Cultural Identity within Psychoanalysis with Kris Yi
Episode 16
Cultural Identity within Psychoanalysis: Reframing the Asian American Experience with Kris Yi
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Kris Yi is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Pasadena, California. She is currently a member of the teaching and supervising faculty at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) of Los Angeles.
She is an Associate Editor on Race and Psychoanalysis for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is a long time co-chairperson for the International Relations Committee for the Division 39 of the American Psychological Association and serves on the board of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiaN).
She has presented widely on culture and race in psychoanalysis and her most recent work on Asian American and Model Minority Stereotype was published in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
She is a 1.5 generation Korean American and works predominantly with Asian and Asian American individuals.
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Cultures are dynamic and powerful forces that shape our identities and influence our perspectives on the world. They serve as bridges, effortlessly connecting the depth of our heritage with the construction of our futures. But for Asian Americans, the balance between traditional values and modern ideals poses a distinct challenge as they strive to find their place within society.
Between visibility and invisibility, the pervasive presence of racism, the necessity for adaptation, and the negotiation between individuality and community… The Asian American experience is as complex as it is resilient. Today’s guest embodies this truth in more ways than one.
Kris Yi, Ph.D., Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with more than 25 years of clinical experience. Throughout her career, she has dedicated her work to highlighting and raising awareness of the Asian American experience, and racial bias within psychoanalysis.
In today’s episode, Kris invites us to step into her world. She illustrates her journey from South Korea to the United States, sharing the challenges of migration, the enduring impact of cultural trauma, and the art of finding the balance between two distinct cultures. Determined to break free from bias, Kris lends her voice to the Art of Listening, to offer a fresh and often overlooked perspective that defies stereotypes.
Join us as Kris boldly rewrites the narrative of the Asian American experience, carving out a unique space within the realm of psychoanalysis.
Chapters
1 - Juggling Korean and American cultures (4:22)
2 - Anti-Asian racism and the Model Minority myth (10:41)
3 - Kris’s experiences with Discrimination and Hypersexualisation (17:14)
4 - Historical racism in Psychoanalysis (22:41)
5 - Bringing new visibility to the Asian Perspective (26:08)
Links
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Kris: [00:00:05] We need to have more Asian American psychoanalytically oriented therapists and psychoanalysts to speak about our experience and be centered. And as Asian Americans, not in response to white gaze per se.
Eileen: [00:00:32] I'm Eileen Dunn, and this is the Art of listening, a podcast that delves into the incomparable power of human connection and the magic of good depth talk therapy. Joining us today is Chris Yi. Culture is the backdrop of our identity. It's a memory of the arms that embraced us. Of the words that shaped our minds. It's an imprint on our relationships and the set of beliefs that nursed us into personhood. But it's also a landscape that keeps changing. Those who have experienced immigration will know this better than anyone. When we adapt to a foreign environment, our culture follows our every move, expanding and changing to experience the world differently. More than a shift in geography. Living abroad is a voyage through the layers of self. And yet the complexity of this experience is often misunderstood. Chris Yee's story echoes this truth so personally.
Kris: [00:01:44] You know, from language acquisition to understanding American social roles, being an immigrant was really one of the central organizing experience of my life. And frankly, that wasn't emphasized or understood or seen in my own analysis.
