Open Letter from a Group of Jungians on the Question of Jung's Writings on and Theories about ‘Africans’: [To the Editor of the British Journal of Psychotherapy]

Dear Editor,

Thirty years ago, the British Journal of Psychotherapy published a paper by Dr Farhad Dalal entitled ‘Jung: A racist’ . Regrettably, no adequate acknowledgement or apology for what Jung wrote, and Dalal critiqued, has been forthcoming from the field of analytical psychology and Jungian analysis. (To contextualize what follows, the Abstract to Dalal's paper has been placed in an Appendix to this letter.)

We write now as a group of individuals - Jungian analysts, clinicians, and academics utilizing concepts from analytical psychology - to end the silence. We felt further encouraged to write to the BJP in particular because of the Journal's strapline making clear its interest in ‘Jungian practice today’.

Via detailed scholarship, Dalal sets out what Jung wrote about persons of African and South Asian Indian heritage, as well as other populations of colour, and Indigenous peoples. Before and since the paper, Jung's views have caused considerable disquiet and often anger within the communities concerned. There has also been disquiet and anger about Jung's views in clinical, academic and cultural circles generally. Analytical psychologists and other Jungians have known about the implications of Jung's ideas for decades; there are signatories to this Letter who have campaigned for recognition of the problems. But there has been a failure to address them responsibly, seriously and in public.

We share the concern that Jung's colonial and racist ideas - sometimes explicit and sometimes implied - have led to inner harm (for example, internalized inferiority and self-abnegation) and outer harm (such as interpersonal and social consequences) for the groups, communities and individuals mentioned in the previous paragraph. Moreover, in the opinion of the signatories to this letter, these ideas have also led to aspects of de facto institutional and structural racism being present in Jungian organizations.