The collective American psyche contains all the elements that Jungian Psychology always refers to – the personal unconscious, containing the patterns we’ve experienced in our lifetime, and the collective unconscious, containing those archetypal energies that have existed over eons. A most significant aspect of our psyche, and one that we as Americans have often failed to make visible, are the elements with parts relating to race and raciality. That Americans are unwilling to see this part of the psyche is probably related to our political, social, and economic engagement with the African Holocaust and its traumatic effects on American society. Our cultural complexes, including what lecturer Dr. Fanny Brewster has termed the “racial complex,” have until very recent times largely gone unexplored within the literature, discussions, and deepening of psychoanalytical theories of the 20th century (including within Jung’s own work, and those deriving from the post-Jungians). However, when we seek to look deeper, we can find patterns that have emerged repeatedly in the collective American consciousness, dressed in the racialized archetypal and behavioral energies of the psyche. With “The Racial Psyche” we will explore America’s self-reflecting consciousness through an investigation of cultural complexes, archetypes, and societal issues regarding raciality and racism. It is through engaging with our humanity and our imagination that we can experience the potentiality of influencing the psyche. To engage in this work of deepening political consciousness can enrich our experience of life and the world, and thus hasten, however slightly, the end of racism.
