Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2002, 47, 567–581

Exploring racism
Helen Morgan, London

Abstract: Whilst the concept of ‘race’ has no basis in genetics or biology, the dynamics
of racism pervade all aspects of modern life – including the consulting room. In this
paper the relationship between a white therapist and a black patient is explored through
an unbidden thought and a verbal slip that occurred in the course of the therapy. The
amplification and examination of these unwanted ‘slips’ are used to shed light on the
subtleties of the effects of difference in colour on the relationship. It is argued here that
the interaction reflects and illuminates the asymmetrical relationship between ‘black’
and ‘white’ in modern western society. This is then considered using the concepts of the
cultural unconscious and social unconscious as ways of understanding the tenacity of
racism in ourselves.

Key words: archetypal image, black, collective unconscious, cultural unconscious,

racism, social unconscious, white.

Introduction
In an article on racism for the Guardian newspaper, March 4th, 2000, A. C.
Grayling wrote:
It is an irony that although racism is a reality, and a harsh one, race itself is a
complete fiction. It has no genetic or biological basis. All human beings are closely
related to one another, and at the same time each human being is unique. Not only
is the concept of race entirely artificial, it is new; yet in its short existence it has, like
most lies and absurdities current among us, done a mountain of harm … In human
terms, DNA analysis dismantles the idea of race completely … rather, race is a social,
cultural and political concept based on superficial appearances and historical con-
ditions, largely those arising from encounters with other peoples as Europe developed
a global reach with the slavery and colonialism that followed.

Here Grayling is referring to the evidence that is emerging from recent develop-
ments in the analysis of DNA which confirms what has been suspected, that
the term ‘race’ is a constructed idea with no objective basis in biology. It is, as
Rustin states, ‘… both an empty category and one of the most destructive and
powerful forms of social categorization’ (Rustin 1991, p. 57)
This paper attempts an exploration of the effects of this form of ‘social
categorization’ on the relationship between two individuals within the setting
of the consulting room. To do so I have returned to an interaction that I first

0021–8774/2002/4704/567 © 2002, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
568 Helen Morgan

described in a paper written a few years back entitled ‘Between fear and
blindness; the white therapist and the black patient’ (Morgan 1998). The
interaction arose in my work with Dee, a black woman whom I saw three
or four times a week over some years. In amongst this material were two
little ‘slips’, one of thought and one of speech, which have continued to interest
me. It is as if two tiny holes opened up in the floor of ego consciousness, and
here I want to dig down into the spaces they have created to see if they can
help illuminate what might be called the racism within the unconscious
psyche.
It is evident from the definition of racism such as that given by Chambers
dictionary as ‘belief in the inherent superiority of some races over others,
usually with the right to be dominant; discriminative treatment based on such
belief’, that there exist many forms of racism, and many types of oppression.
This paper, however, focuses on white racism and concerns primarily the matter
of difference in colour. I have kept the focus here for a number of reasons:

1) The particular interaction I explore occurred between a white therapist

and a black patient. What was brought to the fore through this interaction
concerned the fact of the difference in our colours and the impact that
seemed to be having on the analytic relationship. In other aspects, such as
gender, class and culture, there were many similarities between us. It was colour
that seemed to be permeating our engagement with each other, and an uncon-
scious, asymmetrical dynamic that took its cue from a racist backdrop of the
wider world of which we are both part. The amplification of the images that
arose from this very specific engagement is used in consideration of a wider
dynamic, that of perceived white supremacy. I am reluctant here to stray too
far from the original interaction, and so, whilst I believe that the thinking
behind white racism is applicable to other forms of racism, especially that
of anti-Semitism, I do not make specific reference to such in this paper.
2) With a few notable exceptions referred to later in the paper, very little has
been said within Jungian circles about the issue of white racism and, in par-
ticular, Jung’s own writings on the subject of what he calls ‘the primitive’.
It is my belief that this matter needs examination because it raises a number
of important questions concerning our theories. By trying to face the racism
within Jung’s thinking and within our own, and by examining the theories
we have by that light, we may deepen and expand the theoretical frame-
work within which we work.
3) It seems from the paucity of material on the subject within the psycho-
analytic world that the black/white issue is an extremely difficult matter to
consider for white therapists. I know of no other subject that raises anxiety,
the temperature and defences quite so readily. Considering myself a liberal,
the word ‘racism’ itself sets up an immediate accusatory tone from which I
flinch. ‘Not me’ I want to shout. ‘I’m on the side of the good guys’. For the
‘bad guys’ include the British National Party, Le Pen, the Klu Klux Klan,
Exploring racism 569

the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, etc, etc; all extreme forms of racist
attack which are alien and abhorrent to me. Yet it is possible that the very
existence of the extreme racists means that a container is provided into
which I, as a white liberal, can project the racist self.
4) An important feature of the matter of colour racism is the fact of its
visibility. In Britain for example, however comfortable the black person is
in their own skin, they are always having to deal with the reactions of a
predominantly white society to their blackness. Reactions that cover
everything from the extremes of expressed hatred of the bigot to the subtle
shades of response, including guilt, fear and envy, of the white liberal.

