From ‘Asian American’ to ‘American Asian’ - an Indian Immigrant’s Psychoanalytic Experience of USA

This paper merges autobiographical fragments, two short clinical vignettes, and two longer case studies to examine how minoritization and “othering” enter the psychoanalytic therapist’s room when the analyst is a South Asian immigrant. Beginning with the author’s positionality and the developmental arc from over-assimilation to greater integration, the paper then presents brief encounters around guns and institutional signifiers of power, followed by process notes from a (disguised) case revolving around ethnic humor. Finally, the author describes a multi-year treatment with a biracial patient whose recurrent inquiry – “Where are you really from?” – became a gateway to working with desire, fear, and dissociated self-states across the analytic dyad. Dream and reverie are used (in non-graphic clinical language) to render intergenerational colorism and splitting, with subsequent movement toward integration. The discussion highlights curiosity over rapid disclosure, careful attention to frame, and supervisor-assisted metabolization of racialized countertransference. The paper uses a South Asian immigrant’s perspective and aspires to contribute practice-based knowledge for clinicians and trainees navigating code-switching, authenticity, and belonging in larger Asian American analytic work. The paper does not speak for all Asian Americans, which includes a very diverse diaspora, each with its own cultural heritage and challenges.