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'Problematic and Racist': NYC Psychiatrist Defends Yale Lecture and Her 'Fantasy' About Shooting White People

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ABOVE: Watch Gordon Robertson's commentary on the New York psychiatrist's words from Friday's The 700 Club.

A psychiatrist who spoke to Yale University's School of Medicine's Child Study Center in early April, describing a wild fantasy where she kills white people, says her words were misinterpreted. 

The Washington Examiner reports Dr. Aruna Khilanani's racist-sounding speech was titled The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.

Here is one short example of what she had to say.

"I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f*****g favor," Khilanani said.

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The Manhattan, New York-based psychiatrist reportedly made the comment while giving the lecture that included her negative opinion of white people.

Khilanani also told the audience she had even stopped talking to her white friends because "there are no good apples out there" and "white people make her blood boil."

"This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry," she continued, claiming she only had less than one percent of her white friends left. 

"It was also a public service," the psychiatrist added.

Khilanani defended her comments in an interview with The New York Times published Sunday. She told the newspaper, "Before I gave the talk, I said, I want you to observe your thoughts and feelings as I talk."

She said she only intended to use "provocation as a tool for real engagement" when she said she dreamed of killing white people. 

"Too much of the discourse on race is a dry, bland regurgitation of new vocabulary words with no work in the unconscious," Khilanani said. "And, if you want to hit the unconscious, you will have to feel real negative feelings."

The psychiatrist noted her audience and critics should not have taken her words literally but used them a tool for therapy. 

"My speaking metaphorically about my own anger was a method for people to reflect on negative feelings," Khilanani claimed. "To normalize negative feelings. Because if you don't, it will turn into a violent action."

"I said there's a difference between a thought, a fantasy, and an action. Now, my reflection on my own rage was actually that I was feeling impotent. So, that's where I was going with that. And kind of normalizing feelings of hatred. This is stuff that exists, and I need to dive deep within myself to reflect on how it is that I got here. So, there is a reality here, like, did I actually cut white people out of my life? Absolutely," she said.

The New York Post reports Khilanani earned her New York medical state license in 2008.  The psychiatrist is not affiliated with Yale.

She was called out online over the weekend for her comments made during the lecture on April 6.  In a statement, the Yale School of Medicine said several faculty members "expressed concern" about Khilanani's talk.  The school also decided to post the video but limited it only to those who were members of the Yale community.

The school also added a disclaimer to the video: "This video contains profanity and imagery of violence. Yale School of Medicine expects the members of our community to speak respectfully to one another and to avoid the use of profanity as a matter of professionalism and acknowledgment of our common humanity. Yale School of Medicine does not condone imagery of violence or racism against any group."

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a Yale professor of social and natural science, tweeted on Monday that Khilanani's "disturbing fantasies" didn't bother him.

"To be clear, it's not having disturbing fantasies that is problematic, nor even discussing such fantasies in a classroom," Christakis wrote. "Most human beings have disturbing fantasies, and this can be a proper topic for discussion. People's actions are more important than their thoughts or words."

In a follow-up tweet, Christakis called Khilanani's words "problematic and racist."

"Rather, it is the other arguments this speaker makes, and their pejorative generalizations about people based on their race, that are worrisome and often unfounded," the professor wrote. "It's her line of argument, leaving aside her sharing of her fantasies, that is problematic and racist."

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