THE RACIAL COMPLEX
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
- Dr. Fanny Brewster, Jungian Analyst, colleague and friend, joins This Jungian Life to discuss her forthcoming book, The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race. Complexes tend to operate autonomously and unconsciously, have strong feeling-tones, and contain archetypal fuel. The racial complex, a complicated mix of color, class and culture, operates individually and collectively and in multiple ways. Although shadow projection and “othering” are intrinsic to the racial complex, America’s history of slavery further intensifies it. Like other complexes, the racial complex cannot be either denied or defeated-it can, however, be lifted into consciousness. As with any complex, learning, discussion and self-reflection can expand awareness, connection and compassion.
HERE'S THE DREAM WE ANALZYE:
"The scene begins with me driving my car to a hotel. I park up in a space near the entrance and go inside. After I have looked around a bit I look out of the large window to see that I have left my dog, a brown Labrador, tied to the car. As it is a grey day the dog is laying down underneath lest it rain. A white woman in her 40s with curly hair appears along with two burly white bald men. The woman squats over the car and urinates onto the dog. I am furious and rush outside to rescue the dog, but the two men get in the way, manhandling me roughly. I know they are bigger than me and that I am outnumbered but I fight for my dog as I suddenly wake up."
REFERENCES:
Brewster, Fanny. The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race. a.co/d/gKv3wJu
Brewster, Fanny. Archetypal Grief: Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss. a.co/d/cJTqhgu
Brewster, Fanny. African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows. a.co/d/fNTfVe1
Adams, Michael. The Multicultural Imagination: “Race”, Color and the Unconscious. a.co/d/hthZRvM
Singer, Tom and Samuel L. Kimbles. The Cultural Complex. a.co/d/1uzCmsE
DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People To Talk About Racism. a.co/d/hRCVv2r
Get Out. (fILM). en.wikipedia.o...
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As a Jungian, Pan-Africanist, Marxist, and critical educator, I can't say that we are one race because the concept itself is knowledge power category of domination that emerged out of Europe. Much of these racial complexes are deeply rooted in the political economy. Its time for the Jungian community to investigate the role that capitalism plays in producing and reproducing modalities of domination. We need new ways of relating beyond race. Frantz Fanon says, we must create a new human being.
Lovely, very interesting and helpful episode! Thank you! As a classical homeopath I am deeply interested in Jung's work. My practice is quite mixed, ethnically and I observe certain pathologies / symptoms being more predominant in certain ethnical groups than in others. I am deeply interested in the underlying causes (what we nowadays often call 'sensations') which might stem from the collective unconscious or that might be even deeply ingrained in our cellular memories. It would be so lovely if Dr. Brewster could come back for more!
Did Carl Jung honestly believe that complexes can't be solved? One would say that what has a beginning, also has an end.
I am from Western Europe, and don't feel any racial prejudice. There are also lots of interracial mariages. I can't believe that everyone has got the racial complex.
Great episode! Thank you! With regard to the dream interpretation, I’d like to share with you some of my thinking which I felt wasn’t evoked in your dream analysis. I believe that the car is in fact the central element in the dream. The dreamer drove it on his own and alone. There’s no mention of him driving his car with a dog in it. We learn of the dog only later on, when the dreamer looks out of his hotel window and realizes he forgot and tied his Labrador to his parked car. This makes me think that the dog is an (important) but nevertheless an attribute of the car as it embodies the dreamer’s relationship to that vehicle. Now the dog’s breed. It’s a brown Labrador. This is a breed that is widely used to provide assistance to handicapable people, especially to those with blindness and autism. The dreamer says he is a therapist which is a rescue profession in some way. Having said that, the dreamer’s car might symbolize his life trajectory attached to his occupation of being a therapist. So the dreamer is a rescue professional himself. But since the car is also tied to a dog, it might be that his car (libido) has been disabled (blinded) and needs guidance at this moment too. Might it be that his professional drive have been diminished due to various causes and needs assistance?
