This Asian Will Not Be Analyzed

There is an idea misattributed to Freud that a certain “race” (e.g., the Irish) cannot be analyzed. One of the problems of this statement is its particularity. Thinking a certain race cannot be analyzed not only accepts the perniciousness of categorical racial difference, but also overlooks a more central idea Freud investigated in clinical work: that an unconscious antagonism inherent to subjectivity is the motivation and resistance to know oneself. This is the premise of this paper, which illustrates samples of Filipino American experiences in the psychoanalytic consulting room. Several vignettes are presented, in which fantasies of the author’s identity are conjured to facilitate and hinder the analysis. The intrapsychic, interpersonal and sociohistorical conflicts featured in these cases reflect not only how the Philippines can be positioned in American and Asian imaginations, but also how investments in the identities of self and other reveal how we relate to our constitutive lack. It finally reflects on the jouissance (enjoyment) taken in identity’s rewards, exclusions and impossibility.