A Message from The Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis!

The Commission offers our thanks and appreciation to all who completed the Commission’s survey and participated in interviews.The Commission’s Final Report of our findings and recommendations are deliberately released today, Juneteenth 2023, a commemorative and reflective holiday that keeps in focus that racial equality, historically and presently, is hard won and always in danger. Juneteenth reminds us of the immense work and strong leadership necessary to continue the quest towards racial equality. The Commission joined that work and engaged in it from August 2020 until now. Our Final Report is our invitation to the entire field of psychoanalysis to join this work of making psychoanalysis equitable regarding race and other identities that are subject to oppression. The Commission’s Final Report can be accessed at: https://tinyurl.com/HolmesCommissionFinalReportWe hope our Final Report gives you hope, guidance, and resolve. The Report puts emphasis on group process to hold the tensions related to the work of achieving racial equality, to create and share rituals to support sustaining effort and best ideas, and to establish the avenues on which collective and individual efforts towards equality can proceed. Among several recommended actions, we encourage you to engage in the work ahead by:

  • Sharing the Report far and wide, including both within and outside of your own psychoanalytic institute or other organization,
  • Taking time to read and reflect on the Report,
  • Talking with others about the Report’s findings and recommendations, and the implications for the psychoanalytic communities of which you are a part, and
  • Committing to doing the difficult work of making psychoanalysis as diverse, equitable, inclusive, open, and vibrant as it can be.

Yours in hopefulness and gratitude, Dorothy E. Holmes, PhD, Chair Anton Hart, PhD, Dionne R. Powell, MD and Beverly J. Stoute, MD, Co-Chairs

Follow this link to the Report:https://tinyurl.com/HolmesCommissionFinalReport