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Exploring the Dynamic Unconscious: Intersubjectivity and the Raced-Self in Vertically Infected HIV-Positive Adolescents
Abstract
This paper explores intrapsychic life as a site of socio-political insertion from birth. The first part of this paper engages with the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein on the notion of the dynamic unconscious and the Oedipal situation as key processes in the development of the self. The paper goes on to discuss the critical contemporary position taken up by scholars who have highlighted the racialisation of the Oedipus complex and its use in justifying racial hierarchies. Furthermore, the paper engages with the unconscious as an intersubjective organising principle. Franz Fanon's psychoanalytic framework, that deals with colonial subjectivity, is reviewed here in order to explore how the raced-self becomes imposed and internalised. The second part of the paper locates this theoretical argument within the context of HIV. Intrapsychic development, which comes to be located in our unconscious mind from birth, cannot be understood outside of specific socio-political considerations. The unique developmental challenges of HIV for those who are vertically infected cannot be taken for granted, and there must be more deliberation on the ways in which intersubjective, politically aware versions of psychoanalysis can be used to inform clinical knowledge and practice in working with vertically infected HIV-positive adolescents in South Africa.
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References
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