In his Preface to the 1988 edition of his book, White Racism, Joel Kovel argues
that:
… Western civilization is saturated, not merely with racism – that is obvious enough
– but with the elementary gesture out of which racism is constructed: splitting the
world in the course of domination. It follows that:
• racism antecedes the notion of race, indeed, it generates the races;
• racism supersedes the psychology of prejudice, indeed, it creates that psychology
for its own purposes;
• racism evolves historically, and may be expected to appear in different phases in
different epochs and locales;
• racism cannot be legislated out of existence, since what is put into law always
serves to legitimate the system which generates and is defined by it.

(Kovel 1988, pp. xiii–xiv)

Kovel’s first statement, that racism antecedes the notion of race, asserts that it
is a dynamic located in the urge to power and privilege and that splitting the
world into so-called ‘races’, and then allocating certain characteristics to each
‘race’, is a function of that urge. As such, it is essentially a dynamic that belongs
to the rationale of the political and economic, and that to seek a purely psy-
chological explanation misses the point. This is underlined in his second
assertion that racism supersedes the psychology of prejudice.
There have been a number of attempts in the analytic literature to formulate
an explanation of racism as a psychological phenomenon. Such ideas as the
projection of shadow; splitting; Stranger anxiety; an enactment of Oedipal
conflicts; Freud’s ideas on the narcissism of small differences … these can be
useful ways of thinking about the psychology of prejudice, but I have come to
the view that they all fail to explain the central fact of racism – the asymmetry
that is created between groups in terms of discrimination, domination and
power.1
The first difficulty with this analytic theorizing is that it locates the dynamic
as primarily a function of the psyche. It assumes a model of this psyche that

1
For a fuller critique of the consideration of the psychology of racism in the psychoanalytic
literature see Dalal 2001.
570 Helen Morgan

is discrete and individualistic, where racism is thought of as a neurotic or

psychotic phenomenon within the particular self. By prioritizing the individual
in this way, we may be complicit in feeding a culture of narcissistic preoccu-
pations and serve further to cut us off each from the other.
Almost all theories of racism that have been developed within the analytic
world contain the tacit assumption that, contrary to Kovel’s view, it is ‘the
psychology of prejudice’ which creates racism. The individual is placed in
the foreground with racism seen as primarily an internal matter, from which
the social, the external is formed. Without explicitly addressing the matter,
one difficulty is how to explain the racist structures or mass movements such
as those of slavery, colonialism, Nazi Germany or of the era of South African
apartheid. Are we to assume a synchronous arising of this psychological
phenomenon in the majority of individual psyches, all at the same time? By
glossing over this problem, it seems to me that we lead ourselves into a cul de
sac. Reversing the basic idea as Kovel does, by placing racism first, as the
creator of the psychology of prejudice, rather than the other way round, does
not invalidate theorizing that psychology, but gives it a more appropriate, less
inflated place within a political and economic perspective.
Another difficulty with these analytic theories is that they do not take into
account the differences in power and privilege of the general groupings that
each individual is defined within. Taking the idea of Stranger anxiety as an
example, if this is a real phenomenon that arises in humans, then it must arise
in all humans whether they are black or white, gentile or Jew. To say other-
wise would assume a fundamentally different psychology for different peoples,
which leads us directly back into those theories used to justify colonialism and
slavery in the first place. So, assuming that all humans develop this Stranger
anxiety, how do we explain how this fear in one group leads to their dom-
ination of the other, whilst an equivalent fear in the other leads to their being
discriminated against? And, even if we are to consider the psychology of
the dominant group alone (which most of such theories do), why should cer-
tain sets of people – the Black, the Jew, etc, as opposed to other groups – be
divided off and defined as ‘Stranger’ or ‘Other’ and then feared, projected into
etc. The fact of racism, as it is embedded within Western culture, means that
being defined as one so-called ‘race’, as opposed to other so-called ‘races’ due
to them being born with certain characteristics, determines whether one
inherits membership of the group that discriminates or that which is discrim-
inated against. Theories of the psychology of prejudice, on the whole, fail to
address this.
Taking Kovel’s last point concerning legislation, there is a warning here for
us as we engage in theorizing on the psychology of racism. He is speaking of
the law, but if we take seriously the idea that racism creates the ‘psychology
of prejudice’, then we who are the practitioners of that psychology may be in
danger of developing theories that ‘legitimate the system which generates racism
and is defined by it’. By failing to acknowledge the fundamental asymmetry
Exploring racism 571

