A fundamental change in vision: where black lives matter

Using the lens of clinical work, the author, a white supervisor, plots her concerns about unconscious racism in the training of a black supervisee. Years later this supervisee brings a distressed black trainee nurse to supervision who is struggling with relational difficulties while suffering from unconscious racism in her hospital. Supervisor and supervisee grapple to offer the patient treatment on both fronts. The author explores the underlying presence of ‘white privilege’ and ‘unconscious racism’ which finds a global audience as a result of the killing of George Floyd – an event which also had implications for the long-term supervisory partnership. Links to Jessica Benjamin’s concept of ‘doer and done to’ are made, as well as discussion of a gradual change of vision in the supervisor herself. The author also makes use of insights gained from consultancy work in a multi-racial company and two Channel 4 UK television programmes that feature workshops on unconscious racism in a mixed secondary school in the London Borough of Sutton.     

Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic: the hijacking of the human imagination

This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or ‘triggers’ un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear – leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations and alternative realities such as conspiracy theories. Alternatively, the imagination can be employed in more realistic and creative ways – leading through conscious suffering to healing and wholeness. Which path the imagination takes is shown to depend on the capacity of individuals to feel the full reality of the human condition in general and the exquisite vulnerability of our existence as fragile human beings at this moment in history. Ernest Becker’s analysis of our ‘denial of death’ and his urgency to embrace our common human vulnerability is explored in relation to Jung’s early tendency to deny the body. The author proposes that the more creative uses of the imagination, connected to a more humble and realistic apprehension of our common destiny, may be seen in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that swept the world in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.     

Is this a good time? Political activism and other in the temenos

This paper discusses raciality and Africanist culture as elements of the analytical clinical experience. The history of American Jungian psychology, and its relationship with the African diaspora, is reviewed with a perspective that seeks to deepen understanding of racism as an aspect of psychoanalytical institutional life. An attempt to separate political activism from the clinical setting is explored with consideration of the necessary intertwining relationship between socialization, racial identity and racism. Diversity and inclusion are becoming cultural signature markers of clinical work with individuals who have oftentimes, within the psychoanalytical clinical setting, been described due to ethnicity, as other. Political activism such as the Black Lives Matter movement stretches consciousness towards an insistence that blackness matters, skin colour matters and the lives of Africanist individuals matter. This paper reflects on cultural racial identity, the influence of politics on the individual, and the effects of these on the analytical relationship.     

Intentional collaboration,predictable complicity,and proactive prevention: U.S. schools’ ethical responsibilities in slowing the school-to-deportation pipeline

ABSTRACT

In the United States, constitutional and statutory law reinforce the right of all children to receive an education, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. In a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment and law enforcement, however, partnerships among school districts, local law enforcement, and the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security subject undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to indefensible levels of risk for detention and deportation. We identify three stances that U.S. schools may take in the face of a potential ‘school-to-deportation pipeline.’ Schools that engage in intentional collaboration actively increase detention and deportation by referring students to immigration officials for criminal, non-criminal, and even non-disciplinary activity. Schools that engage in predictable complicity may not intend to subject their undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to detention or deportation, but still put students at risk by involving police in school policies. We argue that U.S. schools should instead engage in proactive protection of immigrant students and families, including actively resisting federal policies when necessary.     

Go Set a Watchman: revealing phantom narratives and shattering projections in the era of Black Lives Matter

Harper Lee’s novels, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, are examined through the lens of reader-response theory and the Jungian concept of the cultural complex or phantom narratives. Socio-historical context includes the American civil rights movement of the 60’s as well as Black Lives Matter. The clinical and institutional implications are briefly considered.     

Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed

Social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, surge when support grows for their social justice goals. At their core, social movements advance when people act collectively by rising in solidarity with a shared purpose to address injustice and inequality. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, this review investigates how social movements succeed in creating social change. We build on an established 21^st‐century framework for how social movements succeed to outline the promising practices of successful social movements. For each of these practices, we identify the consumer psychology mechanisms that motivate collective action and encourage people to transform from bystanders to upstanders, those who provide the grassroots momentum for successful social movements. We illustrate this framework with examples from the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, we highlight insights from consumer psychology that promote an understanding of social movements, and we raise research questions to encourage more consumer psychologists to investigate how social movements succeed.     

