Search

Jung's dreams about Africa reveal the Whiteness and colonialist assumptions typical of the twentieth century educated European. Jung's visits to Africa and New Mexico, and his dreams are critically discussed, showing how, even decades later, Jung failed to use his own theory of dreaming with regard to his own dreams. The compensatory function of his dreams was never effected, and his transference fantasies of Africa and blackness were reinforced rather than analyzed. There were unfortunate consequences for the development of his thinking and his understanding of the individuation process, since his oppositional thinking in terms of White and Black remained as a concrete transference fantasy as well as a colonialist attitude towards his internal world. The Nguni term ubuntu , will be used to reimagine individuation in more explicitly ethical and socially embedded ways. With regard to the development of consciousness, a distinction is developed between the withdrawal of projections and as a helpful therapeutic issue and as an epistemological approach to the place of meaning. If Jung's dreams of Africa had managed to "heal" him, Jungian psychology would look rather like it does today, because the way out of Jung's Colonialism is to be found in Jung's life and work, especially in his alchemical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a position informed by postcolonial thought, it is argued that Jung's concept of individuation, with its emphasis on separateness and the withdrawal of projections, is essentially modern and Western. Any group of people is regarded by Jung only as a regressive threat to the individuation process. Jung's European colonialism is evident in his trips to Africa and his response to the dreams that he had there. It is argued that traces of this colonialism remain evident as a colonialism of the psyche to the extent that opposites such as light/dark, white/black, civilized/primitive, conscious/unconscious remain as the organizing principles in our theory of psyche. The author's experience of growing up in apartheid South Africa is discussed, together with an account of a dream of a traditional Xhosa woman and another Xhosa woman's life. Thereafter, Senghor's concept of negritude is used to describe an individuating consciousness that might be closer to our shared human experience than is found in Jung's writings. Individuation is then discussed in terms of the Zulu concept of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on the recognition that we become persons through other persons who treat us as persons, and that the community can be imagined as facilitating our individuation. It is suggested that Ubuntu might describe our experience of growth within the Jungian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]