in the power of the phenomenon, or by concerning ourselves only with the

psychology of the dominant group, or by assuming a psychology of the
internal can truly explain the external, we may be contributing to the legitim-
izing of the system of racism itself.
With all these caveats in mind, I now return to the clinical material and
the interaction that occurred between myself and my patient, Dee.

Clinical background
Dee was the eldest of four, having come from a religious family where a strict
discipline was imposed on all the children. This discipline was sometimes
harsh and often experienced as arbitrary, to which Dee responded by retreat-
ing into a fantasy world inside herself and away from the family. It was only
in her late teens that she discovered that she had been adopted when she
was 6 months old. Her real mother had become pregnant when still young,
and her sister who had just married had taken the baby. The people, there-
fore, whom Dee had grown up believing to be her parents, were, in fact, her
aunt and uncle. The birth mother left the area after which time all contact
with her was lost, and the couple who adopted Dee proceeded to have three
children of their own. The adoptive parents did not know the identity of the
natural father.
For some months into the therapy Dee was polite and eager to please, yet
we didn’t seem to really be engaged with each other. It was only after the first
long break that any negativity surfaced when she began to miss occasional
sessions. This was interpreted as an expression of anger and a re-enactment of
her ‘disappearance’ from the family as a child, but it remained a theoretical
understanding and wasn’t felt in the room by either of us. Gradually I became
aware of a feeling in me in her sessions of wanting her to leave. One day, as I
looked at her on the couch, the phrase ‘cuckoo in the nest’ came into my mind.
I realized the more particular thought was that she was a ‘cuckoo in my nest’
and I didn’t want her there.
Negative thoughts about patients are usually accepted, welcomed even,
as counter-transference responses, and helpful, therefore, in illuminating what
might be going on. This time the thought was experienced as intrusive, alien
and unwanted, and it was hard for me to own. After a while I said that there
seemed to be a wish in the room for us not to be together. Dee was clearly
relieved and began to talk of her growing sense that she didn’t belong with me,
that being in therapy was a betrayal of herself and maybe not right for her.
Over the next few weeks she verbally attacked therapy in a contemptuous
way, describing it as tyrannical and against people’s thinking. At one point she
was saying how she feared that I would – and she meant to say ‘brainwash’
her – what she actually said was that I would ‘whitewash’ her.
For Dee the early loss of the mother, and the later felt tenuousness of the
bond with the adoptive mother was the pain that lay at the centre of her self.
572 Helen Morgan

She was, in many ways, the cuckoo in the nest, not a real part of the family
and not conscious of why. She had to be good to hold on to her mother’s love,
but she still kept being beaten for crimes she often didn’t understand. Her
rage had no expression and she had to defend herself against angry, destructive
thoughts in case she was rejected altogether. She could only cope with the
situation by retreating into a fantasy world and into ideas of suicide, as her
only way of making sense was to imagine that there was something funda-
mentally wrong with her.
The strict religious culture of this particular family meant that Dee’s illegitimacy
was regarded as a sin, which was covered up by the aunt’s adoption of the
baby. One can only speculate how the adoptive parents felt towards this child,
the product of shameful intercourse, especially after the birth of their own
children. But I believe that my thought and Dee’s verbal slip tell us something
of their unconscious rejection of this infant, and of the child’s sense of her own
wrongfulness, but also of a fear that her ‘rehabilitation’ requires a whitening
that will wipe out her distinctive self.
Here, then, were two individuals together in a room in NW London at the
very end of the twentieth century. Both were well educated and used to the
multiculturalism of a world shrunk by telecommunications and migration, and
both would describe themselves as liberal in their thinking. Into this engage-
ment two small, barely formed thoughts pushed their way; each unwanted,
yet each managing to slip past the defences and through the cracks of the ego
consciousness of the thinker. As has been touched on above, each idea, one
spoken and one merely thought, informed a deeper understanding of the
particular vicissitudes of Dee’s personal psyche, and also of the unconscious
transference/countertransference relationship between us.
What I am interested in exploring here, however, is whether these two fears
– of the cuckoo and of the whitewash – tell us anything about a larger dynamic
within the social and historic framework of which we are part. A significant
clue to this lies in the fact that we both sought initially to reject these ideas that
emerged unbidden in our respective minds. It was as if they each erupted into
the relationship, spoiling as they did so, the benign, enlightened view we held
about ourselves and about the other. Apparently, at a deeper, more raw pre-
rational level, there was a fear in each of the other. The fact that the other
was perceived as a threat was the same, but the form the threat took differed,
and an amplification of these specific images may shed further light on this
unconscious, asymmetrical relationship between ‘black’ and ‘white’.

