Seeing the Invisible: Trauma, Loss, and Racial Psychic Lives in Psychoanalytic Practice

In this lecture, Shirley Liao, PhD, FIPA will share a paper presented as part of a panel presentation at IPA Asia Pacific 2026 conference. In an era marked by political unrest, environmental collapse, and digital oversaturation, this presentation will offer a closer look at the transnational phenomenon of "parachute kids" that emerged in the 1980s and continues—from Asia to the West, particularly to the U.S. Often, these minors who are sent abroad alone in the name of seeking educational opportunities, consciously and unconsciously carry their parental fantasy about life in the U.S. and the responsibility to fulfill the parents' narcissistic expectations for their children to achieve dreams and wishes that they did not realize. Many of these kids carry into their adulthood both intra- and interpsychic/racial tension, isolation, and dissociation (Eng & Han, 2018). The vulnerability of young age while having no available "good enough" parental object can often render parachute kids' adjustment into the U.S. culture traumatic for a fragile and budding self (Brady, 2015). Narcissistic defense can easily become the default mechanism to survive and accommodate to the undue external pressure and internal experience of aloneness, parental abandonment, and racial displacement (Brandchaft, 2007). Underneath the "soft belly" of this narcissistic coping is a tremendous amount of shame. The presenter will offer a unique theoretical formulation of the self-experiences of the "parachute kids" who often struggle with profound invisibility. A trauma-informed, relational/intersubjective approach that integrates the body into psychoanalytic practice will be discussed for the participants to apply to their own clinical work.