Eileen: [00:02:09] Our conversation today is a testament to the magnitude of the challenge, the resilience and the beauty of navigating between two worlds. When I first came across her work, Chris Ye was presenting at a conference in Chicago as a member of the honored plenary panel. Her presentation brought to light the rich inner lives of Asian Americans. That day, I became aware of the limits of my own knowledge, much less my understanding of the Asian American experience. It made me want to invite Chris on this podcast to share her insight and her passion. So today, Chris shares her personal journey from South Korea to the United States. We delve into the model minority myth to find out what lives in the shadow of perceived successes. Bridging the personal with the universal. Chris also reflects on the unspoken traumas of past and present. All along, we explore the power of depth therapies and psychoanalysis to heal and transform our sense of self. So as you tune in this week, I encourage you to reflect on your own experience of cultural belonging and identity. How many worlds do you live in day in, day out? In what ways has your personal journey shaped you? How do you view yourself and others? And now let's welcome Chris Yee. She is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst with nearly 30 years of experience. She is based in Los Angeles, and she trains future analysts at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, providing support for Asian Americans entering the field. Her story is not just a tale of personal triumph, but a beacon for those navigating the complex seas of identity in a multicultural world. Chris, let's start by introducing you as a person and your background. Tell me about your cultural upbringing in between two worlds, South Korea and the United States.
Kris: [00:04:37] I'm a 1.5 generation Korean American, which means that I was born and raised in Korea and spent my formative years in Korea. So Korean culture is in my bones, I would say. But I immigrated here as a teenager, so of course I've gone through the American educational system and lived my life in the mainstream culture as well. So I straddle both worlds, Korea and America.
Eileen: [00:05:12] From the vantage point of growing up straddling both. You and I both know that adolescence is the most tumultuous transitional time and amazing that that was the time that you moved to the States. But tell me more about both.
Kris: [00:05:27] Well, a Korean culture is Confucian based, and it's collectivistic. So, you know, there's a group harmony at the sometimes expense of individual experience and needs and feelings. And I would say the one of the central tenets of Confucianism is respect for one's parents. You know, so-called filial piety and relationships are hierarchically structured based on gender and age and position in the family. And when it runs beautifully, it's beautiful experience. But for me, it was a difficult experience because, you know, this hierarchical system was in place in the context of a lot of social, political and cultural traumas, mass level traumas that were happening in Korea when I was growing up, as well as individual family, my parents issues coming into play. So I had an interesting situation of feeling not exactly at home in my own culture. The the loving, benign collectivistic values, filial piety, the the joy of paying respect to one's parents and their benign response back to you. That didn't register as that, and it was unsettling experience. And I know that I'm not alone in feeling experiencing Confucian culture that way, as I know that there is a great deal of psychoanalytic boom in China. And you might know that China has undergone such profound mass level traumas. And when psychoanalysis was introduced to China, it really took off because it gave people a space, an opportunity to talk about their individual experiences. And that is the reason why I was also attracted to or drawn to psychoanalysis. It gave me a place to talk about and tend to my experiences of trauma from Korea.
Eileen: [00:07:56] I wonder more about specifically just how it was for you. What prompted your move?
Kris: [00:08:03] The way that we came to America was through my mother being a mail order bride. And, you know, this business of being a child, of someone who was a mail order bride is not something that is talked about very much in Asian American community. And I don't think that that's very known in the mainstream culture as well, to the degree to which that Korean American immigration has been defined by women who were connected to the American servicemen in Korea and the women's families. The Harvard Asian American historian Erika Lee estimated that about 40 to 50% of the Korean immigrants from 1945 to 1965 were connected to women, you know, married to the American servicemen. This goes to the American involvement in wars in Asia. And there were communities springing up catering to the needs of the GIS. And my mother worked in one of these communities. Basically, they're sanctioned, you know, prostitution communities catering to the needs of the American service people. And my mother taught English to these women, you know, working for American men. And then she had this bright idea that perhaps she could begin a correspondence with an American and come to America. My mother, by this time was a divorced woman, you know, which carried a stigma. And she didn't have a lot of prospects in Korea. She was very resourceful this way. And she thought, this is one way to come to America. And it worked out. And that's how we came to America. And the vision of America as a land of freedom, and where the American dream was possible. So in that, I think, is something that many immigrants from Asia can relate to. And of course, it became a shattering of that illusion when I learned and experienced, you know, racism in America.
Eileen: [00:10:41] How did that happen? I wonder what your experience was with that. Did it happen right away? Did it take time?