The pissing white woman. I find it curious that she pees on a dog as if she was a dog herself. Can it be that she was actually peeing on his car? In either case, she behaves like a “bitch”, doesn’t she? She does what dogs do by marking the territory, communicating their presence to other dogs. Could it be that the anima is acting like this to actually protect her territory and keep all other (stray) dogs away? I find it beautiful that the dreamer’s psyche thus continues to play the canine metaphor. The dreamer is a therapist, so the anima might feel empowered to pull a full on play on words in his dream. The intelligence of the psyche is further revealed by the fact that Labradors are excellent swimmers and they are also used to save drowning people. Water flowing for them is not a problem. I’d think the real object of anima’s aggression was the dreamer himself and his vocation in particular and he instinctively reacted to the situation. His dog was in no danger at all. But the white woman’s act “woke” the dreamer up and made him go fight even if he knew he was outnumbered by the aggressors. So what is the psyche trying to say with all of this? I think the psyche who sends a "bitchy" anima who assumes the guise of a white woman bearing the traits of a real-life person who wasn’t nice to the dreamer is still trying to deliver a positive message. She says you’ve been hurt and you might feel even aggressed upon but the rescue dog in you (neither your car “libido”) have been really harmed, so don’t give up. After a pause (can a hotel in this dream stand for a place of respite?), take care of yourself but go on with your life journey. I think it's significant that a therapist is given by the psyche the image of a Labrador, the kindest of assistance dogs. It means this man who provides care to others is in the right place. And the anima actually marked it with her pee. In this light, what looked like an act of aggression in the dream, was it really? That’s how I see it 😊 Thank you
Outstanding and thoughtful analysis. Bravo!
This is one of my favorite episodes so far. I really look forward to future episodes with Fanny.
I wonder if, over time, the racial complex will not exist in people. Is this something that will forever be part of a human's psyche, or is it something that exists because of what has happened in the past? Given the United States' history of slavery, is this complex stronger in societies like the US where there has been intense racial/ethnic injustice than in societies that don't have that history?
Perhaps but I imagine it will be replaced with other measures of "otherness", unfortunately.
I had to pause and write this at around the 9 minute mark.
I’m finding Jung’s framework to be problematic and western-white-centric. Seeing him label non-white people as primitive, and saying that complexes are seemingly autonomous as they come and go is especially problematic as you draw an example with Dylan Roof. To say that Dylan Roof’s racial complex possessed him absolves him, and white supremacy of any responsibility.
Unless I’m to look at this racial complex from the perspective that it’s a superiority complex that manifests in white people via colonization and white supremacy. I’m curious to see how this conversation with contemporary Jungian analysts goes.
I’m just going to continue my notes in my own comment thread.
I’m wondering how a racial complex can exist as an autonomous psyche phenomenon if race has been socially constructed- it seems that this complex would’ve been artificially manufactured.
I love what was mentioned about white fear being projected onto black people. I had a visceral reaction to that great observation
Why am I so disturbed hearing this discussion? Here's a clue: I know my brain is unique! From an early age I saw naked emperors. I found this quote in the book "Autism Spectrum Disorder in Mid and Later Life" edited by Scott D. Wright, Ph.D. The quote is by W.E.B. Dubois: "It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on i8n amused contempt or pity." (1903, p. 3). As Resmaa Menakem notes, before white-bodied people oppressed people of color, they oppressed other white-bodied people.
Timely stuff, and from a Jungian perspective no less... fascinating discussion, thx!
A passing observation, but I can't help noticing how much some Whites actually seem to 'need' to discriminate and 'look down' on Black folks... as if it's their unspoken "role" to always be someone to *_look down on_* no matter one's own humble station in life. Especially since folks' relative Status is central to how we determine self-esteem. Which also maybe helps explain why even former POTUS Obama, was once attacked as "uppity", for _violating_ that unspoken cultural 'role'.
When the dreamer tied his dog to the car I was reminded of the woman at the start of the podcast who felt she never had the right to own anything. Perhaps the hotel is America and the dog stays outside 'for.there is no room for them at the Inn'. He's been told he hasn't an inherent right to be at home in America, to be fully himself, and this message is brutally enforced by the police/bouncers when he actively responds to the humiliation of his friendly dog (soul?).
May be the dog is attached to the car for the instance the dog have to do itss need like sanitary stops where dog are allowed to do so and snifflle and run a round and bark a little bit
I love this Podcast and thank you.
Here are my comments on this episode.
