ABSTRACT
In this chapter John Michael Hayes demonstrates that Jung's major, presciently unique contribution to psychoanalytic theory, the concept of the complex (incl. the cultural complex), is an important tool to analyze the persistent problem of systemic racism. Jung, and historically the Jungian community, are hardly immune to the charge of racism. Understanding complexes hardly disqualifies one from being locked in a complex. Whiteness is a cultural complex that binds awareness and blinds consciousness.
We of necessity live in discontinuous experiences. All of it cannot be held in one, encompassing self-narrative. Jung described dissociation as a basic psychological defense. We organize islands of experience into what Jung called ‘complexes’, in effect ‘splinter psyches’, having their own autonomy and creating a distinct experiential reality. A complex forms around our cultural group or subgroup, and creates a reality with assumptions about reality that are taken as factual. Whiteness is a cultural complex that effectively creates a limited, essentially unreal, experiential reality that unthinkingly affirms white superiority, ignoring contradictory evidence, and disavowing the horrific facts of history. A metacognitive awareness of the whiteness complex that holds us opens up the possibility of transcending its limitations and seeing more of reality as it actually is. Metacognitive awareness of the whiteness complex opens a way forward to fuller and deeper relationships with others.