The cuckoo in the nest

The familiar phrase, ‘cuckoo in the nest’, refers to the attribute for which the
cuckoo is well known, its brood parasitism. The cuckoo does not build its own
nest but lays its eggs singly in the nests of other bird species. The eggs are then
incubated and reared unwittingly by the foster parents. According to the
Exploring racism 573

Encyclopaedia Britannica various adaptations enhance the survival of the egg.

These are:

… egg mimicry, in which the cuckoo egg resembles that of the host, thus minimizing
rejection by the host; removal of one or more host eggs by the adult cuckoo, reducing
both the competition from host nestlings and the danger of recognition by the host
that an egg has been added to the nest; and nest-mate ejection, in which the young
cuckoo heaves from the nest the host’s eggs and nestlings.

You can’t help but feel sorry for the poor host-bird. She works away building
this nest for her offspring and then diligently incubates the eggs until they are
ready to hatch. She is not aware that she has a foreigner, an intruder amongst
her treasures. Maybe one of her own has already been tipped out to make way
for this interloper. Maybe it is yet to be destroyed by this pseudo-sibling. The
cuckoo is the lazy parasitic good-for-nothing penetrating the nest when the
host-mother isn’t looking and exploiting her efforts and her innocence.
The nest is a place of retreat, our comfortable home, the place where we
belong. We ‘feather our own nest’ and we lay down that which we have worked
for and saved, our nice little nest egg. Listen to the rhetoric in Britain today
concerning asylum seekers and one hears the fear of the bird in her nest. In this
country we live with the privilege of a prosperity we hug to ourselves, fearful
of the intruder who will ‘steal’ it from us and of the ‘envious’ attack of the
other. The introduction of the notion of the ‘bogus’ as opposed to the ‘genuine’
asylum seeker legitimizes this fear whilst at the same time allowing us to main-
tain a perception of ourselves as generous and hospitable to those who are
deemed worthy of our acceptance. The image of the ‘bogus’ summons up the
sham, the impostor who could exploit our ‘innocence’ and trick us into sharing
our hard-won wealth, should we relax our vigilance. When we are not looking
this intruder can contaminate the nest, usurp the rightful child and replace it
with the alien. The infant’s greed is an abuse of the beneficence of the mother
and, as such, is sacrilege. It will gobble up our hard-earned resources whilst
we flap about working to feed this impostor and looking foolish.
Put this way the projective elements in this fear begin to emerge. If anyone
has intruded into the other’s nest, plundered its resources, fed off its land and
displaced its children, it is the Europeans. A substantial part of the feathering
of this nest has been through the exploitation of the so-called ‘Third World’.
The prosperity we enjoy in the West was largely pillaged from the colonies,
from slavery and exploitation, and continues via the inequality of trade today.
But even deeper than this is the privilege of the white skin per se. It seems to
be a great privilege indeed, and must, therefore, be guarded deep in the safe
realms of the unconscious.
Why is this apparently trivial fact of being born with skin of a lighter hue,
such a privilege? How was it made so? The history of racism is the history of
the construction of an idea, of a way of making divisions, of categorizing, which
then become so imbued in our ways of perceiving the world it seems that no
574 Helen Morgan

other view is possible. The concept of ‘race’ itself, the division of humanity
into groups who can be defined by appearance, is only an idea, but has come
to be perhaps the most powerful in its implications that the human mind has
ever conceived. The history of this idea shows that it is a conception of the
European mind which, in its dominion, has secured the right to say how the
world is to be divided and, in so doing, to award supremacy to itself. As Kovel
points out:
… the world is neither black nor white, but hued. A lightly-hued people – aided
perhaps by fantasies derived from their skin color – came to dominate the entire
world, and in the process defined themselves as white. The process that generated
this white power also generated the fear and dread of the black.
(Kovel 1988, p. 95)

It is common to many cultures, I believe, that the notion of ‘white’ carries with
it thoughts of light, purity, innocence, and of the divine. ‘Black’, on the other
hand, is often associated with darkness, dirt and the devil. Once the light-hued
defined themselves as ‘white’ and the dark-hued as ‘black’, then the respective
associations could be appropriated and linked to peoples. As Hillman explores
at length in his paper, ‘Notes on white supremacy’, white and black are not
opposites in themselves but have been made to be so by the white:
‘White casts its own white shadow’. This conclusion may be bettered to say, ‘white
sees its own shadows in black’, not because they are inherently opposed but because
it is archetypally given with whiteness to imagine in oppositions. To say it again: the
supremacy of white depends on oppositional imagining.
(Hillman 1986, p. 41, itals. in original)

By defining ‘white’ and ‘black’ an opposition was set up. By associating good-
ness with one and badness with the other, by embodying the difference and
fixing it in the unalterable nature of our wrappings, white supremacy became
assured and unassailable. Thus the domination of the other, the establishment
of white privilege, were justified. Philosophy, religion and science have been
employed to bolster that privilege, science assuring us that physiognomy and
phrenology tell us ‘how we look is how we are’, and that physical appearance,
the superficial, defines not only who we are and who we are not, but also a
hierarchy of quality and, therefore of justifiable privilege.
Religion too had an important part to play in affirming white supremacy. A
little story in the Old Testament of the Bible (Genesis, 9) took on a great
significance in this matter. This story tells us how Ham failed to cover his eyes
and saw his father, Noah, naked and drunk and how, as a consequence, God
cursed the descendants of Ham and his son Canaan. The curse condemned all
future generations of Ham’s line to servitude to the children of the other
obedient sons. Throughout the history of European trade in slaves from
the African continent, this story was a central plank in the argument of those
wishing to justify such activities. In the Caribbean, slaves were taught in the
Exploring racism 575

churches that they were black because God had made them so. They were
descendants of Ham and hence inferior, and their task on earth was to serve
their white masters. For these white masters, the keeping of slaves is validated.
Indeed, through being endorsed by God Himself, it becomes almost a duty.

The whitewash
The story of white supremacy then has not been told only by the whites to the
whites for it has been essential that the blacks learn the stories too, and learn
them well. The privilege of the white skin and the inferred inferiority of the black
are a message that comes through the media, through our Western institutions,
through our professions. The pervasiveness of such a message gets into all of us
and is one from which neither white nor black is immune. Such a message is sure
to take its toll, a toll on the black individual about which Frantz Fanon writes:
As I begin to recognize that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating
the Negro. But then I recognize that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this
conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin; or else I want them to be
aware of it. I try then to find value for what is bad – since I unthinkingly conceded
that the black man is the color of evil.

(Fanon 1986, p. 197)

Fanon’s book from which this quote is taken is entitled ‘Black Skin, White
Masks’. The concept of the white mask brings us close to that of the whitewash.
According to Chambers dictionary this is defined as; ‘to cover with whitewash;
to give a fair appearance to; to take steps to clear the stain from (a reputation),
cover up (an official misdemeanour) or rehabilitate (a person) in the public eye;
to beat (an opponent) so decisively in a game that he or she fails to score at all’.
In the therapy with Dee her unconscious slip from ‘brainwash’ to ‘white-
wash’ opened up the question of her relationship to colour – both hers and
mine. She was initially shocked by the idea that she was relating to me as a
colonial, imperial power that could take her over with my mind. Soon after
this she began to express a disparagement of blackness. She said she had been
secretly relieved that I was white when she first met me because of a sense that
a black therapist would be second rate and she wanted the best. She was
deeply ashamed of these feelings as a woman who was politically aware and
dismissive of the mimicry that she saw in some black people.
The fact of being black in a white society fitted her personal sense of not
belonging. Her experiences of racism had provided an unconscious confirmation
that she was ‘bad’ and deserving punishment. Despite political alignment with
the black movement, her internal sense remained that of being an outsider, of
being wrong and somehow dirty. White meant belonging and white meant
what she was not, ‘good’, successful and of value. My whiteness, I understood,
meant she could get close to the source of what was good, but she had to be
careful that she didn’t antagonize me through any exposure of her ‘bad’ rage.
576 Helen Morgan

