What Jung said about America:

 

American Nightmare

“America has probably the most complicated psychology of all nations.”

Carl G. Jung (from Michael Gellert’s article, “What Carl Jung Said About Race Relations in America”)

          There was a church shooting in Birmingham yesterday. An Episcopal Church in an affluent area of the city, was hosting a pot-luck dinner for its “boomer” population. Two people were killed, one injured. The shooter is in custody. Nothing more is known about this incident, except that it causes a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach because gun violence on innocent by-standers is now a daily occurrence in America. And we seem to take it in stride as ordinary. We send our condolences and carry on with business as usual.

          Carl Jung said in the middle of the 20^th century that race is the central problem of American life, and that fundamental change on an inner psychological level must take place in both races. He called our problems with race a black-white “complex,” in that it stems from unconscious and ingrained ideas of what the other is and what the threat level is from them. White citizens have unconsciously projected their black complex onto dark-skinned people, and in doing so “have become what they most fear in blacks—barbaric and diabolically dark.” Black people, on the other hand, have good reason to mistrust whites because of slavery, institutional racism, segregation, mass incarceration, and sustained poverty. They resent the injustice that is their daily bread generation after generation, and at the same time, according to Michael Gellert, want very much to be accepted by whites.

To resolve our “race problem” we must become conscious of the shadow material we carry and how it feeds our fears. So long as we continue to deny and project those fears and hatreds on each other, we will continue to have violence in our streets, in our schools, and in our churches. That is the real America of the 21^st century—not the American dream, but the American nightmare. We can blame everyone from the President down, but we know in our hearts that this is our problem to solve. It begins with finding the courage to look into our own souls and admit what we see there.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane