Response to Fanny Brewster and Alan Vaughan

I want to begin by thanking both Fanny and Alan for travelling the long journey here to present their warm, open and generous thinking to us today. Especially at a time when there is so much that is cold, closed and mean on both sides of the Atlantic. Racism seems to have become legitimised and as Alan puts it: ‘… … still separates, raises walls, creates artificial barriers and divides us’. He later states that ‘racism distorts perceptions, disregards reason, logic and the heart.’ There is much work to be done. As African American Jungian analysts, they are both deeply engaged in retrieving and standing up for the dignity, depth and wisdom of an Africanist perspective in the face of a Western paradigm that is troubled and troubling. They are doing their work. What, I ask myself as a white British analyst, is mine?

In her paper Fanny speaks of the analytic encounter where there is difference in colour in the consulting room and asks a crucial question. She says:

As the African American woman analyst who finds herself listening to the words of a white woman whose ancestors enslaved my own, there must be a place in the transferential field for such a realisation - and acceptance of the place for both our archetypal DNA selves. A place for both our egos to find some safety in the room. How does this, how can this happen?

When black and white meet, as we do today, there will be ghosts haunting the encounter and they must be seen, and they must be heard if we are to manage the potential for misunderstanding, hurt and shame. This must not be left as a one-sided affair with the black individual having to carry the burden of the work. Fanny stresses the importance of acknowledgement of the ancestral lineage bonding in an Africanist perspective, and this has led her back through the generations to that dock at Charleston in the 17^th century and to her ancestor stepping off the ship that had torn him from his African home. I too have an ancestral lineage and this needs recognitio