"​Letting My Heart Be Broken: Healing Cultural Trauma" Dr. Fanny Brewster

Jungian analyst explores racism and cultural healing

The University of Oregon's Office of the Vice President for Equity & Inclusion, Oregon Humanities Center, Department of Religious Studies and the Eugene Friends of Jung are pleased to present Dr. Fanny Brewster:

Our society is deepening its understanding of raciality, racism and intergenerational trauma. As we increasingly awaken to the necessity of acknowledging the tragedy of the African Holocaust, we also begin to consider ways of collective healing. Letting My Heart Be Broken focuses on the history of American slavery from an Africanist psychological point of view. Slavery is also reviewed as an archetypal, somatic, and emotional collective event that has defined cultural intergenerational trauma.

​Uncovering the poison of racialized psychological and political relations gives us the opportunity to discover the remedy for this poison. The adoption of selected Jungian psychology theories into our society did not allow for the acceptance of the ethnic diversity that makes up America. Our American psyche finds itself struggling with this absence while it seeks better ways to acknowledge us as one race with a multitude of ethnicities requiring respect for all our differences. We truly are a pantheon. Our 21st century requires movement away from 19th century racialized psychology theories that never spoke the language of healing racial cultural trauma of our American psyche. During our time together we will discuss how we have now arrived at that moment of potential collective racial healing.