Kris: [00:10:48] I could understand that it was a gradual process only in retrospect, but it really came to the foreground during the pandemic. Basically, with my immigration and idealization of America, I totally participated in the pursuit of the American dream. You know, how do you achieve success? You work hard and you go to school. And being a model minority, basically, and over a period of time, yes, I learned the whole history, the the social, cultural and racial context of that perception of Asian American as model minority. Just to give you a couple of examples, there's the idea that Asian Americans are yellow peril, bringing disease and destruction to Western civilization and America. And then there's the idea that Asian Americans are perpetual strangers, because we Asian Americans look different regardless of how long Asian Americans have been in this country, which is now about three centuries, this idea that we are perpetual foreigners and strangers, I think, remain to this day. How do you want to belong to a society that discriminates against you? You have to put that aside in order to pursue your inclusion in the society. David Ng and Shinhan, in their landmark paper called Racial Melancholia, addresses this issue. The fundamental concept is that it's anger turned inward. Anger at being discriminated against and hitting up against othering and exclusion. We internalize those experiences and turn it against us. And they wrote that paper in the context of seeing Asian American depression and suicides. That's another cost of model minority perception. And then, of course, there's the expectation that's placed on Asian Americans that can foster false self development. Right. If you're expected to be successful. That's placing pressure on you. I have many patients in my practice that struggle with this issue. You know, people who have achieved success, you know, Ivy League education, Wall Street jobs, lawyers or doctors. And yet you're not connecting to those external accomplishments and achievements because they were never an expression of their true selves. And so internally, feelings of emptiness imposter syndrome are very, very problematic. So that's, I would say, another cost of. This model minority perception of Asian Americans.
Eileen: [00:14:12] Being diligent and smart. Stoic. Silent. Compliant, socially adequate and reverent, never crossing a line. Never standing out except in work where talent is the standard. These are the expectations Asian Americans contend with as they find their place in contemporary US society. And this pattern used to assimilate it takes residence in their inner worlds too. In this way, you see the idea of a model. Minority veils individual feelings, histories and experiences. It erases tastes. It narrows skills. It quiets the many voices of the Asian diaspora. It sets up its own special and subtle interior conflict being lived in an oblivious world. On a broader scale, it's a myth that divides the racial landscape to. I'm thinking back to my experience meeting you in Chicago in October, and I remember being riveted by the very specific way you talked about Asian American and the distinctness of the discrimination and the challenge of being an Asian American, as opposed to an African-American or other groups in this country.
Kris: [00:15:52] Yeah, I would say there's yeah, a lot of complexity. The Korean-American poet Cathy Park Hong wrote a book called Minor Feelings, and that's her way of summing up the Asian American experience that our experiences considered minor merely to be put up with, not to be taken seriously. And I think that's in part because of the American racial dynamic. And I would say American racial dynamic is, by and large, determined by the slavery and the legacy of slavery. So it's been very much of a black, white affair. And that's understandable given how heinous slavery was. But American racial psyche is, I think, determined by that, you know, black and white experience. What that has meant for non-black minority groups is that we have been kind of sidelined.
Eileen: [00:16:59] You know, I just want to jump to thinking about there's managing your own experience and your own lifetime personally and professionally as we do. But then there's the the people that you work with. There's your practice. And, you know, as I understand it, you work with plenty of Asian American, especially women. And I wonder in light of what we're seeing and what we're talking about right now, what you've seen historically in your practice and then more recently.
Kris: [00:17:30] So when the 2021 Atlanta shooting of the Asian massage parlor workers happened in Atlanta, I had an explosive reaction from my Asian American female patients. What it did was kind of it opened the floodgate of my patients talking about their own racialized sexual traumas. So although my patients were, by and large, well educated, successful women, they resonated with the slain massage parlor workers who they imagined were being used as sex objects by white men. And, you know, this connects to the, again, the American involvement in Asian wars and development of perception of Asian women as sex objects. Right? You know, submissive, fragile, feminine, docile Asian women being perfect complement to the hyper masculinity of white men. So I think this is sort of in the culture. And until the Atlanta shooting and until I had the reactions from my patients, I just wasn't as aware of the way this was operating in the American culture at that unconscious level. But it really blew.
Eileen: [00:19:15] It open.
Kris: [00:19:15] Blew it open for me. What this has done for me, what was happening in my practice was that it got me in touch with my own dissociated racial trauma that I spoke to you about earlier, having to do with my mom being a mail order bride and so on. That was an experience that was buried in my consciousness, in my unconscious. I hadn't thought about it for many years, and I got in touch with that history, that piece of history for me. So I shared that in the context of a professional conference, I wrote about it. It's published in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and I presented on it. So it's rather personal material. And my good colleague Usha Tamanaha commented on it, and she was just so sensitive and wonderful about it. And then this senior white male analyst raises his hand during the discussion and has the audacity to say that he really didn't hear my presentation, but he heard which has discussion, and he proceeded to say that he has some Chinese patients who are so beautiful, and yet they don't seem to feel that way about themselves. What's up with this? You know, and he wasn't aware of the degree to which the he was seeing them in this sexualized and erotic way. They're so beautiful. Why don't they see it? You know, at a presentation where this was the central issue that I was talking about. How do you tap that as far as racial enactment goes?
Eileen: [00:21:14] How did you how did you respond?
Kris: [00:21:18] I was speechless, I confronted him about it and unfortunately he couldn't see it at all. And I mean very defensive response. And so that's how it ended up.
Eileen: [00:21:36] Chris's confrontation with her colleague is striking in more ways than one. It captures a cliche and an injustice, yes, but more so it identifies the need we have within our profession to listen to each other for what makes us unique. This is an exercise we're familiar with. It's the oath we take to listen and care, and let our patients find their words to reflect, question and suspend judgment, to try to anyway, to choose our beliefs wisely and our words even more so because it's what makes our practice powerful. Easy to say, but in practice, well, there's still work to do.
Kris: [00:22:32] I've come to realize there are racist elements to psychoanalysis in its theory and practice. How can it not? Right? So, personally, while psychoanalysis has helped me tend to my childhood traumas in Korea. I did feel as if I had to check my culture at the door and my struggles adapting to this new country and all these different levels, from language acquisition to understanding American social rules. I mean, being an immigrant was really one of the central organizing experience of my life. And frankly, that wasn't emphasized or understood or seen in my own analysis. Early 2000, I wrote about this phenomenon and let me share with you what I discovered. It occurred to me as an interesting inconsistency that the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud, was himself a member of a persecuted minority. And of course, all his followers were true. And Freud himself was an immigrant. Twice in his life. And with the rise of the Nazis, pretty much all psychoanalysts, Freud, onward, and all of his followers became refugees. They had to flee their countries in Europe and, you know, become refugees in England and also America.
Kris: [00:24:27] It's a profound experience. Now, when I think about how hard it was to adjust to America, I'm thinking these people, Freud and his followers must have had a hell of a time. Now as a collective group. They didn't talk about these experiences, and then they just doubled down on the importance of childhood experiences. It struck me as defensive. They couldn't talk about their anti-Semitism experiences, their refugee experiences. I think it was too much for them to wrap their minds around. Robert Prince, who's a psychoanalyst and who's a child of Holocaust survivor, and Emily Kirillov, write about how psychoanalysis itself is a survivor of the Holocaust. And I think this history has had a legacy that continues to the present, which is that childhood experiences are given privilege over these other experiences. And I think it's a disservice. I think it's a challenge that contemporary psychoanalysis faces. And I think it is it is meeting this challenge. Right. How do you help people from other countries and other cultures and people of minority background for whom the racial minority experience is central to their identity?