As we explored the self-loathing inherent in her ‘secret’ disparagement of

‘black’, her comments switched from a denigration of the blackness of herself
to a denigration of my whiteness. This was done largely through her accounts
of the racism she had experienced. She seemed to be challenging me to take up
a position. Was I allied with these white others or would I join with her in her
attack, and feel black like her? What was not to be allowed, it seemed, was
our difference. I was to be for her or against her.
This complex attitude to her self and to me clearly related to her personal
story, but perhaps this also illustrates something of the dilemma of the black
person in the white society. If what is perceived to be good is white, then the
fairer one can become, the more one may gain acceptance. The stain, the mis-
demeanour is in the blackness and so must be whitewashed, but by becoming
whitened the individual is lost, as is the value of blackness. There is a wiping
out, an annihilation of the diverse when a blanket of white is layered over all.
In this game, the black is beaten so decisively by the whitener that ‘he or she
fails to score at all’.
To save oneself, a protest, a resistance is required. To stand out, to become
noticed. It is the black fist in the air refusing the white-out.
When we put these two fears next to each other we begin to see the
projective nature of both fantasies as well as how intricately tied up with each
other they are. In his book, Taking the Group Seriously, Farhad Dalal states:

What the marginalized groups are then forced to do, as a strategic necessity, is to use
the same weapon, and assert a new essentialism at the margins … The point about
being at the margins is that the centre finds it hard to hear, partly because of psy-
chological distance, and partly because what is being said is inconvenient. And so
the marginalized are forced to shout until hoarse, and can end up sounding shrill …
Once ‘whiteness’ exists and is used to organize the social order, then blackness is
forced into existence. The shape and meaning that this notion of blackness can take
are constrained by what has been allocated to whiteness. The power of ideology is
such that the ‘whiteness’ as organizing principle is unconscious. In other words the
white ensign at the centre is invisible, and it is only the black ensign at the margins
that is able to be seen. Thus those at the centre feel themselves to be innocent, unfairly
assaulted from without.

(Dalal 1998, pp. 206–207, itals. in original)

The white ensign is painted against a white background and is made invisible.
Those who are deemed to be not white, to be ‘other’ are pushed to the margins
and blackened. It is those at the centre who have become whitewashed as pay-
ment for the privilege, whilst the black edges are feared as potential intruders
and robbers of the nest. It is, I believe, this relationship that is referred to by
the two unwanted thoughts of myself and of Dee. And, whilst they are thoughts
that shed light on the system of projection and projective identification that
was alive at the level of the personal unconscious, my argument is that the
personal system seeks and is formed by the wider web of symbols, myth and
language within which it exists.
Exploring racism 577

Jungian thinking and racism

The question now arises as to how this web can be said to function within
the psyche. For Jungians, the obvious place to turn to is the concept of the
collective unconscious and of the archetypes, but I think we must take care.
For it is easy to forget that the archetypes are unknowable directly and un-
representable. We never see an archetype, we can only see the image, and they
are not one and the same. As Jung himself says:
Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype is determined in
regard to its content, in other words that it is an unconscious idea (if such an expres-
sion be permissible). It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not
determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form, and then only to
a very limited degree. A primordial image is determined as to its content only when
it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious
experience.

(Jung 1938/54, para. 155)

In the words of Anthony Storr:

This formulation disposes of the accusation sometimes brought against Jung that he
was a Lamarckian, believing in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. What
is acquired is a predisposition, not an idea; a predisposition to create significant
myths out of the common stuff of day-to-day experience … It is true that in other
contexts Jung writes as if he did believe that culture affected these predispositions;
more especially when he postulates racial differences in the collective unconscious:
but these seem to be later accretions.

(Storr 1986, p. 40)

These ‘later accretions’ should not be passed off lightly as they show how even
the originator of an idea can misuse it to re-enforce a prejudice. Dalal himself
has written a strong piece entitled ‘Jung: a racist’ (Dalal 1988) where he
examines much of what Jung has written on the so-called ‘primitives’. Michael
Vannoy Adams has also considered this important subject in his book, The
Multi-Cultural Imagination. ‘Race’, Color and the Unconscious (Adams 1996).
Both these works examine Jung’s attitudes to the ‘non-European’ in some
depth and are important texts.
The point here is not to attack Jung but to wonder about our own silence
in regard to the racist nature of much of what he says about those other than
Europeans in particular and the question of colour in general. And to raise the
question of whether there are implications for the theory to which we sub-
scribe. Jung was quite emphatic about the psyche of ‘the primitive’ as he was
about the danger of the white man ‘going black’ through contamination, and
he linked much of his pronouncements to the collective unconscious (Jung
1977, para. 554; 1930, paras. 507 & 527). We can put aside the embarrass-
ment of our founder’s words and call him a man of his times, and we are
indeed looking back at a man who is speaking from the first half of the last
578 Helen Morgan

century from a linguistic dialogue that has changed. But by doing so we are
accepting that thought and image are constructed, contingent and changeable,
and how do we square that with the timeless, universality of the archetype?