2020 New World Order

This paper proposes that as the nation move toward the 2020 election, civil harmony might be possible with an ideological shift. Using the words of writer Sylvia Wynter in her work, “ 1492: New World View” who suggest that although this country was structured with domination and subjugation from its inception, this nation could be reimagined to embrace diverse people co-existing. Understanding too that reconciliation must be defined by those who are marginalized, the author using an Afro-futuristic ideology for a 2020 New World Order suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement could carry the torch.     

A serious misunderstanding: synchronicity and the generation of meaning

Abstract: This paper points to the problem caused by the fact that numerous academic ‘Jung studies’ are conducted on the basis of the English translation of Jung's works without any knowledge of his original texts and illustrates it with the misconstrual that Jung's concept of synchronicity suffered in the studies of many recent authors, as exemplified by two articles in the September 2011 issue of the JAP. The translation of ‘sinngemäße Koinzidenz’ as ‘meaningful coincidence’ seduced those writers to take synchronistic ‘meaning’ as meaning the meaningfulness of life or even as ‘transcendent meaning’, which is incompatible with Jung's synchronicity concept, and to replace Jung's strictly intellectual project of establishing an explanatory principle for synchronistic events (in addition to the principle of causality for all other events) by the fundamentally different project of focusing on the impact that such events may have for the experiencing subjective mind, on ‘human meaning‐making’, and, with a decidedly anti‐intellectual bias, of hoping for ‘shifts into non‐rational states of mind’.     

The construct of the ‘mana personality’ in Jung’s works: a historic-hermeneutic perspective. Part I

According to Jung, the ‘mana personality’ represents an archetypal phase of the individuation process of remarkable interest in psychological, hermeneutic and theoretical terms. This figure is characterized by a high initiatic potential that fosters the approximation of the consciousness of the Self. At the same time, it entails a risk of psychic inflation or of ‘similarity to God’. In this article, divided in two parts, I deal with those aspects through a reconstruction of the development of this notion within Jung’s published works, adopting a primarily chronological and, secondarily, thematic approach moving from a textual analysis of relevant passages. In this first part, I consider some passages which deal mainly with the risks of the assimilation of the unconscious in ‘La structure de l’inconscient’ (1916) that preceded the successive proper treatment of the mana personality’s notion presented, and here examined, in ‘The relations between the ego and the unconscious’ (1928). Successively, I take into consideration some further issues related to it discussed by Jung in ‘The structure of the psyche’ (1928/1931), ‘Archaic man’ (1931), and ‘Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’.     

What Do the AMCD Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies Mean in the Context of Black Lives Matter?

In this article, the authors discuss how the legacy of hypersurveillance and egregious anti‐Black vigilante violence and police brutality helped foment the Black Lives Matter movement. The authors consider how the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar‐McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015) can operate as an ethical professional framework counselor educators can use with counselors‐in‐training to increase their awareness, knowledge, and skills in relation to the state‐sanctioned violence Black people routinely experience. En este artículo, los autores discuten cómo el legado de hipervigilancia y la violencia brutal ejercida contra personas negras por parte de la policía y patrullas urbanas ayudaron a fomentar el movimiento Black Lives Matter. Los autores consideran cómo las Competencias en Consejería Multicultural y Justicia Social (Singh, Nassar‐McMillan, Butler & McCullough, 2015) pueden funcionar como un marco ético profesional que los educadores de consejeros pueden usar con sus consejeros en formación para aumentar su conciencia, conocimientos, y habilidades en relación con la violencia autorizada por el Estado que sufren con frecuencia las personas negras.     

The Origins and Legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Purpose

This paper provides a historical review of the origins and legacy of the 1964 Civil Rights Act through the lens of the African American Civil Rights and the Women’s Rights Movements.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The historical narrative was developed using psychological, historical, and legal source material.

Findings

While the Civil Rights Act did not immediately change the landscape of equality in the American workplace, it signaled a fundamental shift in the treatment of racial and gender diversity. In concert with other social, legal, and political shifts, it paved the way for progress on issues like affirmative action, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment.

Implications

Without an understanding of the historical development and consequences of the Civil Rights Act, it is easy to lose sight of how the act has shaped the understanding of equality in the American workforce. Further, the way in which rights movements evolved alongside each other illuminates a need to focus not only on equality between majority and minority groups but also on issues of equality among minority groups.

Originality/Value

Previous reviews of the Civil Rights Act and rights movements tend to focus narrowly on one issue or group, and approach that concern from a single academic discipline. In contrast, we provide a review of the roots and consequences of the Civil Rights Act based on the developments of two rights movements, and draw from sources in psychology, history, political science, and legal perspectives to provide a broader picture of this landmark legislation.     