Eileen: [00:26:09] As therapists, our promise is to listen, engage with and challenge patients. But we ourselves are not unbiased. Truth be told, we're people, each with our own cultural perceptions. They're here, whatever we do, along with our racial blind spots. Which is why, more than anything, our work demands awareness, humility, and the ongoing intent to recognize truth. To notice our patients experience as opposed to our assumptions of their experience. So we must check in with ourselves to seek understanding beyond what we think we know.
Kris: [00:27:05] When I was a candidate, I had selected older white Jewish male analyst as a supervisor for my first control case, and he must have decided that I wasn't forthcoming with my feelings about the case. He had an interest in my countertransference reaction to the case, and he began giving me choices of adjectives. Are you sad, angry, afraid or whatnot?
Eileen: [00:27:45] And multiple.
Kris: [00:27:46] Choice. Multiple choice of feelings, right? And I think he must have determined that I wasn't quite capable of describing my own feelings, that so he was going to help out by telling me multiple choices. And I think it goes to the idea that Asian Americans are inscrutable, that Asian Americans don't have feelings, that we're robot like, work hard, courteous, cooperative, but we don't have internal life. And it felt patronizing. That would be one example. Another example, the very presentation that I gave that you was in the audience of the organizer of that panel. Wanted to see before the panel our write ups, and she proceeded to edit my write up and put Red line through all over it. I know enough to know that that's just not something you do. But she got worried about my English language and decided that that she needed to heavily edit my paper. And it struck me as, again, microaggression.
Eileen: [00:29:12] I would call that a macro myself, but yeah.
Kris: [00:29:15] Yeah, I mean, goes to this idea that we're Asian Americans are perpetual strangers and foreigners, right?
Eileen: [00:29:22] No. And like, you're still in school. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, presenting your work professionally at a panel.
Kris: [00:29:28] Yeah, exactly. This is, you know, plenary session here, and she's editing my paper. So I confronted her. You know, this seems rather troubling. And she did, to her credit, was able to own up to it. These experiences, I think, matter. And they're instructive to other Asian Americans. I think we need to have more Asian American psychoanalytically oriented therapists and psychoanalysts to speak about our experience and be centered in our experience and as Asian Americans, not in response to white gaze, per se, but to center our experience. And that would be my hope.
Eileen: [00:30:19] Big difference. Yeah, big difference between a defensive explanation position and making yourself known.
Kris: [00:30:25] Yes, exactly. Yeah. Thank you for putting it so concisely that way.
Eileen: [00:30:37] As we wrap up our conversation with Chris, we find ourselves standing at the intersection of history, culture, and individual experience. And we reflect not just on a personal account, but on a collective journey shared by many. From Chris's story of immigration and her roots in psychoanalysis to healing racial trauma, breaking stereotypes and reshaping the narrative inside our field. Her voice echoes so clearly the Asian American experience. In many ways, Chris reminds us that listening is not only receiving. It's acknowledging history. It's validating feelings. It's embracing diversity beyond bias. Yes. But more. It's exploring the unconscious beliefs that evade awareness. Chris calls us to see that our profession is not above the human tendency to favor the comfort of the known. For Asian Americans. As for other minorities, we all have a part to play to lift the veil of prejudice and better nurture what is hidden in plain sight. The multifaceted experiences of marginalized groups. Above all else, Chris, is proof that immigration is much more than moving from one place to another. It's adapting to change while holding on to identity. It's stepping into a landscape so vast in search for belonging. It's connecting through our differences. So as we move forward, let us learn from Chris's journey. Taking her stance. Making space to hear the voices of our collective history. Dignified and diverse. Harmonious as they resonate together in hearing her experience. The personal, the professional, the excitements and the disappointments. I feel I have truly met Chris and hopefully so have you. This has been the art of listening again. My name is Eileen Dunn. Please join us for our next episode as we continue to dive into the space between speaker and listener. You can follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'd love to read your thoughts on the show, so if you have a minute, leave us a review to let us know what you think. We want to capture what you feel as you listen. It helps us find out how we can keep bringing you new conversations, and we'll see you the next time.
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