Dorothy Holmes, PhD
/Dr. Holmes’ groundbreaking work examined race within psychoanalysis, observing that race is an essential lens for psychoanalytic understanding because racism has endemic intrapsychic and cultural effects, including traumatic ones. These effects are accessible in treatment wherein psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic institutions resist knowing and theorizing these effects and their resistances. Her work catalyzed open discussion of discriminatory practices in society and in psychoanalysis, and their harm about which psychoanalysis has traditionally been silent, both clinically and institutionally.
Rather than seeing race as an obstacle to deeper work, Holmes posited that when race is acknowledged and addressed, it may lead to more just practices in therapy and beyond. Her efforts demonstrated that personal and organizational wellness cannot be achieved unless all aspects of one's identity are claimed, resolved, and embraced, including though not limited to racial identity. Applying clinical and organizational uses of psychoanalytic thinking holistically, Holmes’ methodology has helped address systemic racism within psychoanalytic organizations and promoted racial equity. She even ventured into psychoanalytic institutional protests designed to maintain racism as a "sleeping dog" employing liberatory psychoanalytic principles and tools to understand racism clinically and institutionally. Her recent psychoanalytic equity work theorizes the intrapsychic and institutional elements of resistance to recognizing the central role of race in society, in general and in psychoanalysis (e.g., use of primal defenses against recognition of racial hatred, clinging to white privilege).
Dr. Holmes, a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst, is a Training and Supervising Analyst with the Psychoanalytic Education Center of the Carolinas and IPTAR, Professor and PsyD Program Director Emerita, George Washington University, a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak, and Chair of The Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in the American Psychoanalytic Association.