Analysis and Activism

Book excerpt: Jungian psychology has taken a noticeable political turn in the recent years, and analysts and academics whose work draws on Jung’s ideas have made internationally recognised contributions in many humanitarian, communal and political contexts. This book brings together a multidisciplinary and international selection of contributors, all of whom have track records as activists, to discuss some of the most compelling issues in contemporary politics. Analysis and Activism is presented in six parts: Section One, Interventions, includes discussion of what working outside the consulting room means, and descriptions of work with displaced children in Colombia, projects for migrants in Italy and of an analyst’s engagement in the struggles of indigenous Australians. Section Two, Equalities and Inequalities, tackles topics ranging from the collapse of care systems in the UK to working with victims of torture. Section Three, Politics and Modernity, looks at the struggles of native people in Guatemala and Canada and oral history interviews with members of the Chinese/Vietnamese diaspora. Section Four, Culture and Identity, studies issues of race and class in Brazil, feminism and the gendered imagination, and the introduction of Obamacare in the USA. Section Five, Cultural Phantoms, examines the continuing trauma of the Cultural Revolution in China, Jung’s relationship with Jews and Judaism, and German-Jewish dynamics. Finally, Section Six, Nature: Truth and Reconciliation, looks at our broken connection to nature, town and country planning, and relief work after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. There remains throughout the book an acknowledgement that the project of thinking forward the political in Jungian psychology can be problematic, given Jung’s own questionable political history. What emerges is a radical and progressive Jungian approach to politics informed by the spirit of the times as well as by the spirit of the depths. This cutting-edge collection will be essential reading for Jungian and post-Jungian academics and analysts, psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists, and academics and students of politics, sociology, psychosocial studies and cultural studies.