PERSON: Aruna Khilanani

Self-employed

Psychiatrist

I may be one of the only psychiatrists in the country that has a Masters Level body of knowledge in theory on marginalized identities. This is important because it could really affect you.

My background is literary, and I have a love of stories, people, and immersing myself in other worlds. I majored in English at the University of Michigan, and completed a Masters of Humanities at the University of Chicago focusing gender theory, race theory, African American Studies, Embodiment, Post Colonialism, Sexuality, queer theory, Culture, South Asian Studies, and Marxism.

This is important because if conscious and unconscious structures of racism/ sexism/ homophobia, classism exist in all aspects of our world, why wouldn’t it exist in your psychiatrist? Why would your psychiatrist be spared ? And, how would that affect you? Worse yet, could the very act of seeking help actually be destructive towards you?

Blackness. Whiteness. Mixed Ethnicity. Masculinity. Femininity. Sex. Identity. Queer. These questions often go unexplored as marginalized groups often face the dual problem of wanting to explore their identity, while living in a world that situates them, as the very cause of the worlds problem-situating them as Other, and locating them as the cause of their frustrations. How do you live in a world like that?

I have a high level of expertise in seeing both the conscious and unconscious structures of racism/ sexism/ homophobia/classism that would allow a real safety in treating marginalized groups who may want to change aspects of themselves, and struggle with or be curious about questions around their identity. They haven’t felt safe to explore these questions for REAL reasons including the onslaught of unrecognized racism/ sexism/classism in a world that they face on a daily basis, and the long dirty history of psychiatry and psychology in pathologizing marginalized group by not accounting for aspects of differences in experience, and dismissing differences in how different people are treated as ‘fantasy’ or worse yet, blaming them. To every person, who has been harmed by psychiatry or psychology, I would like to extend an apology. Enough is enough. It’s time.

You have the right to become who you want to be and feel safe in the process of doing it.

I am rooting for you.

>> Https://arunakhilanani.com/