According to this podcast I need to abandon MLK's GOAL of a color blind world where all are equal, that we are not a melting pot, we are jambalaya or a salad bar, that I need to ask myself continually how am I racist, am I racist. I need to accept that racism is built into every American structure. I need to continually look for racism under every nook and cranny of my ecology. Know that I can't root out a racial complex, that I should be castigated if I have not rooted out my racial complexes. But know that is not enough. That I must repeat to myself endlessly that I am a racist that I know I am a racist, but in the end I cannot root racism out of my psyche. That I need to keep engaging with my racial complex but racial complexes don't or can't go away because we can't solve for the racial complex. So - I can't fix it. So I need to suffer my racial complex to find peace among different ethnic groups. That I need to talk about racial differences as often as I can and let each group have racial differences without ridicule or shaming. This will promote ways of healing the negative aspects of a racial complex, but again it can't go away. That I need to be curious about people who look different than I do including culture. That I must always look where people are treated differently than I am in social situations and to learn and observe these differences. Become intensely curious of racial differences and how treatment of racial differences are treated in the ecology of the world. This will bring redemption? This will avail forgiveness? What is the goal of such a process outlined here? What is the future vision of such a society?
What a deep and thoughtful response! Jung tells us that when we discover our inner conflicts and hold them consciously, which is rather painful, the psyche activates 'the transcendent function' spontaneously creating a symbol that actually resolves the inner tension and helps develop the new attitude that shows the next step.
@@thisjungianlife - thank you they were quotes, notes and summaries taken directly from this podcast.
@@thisjungianlife As a committed believer of the utility of depth psychology, I have found Dr. Fanny Brewster’s books Archetypal Grief and Racial Complex to be illuminating as well as enlightening and given the fact that I am a resident of Dr. Samuel Kimbles’ native home-town, I approach these books with curiosity as well as with intense understanding. I believe that Dr. Brewster shares the same viewpoint that I have: that the individuation process is the true method to create a more ethnically harmonious society.
I have to admit that I find one aspect of Dr. Brewster annoying, though, and even though this shadow aspect is also the characteristic that I found most intriguing about her, the fact is she views race too much from the protective womb of the current paradigm surrounding race. This weakness is a strategic error of hers that may come back to haunt her and cause her and her readers much stress.
The solution to this situation is for Dr. Brewster to allow herself to develop a deep intellectual/intuitive/spiritual desire to learn/understand the archetypal patterns that White Americans magnetically/naturally drive towards - and to begin, I would suggest Dr. Brewster start with the current box-office blockbuster, the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Joker(her attributing the Charleston massacre to the Racial Complex is flat wrong; the reasons are much more found in the predominant archetypes presented in this motion picture).
Using Dr Carol Pearson’s The Twelve Archetypes as a reference, Joker shows a fixation towards the Trickster-Orphan-Destroyer pattern that I noticed over and over again that creates a seductively gravitational pull for whites. It seems that if these archetypal dynamics mixed together create a complete nullification of any ethical/moral barriers as well as White Americans will unconsciously place this existential/psychological nightmare upon each other (perfect example: affirmative action) and we have our own country’s history to display where African-Americans were treated to this shadow element. Nevertheless, the movie hits it right on the proverbial bulls-eye (when you watch it, you are watching every white Person’s individual/collective nightmare).
The motion picture includes a comedy club named Pogo, which was the clown-persona embodied by serial killer John Wayne Gacy and the fictional subway system that the producers of the film created had its main hub named Hinckley. Even the director of the film, Todd Phillips, enjoyed the comedy genre movies(Trickster) as his prime focus, but became demoralized from doing comedy due to the current cancel-culture-political-correctness(orphan) and decided to go into the comic book genre with an emphasis on subverting it(destroyer).
When I saw the movie, it descended me into a depression, because it naturally hit this shadow aspect on both the personal and collective level. An African-American employee was looking at me strangely at work (I include this portion because this lady, through an accidental-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction occurrence read my Active Imagination story). I wanted to tell her what was going on, but most individuals do not have any concept of Jungian Psychology and would think it and myself both are strange.
The advantage that Jungian Psychology offers is that it provides the deep insights into what really motivates conscious behavior and by understanding the archetypal tendencies of White America, Dr. Brewster may very well develop an internal fortitude as well as provide it to others in the event the current paradigm that she seems to be too reliant on changes.
Just a few parting notes: Watch Joker and then watch the Color Purple and note the archetypal differences between the central characters of each movie. Also, note the tai chi performed by Phoenix after the subway incident and keep Dr. Carol Pearson’s archetypes in mind(tai chi is martial art whose very name is a cosmological concept and serves a cosmological purpose).
With honest curiosity, does the expression "white fragility" relieve or reinforce the racial complex? I wish an expert could help relieve this confusion.
I a way we share evoltion and we could not evolve as one human race if it was not fore animal nature.integration of the dogg so that the dog can be where man stays gives me a nice active imagination