Racial Legacies Jung, Politics and Culture

1. Introduction  2. Imagining our ancestors  3. The legacy of the Atlantic slave trade  4. The Ties that Bind: The Racial Complex  5. The creation of the ‘Other’  6. Modern psychology and its influences  7. Colour Matters  8. The Politics of Race  9. Closing Reflections.

Biography

Fanny Brewster, Ph.D., M.F.A., is a Jungian analyst and Professor of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA.

Helen Morgan is a Fellow of the British Psychotherapy Foundation and is a training analyst and supervisor for the Jungian Analytic Association within the BPF.

'Brewster and Morgan dare to enter this powerful conversation in exploring the assumptions and challenges about race. Dialoguing from within their own cultural, social-political context exploring European and African diaspora histories as Jungian analysts, they consider the intergenerational context and its relevance for us today. In this important text they create a rich psychological space in which to meet, reflect and share experiences finding a soulful meeting place. This important discussion invites us to re-think and critically interrogate our shared histories, collective memories, psychic disenfranchisement, through radical honesty and to encounter each other through opening dialogue.'
Anthea Benjamin, Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Group Analyst UKCP & BACP registered　

'This is a brilliant and creative piece of work that examines raciality from an Africanist and White perspective. It is also an act of empowerment and response to Jung excising the black experience. A self-identified Africanist, Fanny Brewster, PhD centers Africanist traditions and the healing arts in the treatment room. She takes us on a journey of mapping out her ancestral origins with imaginings of her ancestor standing on a pier. Her poem to her ancestor took my breath away. We are reminded that we are not outside of history as we live these horrors today. This is a valuable model of how to weave cultural Africanist traditions, spirituality and history in an analytic psychological treatment.'
Rossanna Echegoyén, LCSW, Founder and Co-Chair of the Committee for Race and Ethnicity at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis

'Racial Legacies is the poetic and scholarly outcome of a deep, courageous, transatlantic engagement with racial complex by Fanny Brewster and Helen Morgan. This is an essential book for 21^st century Jungians, with two distinct voices to guide engagement with systems of racism and white privilege and their implications for the theory and practice of Analytical Psychology.'
Jane Johnson, Senior member British Psychotherapy Foundation and British Jungian Analytic Association

 'In this unique work, Brewster and Morgan collaborate to intertwine their voices and stories – reaching across the Atlantic bringing the different UK and US cultures into the mix – in the service of exploring our relationships to race. Brewster and Morgan take the field to the cutting edge of where and how analysts need to be addressing race head on in the era following the murder of George Floyd. Their dialogue models respectful interaction while confronting history, theory and politics head on. They rightly alert us: "In our contemporary practice of psychology we must be aware of the racialized foundations of Modern Psychology". Brewster alerts us: "The voice of members of the African Diaspora when expressed says that the whiteness of psychoanalysis does not see them, cannot see them and include their cultural identity of blackness". If Jungian analysis is to dig itself out of its at times racist silo, it needs to pay attention to this book. The authors challenge us to have "sufficient confidence in the robustness of the core principles of psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic theory to trust that they can withstand some rattling". The book ends by turning back on itself to provide a meta view of the writing and process of managing the intrinsic challenges of co-writing from both a black and a white perspective which is profoundly honest, transparent and moving. A model for us all.'
Ruth Williams, Jungian Training and Supervising Analyst (AJA). Author of Jung: The Basics

'Jungian Analysts Fanny Brewster, an African American Black and Helen Morgan, a Caucasian from England joined in a courageous endeavor to explore the complexities of racism, politics, culture and psychology. Through their trust, mistrust, struggles and openness they display a willingness and vulnerability to hold different perspectives while continuing to talk. This book is a recommended read for those who are interested in understanding how to hold different perspectives while engaging in heartfelt conversations around difficult subject matter. The authors open conversations provide a psychological model that can improve racial relationships and help create a future just society.'
Jane Selinske, Ed.D., LCSW, NCPsyA, President C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytic Psychology, NY

'I find myself between loud applause and profound sadness and tears as I finish reading Racial Legacies: Jung, Politics and Culture. I am in tears of white guilt, of compassion for the years and years of personal and political struggle on the part of black people. Fanny Brewster and Helen Morgan clarify a picture of how hard it is to address systemic racism without an empathic understanding of the centuries of greed, torture, white power and unconsciousness suffered by Africanist people, particularly in the south of the United States. In her book, Caste,　Isabel Wilkerson talks of class consciousness as "the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that (they) look like the natural order of things". It is this cruel complacency that Jungian psychology has the potential to expose by helping to make clear the power of unconscious archetypes, such as equating whiteness with goodness and righteousness, blackness with evil and badness. How long must we wait?'
Elizabeth Stevenson, M.Div. Jungian Psychoanalyst

'Every few years, a book comes along that revitalizes, restores, renews our faith in womankind, taking us by the hand, leading us into the dream world of our collective past from which we emerge more wholly ourselves – which is, Racial Legacies: Jung, Politics and Culture. Generous, precise and unsentimental, Fanny Brewster and Helen Morgan offer a brilliant collaboration that achieves this and more. Brewster and Morgan have created a deeply personal and moving book, perfectly suited for the times we are living, the authors compare their own ethnic backgrounds with others to create a ‘sharing space’ of enlightenment . . . A thought-provoking must read book.'
Dianne Travis-Teague, Director, Alumni Relations, Pacifica Graduate Institute

'What a wonderful idea to bring disparate voices together to explore how each approaches the history and experience of cultural differences within the field of psychoanalysis. Racial Legacies: Jung, Politics and Culture by Fanny Brewster and Helen Morgan provides a thoughtful, fresh discussion of the presence of the Other both within and outside of the consulting room. Recounting their individual experiences of their own races in childhood, Brewster and Morgan go on to examine and compare their first notable encounters with others from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and share their "wonderment and concern" for race in analytic relationships.'
Beth Boardman, RN, MA, PhD, Lecturer, Mythologist, Author, Chair, PGIAA Advisory Board