I am pleased to announce this edited series of essays on the American psyche from a multitude of perspectives. Published in November of this year, it offers new, original and in-depth explorations of our collective psyche in a period of radical, rapid and at times explosive bursts of the irrational, complex and continually fascinating myth that we live within and outside of simultaneously. My own essay, that I was delighted to be invited to write and submit, is entitled “Captain Abah and Donald Trump: False Claims, the Fragility of Belief, and the Perilous Ship of America’s Soul.”
I hope that you will consider adding it to your library. Its multidisciplinary, depth and archetypal inflections offer new understandings of where we are as a nation and where the ship of state, even as it takes on water, is moving steadily towards uncharted seas.
The remainder of this short announcement appears on the back cover of the volume. It offers perceptive and multi-layered perspectives on this collection, so admirably collected, edited and guided in every step leading to its publication, by Dr. Ipek Burnett, one of the most generous and critically-equipped souls to guide the direction and quality of this rich and, we hope, enduring congregation of ideas and images helps us to refashion the American myth in its potential for inclusiveness.
Overview
The United States is at a crossroads: Moving away from the stalemate of political polarization and culture wars requires reflection, critical thinking, and imagination. This book of collected essays brings together leaders in Jungian and archetypal psychology to forge this path by offering a comprehensive look at the American psyche.
Re-Visioning the American Psyche examines the myths, images, and archetypal fantasies ingrained in the collective consciousness and unconscious in the United States. The volume tends to manifest symptoms in political institutions, social conflicts, and cultural movements. Using various interpretative processes―from psychoanalytic to literary and to participatory―it reflects on the meaning of democratic participation, the psychological cost of wars and violence, intergenerational trauma due to racism, the emotional dimensions of political polarization, deep-seated oppositional thinking in patriarchal structures, frailty of the American Dream, and more.
With its rich scope, interdisciplinary scholarship, and critical engagement with historical and current affairs, this book will be of great interest to those in Jungian and depth psychology, as well as sociology, politics, cultural studies, and American studies. As a timely contribution with an international appeal, it will engage readers who are invested in better understanding psychology’s capacity to respond to social, cultural, and political realities.
Reviews
"Building on her brilliant cultural analysis in A Jungian Inquiry into the American Psyche, Burnett now brings together fifteen authors to reflect on a wide range of American topics from political polarization to intergenerational trauma to capitalism and patriarchy. With rigorous research, imagination, kaleidoscope insights and heartfelt expression, this collection confirms depth psychology's potential to contribute to social responsibility. Interdisciplinary in nature, timely and timeless at once, this is a great contribution to Jungian studies and beyond."
Andrew Samuels, author of The Political Psyche
"America is on the couch as never before in this splendid collection of essays edited by Ipek S. Burnett. The remarkable success of the collection is to achieve coherence with diversity, wide coverage of topics with depth of analysis, and combine different depth psychological lenses with ancient myth and twenty-first century suspicion of patriarchal and religious apologias. However, perhaps the most remarkable achievement of Re-Visioning the American Psyche is to make the good old USA into a case study of contemporary philosophical and political crises. Can democracy exist in systematically repressed psyches? Can the psyche exist if history is systemically falsified and social justice denied? Truly, this book demonstrates that Jungian psychology is a valuable critical lens across multiple social and humanities disciplines. Re-visioning the American Psyche is essential reading for anyone in America or who wants to understand Americans."
Susan Rowland, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, author of C.G. Jung in the Humanities.
"Revisioning The American Psyche cannot be engaged with the mind alone but through the pores of our skin. Ipek S. Burnett has collected and arranged a number of essays that are designed to liberate us from traditional narratives about America that have permeated our psyche. The still quiet voice of care is awakened as we ask ourselves not only what it means to be a citizen of a differentiated humanity but how can caring manifest into collective action"
Robin McCoy Brooks, co-Editor-in-Chief of Intergenerational Journal of Jungian Studies and author of Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe & Social Action.