early on that when asked to check our privilege, it is easy