Journal reviews

Articles reviewed: Bernstein, Jeanne Wolff. ‘Countertransference: our new royal road to the unconscious?’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues Crastnopol, Margaret. ‘The analyst's personality: Winnicott analyzing Guntrip as a case in point’, Contemporary Psychoanalysis Epstein, L. ‘The analyst's “bad-analyst” feelings: a counterpart to the process of resolving implosive defenses’, Contemporary Psychoanalysis Garwood, Alfred. ‘Psychic security: its origins, development and disruption‘, British Journal of Psychotherapy Haynes, Jane. ‘Facing the self: is man no more than this?’, Harvest Papadopoulos, Renos K. ‘Storied community as secure base: Response to the paper by Nancy Caro Hollander “Exile: Paradoxes of Loss and Creativity”’, British Journal of Psychotherapy Sand, Rosemary. ‘The interpretation of dreams: Freud and the Western tradition’ & Greenberg, Ramon & Pearlman, Chester. ‘The interpretation of dreams: a classic revisited’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues Spensley, Sheila. ‘Learning from Bion’, Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists Wilgowicz, Perel. ‘Listening psychoanalytically to the Shoah half a century on’,International Journal of Psychoanalysis     

Simone Weil: The Ethics of Affliction and the Aesthetics of Attention

ABSTRACT

For Simone Weil the invocation of ‘rights’ to address extreme human suffering–what she calls ‘affliction’–is ‘ludicrously inadequate’. Rights, Weil argues, invite a response, whereas what the afflicted require is not dialogue but simply to be heard. For Weil, hearing the ‘cry’ of the afflicted is the basis of all justice. The task of such a hearing is given over to Weil’s concept of attention, which demands an ethics of creative silence. This paper will argue that central to Weil’s ethics of attention, and thus the way she thinks we should show compassion and act justly, is the Kantian aesthetic concept of disinterestedness. I will argue that whilst Weil is influenced by Kant in multiple ways, it is his aesthetics, rather than his normative moral theory, that is most at play in her own ethical theory of attention.     

Journal Reviews

Field , Nathan (London). ‘The Primitive and the Pathological’. British Journal of Psychotherapy Fordham , Michael . (London) ‘Ending psychotherapy’ Zinkin , Louis . (London) ‘All's well that ends well, or is it?’Group Analysis Fosshage , J.L. (New York). ‘Towards reconceptualising transference: theoretical and clinical considerations‘. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis Hillman , James . (Thompson, CT, U.S.A.) ‘Once more into the fray (A response to Wolfgang Giegerich's “Killings”)’. Spring Josey , Alden . (Delaware, U.S.A.) Molecules as mandalas: modern chemistry and the quest for the Self.’Psychological Perspectives Phillips , Adam . ‘Contingency for Beginners’. Winnicott Studies Rigsby , Roberta . (U.S.A.).‘Jungians, archetypalists and fear of feminism’. Continuum Samuels , Andrew . (London). “The professionalization of Carl G. Jung's Analytical Psychology Clubs’. Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences     

The construct of the ‘mana personality’ in Jung’s works: a historic-hermeneutic perspective. Part II

This is the second part of an article that tries to provide a framework of understanding of, and a seminal reflection on, a highly interesting yet little explored psychological construct of Jung’s analytical psychology, namely the ‘mana personality’. Here I take into consideration some issues around the ‘saviour complex’, discussed in Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, concerning both the psychological analysis of the individual and the socio-political level related to the collective horizon of the 1930s. Moreover, I consider the continuity of Jung’s analysis of such issues in other works such as ‘Psychology and national problems’ (1936), Symbols of Transformation (1952), and Aion (1950). I finally make some suggestions concerning Jung’s apparent hermeneutic tendency to apply the construct of the mana personality to collective historical phenomena.     