The cultural, social and collective unconscious

It seems to me that the Jungian model of the psyche leaves too great a gap
between the personal and the collective unconscious – a space that can be filled
with questionable and even dangerous material. Henderson (1990) introduced
the idea of the cultural unconscious as an additional layer of the psyche. Adams
(1996) takes on this idea except that he believes it to be a part of the collective
unconscious. However, this still assumes cultures as discrete entities as if
our membership of such was unproblematic, whereas in fact the groups, our
cultures, with which we identify and which determine our identity are many,
they often overlap and they may be conflictual.
I can locate my culture geographically in Britain, but for this to have any mean-
ing, questions of class, gender, colour, ethnicity, and many others are instantly
raised. The context will determine which particular form of identification is in
the foreground. Each form of categorization brings a blanket of homogeneity
down on the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ so that, for that moment, differences between
those in ‘our’ group are lost, as are differences between those in ‘theirs’. Each
grouping has its own cultural norms and its own cultural unconscious. In post-
structuralist terms, they are discourses and all of us belong to a multitude of
discourses, not just belong to, but are in them and they are in us. We define
and are defined by this interplay of a multi-verse of cultural discourses.
It is important to keep in mind that these cultural discourses exist, define and
are defined by the social world – a world that is not democratic in its valuation
of the worth of each culture. As there is a hierarchy of power relations
between cultural discourses at the conscious level, it can be said that there
exists such a relationship at the unconscious level. Dalal describes this as the
social unconscious. This he considers:
… includes, but is bigger than, what might be called the cultural unconscious. The
cultural unconscious can be described as consisting of the norms, habits and ways
of seeing of a particular culture, that are so deeply embedded in each of us that they
are indeed unconscious. This notion is the same as that of discourse. But we have
already said that we are subject to more than one discourse at a time – none of us is
monocultural. The social unconscious, as I think of it, includes the power relation-
ships between discourses. This ordering is also unconscious. This gives the social
unconscious the appearance of an absolute, which it is not, it is still a discourse.

(Dalal 1998, p. 212, itals. in original)

This suggests a way of thinking about the structure of the unconscious psyche
as including the cultural unconscious of particular discourses, itself contained
within a social unconscious which orders the power relationships between
Exploring racism 579

discourses. As a white woman, where the issue of ‘race’ is of most significance,

then one set of power relations is relevant. When the issue is that of gender,
then another set moves to the front of the stage. Neither are fixed, and a
different discourse may operate in the foreground at any moment. Dalal would
disagree, but I believe we can consider a stratum which underpins the arche-
typal forms or predispositions, and it is as the archetypal moves through the
social, cultural and personal filters of the unconscious that it is filled out into
an image or an idea that emerges into consciousness.
Holding to an insistence on the archetypal as ‘predisposition’ can help us
own the internal experience and lessen the likelihood of its projection onto the
external object. Thus, to return to my fear of the cuckoo in the nest, the com-
pulsion is to blame the other as a real object that brings my fear into existence.
It is my fear that is the experience, and my unconscious sense of privilege
which I am compelled to protect, that calls up and gives shape to the imagined
threat and calls it ‘cuckoo’. It may be that this fear is archetypal, as, perhaps,
is the fear of the whitewash. Or rather, perhaps they can be seen as a pair of
fears that image the archetypal linkage in that relationship between the centre
and the margins.
It is certainly possible that the fear of a return to a primitive state of mind
can be termed archetypal, but for Jung, this became fixed to the external object,
to the modern black African and to the risk he referred to as ‘going black’. He
filled out the ‘primordial image’ with ‘the material of the conscious experi-
ence’, with cultural and personal projections and used it as a justification for
his own fears and fantasies. Unfortunately he also loaded his conclusions
about Africans, Asians, African Americans and others with all the weight of
his influence and of the universality of the archetype.
The image is not the archetype. If we confuse the two then we fall into the
very shadow of our theory and, like Jung, we appropriate the weightiness of
the archetypes to justify our particular prejudices. By doing so we lend them
an immutability and a certainty that echo the use that once was made of the
story of Ham, and we amplify our own voices by appropriating those of the
gods. Thus the fluidity of the archetype is fixed into the image, into the cold
metallic template of the stereotype.

