COLLOQUIUM  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026 IN PERSON

The common expectation of Asians living in America involves a fantasy that adhering to the demands of the model-minority myth, regardless of present socioeconomic status or future attainability, will shield them (through class privilege) from racism. This corrosive fantasy not only harms Asians in United States, but also justifies anti-Black logics when applied to other people of color because it implies that all "failure" is a result of not trying hard enough when in fact the logic of the fantasy is a key component of systemic racism. In Passing for Perfect: College Imposters and Other Model Minorities, Erin Khuê Ninh argues that being a “model minority” is not a “myth” but coded into one’s programming as an identity. Through clinical examples, and by using the concept of Esther Bick's primal skin function and Didier Anzieu’s concept of the skin ego, I seek to explore the impact of the intergenerational trauma of "knowing" one's place/one's value during preverbal stages of life and how this relational trauma comes into sharp relief during the process of adult immigration.

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Host or Publisher Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis