During the processes of transference and counter-transference, issues of race and culture can affect the client-therapist relationship even when neither is manifested nor acknowledged. The facilitator will provide participants with opportunities to develop awareness, sensitivity, and skill in this regard when working with clients.

Patients will explore the issue of race as a cultural complex within the therapeutic container. Topics include the archetype of the dark feminine, the psychohistorical development of race, and the symbolic values assigned to the use of black and white as colors. Participants will explore personal racial awareness in a group setting, discuss various case studies, and review an African American teenager’s completed sandplay case.

Tessamarie Capitolo, MFT, is a Jungian analytic psychotherapist and a teaching member of Sandplay Therapists of America. She has private practices in San Francisco and San Rafael. Tessamarie is the founder of the Child Therapy Institute of Marin, which serves a diverse population. She has taught sandplay nationally and internationally and has published several articles on racial symbolism in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy.