This subscription Seminar essay series will now begin to work its way through Jung’s “Visions” Seminar.

Because it is a very expensive book, and not easily available I will do my best to summarize and amplify what I see as the most useful and essential points of Jung’s teachings here – when and as I can. As you will soon see, the problematic aspects of this text and these historical events will require some direct and ongoing confrontation:

There is some truly extraordinary teaching in these lectures and discussions, but it is important that anyone reading these essays understand that the text we are exploring also reveals many of Jung’s personal, clinical, ethical and theoretical failures.

 

The Setting:

These weekly lectures  were presented in English, a third language for Jung, to members of the Psychological Club at the  Analytical Psychology Club House in Zurich.  The Psychological Club was founded with funds from Jung’s wealthy American patient, student, trainee and admirer, Edith Rockefeller – John D. Rockefeller’s daughter – who he had treated for depression, and who went on to become a prominent Jungian analyst herself. The meetings of the Psychological Club were attended by Jung’s admirers, patrons, students, as well as  former and current patients (many training to become analysts themselves) who often required additional structure and activities beyond their analytic sessions during their treatment stay in Zurich.  In many ways, the Psychological Club functioned as a kind of chaotic combination of psychosocial club, group therapy, training institute, and fan club.

A majority  (but certainly not all) of the club members were women, wealthy enough to travel to Zurich from all over Europe and America, and Jung was considered both a charismatic and handsome figure who attracted large admiring audiences as well as a significant amount of financial patronage.  Jung supported many of these women in their own professional development, and throughout his life many of his closest collaborators and disciples were the women who he had first treated and then trained as analysts.

As we can imagine, the boundaries in this space were messy. Many of the attendees were actively in treatment with Jung – caught up in the throes of their own complexes and conflicts, acting out competitive feelings towards other club members, seeking attention  and contending with thick idealizing transferences to the dynamic Dr. Jung.

Jung often used these seminars to form defacto group interventions targeted to the psychological development of his patients/audience and to emphasize themes that he felt were common to many of the members, as a kind of annex to their individual treatment.

 

The Characters:

These weekly lectures were to be a presentation and a discussion of his work with an American patient, scientist Christiana Morgan, one of the several patients who he first began to teach active imagination techniques. Active imagination was a method he had developed through the process of journaling his own contemplative visualizations in Liber Nous/The Red Book – in which he would sit in meditation, and allow a fantasy to emerge, and then would engage in imaginal dialogue with the characters in his fantasy. (for more information about active imagination see Seminar essay #25)

As Morgan engaged in this practice, she produced a long series of imaginal visions, and an accompanying set of paintings that Jung felt represented a deep archetypal template of a mythical initiation/integration process that was pertinent to Euro-American women generally, beyond Morgan’s own idiosyncratic healing and development. Jung’s intention was to present this to the Psychological Club as an archetypal journey through women’s developmental psychology. To that end, he chose to try to present the visions and the paintings completely detached from any personal or identifying information specific to Christiana Morgan.

Jung had presented these lectures in German to an earlier audience, and had done so with great excitement and respect for the un-named Morgan’s process and productions, and great enthusiasm for the archetypal template that he felt offered great insight into the psychology of women.  But this lecture and discussion series  proved to be very, perhaps, too stimulating  for many members of the Club, seemingly activating significant envy in many of the attendees, who often attempted authoritatively dissect the visions and pathologize the anonymous visionary.

Jung’s responses and interpretations throughout the seminar grow increasingly irritable, likely in large part with the club members, but this also seems to spill over into his perceptions and presentation of Morgan and her visions themselves. Perhaps he began devaluing the content to make it less threatening to the seminar members – but whatever the trigger and there are many – this seminar becomes an outlet for Jung’s more toxic misogyny – as he begins to express sexist contempt and strong negative feelings both about the case he is presenting and the audience.

Jung also uses the N-word at several points, in discussing the psychic effect of interracial realities in the United States. It is unclear if he is mirroring language that he has absorbed from American patients, if he has, with a limited English, confounded the N-word, with “Negro,”  if he used the word to seem skilled and proficient at American slang, or if he is enjoying and exhibiting an explicit belief in racial superiority.

(See: Visions: Notes on the Seminar Given in 1930-1934. Introduction by Claire Douglas, pp ix-xxxiii)

This is Jung’s unprocessed grandiosity and his white male supremacist shadow on full display – as he succumbs to the inflation of his devoted fan club, and asserts himself as an authority on women’s pathology, and seems to simultaneously enjoy and exert his authority and dominance while also trying to irritably extricate himself from the thick hero worship and its messy consequences in the room.

 

The Turning Point

 

It is also possible that Jung’s negativity is a response to his lost his faith in Morgan. For multiple reasons which we will discuss below, Jung becomes less enchanted by their treatment alliance, as is faced more and more with the aftermath of their work together-  this presentation is four years after their termination.  He seems increasingly upset with the visions and with Morgan, as he becomes hopleessly and destructively entangled in the longer term outcomes of the case and the boundary-less community that has he has built around him and that he resides in the center of.

Jung received direct updates from Morgan from the United States, where she became a Jungian analyst at Harvard – but he also learned far more about Morgan from other patients that  that knew her intimately through the small and incestuous Jungian community in the U.S.

In fact, during the course of this seminar, Jung was contacted for consultation by a former American patient of his, Henry Murray, who was  both Morgan’s co-worker at Harvard, and her current lover, and who contacted  Jung for help in leaving Morgan for another woman.

Additionally, another Harvard man, Ralph Eton, a colleague both of Morgan and Murray,  at the Harvard Psychological Clinic, described by his U.S analyst as “brilliant but unstable”  – had been involved with Morgan previously but been rejected by her and was unable to get over their breakup, also presented to Jung for treatment, and began attending the Psychological Club. Eton actually recognized Morgan’s visions, because Morgan had showed her paintings to him early in their relationship.

Eton, now attending a weekly seminar that waded through his lost- lover’s fantasy life – decompensated into florid psychosis – fled Zurich and returned to Cambridge where required hospitalization. He escaped the locked ward and committed suicide in the woods near Henry Murray’s home.

All of this chaos, tragedy,  and boundary crossing both exposes the messiness of Morgan, and the men in her world as well as the mess that Jung himself had made by establishing himself as the guru-leader of a school of thought, the entangled and enmeshed boundaries of his tight-knit community of disciples, his own poor clinical decisions, and his destructively inflated role in his patient/trainees’ lives.

“Finally, someone overtly breaks confidentiality about Morgan’s identity and the seminar ends abruptly” (Visions: Notes on the Seminar Given in 1930-1934. Introduction by Claire Douglas, p. xxiv)  

Lysis

Christiana Morgan found a place in the world and lived a flawed yet productive life, centered around her great romantic love for Henry Murray, and her work as a psychotherapist at the Harvard Psychological Clinic. Throughout her long life, Morgan returned again and again to the visions. She respected them as the core myth of her life but never succeeded in fully plumbing their meaning. (Visions: Notes on the Seminar Given in 1930-1934. Introduction by Claire Douglas, p. xxii)  

 

So: as you can see, there is a lot to learn about Jung as a limited human being, as a wounded healer, as a white man contending with his own conflicts around supremacy and the feminine,  who experiences the first hand and disasterous consequences of inflation and inflicts those consequences on others, about the historical development of a psychological discipline at time before secure boundaries were erected around transferences and before the community was large enough to avoid such enmeshments.  There is also some thoughtful, humble, generous and beautiful teaching mixed in among the damage and chaos.

I will do my best to sort through the useful, the meaningful, the toxic and the intolerable. I will offer my own interpretations and responses to Morgan’s visioning. I will try to confront and cut away the contamination and the  rot, and see what, if any, fruit remains when we are done.

 

If you are interested in subscribing to this essay series there is more information below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing a new ebook:

 

Circling the Drain: Essays from the Edge of the Abyss

Psychotherapist Martha Crawford shares her encounters with death and dying in her clinical practice, as well has her personal experiences of care-taking, bereavement, and negotiating her own rare cancer diagnosis. The aim of this book is to help others contend with their own fears of death and loss, and to begin to consider living and dying as a natural, interconnected continuum rather than as binary opposites.

Many essays from this blog, and including several new essays. 

 

Available for purchase here.

 

 

This is a workshop designed to support therapists and counselors, artists and creatives, meditators and those engaged in spiritual practices and  anyone who wants to learn to work with their dreams in service of healing, creative or contemplative processes.

Workshop sessions will be convened via Zoom on Friday’s at 9:00AM Pacific, 10AM Mountain, 11AM Central and 12PM Eastern for one hour, over 10 consecutive Fridays – starting on September 25th.

Meeting dates: 9/25, 10/2, 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, (skipping 11/27 for Thanksgiving) and  12/4.

I prefer to have no more than 6 or 7 members in the group.

(If there is sufficient interest, I am willing create a second session on the same dates as above but meeting later – at 10:30 Pacific/11:30 Mountain/12:30pm Central/ 1:30 Eastern)

The topics covered include the structure and relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, understanding archetypes, anima/us and “the shadow, Jung’s method of dream “amplification,” the compensatory function of dreaming, “Big dreams” and dreams of the collective, healing and problem solving dreams, and contemplative and creative exercises that can help expand upon dream themes, an exploration of dreaming and synchronicity, and the relationship between the creative process and dream work. We will explore not only the useful aspects of Jung’s thoughts on dreaming, we will also confront and challenge the Eurocentric and misogynistic notions that exist in these texts and theories.

There will be time each session to for a respectful and boundaried exploration of dreams that are either shared by a participant or selected from the available readings.

For more information and to register, click here.

 

Sharing an interview about my new dream collection – Dreams of a New World  –  which is accepting dream submissions (Twitter feed @newwordldreams) as well as thoughts about pandemic dreaming from other dream workers and dream collectors  – at InStyle magazine – click here to read.

 

 

This January, a few weeks  after  I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I sat on the floor in my totally empty house and folded laundry while I talked on the phone with a writer named Stephen Marche about The 45 Dreams Project.

Today his very thoughtful account of our conversation was posted by The New Yorker. You can read the article here.

 

This is essay is a part of my subscription seminar series, two essays each month – discussing depth psychology texts and their practical applications. I have set this essay to “public” so that those who may be interested in this series may have access to a “free sample.”

 

This essay continues our exploration of “Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940” – by C. G. Jung. This book (available to read online ) is an assemblage of notes a group of analysts studying dream work under Jung. Children’s dreams were selected as a subject as they are often rich with common archetypal themes – and offered Jung a chance to teach his trainees how to explore, and apply, and how not to apply, some of his theories about dreaming and dream exploration.

 

In the Winter 1936/37 session (Chapter 2) analyst Margaret Sachs presented the following dream of a nine year old girl from a lower middle class family – who was distractible, only superficially engaged in her school work, who was repeating the second grade, and still having a very challenging time. Her intellectual functioning seemed to be fine. Her mother noted that the girl was unable to marshal her industriousness to engage in household chores.

 

The dream:

 

I went into a forest and then a lion came. I wasn’t afraid of the lion. I wanted to stroke him and ride on him. But I fell off. Then he ate me up and I was dead. Now my mommy came and took me on her arm. She went home with me and laid me on the bed. Then I discovered a magic mirror in the pocket of my apron, which I turned toward myself, and then I woke up again. I had enchanted myself.

            I had also put a spell on the whole house, and there was a store downstairs, and everything was completely different now. The people walked all slanting, me too, and I kept thinking I’d fall over but I didn’t.

            I went and got a loaf of bread in the store, and the woman said: “You have to hold onto the bread” But I let the bread fall, and then many worms came out of it. Now she had to give me another loaf of bread, and then I walked up the narrow staircase and fell over myself. There was a hole in the stairs; I stuck the bread into the hole (I didn’t know why), threw the money away and brought mommy a couple of stones. She was angry with me and beat me with a switch. Then I woke up.

 

When Sachs explored the dream with the little girl, she offered more content about what she saw in the magic mirror: A dead body, decaying and skeleton-like, suspended from a tree. The image made the dream-ego, (the dreamer within the dream) nauseated. She tries to take the body down but she, and the body both disintegrate further.

I’ll  start this discussion by talking about how I might respond to this dream in the spirit of the present era, if a child told it to me in session, or a parent who I saw for parental guidance and support reported to me that their child had such a dream:

First: there are the diagnostic and prognostic implications that I would take note of for myself, privately, while listening to such a dream – some of which I may, or may not share with the child or the parent.

 

Here are some things I would notice and wonder about as I listened:

 

• What instinctive energies, maybe aggressive ones – are emerging from the “unconscious” – just as the lion, a powerful instinctive force, comes from out of the dark forest in the a clearing of ego-consciousness.

 

• I would notice that the child is not anxious, and bravely wants to tame and and harness her instincts – by riding the lion – like one might ride a horse. Freud himself made a similar analogy when explaining the function of the ego: The ego is ‘like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.’ Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66. Here, the dreamer is trying to “get on top of” a much more aggressive and overpowering force – the “king of the jungle.” The dreamer is unable to manage her primal impulses – her ego/conscious is overthrown, and then eaten and swallowed up by these energies.   She didn’t retreat anxiously from the development challenge, she was overpowered. The image that emerges in my mind when I picture the child in this dream is the Strength card from the tarot deck – in which a woman depicted as successfully able to tame her powerful animal passions. This child, seems to be dreaming about a kind of weakness that leaves her overwhelmed.

 

• Following her defeat, she is picked up like a baby, and nursed by her mother. She has some sense of safety net after her painful failure. She begins to “reflect” upon herself and what has happened to her, and encounters an aspect of the self, or hoped for trajectory, or a potential that is now dead, and leaves her feeling disintegrated and fragmented. I might wonder if this is the self that could have been – the girl that could have moved on to third grade with her peers and if she could have found the strength to harness and focus her energies. Some ideal, expectable future has died, both for the mother and the child – and the child, as well as the parent, likely need some time to rest nurse their wounds and grieve this loss. A nine year old child is acutely aware of their own functioning in relationship to their peer group. Children of that age know who is the best reader in the class, who is the fastest, who is the funniest, who is the best artist or who is the naughtiest or who gets into trouble the most. She knows that her classmates moved forward and she did not. She knows that it isn’t anxiety that interfered – she says clearly that she was not afraid – but that she doesn’t have the ego strength alone to focus herself.

 

• She also sees that her failure has cast a pall on the whole house, perhaps activating her parents anxiety and worry and frustration – leaving everyone in the house out of balance and throwing off the household homeostasis. She is worried that she may “fall” again, but is able to stay afloat for a bit.

 

• The store downstairs makes me think of the unconscious instinctive resources that she also has available to her – not only the energies forces that she cannot yet contain. She is able to “go down” into her depths, and come up with some sustenance – she makes some contact with, a nascent adult self, or parent introject, or her own inner “wise woman” who tells her how important it is to hang on to the bread.

 

• I might wonder if the bread represents some kind of emotional nourishment – or provisions, fuel, to feed and strengthen her – and perhaps both the girl and her mother needed to be fed some healthy narcissistic supplies so that they can get their inner balance, and find their faith in her again (I think here of the bread of the communion – as this is likely a Christian, churchgoing family in that place and era – and how all are welcome at “God’s table” and each person ingests and holds a piece of the sacred inside themselves) before facing another school year. But she tragically is unable to hold onto these supplies – it slips from her fingers and becomes rotten before she or her family can internalize it. She just couldn’t hang on.

 

• But this girl does not give up easily. She is trying very hard in the face of all of her struggles. She goes back down, and gets more supplies from the store in the basement – and is able to hang onto her sense of self – as she tries to negotiate some narrow developmental “steps.” This time, even with the bread in hand – the poor thing falls again – into a hole in the steps. This seems to me to be pointing to some real developmental challenges that this girl is facing. And the dream to me doesn’t seem to be about a neurotic or emotional psychological problem. She isn’t afraid. She doesn’t give up. She has some real inner resources she can access. She doesn’t become despairing and quit. But there is a hole. A lacuna. Something missing which makes her unable to take the next step. She stuffs her sense of self in the hole – perhaps trying to get by on confidence alone or in an attempt to cover up the hole so she doesn’t have to face it, or so others won’t notice. She cannot bring her mother the rewards (money) or sustenance they both yearn for. But this leaves her with nothing to offer her mother but stones. She ends the dream punished, despite how hard she has tried to complete the various trials she has faced in the dream.

 

• I would wonder about the repetitive theme of falling in this dream: falling off the lion, almost falling in the out of balance slanty house, the bread falls, and then rots and falls apart. The body falls from the tree, the arms and legs fall and she falls over and over. And she falls on the stairs.

 

• I also notice that she has to get bread twice, and fails at that test twice – and that this is a child who is failing at her second attempt at second grade

 

• I would also notice the positive aspects of the dream: the girls experience of being cared for and carried after a painful failure. The resources in the basement. The woman who offers her provisions.

 

• As I listen to the dream, I would also take stock of my emotional response. I feel a bit heartbroken for this girl who keeps trying, who mourns and feels off kilter and who tries and tries again. Hopefully, in this day and age, this is a child who would already be identified by the school system – if by no one else – as a child who is potentially struggling with some learning disability or who is non-neurotypical in some way – perhaps a kid with some executive function disabilities, or ADD/ADHD. This is a child that I would want to see have a full neuropsychological assessment if they had not already, and I would make that recommendation based on the dream in conjunction with the presenting problem.

 

 

In talking to the child – I would likely just try to mirror the emotional content of the dream – How brave the dreamer was, how scary it must have been to see that in the magic mirror – I might ask questions that would encourage her to express some of the emotional content of the dream: “that must have been upsetting! But you went right back and got more bread! You didn’t give up!” or “Oh no, you got in trouble even after you tried so many times!” I might ask more about how the hole, and possible ways to get around or up or over it. I might create some active imagination exercise for the girl: “The bread didn’t work to fill the hole… is there anyone we could ask to help you get up the stairs because they sound like hard stairs to get up! Was the lady in the basement helpful? Maybe she could help you get over the hole? Should we pretend to ask and see what she says?” We might make drawings of a new way around the hole, or if I had a sand table available I might just let the child build the house in the sand and see if she could create new solutions.

 

If I was talking to the parent (lets say mother since she is the one present in the dream) : I might underscore that the child’s challenges seem to be beyond her “will” at the moment. Perhaps the energies that overwhelm the child are active/aggressive drive -– and manifest as hyperactivity –needing to move and pounce and run and disrupt her attentions at school – or these energies could manifest as day-dreaming,– as intrusive fantasies emerge to derail her industriousness.

 

I would try to show the parent the ways in which this dreams depicts this little girl as trying very hard – and how often things keep falling apart and disintegrating despite her best efforts. I might explore with the mother the ways that a “spell had been cast” over the household – and how her daughters struggles and failures were effecting her. I might try to help her identify aspects of her daughter that she felt admiration and tenderness for and has faith in, and try to help her modulate her frustration if it was present and not merely her daughter’s fear of making her mother angry. I might explore the loss and falling apart that the magic mirror revealed – give the parent some space to mourn for the “ideal” that she had hoped for her girl and point out that the girl experienced this little death too. I might also explore the ways that both mother and daughter are getting frustrated – how the girl is getting fed up with trying, wants to “stuff it down” into the hole and throw away the possibility of reward – and how she is also feeling punished or is fearful of being further punished for her failures.

I’d also be aware that both the girl and mother were left in need of strengthening and emotionally hungry at the end of the dream – and try to identify ways for me to offer, and to help them identify others around them who could provide some nurturance.

 

In short, in my view– this is a dream with a few archetypal images – but which is also extremely close to the child’s current central developmental and environmental dilemmas– and which offers us some clues as to what challenges and resources exist for her.

Next seminar we will look at some of the ideas Jung and his trainees have  – some which may lead us far afield, and some which might enrich our understanding

 

 

This is an essay that Jason Mihalko PsyD and I wrote together in 2014 that was published in a now defunct online magazine, and is no longer able to be found online. We laughed at the thought of  titling it “Two White Shrinks Sitting Around Talking” – but I don’t remember what it was actually titled at the time of publication.  I decided to publish it here for those who may be interested, and simply to preserve its availability. Time moves fast, and memories fade, and concepts of justice work continue to evolve but it is sometimes valuable to have records of our labors and the processes we have moved through.

 

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Since the death of Trayvon Martin, and again this summer when the Ferguson protests began and now with the devastating Eric Garner case and the protests and demonstrations that have followed in its wake , I began noticing that I have become comfortable (or complacent?) in my role as a respectful listener and a grateful learner when a black client, friend or acquaintance is trusting or generous enough to share their complex thoughts and feelings with me. In racially mixed settings I also feel comfortable generally, supporting and amplifying the voices of people of color. Maybe because I am a reluctant leader anyway. Maybe because, as clinical social worker I’ve have been trained to hold still and offer support. Maybe because I am aware of the ways I could inadvertently shut the conversation down or damage a fragile trust with a thoughtless word, or error. Maybe I hold still because I am cowardly and fearful of making a mistake. And most likely a combination of all of these.

 

But the places I feel most self-conscious, most “not right with myself” and most disoriented is in dialogue with other white people: white clients, friends, and extended family. Heated confrontations, indulgent “patience” righteous tongue clicking, back-patting or colluding avoidance –   no position, no conversation, and no silence feels right.

 

So I decided to use this column to talk with a white friend and colleague, Jason Mihalko, PsyD, a clinical psychologist (and author of the blog The Irreverent Psychologist) about how we, as clinicians, talk about these issues in our offices, on social media and in our lives. There is likely little here that will be useful or illuminating to black readers, or other people of color. Maybe, there are few white readers out there, like Jason and myself, who could always use another opportunity to, and check and challenge ourselves – to do whatever work we can do on our own – to examine our participation in oppressive systems.

 

JM: Yes. I’m also thinking about how we are two white psychotherapists talking about these issues. It’s making me think about how rare it is that I hear the voices of psychotherapists who are people of color. Their voices, I find, are often hidden within a special “diversity” class or locked away in a department of African Studies. I get frustrated when diversity and multi-cultural practice is something that is limited to a special class or special circumstances. We aren’t often taught to look at all of our interactions and work through this lens.

 

I think this is my work as a white man, and a white psychologist. I have to do the work to understand racism whether it is my own or institutional racism that is enacted by the systems within which I am embedded.

 

My very first semester at Antioch I took a class called “Dialogue and Difference” taught by the person who would eventually be my dissertation chair. It was one of my more profound experiences in graduate school. We spent a lot of time talking about how conservation, as it is usually thought of, is trying to convince someone to believe something other than what they already think. If I remember correctly, our professor traced the root of conversation down to percuss — to beat someone over the head with our ideas. So I’m not down with the idea in conversation like that. But dialogue, well that’s another story. I love that.

 

MC: And then there is silence. Sometimes silence is collusion. Sometimes it is active support that allows other voices to be heard.

 

JM: And sometimes silence is protection. 

 

MC: Yes. I’m noticing the wish to be silent right now. It can be frightening, exposing to have this public dialogue. What will I miss? What mistakes will I make? Who might I hurt or anger? What might I learn about myself and others? And even though the information can move us further down the path of liberation – these can be painful lessons.

 

There are many ways in which professional psychologists & clinical social workers and the practice of psychotherapy can collude with systemic racism. But I believe that psychotherapy can also be radical form of empathy and a liberating force.

 

 

JM: Yes. I totally agree. I think there is a tension in psychotherapy, and especially clinical psychology (which I know best) between pressures of identifying the status quo (normal behavior) with seeking liberation. I experience this tension daily in my practice between tying to find way to help people conform to what they consider normal behavior (defined as behavior not representative as categories of psychiatric illness) and seeking liberation from punishing standards of “normal” behavior which are often rooted in racism, sexism, homonegativity, abelism, ageism, etc. etc. etc.

 

Just yesterday I was talking with someone and reframing psychiatric symptoms (in this case anxiety) as representative of normal responses to trauma. The trauma in this case was the experience of racist actions. The panic attacks suddenly became something much different when conceptualized as physical manifestations of the reexperience of racial violence.

 

 

MC: There are also, it seems to me, psychological realities that are omitted from social justice conversations –  for example: a real psychological understanding of the implicit bias research and its implications. Which requires that we recognize that one of the effects and causes of systemic racism and anti-blackness are powerful and very real unconscious forces which inform or contaminate our   snap-judgments, gut instincts, hunches, etc. impacting employment, policing, institutional access across the board, and which can have very violent external manifestations. 

 

 

 

 

This requires an acceptance of the fact that we are largely unconscious beings – that there are and will always be impulses, fears, distortions, and prejudices, codes that have been uploaded by our culture, that exist in our machine, that we can’t completely eradicate, ever. This racist programming influences our choices and behaviors – the assumptions and expectations we have of others.  En mass – these internalized biases become gatekeepers for our institutions and collectively our unconscious, implicit bias ends up crafting social policy.

 

JM: I find some therapists and patients have trouble responding and grappling with the unconscious. I like how you are also mixing in her cognitive behavioral imagery — codes. Many folks who don’t prefer imagery of the unconscious can get traction thinking about this when they think about computer codes that are running invisibly in the background.

 

I always thought I was supposed to acknowledge I am racist and sexist and homonegative and abelist and…. How could I not be? I’m a product of this society at this point in history. I feel powerful when I can own these things, name them, and work toward being more than what my limited society offers me. 

 

 

MC: Yes, this is the work of a lifetime – its not a process that can ever be completed. That being said, you and I also both know that 1) some unconscious content can be surfaced and made more conscious and 2) that once made conscious of such implict programming we have a greater capacity to make choices and not be controlled, entirely, by our unconscious impulses.

 

And when client’s dream  – especially white clients – but not exclusively for we all internalize these biases– you see the cultural coding emerge: a dream of being followed down a long street at night by a black man. A dream of being seduced by an Asian woman in a red dress. A dream of a black intruder breaking into the house. Consciously committed to anti-racism or not, white therapists have all absorbed the racism that exists in our cultural myths (ie: media) and stories. We drink in distorted and objectifying stereotypes and project out our own fears on to any group we perceive as “Other.” 

 

JM: It now seems that many so-called progressive people are busy demonstrating how they are less racist than other people, or they are somehow more progressive (and thus better) and those “other” people. I find I have less and less time for this sort of sport because what gets hidden is the so-called progressives own implicit bias. None of us can exist outside of our bias laden society. 

 

 

MC: Individually, in the confines of my office – I have the opportunity to address these oppressive forces: when I can hold and validate the grief, fear, and anger of black clients, and other clients of color. They have needed space to mourn, to rage, to tremble for their children. I hope, and maybe even believe, that making sure that my office is safe for those experiences can allow people to rest momentarily and refuel before heading back out into the fray.

 

JM: Shelter from the storm. And I imagine a white psychotherapist helping to create this shelter could be meaningful in ways that I can’t even begin to understand. I think of the ways in which my actions as a white psychologist hearing, attending, noticing, and opening discussing of racism and privilege might create some small amount of resilience and shelter for someone.

 

It doesn’t save the world, it doesn’t prevent violence, but I think this shelter can offer a profound and enduring validation that first transitional and later becomes an internalized and fully owned part of self.

 

MC: With clients of color and with black clients in particular at this historical crossroads –  I can be receptive and respectful of the fact that there are parts of this experience that can never be contained, understood, or mirrored by a white therapist – and I’ve noticed the space for deeper breaths that is created when I state that explicitly.

 

This is a conversation that has been very active in my caseload since Trayvon Martin was killed – and part of my obligation is to respect that I benefit from a system that is terrorizing others.  After Zimmerman walked free, a client had a dream about a sick black baby, near death, locked inside of an expensive white car and no one was paying attention. While I, as a therapist, am the one who is being specifically called upon to care for that crying sickened baby I am also one of many who holds the keys to the fancy white car.

 

JM: I like this dream. I also like the idea of working to unlock the doors.

 

A patient of mine, a person of color, asked if it was okay they cancelled their appointment the night of a protest in Boston. They offered to pay my missed session fee. I told them I was proud of them for wanting to go, that their presence was important, and that I felt the world was a better place because this was happening. After I hung up the phone I cried thinking about what it would have meant to have this person give me so much money so they could go to a protest, and what privilege was involved in that, and how awful it made me feel.

 

MC: Okay now: here is the confusing part.

 

White clients:

There are those that are actively engaged in processing their implicit bias and their participation in systemic privileges  – who understand that this is ongoing work, the work of a lifetime, and is never done. We can engage in critical self-examination together.

 

And then, there are many people who have never once spoken about race in therapy- who are now suddenly talking about their response to Eric Garner’s death, to the protests. Sometimes they are shaken, experiencing the first wave of the unfolding crisis of realizing that their experiences as white people are not universal for all Americans. Sometimes they are angry or reactionary, or complaining about the inconvenience of the protests or fearful of the up swell of public passion and emotion.

 

And there are those who have made no mention of it, no reference to it at all.

 

I try to remember when I was fearful confused and overwhelmed by the protests in Los Angeles that followed Rodney King’s beating, and all that I did not yet understand. I try to ask thoughtful questions that activate compassion and self-awareness in these client.  It is a narrow line to walk, to have empathy for the fear, or upset or avoidance – while still challenging it – and to face the unprocessed racism in my white clients as reminder of my own, past and present.

 

JM: I love the idea of being curious–shining the spotlight of my attention and curiosity on a particular topic. I try to do that when I see or experience something that seems like racism or unexamined privilege. I get super curious about what I hear, and wonder aloud why someone experiences or thinks something that they think, or share what I experience and think. My patients make fun of me because they always know when I’m moving in toward something because I say “I wonder…..”

 

MC: That is an extremely helpful idea and reminder for me. To approach with a sense of true curiosity – about the formative experiences and notions behind these beliefs. And to let my curiosity make them curious too – to let it begin to question, to challenge the premises underneath these beliefs

 

JM: I notice people are anxious and scared. I notice that white people don’t have a lot of resources and supports to safely talk about these anxieties and fears. I notice there aren’t a lot of supports of people to learn and share their experiences in a way that they (a) don’t hurt other people and (b) don’t get hurt by other people. I see people directing a lot of anger (understandable anger!) toward folks who are enacting their racism. I’m not so sure public shaming without the provision of tools is helpful. I think people need to also have access to tools to understand their experiences and how they have come to have racist thoughts and notions. 

 

I think of it a bit like coming out. I spent some significant resources of time and thought thinking about my sexuality. When I was a young teen and came out I expected people to be where I was at, right away, and had little tolerance for people and their own process. It occurred to me that not everyone has spent so much time thinking about sexuality. I had to find ways to give people a break so they can have their own process–and had to find a way to keep myself safe. 

 

I think about this a lot with racism. People of color have lived their whole life in a racist system. It is something they experience every day, with every action, in ways that I cannot even begin to understand. I think of folks who are just discovering racism — and are totally unprepared for the process they are about ready to experience. When white folks grow up embedded in racist institutions and racist communities where have they developed a critical consciousness to explore these things? Where have they developed a community that can help them support their own process of growth and development.

 

Of course, I think white people are responsible for figuring this out for themselves. I think it’s my job to think about my racism in a place that protects people of color from being damaged by my own process.

 

MC: I am hearing a great deal about relationships damaged and friendships broken by the unconscious, unexamined and biased opinions or rigid identification white privilege on social media. 

 

I know that my own relationships with old friends extended family members changed dramatically when I became when I became a transracially adoptive parent – and I see many people having to reorganize their own boundaries and expectations about the previously latent racism that is showing up on their friends timelines. 

 

I have clients who’ve had to block or unfriend family members for self-care

Other have engaged in challenging conversations – which can painful, and result in loss.

 

And I’ve also heard of a handful of satisfying conversations where an online friend is open to ideas that are new to them. 

 

What are your thoughts about this? 

 

JM: I think we do the best we can. I think we all have to find what our limits are, and make sure we aren’t exposed to ugliness that we cannot process, handle, or currently lacking the resources to metabolize. I wish we had more tools to invite people back into fellowship and community with us after they’ve done their own work. There is so much polarized us/them conflict that I worry we will faction off into smaller and smaller communities and lose our connections to our larger society and world.

 

The other day on my facebook page I told someone I would not agree to disagree. I knew I’d end a relationship saying that. It was important for me to take a stand against throwing people way and creating a group of people who were voiceless. 

A mentor of mine always talked about spending privilege, and the choices about how we spend it. I hope I’m a big spender, that I make wise investments, and that I continue to find ways to offer it freely. As far as I can tell, the society around me and history behind me has given me a supply of privilege that cannot be exhausted. I’ve decided to make my life about spending it in the service of helping the hurt, lost, and forgotten stand on my shoulders and make themselves be heard.

 

MC: Yes. We can spend privilege – but we can abuse it, and we must also consider how and when we can rescind it too. I practice martial arts, and often have a practice weapon  – usually a sword that I work with in the park adjacent to the federal courthouse near my home. I’ve had that privilege. Young white cops occasionally approach me – and I show them that my sword is plastic, foldable. They say how great that I do this at my age –

 

JM: Ouch. A woman of your age.

 

MC: Yeah, no kidding – and they tell me to keep it up that they wish their mothers would do something like this – and they walk on.  When Darrian Hunt was killed – a biracial black man was killed for carrying a fake practice sword on the street, just exactly as I have done many times I decided that it was an abuse of privilege and now I practice with a stick, or simply imagine a sword. Does this change the world?  Does this overturn centuries of  systemic  exploitation and oppression? Certainly not. But it undermines its hold on my own perceptions. When we can’t dismantle destructive systems, we can at least try not to reinforce them.

 

I think white people need to consider carefully how they spend their privilege. Sometimes it means letting someone stand on my shoulders so they can shout louder. Sometimes it means getting out of the way. Sometimes it means standing up and giving voice to those who cannot be heard or do not yet have the skills to be heard. Sometimes it means waiting quietly until someone is ready to listen. 

 

Most of all, I think about who the audience is. If I’m in an all white environment then I’m more likely to be louder and more forcefully in my wonderings and thinkings. If I am around people of color I’m more likely to work toward figuring out how I can be supportive of the work they are doing. 

 

Unless of course someone’s humanity is getting denied. Then I’m likely to get myself into trouble. 

 

My first dissertation chair spent a lot of time thinking and research about allies. 

 

She thought it was important allies had a space to talk about things outside of the view of the community that they were allies to. I think it’s important that white people have places to discuss our racism, our participation in racism, our unawareness of racism, and the ways in which we’ve benefited from a racist system. 

 

I’ve heard from people who’ve tried to set up setting like this and have been attacked for being racist. 

 

MC: I think this is what is daunting to so many – that there is no way to actually “do it right” – there is no way, no path, no action we can take that we can be assured will result in our feeling “good” or “right.” We fear failure, and the consequences to ourselves and others. And if there is anything that being a therapist has taught me it is that failure is inevitable. There is not a single case I have treated in 20 years where I “did it right” and was perfectly attuned. I fumble, I flail, and I have to apologize humble myself again and learn from it. I used to have a George Bernard Shaw quote on my wall that read: “You have just learned something, and that always feels at first, as though you have just lost something.”

 

JM: And because of my commitment to not throwing people away, I’m also working hard to call people back into connection to me if they are willing. 

 

So much work to do. 

 

 

 

 

Two new chapters are available at The 45 Dreams Project:

I have collected and sorted over 3000 dreams about Donald Trump and the Trump administration through this blog, private emails, personal communications, and via the @45dreamsproject twitter feed. I will be sharing the themes and patterns that have emerged on this site, one chapter each month:

 

Chapter 4: Dreams of Incompetence and Cognitive Decline:

There has been a great deal of speculation about Trump’s mental and legal competency. News articles, op-ed writers and Ivy League professors analyze his impulsivity, and his compulsive lying. Speech analysts examine his verbal skills and idiosyncratic use of language for signs of decline or dementia.

Last night I dreamt that we were all forced to go to a Trump event and at the end we all got his autograph, but he misspelled Donald as Dinald on everyone’s poster of his face.[i]

 

Chapter 5: Dreams of Masturbation and Mana:

This chapter focuses on just two dreams, both fairly lengthy, remarkably similar and yet diametrically opposed:

Dream #1:

I’m backstage, and have infiltrated a President Trump rally. He’s giving his usual boisterous speech to an adoring crowd. I’m on his right, crouched down, and I can see him through the wings…

 

If you would like to start from the beginning here is where it begins:

Chapter 1: How to Understand this Project