Constructing the collective unconscious

Abstract: Innovative attempts at collating Jungian analytical psychology with a range of ‘post‐modern’ theories have yielded significant results. This paper adopts an alternative strategy: a Lacanian vantage point on Jungian theory that eschews an attempt at reconciling Jung with post‐structuralism. A focused Lacanian gaze on Jung will establish an irreducible tension between Jung's view of archetypes as factors immanent to the psyche and a Lacanian critique that lays bare the contingent structures and mechanisms of their constitution, unveiling the supposed archetypes’a posteriori production through the efficacy of a discursive field. Theories of ideology developed in the wake of Lacan provide a powerful methodological tool allowing to bring this distinction into focus. An assembly of Lacan's fragmentary accounts of Jung will be supplemented with an approach to Jungian theory via ?i?ek's Lacan‐oriented theory of the signifying mechanism underpinning ‘ideology’. Accordingly, the Jungian archetype of the self, which is considered in some depth, can begin to be seen in a new light, namely as a ‘master signifier’, not only of Jung's academic edifice, but also —and initially—of the discursive strategies that establish his own subjectivity. A discussion of Jung's approach to mythology reveals how the ‘quilting point’ of his discourse comes to be coupled with a correlate in the Real, a non‐discursive ‘sublime object’ conferring upon archetypes their fascinating aura.     

The plight and promise of contemporary psychoanalysis in the light of its social history

This paper addresses the many changes which have beset psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic community since the widespread, general acceptance of both by the educated, middle-class public in the 1950s. It attempts to explain these changes, at least in part, by reflecting upon them in the light of the history of the psychoanalytic movement and upon the rise of dynamic psychology as well. Many in the psychoanalytic community think that their work is being ignored, devalued, and even attacked by an increasing number of influential persons and organizations. Critics claim that, epistemologically, psychoanalysis is scientifically invalid; therapeutically, it is ineffective; economically, it is too costly and takes too long; and theoretically, it is pluralized to the point of fragmentation. This is the plight of psychoanalysis. This paper argues that many of the major problems which once beset Freud and his colleagues, and which beset the psychoanalytic community today, are best understood in terms of two sociological processes, legitimation and institutionalization. Legitimation is the socio-cultural process whereby a new idea (e.g., Freud's theories, Jung's theories) contests the established web of ideas which give coherence and meaning to social and personal identity. Institutionalization refers to the way legitimated ideas replace once-contested views of reality. The single most decisive factor generating the plight of contemporary psychoanalysis is the ‘decision’ (1) to socially locate (institutionalize) psychoanalysis in institutes, rather than in clinics or universities, and (2) to represent psychoanalysis to the public (legitimation) as a medical science. In order to illustrate and advance these claims, I first define and distinguish sociologically the institute, the clinic and the university. Second, I describe the origins and development of the ‘decision’, made by Freud and his followers, to locate or institutionalize psychoanalysis in institutes. Third, I compare and contrast this early pattern of legitimation and institutionalization with that of the present-day psychoanalytic movement in England (relatively benign institutionalization) and in the United States (relatively destructive institutionalization). Throughout this discussion I draw upon the new literature on the history of psychoanalysis, past and present. As for the ‘promise’ for psychoanalysis, it can materialize insofar as psychoanalysis establishes contact with the clinic and the university (re-legitimation) and insofar as that contact becomes so self-evident that it is taken for granted (i.e., it is re-institutionalized).     

George Floyd’s death and COVID-19: inflection points in the Anthropocene Era?

George Floyd’s death, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are on a continuum from the immediate shock of viewing a video-recorded murder, to millions dying worldwide from disease, to deaths related to climate change accumulating over a millennium. They participate in the powerful archetypes of death and inequality. ‘Increase’, Hexagram 42 in the I Ching, archetypically addresses inequalities at all levels – racial, economic, political and the profound imbalance between humans and the environment. Floyd’s death highlights the consequences of systemic racism and income inequalities. The pandemic as ‘nature’s revenge’ hits minority populations harder due to underlying health conditions resulting from poverty and greater exposure to the virus in the workplace. President Trump as Trickster showed Americans their shadow and his response to the pandemic amplified its severity. The pandemic has shocked our social, political and economic systems and paused our species rush into environmental disasters at many levels. The disruptions present opportunities for reflection, experimentation and developing new systems as old forms are challenged. The ecological dimensions of Jung’s concepts emphasize interconnectedness at all levels and the paradigm shift he called a ‘new age’ provides a framework for altering the course of the Anthropocene Era.     

Domesticating Deathcare: The Women of the U.S. Natural Deathcare Movement

This article examines the women-led natural deathcare movment in the early 21^st century U.S., focusing upon the movement’s non-coincidental epistemological and gender-political similarities to the natural childbirth movement. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon the author’s intensive interviews with pioneers and leaders of the U.S. natural deathcare movement, as well as from the author’s own participation in the movement, this article argues that the political similarities between the countercultural natural childbirth and natural deathcare movements reveal a common cultural provocation—one that spans the natal transition and the fatal transition.