End point
Of course, one particular culture or discourse is that of analytical psychology
itself. I cannot speak for other organizations, but within my own the numbers
training who are from black and ethnic minorities are low, and I suggest it is
worth asking why. Worth it, not just because we might be caught in a form of
institutionalized racism, but because it may mean we have developed and are
colluding with a way of thinking about the human psyche that unconsciously
maintains a Eurocentric, white supremacy. The opening up of this through
that which is excluded has difficult but interesting possibilities.
580 Helen Morgan

A paper by Bob Young (1994) on how little the issue of racism is addressed
within training organizations is entitled ‘A loud silence’. Not only is the centre
a place where the white ensign is invisible, it is also a very silent place where all
that can be heard is the confirmation of those who are deemed to be like ‘us’
that ‘we’ are right. The uncomfortable questions have been pushed to the
margins where they may shout with shrill voices, or give up, shut up and turn
elsewhere. It is as if, in order to enter the centre, a whitewash is required – and
then the question disappears against the white background. Thus, the inter-
esting noise is from the margins and can only be asked from there. We at the
centre may need to stay the rush to defend ourselves and keep quiet and listen,
we may need to strain to hear and we may risk the privilege of the centre in
the process, but I suggest a more interesting world arises when all voices are
allowed. Perhaps it is time to apply the ‘talking cure’ to the culture that is our
own profession.

TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT

Alors que le concept de ‘race’ ne repose sur aucune base génétique ou biologique
les dynamiques du racisme infiltrent tous les aspects de la vie moderne – y compris le
cabinet de l’analyste. Est explorée dans cet article la relation entre un thérapeute blanc
et un patient noir à partir d’une pensée spontanée et d’un lapsus qui sont apparus dans
le cours de la thérapie. Ces ‘glissements’ indésirés sont amplifiés et examinés pour
mettre à jour les subtilités des effets de la différence de couleur sur la relation. Cette
interaction est montrée comme reflètant et mettant en lumière le fait que la relation
entre ‘blanc’ et ‘noir’ dans la société moderne occidentale est assymétrique. Ceci est
ensuite mis en relation avec les idées d’inconscient culturel et social, idées pouvant
donner des voies pour comprendre la tenacité du racisme en nous.

Während das Konzept der ‘Rasse’ keine Grundlage in Genetik oder Biologie besitzt,
durchdringt die Dynamik des Rassismus alle Aspekte des modernen Lebens – einschließlich
des Behandlungszimmers. In dieser Arbeit wird die Beziehung zwischen einem weißen
Therapeuten und einem schwarzen Patienten anhand eines ungefragt auftauchenden
Gedankens und einer verbalen Fehlleistung, die im Verlauf der Therapie auftrat. Die
Amplifikation und Untersuchung dieser ungewollten ‘Fehlleistungen’ wird verwendet,
um Licht auf die Feinheiten der Auswirkungen von unterschiedlicher Hautfarbe auf die
Beziehung zu werfen. Es wird hier behauptet, daß die Interaktion die asymmetrische
Beziehung zwischen ‘schwarz’ und ‘weiß’ in der modernen westlichen Gesellschaft
widerspiegelt und erhellt. Dies wird betrachtet unter Verwendung der Konzepte des
kulturellen und sozialen Unbewußten als Erklärungsmöglichkeit für die Haltbarkeit des
Rassismus in uns.

Mentre il concetto di ‘razza’ non ha alcuna base in genetica o in biologia, le dinamiche

razziste pervadono tutti gli aspetti della vita moderna – inclusa la stanza dell’analisi. In
Exploring racism 581

questo lavoro viene esaminata la relazione tra un terapeuta bianco e un paziente nero
attraverso un pensiero non espresso e un lapsus verbale che avvennero nel corso della
terapia. L’amplificazione e l’analisi di questi indesiderati ‘lapsus’ viene usata per far
luce sui non-detti degli effetti della differenza di colore nella relazione. Si sostiene
quindi che l’interazione riflette e illumina la relazione asimmetrica tra ‘nero’ e ‘bianco’
nella moderna società occidentale. Si considera poi l’uso dei concetti di inconscio
culturale e inconscio sociale come un modo per comprendere la tenacia del razzismo in
noi stessi.

Mientras que concepto de ‘raza’ no tiene su basamento en la genética o biología, la

dinámica del racismo perméa todos los aspectos de la vida moderna – incluyendo el
consultorio. En esta disertación, se explora la relación entre un terapeuta blanco y una
paciente de raza negra, mediante un pensamiento no deseado y un lapsus verbal que
ocurrió en el transcurso de la terapia. La amplificación y examen de estos ‘lapsus’ no
deseados, se utilizan para ilustrar las sutilezas de los efectos que la diferencia de color
ejercieron sobre la relación. Se discute aquí como la interacción refleja y destaca la
relación asimétrica entre ‘negro’ y ‘blanco’ en la sociedad occidental moderna. Luego
esto se considera, tomando los conceptos del inconsciente cultural y el inconsciente
social como maneras de comprender la tenacidad del racismo en nosotros.

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